“Understood,” I said, noting the faces of grim determination on the rest of my team. “Tell Chuck to stay with him. We’ll get this damn pixie if it’s the last thing we do.”
I looked down again at my hand, thinking it may just be the last thing we do.
“You got it, love muffin,” she replied. “Please be careful.”
“We always try to be,” I answered and then shut down the connection. “Griff will be fine,” I noted, even though they’d all heard the conversation since Lydia hadn’t used a direct-connection with me. “I’m sure of it.”
“I hope you’re right,” said Warren. “Griff’s the only mage who really gets what I do.”
Rachel gave him a sidelong glance. “I understand what you do.”
“So do I,” agreed Jasmine.
“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean it like that. I meant that Griff and I have worked together for many hours. He has really tried to understand the nuances of wizardry, especially rune creation. It’s kind of a hobby for him, I guess.”
“Oh,” Rachel and Jasmine said in unison.
We continued through the streets until Serena started to slow down. She was looking left and right until she finally came to a full stop. Then she smacked the side of the tracking unit and shook it a bit.
“Turbo,” she said, “do you have any idea what this means?”
He glided over and stared down at the device.
“Hidden zone,” he said and then tentatively flew forward, directly at the seam of bricks that connected the two buildings in front of us. He disappeared. “Yep,” he repeated more loudly, “hidden zone.”
We stepped through and found ourselves standing in an alley. Straight ahead sat a flight of stairs that were going down.
“I’m guessing he’s down there?” I said, hoping Serena would say he wasn’t.
“Yep.”
Damn it.
“Okay,” I sighed. “Well, at least he’s drained of energy.”
“I’m sure he’s recovering quite quickly, Ian,” noted Rachel. “We are in his lair.”
I nodded grimly and started walking forward. Whatever that little bastard had in store for us was bound to be fun, especially now that I’d royally pissed him off.
“Super.”
Chapter 21
We went slowly down the stairs, recognizing that Rot would expect us to follow him. Whether he knew we could track him or not was something we didn’t yet know, but we saw no reason to chance it.
“Rune,” announced Warren, pointing straight ahead. “Notification.”
Well, that answered that.
“I don’t suppose you can disable it without him knowing?” I asked hopefully.
“If we have an hour or so, I could try,” he said, sounding miserable. “I mean I can disable it easily enough, but to make it so he doesn’t know would take a lot more work.”
I nodded.
Then I snapped my fingers. “Wait, will it tell him how many people hit it?”
“Yes,” he answered slowly. “Each person who trips it will trigger an event and he’ll pick it up.”
“Okay, but what if I’m carrying someone over it and you’re carrying someone over it?”
“That’d only be one event,” he stated without hesitation.
“You’re certain?”
Warren bit his lip and then knelt down to study the rune. He didn’t get too close to it as he mumbled to himself. It sounded like he was counting, but now and then he’d say something like “hoozledul” and “dibblycoff,” which were clearly not numbers…at least none that I’d ever heard.
“What’s your plan?” Rachel asked as she sidled over.
“If I carry Serena over while she’s holding Turbo, and Warren carries you—”
“Why wouldn’t you carry me over and have Warren carry Serena over?” Her arms slowly crossed over her chest. Then she squinted at me. “In fact, why don’t I carry you over and have Serena carry Warren over?”
There was no way I was getting out of this one. I’d placed my foot in my own mouth twice here. I know it, you know it, and Rachel damn well knew it.
So, I did the only thing I could do at that moment.
“Sorry.”
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine, so we carry each other over. Then what?”
“Then we have it so Rot thinks there’s only three of us, not seven.”
“But he’s seen us already,” Jasmine chimed in. “Why would he think that we’ve suddenly lost three people?”
“He wouldn’t,” I replied with a smile, “but that’s just it. It’ll throw him off a little. He’ll wonder if his runes have failed or if we sent part of our crew to come around a different way…” I paused and looked at their confused faces. “He’ll feel just like you’re feeling right now.”
“Baffled?” asked Serena, from behind me.
“Yes.”
“No, no,” Turbo said, coming to my defense. “He’s making sense here. Think about it. If you had seven people chasing you and you went into your house and locked the door, and then you saw three people walk past your surveillance camera, wouldn’t you wonder where the others were?”
They all thought about it for a moment and then nodded slowly.
“There you go,” I said. “It’ll make Rot wonder where the rest of the squad is. That puts him slightly on his heels.”
“Right,” Rachel said. “I get it. You’re just playing mind games with him. Okay, so what does that buy us exactly?”
“Hesitation,” answered Serena. “Rot’s overly confident, just like all the ubers we’ve run into. He prides himself on being fully in control. If some of us are missing, he’s not fully in control.”
I pointed at Serena. “Exactly. Whatever edge we can get, we’ll take.”
We’d faced these damn ubers enough times to know their egos were enormous. They got majorly ticked off when you messed with them, just like Rot did when I made fun of his name. Anything we could do to get the upper hand or put him off balance would only help us take him down faster.
“Chief,” Warren said, waving me over, “if you look here you’ll see that there are two spikes on this wheel. That’s a single counter. If it were four spikes we’d be looking at unique energy signatures as opposed to a straight-up body count.”
“Ooookay?”
“We can do the carrying each other over idea you mentioned,” he explained. “Unless, of course, he’s got these things all over the place down here, then all bets are off.”
“Right.” I turned to the team. “Okay, so who wants to carry whom?”
A couple of minutes later we were standing on the other side of the rune. Rachel had successfully carried me and Turbo over. I was honestly rather impressed, and more than a little turned on.
“Me too,” agreed The Admiral.
At least he was talking about my actual girlfriend this time.
Warren had tried to lift Serena but failed, so she picked him up and walked across. Then Felicia swung Jasmine up in her arms and strode across like it was nothing.
“Now, there’s a fantasy.”
“Perv,” said Rachel.
“Do you think she heard me?” The Admiral twitched.
“No, idiot.”
Or, wait…was that how she always knew what I was thinking whenever there were hot chicks about who were doing things that would make my libido heat up a few points? I immediately realized that was a dumb thing to think. First off, no. Secondly, if she could hear my dick talking to me, she’d have overheard a lot more of our conversations over the years than the basics. And last, it didn’t take dick-telepathy to know what I was thinking whenever there were babes around. I was pretty much an open book.
“Okay,” said Jasmine, interrupting my thoughts, “so Rot should expect that there’s only part of our group coming through here. Now what?”
“Now we split up and find him,” I answered. “Whoever spots him first, let the others know and we’ll get it sorted out.”
We broke off into groups, with Jasmine and Felicia heading left, Serena, Warren, and Turbo going to the right, and me and Rachel walking straight forward.
Each step was measured and quiet. The last thing we wanted to do was tip the guy off. Rachel was carefully scanning for runes, and I could only hope the others on my team were, too.
I was scanning the area with Boomy out. My goal was to protect Rachel at all costs.
One of the problems with being in a relationship with your partner was running into things like what had happened between Griff and Chuck. I couldn’t even imagine the grief Chuck was suffering through right now. Looking at Rachel, I would be tearing myself up inside if she were to be seriously injured. That brought back memories of her being kidnapped in London. Memories of that emotional rollercoaster sucked.
Did she feel the same about me? I mean, she did say that she had originally left to join the London PPD because she couldn’t stand being around me when bad things happened. But I thought that was more to do with the valkyries wanting to bone me than anything else.
“Rachel,” I said with some trepidation via a direct-connection, “I want to ask you something and I want you to be completely honest with me.”
“Sounds serious,” she replied. “Go ahead.”
“It is serious, so please just answer me honestly here.”
She stopped walking and looked at me with a face of concern.
“Okay, Ian. What is it?”
“Can you hear it when my dick talks?”
Chapter 22
Rachel never answered the question. She merely looked at me as though judging whether or not we would be sharing the same bed again…ever.
The worry over the possibility that she may be able to hear the communications between me and The Admiral did seem to shut him up though.
We continued our sneaking until we finally walked into a large room. It looked kind of like a school gymnasium. There were basketball hoops, floor mats, a small set of bleachers, and six gigantic pixies who were hovering just above the ground at the far end of the room.
I did a double-take.
“Are those things real?” I heard Warren gasp from our left. Then he whispered, “Sorry.”
“Check to make sure they don’t have normals in them,” I instructed.
“In those things?” he replied. “Seriously?”
After I gave him a look, he did his little spell and shook his head.
Thank goodness for small favors.
I glanced to our right and saw Felicia and Jasmine coming into the room as well. That meant our paths led here. So much for all that ‘carrying each other over the rune’ crap.
Regardless, I was having one hell of a time coming to terms with the size of the pixies in front of us.
As one, my entire team walked toward the oversized supers like we were zombies. Honestly, I could only imagine that this was what a moth must feel like right before it got fried into oblivion by one of those bug zapper things. And no matter how much I felt that this was stupid, I just kept walking.
“They can’t be real, right?” Rachel asked out of the side of her mouth. “It’d be silly.”
“No,” I argued, “what’s silly is that we’re still moving toward the damn things.”
“Valid point. Why are we doing that?”
“Because we’re in disbelief, I’m hoping?”
The beasties were easily ten feet tall, if not more. They looked adorably evil with their fluttering wings and bobtail hairdos. Well, the males anyway. The females had more of a short cut going that was set off by dark eye makeup.
Sexy.
“Never been with a pixie before,” The Admiral whispered. “Normally, that’d be pretty disturbing, but these babes are huge.”
I waited to hear “perv” or “freak” or something else from Rachel, but she said nothing. So that meant that she couldn’t hear our discussions. Right?
Damn it.
As one, we all reached out and touched the pixies on their stomachs.
Why? I had no fucking idea.
But it turned out to be a bad move. Of course, you probably assumed that already.
All of the pixies backhanded us in unison with a resounding “thwack,” flinging us back across the room. It was one major wallop. I’d been hit more times than your average boxer, but never like that. And from a pixie, no less!
I groaned and rubbed my jaw as I pushed up to one elbow.
“Seems they’re real,” I said.
“Definitely real,” agreed Rachel. “And, yet, we couldn’t have just admired them from afar.”
The ground shook slightly as a massive thumping sounded.
It happened again.
I glanced over and saw that the ginormous creatures were slowly heading our way, fanning out in a one-to-one scenario. I did the math and it wasn’t good. We were definitely going to be down one wizard when this was all said and done. There was no way Warren could handle one of these guys, even if Turbo backed him up.
“Try fire, ice, energy, bullets, knives,” I blathered as quickly as I could. “Rub their bellies if you have to…” I paused. “No wait, that didn’t work. You know what I mean. Fight!”
Boomy was essentially useless, which really sucked because my particular pixie had a whip, and she was really good at aiming it. Fortunately, I was very agile, so I had successfully dodged every attempt she made at splitting me in two.
Rachel was firing energy pulses at her attacker, Jasmine went with fireballs, Felicia shot and then threw her knife, Serena was dodging and kicking at hers, and Warren whimpered and ran around, trying his damndest to escape. Turbo didn’t have a pixie of his own to battle, but he was trying his best to protect Warren.
“Hey,” I yelled out at my pixie, “why don’t you put that whip down and fight like a man?”
“I guess because I’m not a man,” she answered in a deep, booming voice. “Now, stay still so I can flay the skin from your body, you fucking vampire!”
Oh, good. These could talk.
Then, I frowned and stood up straight. She must have noticed the change in my demeanor, because she paused her attack.
“Why would you assume I was a vampire?” I asked through gritted teeth.
She shrugged. “The suit, the hair, the good looks, and the way you walk.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, I’m not a vampire. I’m an amalgamite.”
“A what?”
“Amalgamite,” I repeated. She squinted. “I’m a combination of races, essentially.”
“Ahhh,” she said, and then asked, “So is your mom Snow White or something? Maybe your dads are like Wolfy, Fangy, Fucky, Pumpy, Boney, Screwy, and Sticker?”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” I countered. “And, no.”
She laughed and raised her whip again.
I took the chance to run right at her. If I’d had a second to think logically about this plan of action, I probably would have gone a different way, but there was no turning back now.
The whip cracked over my head, threatening to burst my eardrums.
I slid under her.
And before you start wondering, I did not look up.
When I got through to the other side, I spun and jumped onto her back, trying to get her in a rear naked choke. Her neck was as thick as an oak tree, though, meaning I couldn’t even get a grip.
Out of pure desperation, I curled my fingers and dug them into her shoulder.
She growled and shook me away, dropping me to the wood floor in a heap. It hurt. But there was a mass of dust that fell from the “wound.”
I’d torn a piece of her away.
“Hand to hand,” I yelled. “Get in close and start ripping them apart!”
This was all Felicia needed to hear in order to turn into wolf form again. Her claws would make quick work of a beast like this.
My pixie spun around and raised up her foot, bringing it down at my head with a vengeance. I rolled out of the way, scooted down, and then gr
abbed her Achilles, ripping it out in one smooth motion.
The bitch fell forward with a cry.
That gave me enough time to jump up and charge at the pixie who was chasing Warren.
I dived through the air and crashed right into its knees, dislodging the dust like I was breaking bones. The dude tumbled over, cursing me as he tried to get a grip on me. But Warren had picked up a baseball bat from one of the nearby bins and began swinging it at his fallen foe like the damn thing owed him money.
Unfortunately, none of this was going to be permanent.
My pixie was already filling in the dust back on the back of her leg. She’d be fully functioning again in no time. And even though Felicia was making great headway on her pixie, she’d be tired out before getting through a second one.
“I know what to do,” announced Serena, “but I need time, and I need Turbo.”
“Yeah, there’s a problem with that,” I yelled back. “We’re outnumbered.”
That’s when the miraculous vision of Chuck burst into the room. Black hat, black jacket, hate on his face, and holding two double-barreled, sawed-off shotguns.
Chapter 23
Chuck strode purposefully up to the pixie that Serena was fighting, stuck the ends of the shotgun into its stomach, and fired.
“Chuck,” I called out, “that’s not going to—”
Two massive holes blasted out the back of the pixie, nearly cutting it in two.
“—work.”
“Griff’s out of surgery,” he said through the connector. “He’s going to be fine. He had about twenty seconds of consciousness before dozing back off and he said that we needed to get close in to whatever we’re facing in order to bypass the shield.”
So that’s why my digging into them directly was working. I was through the shield. Same with Warren’s bat.
“You heard the man,” I commanded. “Get in close and do your damndest.”
“Still won’t stop them from healing themselves,” Serena argued. “Turbo, follow me!”
Actually, my feeling was that if we tore these damn things apart fast enough, they’d not have a chance to heal. Just like when we shot the hands off the apes. Of course, Rot did seem to be going out of his way to improve his creations at every turn, so who knew what was in store for us at this point.
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