The hurled piece of torso missed by a considerable distance.
“Couldn’t have done that sooner?” I asked. “Spare us the tension?”
“Shhh, Thorburn. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Illuminate me,” I said.Midge threw again. To the same distant spot.I saw confusion on her features.
The phone rang for a fourth time. Fell finally answered.
He paused for a moment.
“Okay,” he said. He hung up.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Your friends are nervous. There’s activity near them. Either our opposition tracked down the effigies I secreted around the city, and they just happen to be in the neighborhood, or the very temporary protections I put down are faltering. The Astrologer is very good at navigating and finding things, and that could include your friends.”
“They aren’t tied to this, they aren’t my Champions,” I said, then quickly added, to be safe, “in the sense of this contest.”
“They’re involved. There’s a massive gap between not wanting them to be tied to this and them not being a part of it. You know it.”
I glanced at Tiff and bit my lip.
Midge paced. She approached the bus stop, then tore the bench loose. Stainless steel or something approximate, cut into a wavy shape so it wouldn’t be comfortable to sleep on.
She bent it, twisted it, and tore it in two pieces.
She threw them blind.Hoping to hit something.
The post that held up the roof of the bus stop was the next casualty. She threw it so it flipped end over end.
Uncomfortably close to us. Tiff made a noise.
Midge made a few more indiscriminate attacks, dismantling the bus stop. None came as close as the post did.
She found and threw the largest blades of glass that had come down from the shop display window. Each one thrown like a throwing knife or Frisbee.
Useful pieces of glass exhausted, she paced, searching, constantly on the lookout for us or for Rose.
Her eye settled on something else.
Fell’s car. Battered, with one broken window.
“No,” Fell said.
She stalked toward it, slipping briefly on ice.
“No, no, no!” Fell said.
He moved, and I took that as my cue to move.
We had our differences. If it came down to saving my friends and the lengths I would go, I suspected he would be caught off guard. He was a loner, by all appearances. He’d mentioned family, but he functioned alone. I didn’t.
But the car? I had my bike. I could understand his attachment to the car.
We’d fucking rescue that car.
Evan flew around me. Where he’d made Midge stumble, the push he gave me helped steady me where I felt unsteady. Just as it was easier to slip when I was already slipping, it was easier to move forward with balance when I was upright and on firmer footing to start with.
“Evan,” I said. I reached out. “Hold up!”
He turned in the air, then landed on my hand.
“That part before, where you stuck your arm out and I took off?” he asked. “That was great!”
It had been, but I didn’t have time to agree. “Part two right now. Fake out. Watch for my signal. Don’t stop watching. Go.”
“Yeah!” he said, saying it as he took off, so his voice faded slightly as the distance increased.
Midge had noticed us, meaning that Fell’s protection wasn’t sticking with us any longer.
She maintained her course to the car. Did she think someone was inside?
I actually managed to arrive before Fell, putting myself between Midge and the car.
Unarmed, no magic, and a sword I could barely hold, even if I was in a position to use it as a weapon.
“Evan!” I called out, looking over Midge’s shoulder “Now!”
Midge turned, faster than I might have expected, arm drawn back.
I raised one hand, gesturing ‘stop’.
Evan flapped hard, steering himself away, reversing direction.
A momentary stall and fake-out.
Midge’s expression when she faced me again was something to behold. Her face was burned, the whites stood out, her pupils narrowed to points, and brown nubs of teeth were bared.
She apparently didn’t like being deceived.
When she struck out, it was from fifteen or so feet away. Far enough away that I hadn’t anticipated an attack. Close enough that I couldn’t move out of the way.
Fell was already throwing the powder into the air.
Midge released the blade of glass, an underhand throw, quick and accurate.
I could see the powder taking form. Another me standing two feet to the left, catching the glass in the stomach. Impossibly, it went all the way through with a wet sound, made a louder thunk sound as it hit the car, and then belatedly shattered. Leaving illusion-me with a morass of glass shards in his midsection.
Fell, just to my right, raised his gun.
She caught his hand and crushed it, gun and all.
Then she pulled.
One arm came free of the socket.
She caught the other hand before he could stagger away. One hand on his chest, another on his wrist, another pull.
This time, due to angle and the force with which she gripped his hand, it came apart at the wrist. She had to try a second time to tear the arm from the socket.
He spun to the ground from the force of the maneuver, and landed in just the right position for her to step on both of his kneecaps, pulverizing them.
Leaving him to bleed out, she reached for the car.
The real Fell threw out a handful of powder, directly at her maimed reaching hand.
She closed it into a fist, then turned toward Tiff and Maggie, car forgotten.
“Protecting the car,” Fell said. “Your friends will need to manage, but if we lose the car-”
“I get it,” I said.
Superficially, if we lost the car, we were limited in how we could get around. The guerrilla strategy wouldn’t work.
Sentimentally, he was attached to his car, and while I’d never put my bike before my friends, I could sort of understand him putting his car before relative strangers.
Besides, berating him for being selfish wouldn’t achieve anything. Focus number one had to be on stopping this rogue summon.
We’d tried to fix one problem and we’d created a bigger one.
“I’m back,” Rose said.
Speaking of.
I looked. She was in the car’s side-view mirror.
A dark red line crossed her white blouse, and blood had spread from it, seeping into the cloth around it. It forked like a lightning bolt might. Or a crack in glass. From one shoulder to the other.
“You’re hurt.” Putting it lightly. A few inches higher and it could have been her throat.
“I’ll cope. I found the solution, but I need a distraction.”
I glanced at the others.
Maggie had the flute in hand, and Dickswizzle was dancing circles around Midge.
We had a second.
“Okay,” I said. “Fell, can you do this again?”
“No,” he said.
“Why not?”
“If illusion like I use is going to fail, it’s going to fail on the third try. Deceptions work that way. Besides, I need to have her attention before I can redirect it.”
As he’d caught her fist with the powder, or the thrown object.
I nodded.
I signaled Evan.
He swooped low, Midge fell, and Dickswizzle leaped, biting at her throat.
Too many double chins to get through before he could reach anything vital.
Midge caught the goblin and tore it in half.