Instead of pulling away, if you have the fortitude to jam your forearm as far into its mouth as you can… the math changes a bit. Sure, you’re going to get bit, and sure, it’s going to hurt like hell, but by pushing your arm as far back into the dog’s mouth as you can, its jaws can’t get quite as much leverage when it clamps down.
And, if you’ve been trained on how to do it, you can break the dog’s neck. Lysette had been trained how to do it.
As the hell hound clamped down on her left forearm, she wrapped her right forearm around the back of the hound’s head, right where the skull meets the neck. Then, she pushed forward with her legs and used all of the magically enhanced strength in her arms and torso to force the hell hound’s head upwards and backwards over the fulcrum of her right forearm. The hound struggled violently for a second as it realized something terrible was about to happen to it, and there was a crack that I could hear even over the ringing in my ears from the gunfire.
The hell hound went limp and fell to the floor. Lysette leaned over and put her hands on her knees, breathing heavily from her exertions and bleeding from the lacerations in her arm.
“Bad dog,” she said to the lifeless hell hound.
“Jolly!” I said, as I finally reached Mickey. He was by my side in a second, hovering over Mickey, trying to assess the damage.
“Are you okay?” he said to her as he checked her over.
“Oh God, I’m dead, I’m dead,” Mickey said, rolling around on the floor. “Am I dead? I can’t feel anything at all.”
“Mickey… you’re not even bitten!” Jolly said. “It grabbed you by the vest! You’re fine!”
“I’m… fine?” Mickey said, looking down at her torn shirt and the Kevlar vest now visible underneath it. “Oh, wow. I am fine. Hey, these things are great. Really glad we wear them. I’m going to have to leave this company a nice review…”
“Get up and shake it off, Mickey,” I said, as Jolly turned his attention to Lysette’s arm. “We’re not done.”
As if on cue, Dread shouted to us from the bridge. His hell hound was lying dead nearby, and he and Shifty were kneeling down next to the woman who’d been mauled by the two-headed monster.
“Jolly! I need you!” he said, as a glowing magespear flew out of the restaurant and slammed into one of the couches nearby, blasting it to pieces.
“Shifty! Get a shield up across that bridge!” I shouted, and turned to get my team sorted out. “Mickey! Where’s your pistol?”
“I… I… don’t know, I dropped it,” she said, searching the floor around her.
“Find it. Lys? You good?”
Lysette shook off Jolly’s attentions and nodded, pulling a pair of brass knuckles out of her jacket pocket and slipping them onto her fists. I’d tried to explain to her earlier that brass knuckles weren’t exactly on the list of approved nonlethal weapons, especially since she was already strong enough to break a man’s neck with or without them, but as usual, she ignored me and went her own way.
“Jolly, you need to…” I began to say, but I was interrupted by the deafening close thunder of another arc of lightning erupting out of the depths of the restaurant.
This time, however, Shifty’s shield was up and caught the discharge, allowing us the luxury of not having to dive for cover, so we were able to see what came running out of the restaurant next. It was four men, rushing out in two pairs; Caleb and Martin, fleeing to our left, followed seconds later by Oswald and Adjani, fleeing to our right.
They were enemies, but it looked they’d all had enough fun for one day, because they seemed to ignore each other in their haste to get the hell out of Dodge. Caleb was practically dragging Martin, who looked like he’d been pushed through a meat grinder. Adjani was bleeding from a scalp wound, and was being shoved along by Oswald, who held a pistol with a long extended magazine in his free hand.
Caleb took a second to hurl a magespear at us before continuing his flight, in order to keep us taking cover behind Shifty’s shield. Oswald sprayed a burst of automatic fire from his pistol to the same effect as he pushed Adjani at a run away from the restaurant. I was about to bark out orders to pursue them, when Kel walked calmly out of the front doors and I forgot all about the four of them.
“Shifty! Drop the shield!” I said, and fired off two shots once our shield was down.
It was a futile gesture, which I realized even as I did it. Kel always seemed to have her damn defenses up; that spherical force field which kept that sick bitch nice and safe and beyond caring about us tiny little ants firing guns at her. The bullets impacted on her shield uselessly, and she turned to look at me.
Anger lit a fire in her eyes as she recognized me, quickly changing to that cruel confidence she constantly seemed to project. Kel’s hand reached out towards me and then closed into a fist… the Death Trick she was so fond of using, designed to stamp out my life in a heartbeat.
But like Mickey, I wore a charm that Shifty had made to protect against that very Trick… we all did. Victory Loves Preparation, the old Latin phrase goes, and although I could feel the charm actually start to heat up and get warm to the touch from whatever energy it was absorbing, the defense held and Kel’s Death Trick didn’t so much as make my heart skip a beat.
I could see her expression change from confidence to confusion at her magic having no effect on me, and I dug the charm out from underneath my shirt on its chain and held it up in a fist, adding a little middle finger salute in for good measure. It was only a little victory, but damn, it felt good.
Everyone with a gun opened fire at her. Kel looked around at all of us arrayed on the bridge opposing her, frowning at the bullet impacts on her shield, and then she must’ve decided to call it a day, because she closed her eyes to teleport. Of course, we’d prepared for that and had our screen up, preventing her from using that Trick, so after a second, her eyes opened again and she was still there with us.
Oh, did she look pissed. I loved every second of it. Finally, finally I had her on the ropes, and I was going to wipe that smug look off her face with my boot.
“That’s right, bitch!” I said. “You can’t get away from me, this time!”
Turns out, I was wrong.
Kel spread out her arms and raised up into the air, bullets still impacting uselessly on the spherical shield surrounding her. She hovered maybe seven or eight feet into the air, and then levitated out over the wide gap between the walkways on either side of the mall.
At first, I thought her plan was to lower down the twenty feet or so to the first floor and make a run for it. Wrong again. Kel looked up, brought her arms back in to her sides, and shot like a missile through the skylight above her. Her shield smashed through the glass, allowing her to fly out and away, and like that, she was gone.
I really should’ve seen that coming. I would have, if I hadn’t been so rushed for time planning this out and pre-occupied with dealing with Fly and Adjani and so many civilians everywhere.
It didn’t matter. All that mattered was, Kel had made her escape.
Still. The game wasn’t quite over. We may have lost our shot at Kel, but there were four consolation prizes up for grabs still fleeing the mall, and they hadn’t gotten away yet.
***
“Damn,” Dread said, peering up at the shattered skylight. “Didn’t see that coming.”
“Forget it! Come on, Dread!” Cass said. “We’re going after Adjani and Oswald! You too, Mickey!”
“What about us?” Shifty asked.
“You and Lys get those other two assholes!” she shouted back over her shoulder, already disappearing down the walkway after her prey.
“What about me?” Jolly said. “All of a sudden, I’m chopped liver? Oh, sure, when someone’s all busted up, then it’s ‘Quick, Jolly!’ ‘Over here, Jolly!’ But not…”
“Come on, Jolly!” Lysette said, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him at a run down the walkway in the opposite direction of Cass.
“Slow down! Slow down!”
Jolly said. “I don’t have magic legs like you!”
Lysette glanced back to see that Shifty had already fallen behind a bit as well. She slowed her pace a bit to let her two companions catch up.
“What’s our plan?” Jolly said.
“Chase those two down and kill their asses!” Lysette said.
“You mean arrest them, right?” Shifty said.
Lysette glanced over at him. “Sure.”
“How do we know which way to go?” Jolly said.
“They ran this way out of the restaurant,” Shifty said.
“Yeah, but they could’ve gone into a store, or…”
“One’s hurt,” Lysette said, pointing out a trail of blood drops leading down the walkway in front of them. “Follow that.”
“That’s a lot of blood,” Shifty said, checking the magazine on his pistol. “Martin’s got to be seriously messed up.”
The walkway near them was clear of civilians, but further down the mall, they could see scattered individuals milling around, confused, then suddenly running in every direction. Panicked screams and shouts began to fill the air from the chaos in front of them.
“Or we could follow that,” Jolly said.
As they got closer to the commotion, they could see that they were approaching the food court. People were scattering in all directions; several were lying motionless on the ground underneath the tables. Lysette couldn’t tell if they were hiding or hurt or both.
A moment later, she spotted Caleb and Martin next to an escalator just past the food court. Caleb was still trying to drag Martin along, but the wounded mage fell to the floor, barely moving. Caleb propped him up against the side of the escalator, and hovered over him, lost in indecision.
“There they are!” Jolly said. “I don’t think they’ve seen us yet.”
“Hang on a second,” Shifty said, bringing them to a halt.
He stooped down and pulled up his left pant leg to draw a backup pistol out of an ankle holster. He handed it butt-first toward Lysette.
“Here. Take it.”
Lysette hesitated.
Shifty held it toward her again. “What? Take it, Lys!”
Her only answer was to look pointedly at the larger pistol in his right hand.
“No, no, no,” Shifty said. “I keep the big one, you get the little one.”
She stared silently at him.
“I mean it, Lys. I’m keeping the big one.”
Lysette frowned and took the smaller backup pistol from him. “Fine.”
“What about me?” Jolly asked. “What do I get?”
“I only have the two,” Shifty said.
“Well, maybe I should get the gun instead of Lys.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Lysette said.
“What?”
“You’re a terrible shot, Jolly. Terrible.”
“I… I’m getting better,” he said with a dejected shrug. “I just get too excited when I…”
“Watch out!” Shifty said, shoving Jolly towards the cover of the railing.
Foot-long energy spikes flew at them in a wide spray, a dozen or more, slamming into the walls and railing nearby with the sound of sledgehammers hitting concrete. Several impacted heavily on a shield Shifty got up in front of them, sending blue shockwaves of energy outwards from where they hit.
“What the hell was that?” Jolly asked, lying as flat to the ground as possible behind the railing.
“Magedarts,” Shifty answered. “Stay down.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Jolly said, pressing himself down and against Lysette as another series of magedarts slashed through the air, blasting chunks of debris out of the walls and railing nearby.
“Jolly,” Lysette said, pushing him off of her with a grunt. “Get off. I have to shoot back.”
“Sorry. Sorry.”
“Ready?” Shifty said, watching their adversaries from behind the safety of his shield.
“Ready,” Lysette said.
“Now!”
The shield dropped, and Lysette rose up from behind the railing, taking a split second to acquire her targets and then snap-firing twice without using her sights. If she could’ve taken an extra instant to line up her sights properly, she would have, but as quickly as she had to rise from cover, fire, and drop back down again, she instead relied on her enhanced coordination to fire by instinct and get her shots at least close to where she wanted them.
Shifty fired twice as well before getting his shield back up. They could see Caleb duck reflexively behind the escalator as the bullets hit around him, and then he fired back, sending another burst of magedarts slamming into Shifty’s shield.
“He’s making a run for it!” Shifty said. “Down the escalator!”
Lysette stood up from behind the railing. “What about the other guy?”
“Uh, I think Caleb left him… yeah, he’s there. He’s not moving.”
“He’s breathing,” Lysette said, shifting her sights to line up on Martin’s head.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Shifty said, pushing her arm down. “We need to take them alive if we can, Lys. We arrest them, remember? He’s out of the fight.”
Lysette glared at him, nodding toward Martin. “Tell him that.”
They moved away from the railing and further into the center of the walkway in order to get a better look at the wounded mage. He was still propped up against the side of the escalator, jacket and clothes torn and bloody, his chest barely moving as he pulled in shallow breaths.
“All right, he’s pretty beat up,” Shifty said. “We move up, get the mage restraints on him, Jolly stabilizes him enough to make sure that he doesn’t die. Right?”
“Fine,” Lysette said. “Wait… his hand is moving. Drop your shield!”
Before Shifty could react, Martin’s hand moved in a swirling motion, almost imperceptibly. The air in the walkway near him began to blur and distort, becoming dark and taking on the appearance of a cloud of smoke the size of a large man.
“Kill him!” Lysette said, firing a shot into Martin’s chest, but it was too late.
Something emerged from the dark smoke.
It was large and heavily muscled, covered in hair and humanoid in shape. It stood over seven feet tall, with a broad, thick neck and the head of a hyena. Its monstrous arms ended in heavy claws, and saliva dripped from its jaws as it swung its head back and forth, looking for victims.
“Oh, shit,” Shifty said. “Not one of these guys.”
“You’ve seen one of those things before?” Jolly asked.
“I’ve seen a lot of those things before,” Shifty said. “Not a fond memory.”
“It’s going after the civilians!” Jolly said. He rushed forward recklessly, scooping up a nearby chair and throwing it at the monster. “Hey! Hey, ugly! Over here! Over…”
He paused as the creature turned to look at him, its fanged mouth opening wide. The muscles of its legs rippled as it pivoted toward the three of them and rushed them in a frontal charge.
“Oh, look it that, it worked,” Jolly said, backing up a step behind Lysette and Shifty and patting them each on the back. “You guys are up.”
“One-two punch, Lys,” Shifty said. “Shield first, then we counter. Right?”
“Right,” Lysette said. “Get ready, Jolly.”
“Me?” Jolly said, as the hyena-man slammed into the shield Shifty had raised only a few feet in front of them.
“Now, Jolly!” Lysette said.
“Okay, right, right!” Jolly said, and bent a little at the knees in front of the shield holding the snarling monster back. He laced his fingers together and lowered his hands in front of his waist, making a step to boost Lysette.
Lysette didn’t look at his improvised step-stool; her eyes were locked on the were-hyena as she stepped up into Jolly’s hands and then leapt into the air, nine feet high, and flipped up over the top edge of the shield. As she twisted through space and her legs arced up over her head, she aimed straight down at the monster and fire
d once into its head before coming to a landing behind it.
Scraps of red tissue exploded outwards on the side of its jaws from the impact; she’d missed hitting the skull squarely and had only creased it. Still, the shot stunned the creature momentarily, sending it stumbling to the side, and Shifty dropped his shield and fired twice into its head, downing the creature.
“Oh yeah!” Jolly said, clapping once. “Did you see that, Shifty? Hunh? That move we did with the boost? We practiced that.”
“Yeah. It’s neat, Jolly,” Shifty said, then nodded toward Lysette. “You, uh… you missed your shot.”
Lysette glared at him.
“I’m just saying, I’m kind of surprised,” Shifty said. “You know, you being a super ninja and all that.”
Another glare, and then Lysette’s body relaxed a bit. “You’re trolling me, aren’t you?”
Shifty grinned. “A little bit.”
“That’s it?” Jolly said, looking around. “That wasn’t so bad.”
“Yeah, because there was only one of them,” Shifty said. “Usually, there’s a whole gang of the ugly bastards. Martin must’ve been too hurt to conjure any more of them.”
Jolly stepped back from the body in surprise as it suddenly disappeared in a cloud of the same black smoke it had appeared in. “Whoa! Do they always do that?”
“They do when the mage that conjures them dies,” Shifty said. “Go back to wherever they came from, I guess. Martin must’ve finally bled out.”
“Let’s make sure,” Lysette said, leading them toward the downed mage.
“Yeah, looks pretty dead,” Shifty said, once the three of them moved up to where Martin’s bloody corpse was propped up against the side of the escalator. “Dude looks like he went through a meat grinder. Is he too far gone for you to resuscitate, Jolly?”
“Almost definitely. I could either try to help him, or I could help them instead.” Jolly said, gesturing toward the wounded civilians under the tables nearby.
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