2.
Abe jerked his arm back and raised his pistol toward the falling glass while everyone else jumped backwards. He fired at the object flying toward them, the shapeless mass seeming to not respond to the bullet as it was hit. And that was probably because it was a corpse.
Merry grabbed Abe's arm and yanked him backwards as the body hit the banister with a sickening crunch and bounced to the floor. Momentum carried the corpse across the floor in a grotesque slide until it came to rest against the wall. Abe walked over and touched it with the toe of his shoe, lifting it up and rolling it over. It used to be a man, but these days was more of a lump of bruised and bloody flesh. There were teeth marks where one of the legs ended abruptly. Abe fought back the urge to vomit and said, “think it's a guest.”
There was a thud as something else hit the roof, the impact making the whole house seem to shudder and shake. “More bodies,” said Begonia. She grabbed the tall student's hand and started to run toward the door. “We gotta go give 'em more targets that can defend themselves if we want 'em to stop.”
Abe looked at Merry as if to confirm that this was, indeed something they 'gotta' do.
“Go on,” said The Lady as she flexed her fingers. They began to glow brightly, the light creeping up her arms in thin veins, writhing and flexing along her skin as it moved higher and higher.
Abe quickly reloaded his gun as he watched The Lady begin to float up toward the shattered skylight. Merry took his free hand and pulled him with the others toward the front door of the Manor. “Wait, I don't understand. You need to mayor to use the key, right? So why don't they just kill him and leave everyone else alone?”
The Lady paused, her feet nearly at Abe's shoulders. “There are rules, Mr. Crompton. They are, however, welcome to try.”
“Abe, come on!” Merry pulled him after her, with, he suspected, a bit of magical encouragement (he had already decided that Tym had used magic to help him lay out Roods and himself with those punches, and was in danger of attributing a great deal else he didn't like to spells).
“Merry,” said Abe as they emerged from the house. “Are there any rules keeping any of the rest of us from being killed?”
Merry released his hand and forced a smile. “Not that I'm aware of.”
Abe nodded thoughtfully and then said, “well, if I'm going to die...” He leaned in and quickly kissed Merry on the cheek.
“If you're going to die...” said Merry. And then she kissed him hard on the lips.
3.
Everything seemed more or less hunky-dory on the manor grounds themselves. If Abe hadn't seen a corpse fly through the skylight moments earlier, based on the status of the manor grounds, he'd have never known there was anything wrong. Well, if he couldn't hear, that is.
Because before they even made it out the door it had been impossible to ignore the sounds of groans and the crackle of flame and the occasional scream of pain or terror. Upon stepping past the gate, however, the carnage became impossible for even the hearing-impaired to ignore. The wide black asphalt streets were empty save for the students from the school and the flaming wreckage and the trolls. So, not empty at all, really.
A half a dozen of the motorized carriages Abe had nearly been run down by earlier in the day were smashed together in front of the store opposite, and as Abe watched a pitch black troll pulled a vehicle from the pile and threw it with one hand into the fence of the manor. It ripped through the metal poles like a stone through wet paper and wrapped around a huge tree, sliding down the trunk as it simultaneously started to burn. A pair of the great brutes were further down the street standing on either side of a group of party-goers. They moved side to side with a grace that belayed their mass, easily keeping the terrified men and women between them.
“Which one, which one, which one's the tastiest,” one of the trolls chanted in a kind of baritone sing-song. As if he'd figured it out he reached down and seized one of the men around the waist. The man screamed and flailed against the massive fingers, clawing desperately.
“Hey wait, Town'ouse,” said the other troll. “Didja wonder if they might fly better alive?”
The first one, Town'ouse presumably, shrugged. “Dunno.” He lifted the man up to eye level and said, “go through the skylight, all right you?” And he pitched the man up toward the roof of the manor, watching to see if the experiment was a success.
Abe watched with horror as the man disappeared into the darkness of the night bracing for the horrible splatting sound he wasn't even sure he would be able to hear. Before he would have heard it, though, there was a yellow glow in the sky. It grew larger or it grew closer... perhaps both, but soon Abe could see the man again, slowly rotating in mid-air, his body held aloft within a sphere of bright yellow light. He began to float back toward the trolls, his trajectory exactly reversed but slower now. He was screaming again, but this time his fear was tempered with the realization that he was not quite so certainly going to be dashed to death against roof tiles.
He floated toward the street slowly, and above and behind him was The Lady. She was surrounded by the bright saffron gleam as well, but where he seemed trapped by it, held within a golden cloud like a bug trapped in amber, she was armored. She set him down gently on the asphalt and then turned her attention to the two creatures. One of them cuffed the other one on the shoulder as if to suggest that they were about to be amused, but his heart wasn't in it. They were nervous. Abe was reminded of the drawings he'd seen of elephants shrinking in fear from a mouse, except that to complete the comparison he had to imagine the mouse holding an enormous elephant gun or two.
Most of the party-goers trapped by the trolls had taken the opportunity to flee, but one who wasn't so quick was snatched from the ground by one of the trolls. He dangled her by her ankle (the woman seemed more concerned with keeping her dress from falling down over her upside-down body than was reasonable considering the circumstances and used both hands to hold her clothes against her thighs rather than trying to escape or be otherwise helpful) and reached his hand back, poised to strike. The threat was obvious.
The Lady extended both hands. One stream of yellow shot fast and straight like an arrow from her fingertips and the other spread in a sort of mist that reached out and encapsulated the woman being dangled. If one had been able to follow both bits of yellow at once, one would have observed the small fast beam shooting out in a perfect line connecting, for a brief glowing moment, The Lady's finger to the center of the troll's forehead. If one were really paying attention, one would have observed the faint yellow glow further along that line for a split second... somewhere in the back of the troll's skull. There was a quick blackening and there was no blood. The mist held the woman as the troll's grip slackened and he began to topple backwards like a felled oak. The woman was lowered gently to the ground and the mist even held her skirts against her legs modestly until she was turned upright, shocked but unharmed.
It had taken virtually no time at all.
“Go and tell Rooftop that my students and I are outside now. My guests are inappropriate targets.” The Lady looked at the remaining troll expectantly for a moment and then waved her hand. He jumped back in terror, but she'd only be shooing him. “Go on.” He began to run.
There was a honking sound off toward the manner like a goose being amplified and squeezed. Abe turned toward the sound and heard another alongside it. A roaring and then a squealing sound that came from a sort of carriage that was slipping on the road as it came around the corner. It had large black wheels that screamed in protest as the momentum of the vehicle sent it sliding sideways rather than moving forward, and the back appeared to have been partially sheared away so that the roof and sides were open. Mounted in the back was a kind of cannon and manning the cannon was Begonia, a wicked gleam in her eye.
Tym and the other students were in the back of the vehicle with Begonia, all except the tall lanky one who was apparently steering. Sitting beside her was Sarwell, looking pale and horrified. The
horror was most likely from the troll that the vehicle seemed to heading straight towards. This one had been about to flee with his fellow when the students had come peeling around the corner, and now he scooped up one of the ruined cars from the pile and threw it towards them.
Abe watched as the tall lanky girl controlling the thing reached down and did something while spinning the steering mechanism and gritting her teeth. The vehicle clunked and began to turn away from the oncoming debris, then the driver yelled, “Tym!” and there was a blue flash beneath the back wheels. The whole affair lifted up onto just the front wheels just as the wrecked projectile would have hit them and the back wheels bit briefly into the surface of the thrown vehicle, finding enough purchase to push forward. The troll watched, as dumbfounded as Abe, as the vehicle finished it's turn unharmed, wheels screaming protest as it slid to a stop only a dozen steps from the troll. Begonia was already turning the cannon toward him and the sound of the roaring engine was drowned out by bellow of the gun.
The troll turned to run a moment too late and the shot hit him in the shoulder, sending him spinning to the ground. Begonia fired again as the creature got to his feet and ran toward the alley. “Aw, nuts!” She stopped shooting and slapped the gun in frustration. “Lucky bastard.”
The driver revved the engine and Merry took Abe's hand and ran to the vehicle. “We're taking that?” Abe asked.
Tym, who appeared much more tired now than he had looked inside, forced a smile. “It's miles to the clock tower, Mr. Crompton. It's the truck or a walk.”
Abe helped Merry into the bed of the truck. “I'll take the truck,” he said.
The Lady was opening the door to get in the cab with Sarwell and the driver. “He'll take the gun,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Clash of the titans
1.
Begonia had been less than thrilled at the notion of giving over the gun. “Well,” said Merry, “it's not as if he can do much else.”
“Right,” said Begonia. “He is pretty much useless.”
“Hey!” said Abe.
“And you can be quite helpful even without a gun,” Merry agreed. “After all, we almost took down the Woodsman, you and I.”
Begonia spun the gun toward Abe. “Hold on tight.”
Abe put his hand on the butt of the weapon. “I don't see why I--”
He nearly fell out of the bed of the truck as the driver accelerated so fast that the tires squealed once more. Tym steadied him from where he sat near the back. “Takes some getting used to.”
Abe pretended like he hadn't nearly fallen out of the truck and scanned the streets as the truck settled into a slow crawl which was, nonetheless, faster than walking would have been. The gun Abe had been left in charge of was something in between the cannon he had assumed it was and the sorts of guns the men in the clock tower had been carrying. Black and long-barreled, it had a large canister attached to the body that housed, if the diameter of the thing was an indication, bullets roughly the size of a man's thumb. Abe stretched his hand out to see if his thumb could actually fit inside the barrel, but before he actually tested his new hypothesis, there was a clucking sound. Merry and Begonia and one of the other students were all watching him, and all three shook their heads slowly in unison, giving him very similar glances that each suggested he was an idiot.
Everyone remained tense for most of the journey, eyes constantly scanning and Abe swiveling the gun here and there as they braced for an attack that was imminent. The attack began to seem less and less imminent as they moved forward unobstructed. The cabin of the truck was open, so Mr. Sarwell's observation about just how unobstructed their path was was easy to overhear. “Is there a curfew tonight?” he asked.
“Maybe Rooftop put the word out that it was a night to stay in,” said Abe.
Tym, the only one sitting in the bed of the truck (a fact which no one objected to since he looked exhausted) laughed. “Yeah, maybe. Or maybe The Lady did.”
“Or perhaps there's just some really compelling television,” said the driver.
“Eyes on the road,” said Begonia. “An' you think all television's 'compelling'.”
The Lady didn't comment.
After a moment, Abe said, “What's television?”
2.
“Stop!”
They were in sight of the clock tower when The Lady called the halt. There had been no conflict since they moved away from the manor, and even though no one had been able to really relax, the passage of time was eating away at everyone's readiness. Abe had long since stopped swiveling the gun, having realized that the bright lights of the signs and windows of Darbyshire would make it difficult for him to spot anything even if there were anything to spot. All he'd managed to accomplish is giving himself a hell of a headache from all the bright lights and the rapidly moving truck.
So it was actually a bit of a blessing that the lights where they were stopping – from here to the clock tower, actually – were out.
“Why's it dark,” said Merry.
Abe patted his jacket to make sure his pistol was still there. “Trolls feed off of light,” he said.
“And they're invisible,” said a voice very near Abe's ear. It was high pitched and familiar.
“Spirit House...?” Abe looked around like a complete moron, given the troll's recent comment regarding his visibility.
“Out of truck!” Begonia screamed, shoving Merry and then Abe. She jumped back near the cab and shoved her hand down as she said, in a voice not much like hers, “M'lady, run.”
Abe fell and Merry landed on top of him, the fall significantly greater than it should have been on account of the truck rising up in the air. He grabbed Merry and shoved her back and away as he noticed the tell-tale distortion of something roughly man-shaped beneath the back of the truck. The doors of the cab opened and the driver, The Lady, and future-mayor Sarwell were about to make their escape when the front of the truck fell down onto the street. It looked as if Begonia had a blade for a hand in the dimness of the city now bereft of streetlights, but before Abe could confirm what he thought he saw she was lost to him.
Lost because the troll holding the back half of the truck grunted with effort as it folded the entire bed like a stubborn piece of card stock. Begonia cried out, her voice sounding deep and strange as the metal shredded in the monster's grip to fold over her. The scream of metal didn't quite cover the squishing sound.
Abe's eyes widened in horror. “No.” He drew his gun and aimed at the nothing holding the wreckage of his friend above it's head. Before he squeezed the trigger, the troll dropped the former-truck with a yelp. The metal began to protest once more as it started to push apart again. It shuddered and then the two halves of the truck bed split apart. Begonia pushed them out and away from her, holding them with suddenly gigantic hands. She was smiling a cruel sort of smile and she seemed completely unhurt, though her body had changed from that of a little girl in a pretty dress to something more amorphous.
Her smile widened beyond the edges of her lips as she held the two parts of the car aloft by the axles. A strange whine that Abe would recognize anywhere was coming from Begonia's mouth. He turned the gun from where he thought the troll was to Begonia. “Begonia?”
Merry was standing behind Abe. She put her hand on his shoulder. “I don't think that's Begonia.”
Several feet away from where Abe had been aiming, Spirit House became visible. He was much darker than Abe remembered, but otherwise unchanged. It was amazing how perspective changed things: Abe had been terrified at the size of him when they met, but now he saw that he was positively miniscule by troll standards. “Children, I don't think there was ever Begonia.” He seemed almost wistful as he spoke, looking at Abe for a moment and then lunging toward The Lady and Sarwell. Begonia swung half of the truck into his path and the other behind him.
And she clapped.
It was not unlike placing a jelly sandwich on an anvil and hitting it with a hammer.
Abe fire
d at Begonia and saw the bullet hit her arm, spraying a Begonia-colored mud out of the wound and nothing more.
The Lady pushed Abe's gun down. “Enough.” And then she raised her voice to Begonia, who was pulling her fingers back from the axles and pushing her body back into shape. Not her shape, though. Humanoid enough, but like someone had made a sculpture of Begonia from wax and left it too near a flame for too long. “Nothing gets to Sarwell, Clay.”
“Oh, fine,” the thing said. It sounded deep-voiced and frightful, but a little like Begonia, too.
Abe scrambled to his feet awkwardly, keeping his gun on Clay the whole time. It was, he knew, the very monster that he’d left for dead hours earlier, and it suddenly became quite clear to Abe how Begonia had known. “I don't want that thing behind me,” he said.
“Well,” said Merry. “You're welcome to wait here, then.”
She got about three steps before Abe ran up beside her.
The Lady was moving slowly forward directly in front of Sarwell with Tym walking to one side of him and the driver and Winchell on the other. The rest of the students were in a sort of semi-circle in front of Sarwell as they all walked warily forward. Well, the students were wary. The Lady walked regally, veritably crackling with yellow energy.
“If I used yellow,” said Merry with forced joviality, “I wouldn't have picked a red dress, I don't think.”
Abe nodded sagely as he kept pace with her, the two of them falling in several steps behind Sarwell, forming a sort of rear guard. “Not a good combination...?”
“It's why I wore a black dress.”
“Important to look one's best when being slaughtered by trolls, I suppose.”
Merry turned and cast a baleful eye over Abe's white and pastel ensemble. “Then why'd you wear that?” She kept a straight face for a moment before smirking. “Besides, so far the slaughtering's been pretty one-sided.”
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