I could see the wounds, the elemental energy bleeding forth.
Conquest passed into my field of view as he stepped back, both hands on his old fashioned bayonet rifle.
When Conquest’s eyes fell on me, I ducked behind cover. I had only a fleeting glimpse of him raising his weapon to his shoulder, the barrel pointed at me.
“Down!” I shouted.
Maggie threw herself to one side, landing on her side so she wouldn’t take the gun off Duncan.
I dropped to the base of the wall.
Conquest was big, the rifle disproportionately large. The shot blew a chunk out of the wall by where my arm had been. Another hole appeared in the wall on the far end of the room.
Rose was saying something, but my ears were covered.
“What?” I asked, lowering my hand.
The music was almost drowned out by the sound of the Hyena tearing into the car.
“Corvidae is down,” Rose commented, sounding very calm. “Wait, nevermind, he’s back up.”
“Duck, Rose!” I said. “Those bullets could hit you! Conquest has done it before.”
“I am,” Rose said. “But he’s trying to stop you, you know?”
I did know.
He wanted to take me out so Rose was easy pickings.
But he’d aimed for a spot that would have hit my arm. Assuming supernaturally good aim, was he shooting to wound? Did he want to break me?
Another shot passed through a spot slightly higher than the last.
Maybe not. That seemed aimed at hitting head or neck.
It all seemed to be playing out in slow motion. The way the splinters and plaster flew through the air, the chunks of brick arcing toward the floor.
Everything mattered, missing something vital could ruin us.
But my perceptions were the key thing here, and I was perceiving things in an odd way.
The music? The individual elements were piling on one another now, building up to something.
I could cover my ears to stop that bit of perception alteration from getting to me.
Maggie couldn’t, not with a gun in one hand. Not if she wanted to aim at Duncan.
This wasn’t a glamour, not exactly. It wasn’t countered by someone recognizing it for what it was.
I’d argued with Rose before, saying that magic was an art form, not a science. That it was about symbols and interpretation, and just as we focused ideas through words and images, the rules of this world could be altered by way of incantations, rituals and symbols.
Time as we recorded and tracked it was a construct, attitudes toward it changed from culture to culture, person to person.
He was altering that attitude.
Things were slowing down, in action and thought, and it was getting worse. I knew my actions were slowed, but my thoughts were gradually catching up.
Why?
What did he gain, slowing everyone down? What did it do except give us more time to think as trouble arrived?
Duncan shifted his weight, back away from Maggie at first. Innocuous.
“Touch your ears…” Maggie said, and the words were slightly drawn out, distorted by the music, “…I shoot!”
Maggie didn’t see how he was getting his feet under him.
The music shifted, the effect doubling down. Duncan moved as if he’d expected it, choosing that moment to spring forward.
Maggie stepped back, adjusting the angle of the gun, gauntleted hand closing on the trigger. Excruciatingly slow.
Duncan moved faster.
His hands moved faster.
The runes he’d drawn on his wrists in marker.
I could remember when I’d tested the slow time field around Hillsglade house. Dropping something, watching it move slower in my perceptions as compared to reality.
I moved, not drawing my arm back -there was no time- but simply hurling it forward.
I threw June.
The music could affect my body, convince it to move slower, it would have a harder time doing the same to a hurled hatchet.
Duncan’s hands reached the gun. Maggie managed to pull the trigger, but Duncan was already turning the gun around, one hand on the back of it, the other on the side of the barrel.
The gun shot passed over one of his shoulders.
He twisted the gun around until it was pointed at Maggie, her finger sliding out of the trigger-guard as the gun rotated.
The hatchet hurtled past him, handle striking his elbow.
He moved, holding the gun with one hand. His body was as affected as mine was, but his hands and his arms weren’t. He looked at me out of the corner of one eye, aiming-
-and there was nothing I could do about it. Even covering my ears wasn’t making a whole lot of difference.
Rose was saying something, but her voice was distorted.
Then I heard fluttering right in my ear, and the entire world shifted into focus, in the chronological sense.
Evan.
Good kid.
I threw myself to one side, and Evan gave me a push to help. In the doing, I put myself behind Duncan, where it was physically impossible to aim at me. The shoulder couldn’t bend that far back.
“Good job,” I said, putting my feet under me.
“Hyena’s down!” Rose said. I put two and two together and realized she was repeating her line from earlier. “Corvidae is gone!”
The music still played.
Conquest moved, stepping to a point where he and his rifle were visible through the window. Basic logic said that if I could see him, he could see me.
Evan’s wings sounded I lunged to one side, trying to use Duncan as cover, hoping Conquest had made some deal-
No such luck. Shots rang out. The damage was exaggerated as it hit various objects and surfaces within the house, causing plaster to rain down, loud and violent enough to make my vision distort. He didn’t need to reload.
He was the assailant, I was the civilian, or the man on the battlefield who was out of ammo and praying not to get hit. That was the aura he had, the atmosphere that he carried with him when he was on the offensive. It stripped away rational thought, shifted the ‘fight or flight’ decision making into pure ‘flight’.
It was like being the kid in the classroom, homework unfinished, praying the teacher wouldn’t pick you to answer the question. That was the closest comparison I could make, tying it to reality, except being ‘picked’ was being hit by the bullet.
And you knew the fucking teacher had it in for you.
I found the hatchet in my scramble.
Time seemed to slow as I ducked low, grabbing the handle, and put inadvertently distance between myself and Evan.
I thought of moments I regretted. Moments where I looked back on them and wished I’d done something different. Moments I’d been attacked.
I found something there. Anger, a need to not feel like that again.
I’d fight back, lash out blindly if I had to.
Evan found me again, no doubt trying to help me avoid the next bullet. In the moment I found the regular flow of time, I swung the hatchet, aiming for Duncan’s wrists.
It was about as grisly as one might expect.
Blood, a scraping that felt incongruous with everything else.
I’d only hit one wrist, but that was enough.
I pulled it free, expecting resistance, found none, and let the hatchet fly into the air.
Rose was watching, waiting.
“June!” she shouted. “We release you from your binding! All at once now! The snow! Nothing but snow!”
Conquest shielded his face as the hatchet detonated, the ghost appearing as she’d been the first time I’d seen her, clear as day.
Bye, June.
Snow filled the room, thicker than any snowfall.
I ran, and by the third step, my feet were padding on snow.