There were goblins here too. Bigger ones. They had the same habit of peering at her from dark places, their eyes flashing momentarily like slivers of light striking on random reflective surfaces. Unlike stray bits of light, however, they had a weight to them.
They would be Johannes’. All of them, in one way or another.
She pressed on. It was easier if she kept moving. When she was forced to pause, the goblin stuck to the frozen ground, her leg seized up, and the strain in her arms caught up with her.
She wondered momentarily if it had something to do with the nature of this place. She couldn’t help but feel she was constantly going downhill, and it was drawing her to keep moving, deeper and deeper.
A car passed close enough that her snow-crusted scarf slapped against the passenger-side window. If her hand hadn’t been on Buttsack’s foot, the mirror might have caught her elbow.
Worrying.
She paused, trying to find a way to maneuver up to safer ground, and Buttsack kicked weakly against her grip.
Was he waking up?
Going back was too hard, arguably dangerous. She elected to move laterally.
Up a steep, snow-crusted stairway to an intersection.
A larger building stood nearby. Giant metal letters had been mounted on the side.
A middle school?
She headed over, shifting her grip to have one hand to each of Buttsack’s feet, letting go only when she was near enough to test a door.
The interior wasn’t warm, but it was out of that constant wind.
Mostly. A window was open or broken somewhere, and colorful papers drifted lightly across the school hallway.
Buttsack groaned.
She dragged him halfway down the hallway. The stiletto still pierced both of his palms, above his head. She shifted the position of it, putting the blade between two lockers, and then kicked the handle, driving it in. The metal on metal sound echoed through the school hallway. Buttsack made a pained expression.
“Wake up,” she told him.
He rolled his head from one side to the other. Half his face and most of his shoulder were a bloody ruin. She could see muscle and exposed bone, complete with bits of dirt, and moisture from the snow and ice she’d dragged him through.
She grabbed the pipe. A single cord connected the front of the inner pipe to the back end of the outer pipe. It worked well, slung over one shoulder. She aimed it at him.
“Wake up or I’m liable to shoot you. I’m done dragging you around, one way or the other.”
His eyes opened.
A moment later, they opened wider. “You brought me here?”
“Caught you the first time in a school. Fitting we do this in a spot like this.”
“The Sorcerer’s Demesne.”
“Oh, that. Yeah.”
“Bitch! You fucking bitch!”
She bent down, grimacing at the tension in her leg where he’d bitten her the night before. She pressed one end of the pipe against his groin.
“Bi…” he trailed off.
“I’m curious what’s so bad about being here. I can understand why goblins want to stay away from, say, the neighborhood where the witch hunters live. I can picture Eva hunting goblins for sport. I can even understand why you guys want to avoid regular humans. Common sense. But you’re upset to be here?”
“You should be too.”
“I’m kind of upset,” she said. She shifted position so less weight rested on her calf, and the pipe slid forward a bit in the process. Buttsack flinched. “An awful lot of walking. This place isn’t even that big, but it’s so convoluted…”
“This place is bad because there are powers here,” Buttsack hissed. “Things any self-fucking-respecting sod would fucking stay way from you moronic fucking cunt!”
She slammed the larger pipe down. When the end of the smaller one slid from its perch over Buttsack’s groin, she didn’t try to correct it. The spray fired into and beneath his prodigious rear end.
In retrospect, her ears ringing, she wondered if he was meaty enough to shield her from the shrapnel.
She wouldn’t do that again.
All the same, Buttsack was screaming, feet scrabbling frantically for purpose on the dusty tiles of the school hallway. She’d taken a piece out of his rear end.
“Bitch! Whore!”
“You know, I haven’t asked, since I’m not Isn’t it lying to call me those words?”
“Cunt!”
“I guess the words have another meaning, in a way. Listen-”
He spat out a stream of invectives in a language that wasn’t English. It sounded vaguely Germanic.
She sighed, took the pipe gun apart, removed the spent cartridge. She retrieved another shotgun shell from her coat pocket and fit it into place before putting everything together again.
The onslaught of foreign curse words slowed.
It stopped as she put the pipe back into position.
“Listen,” she said.
She had his full attention. His emotions were overflowing to the point that he couldn’t keep his expression still. One lip twitched in some reflexive need to snarl.
“There are powers here, you said?”
“Yes. Genies, goblins, elves, minor incarnations, wraith kings. Changes from day to day.”
“Didn’t know we had that much traffic in Jacob’s Bell.”
“We don’t, you stupid fuckkkk-” he came to an abrupt halt as she adjusted her grip on the pipe.
“Go on.”
He glared, sullen. “The sorcerer alters the layout to let them in. Uses his familiar. The rules are the same, always. You don’t go after practitioners, you leave grudges and greater weapons at the door. No fighting, unless it’s to go after someone who starts a fight, no deals with anyone except the Northern Sorcerer. You leave with what you brought with you.”
Giving him an awful lot of power, if powerful creatures are respecting his rules.
“Nobody else has tried to do this?”
“Lots do it, you imbecile! But not many mortals. How many have this much room to work with?”
“True. We-”
Buttsack’s head turned a fraction, ears moving to reorient.
She stopped.
Her head turned.
A little girl. Black, maybe ten years old, wearing a parka over a white dress, gray tights on her legs, with winter boots that had fur at the top. Her hair was in two buns at the back of her head, held in place with bright elastics. The child’s eyes were wide.
She could see Buttsack.
The girl in the checkered scarf moved, but the little girl moved faster, running.
By the time the girl in the checkered scarf reached the corner, the little girl was gone. A door slammed somewhere distant.
Fast.
“You could be in trouble,” Buttsack taunted. “You bitch.”
He went rigid as she pointed the pipe his way.
“You should kill the little slut to be safe,” Buttsack said.
“How long was she watching?” she asked.
“Dunno, but I still think you should pop little slut full of whatever you’ve got there. Make her bleed. If you hit her in the gut you get blood mingling with shit, and she dies slow. I’d give you my shiv but you fucking lost it, mongoloid bitch.”