“Hour eight,” Ainsley said. Another needle in the candle. She held it in such a way that the needles stuck out through the gaps between her fingers, wax running over the backs of her hands. “I take the freedom you cherish, Blake Thorburn. I take your wings, I take your claws, I take your ability to crawl, to slither, to leap and trawl. I take this freedom from you as time takes all things.”
The pressure that had weighed me down before now pressed in from all directions.
“Rhymes,” I said, in an effort to fight past my frustration. “Cute.”
“I try,” she said.
“Evan,” I said.
Sunglasses stepped closer. I saw a golden disc in his hand. Like a saucer, almost.
Ready to beat on my familiar?
“Get help,” I said.
I flung him, back and away from the others.
Sunglasses stepped forward, disc raised, but Evan was already gone, up and over the fence, then down, so he could take cover behind it, flying around the building.
Sunglasses relaxed.
“One,” I said, “Two, three, four, five…”
“Hour-” Ainsley started.
“…six, seven, eight…”
“Ainsley,” Sunglasses said.
“…nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen…”
It was childish, but I was going to disrupt her concentration any way I could. The numbers were important, no doubt, I had no idea why or how, and I was going to throw as many numbers out there as I could.
When kids did it, they did it with random numbers. Ty had shown me the truth, once upon a time, when I was measuring things for a display. Count in order, and you could more effectively disrupt someone’s ability to recall numbers. Their minds would get caught up in the flow of numbers, and they’d lose track.
“…eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two…”
“Cover my ears,” she said.
Sunglasses covered her ears with his hands.
She ran her free hand up the candle, counting the needles.
“Hour thirteen…”
I stopped. No point in continuing.
Sunglasses and the youngest girl turned their heads at the same moment.
“Trouble,” Sunglasses said.
“Someone stepped into the snare,” the youngest of the two girls said. “They won’t make it much further.”
“Yeah. Be careful, keep an eye out.”
She nodded.
“…I bind that which I have already bound…” Ainsley continued.
I grit my teeth.
What to do?
I didn’t know enough to free myself, and I didn’t know enough to bind them faster or better than they were binding me.
Attacks? I had no weapons.
The practice?
No.
I could sense Laird drawing closer. His kid was Craig, the sticky note kid?
“…bind you thrice over.” Ainsley said, finishing.
My heart was pounding, my mouth dry. I was cold, being crouched down against the freezing pavement and snow, moisture soaking through my jeans.
“Kind of overkill, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Not after what I saw in that bathroom,” she said. She reached into her pocket, winced, then pulled out another needle.
“Kind of sheltered, aren’t you? That wasn’t even remotely diabolic.”
“It was barbaric. Using something like that on me?”
“People haven’t really held back in dealing with me,” I said.
“I’m holding back,” she said, glaring down at me. “You know what Craig would have done? He would have stuck you in an old man’s body. Aged you by ninety years, until you were so old and demented you couldn’t speak. My uncle? He would have had Craig leave you like that.”
“Taken down by a sticky note?” I asked.
My supposed savior was stuck, trapped in one place, and Evan was stuck with them.
I could only stall.
“Craig’s good. He started earlier than most of us, and…” she stops as Sunglasses elbows her. “Hour twenty-one.”
Very near the top of the candle.
“Does it hurt? The wax?”
“I bind-” she started.
The nearest car shuddered, then tilted. The tires on one side had been punctured.
I heard rattling. the fence was swaying.
“Get your silvered chains,” Sunglasses said.
“We used them to bind the exit.”
“Not all of them. Tandie?”
The younger of the two girls pulled one of the gleaming chains from her bag.
“Some well-off families get their kids fancy cars,” I said. “I guess your family gives you… what? Protective chains?”
Sunglasses ignored me.
“Where do I put it?” Tandie asked. “Around him?”
“No. Ainsley, finish the binding, so he can’t be moved by others. Tandie, protect us.”
“We won’t fit all in the circle.”
“Me and Ainsley, then.”
“And me?”
“Give me the chain and run. Go inside!”
Tandie hesitated, then did just that, practically throwing the chain at him before bolting.
I heard a loud crash. The car closest to the door moved. It didn’t move fast, but it still moved, rolling between Tandie and the door.
“No, please, no,” Tandie said. “No horror movie stuff please, no.”
Another crash followed. The car next to the other one began rolling forward.
One by one, the cars began moving, brakes cut, somehow shifted into neutral.
“I bind you one final time,” Ainsley said. “I bind-”
The one to my left shuddered, and the crash was painfully loud. It began rolling.
Safe within the circle, Sunglasses and Ainsley stayed stock still as it approached.
She tried again. “I bind-”
The car to my right shifted into motion with a bang.
The car door swung open. Nobody inside.
As the car moved forward at perhaps five miles an hour, Sunglasses watched the door approach, threatening to bump into him and Ainsley.
When it was close enough, he kicked it, vicious. It slammed shut.
Tandy shrieked. She’d been climbing over the car hood to get to the door, but now she fell, landing on the snow-covered pavement, two hands wrapped around her ankle.
Her screams turned more frantic as she got a look under the car. She began to crawl away on three limbs.
“Come, Tandy!” Sunglasses called out.
He wasn’t looking as a small figure crawled over the open car door.
It was the size of a chimp, roughly as hairy, but less consistently hairy, with a receding hairline and thick body hair. Its feet and hands were clawed, and it had no tail. The macabre overbite showed off an uneven row of fangs.
What was eerie was how it had decorated itself. It wore a makeshift monocle that wasn’t round, but held in place by points of glass that punctured its eye socket. Its genitalia was decorated, pushed through a series of washers and wound up by wires that bent it into some grotesque art piece.
It grinned as it saw me. It then winked, catching hold of the handle above the door, weighed-down genitals swinging madly for a moment, then swung itself into the car.
Sunglasses was fixated on the other of the two little monsters, which was assaulting the youngest of the two girls. That one was female, potbellied, just as hairy, but similarly decorated. It carried a makeshift backpack and wore a collar and a self-inflicted two-way wedgie with a single length of rusty chain welded to a collar.