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“Are you listening to me?” Fin demanded, as even Olga ended up hugging brick.
“No,” I breathed, and doubted he heard it. But he must have seen it, because the wrinkled forehead acquired another one.
“Dory! I’m trying to tell you that you’re in danger!”
“No shit,” I said, as the trolls started scaling the burnt brick, pulling themselves up ruined floor after ruined floor, until the blue and red teams were facing each other, not on the ground, but on the walls.
And, finally, I understood. The fight—a free-for-all between a dozen massive guys on each side—was to take place in the demolished open space in the center of the building, up and down fifteen stories as combatants leapt and dove and swung through open air, getting assists from a few dangling ropes the showrunners had provided while dodging the pots and pans, broken bottles, and burnt, ragged-edged table legs many of the fans were wielding. Which they clearly planned to use to help their favorite team by clobbering the hell out of the other guys.
“Interesting,” Louis-Cesare said, his eyes shining.
Because he was insane.
Like Fin, apparently, who had leaned over to grab me and yell something in my ear.
“What?”
“. . . warn you . . . word on the streets . . . seat.”
“I can’t hear you!”
“Heard . . . want . . . seat!”
“What seat? It’s standing-room only!”
Fin was starting to look frustrated, but not nearly as much as I was, because how were we supposed to find anybody in this? We’d be lucky to avoid getting pancaked by a falling troll. Like, really lucky, I thought, staring upward at thousands of pounds of muscle hanging off barely-holding-together walls as a sound like a thousand trumpets pealed through the air, loud enough to make me actually nauseous. And to drown out whatever the hell Fin was yelling.
“I don’t want a damned chair!” I told him, ears ringing, as I tried to pry him off. Which should have been easy, because forest trolls are a lot less butch than their mountain counterparts, only this one was determined.
And now he was shaking me. And screaming in my already-wounded ear. “Not a chair! A seat! They want your Senate seat!”
I frowned at him. “What? Who does?”
“Hello.” It was the girl with the purple hair and the catsuit, appearing out of nowhere and giving me a little wave.
And the next thing I knew, I was flying.
Chapter Four
For a moment, everything was darkness and disorientation and the disturbing feeling of no longer being properly attached to earth. And thunderous noise, because the crowd was on all sides now, since I’d just been thrown something like three stories straight up. And flipped head over heels in the process, to the point that I only knew where I was by the torches burning in the lobby below, a ring of fire slinging around me as I tumbled through space, getting farther away by the second.
Gravity being a thing, I fully expected to be
reacquainted with them shortly, when I hit the floor in a puddle of used-to-be-dhampir. And maybe I would have—except that I hit the side of a moving mountain first. To whom I clung like a limpet, because literally all I could see were thrashing bodies and flailing fists, all of which were bigger than my head.
Way bigger.
And aimed at us, I realized. Team Immovable Object and Team Irresistible Force were meeting with a crash like two freight trains coming together, with me in the middle. Because I’d happened to catch hold of the big boy, whom everybody seemed to agree had an unfair advantage.
So they were trying to take him out first.
Half of the opposing team jumped him, most of them having already found weapons consisting of whatever the fire had spared. Kitchen knives, heavy pieces of furniture, and what appeared to be part of a solid steel girder all came at us at the same time. Causing my ride to do a 360 flip in midair, coming off the wall and going straight up, amazingly fast and balletic for someone his size.
Leaving the would-be attackers to crash into the wall below.
“All right,” I breathed, grinning in shock and relief as we righted again, on a broken ledge another story up. “All right! Yeah!”
Which, in retrospect, wasn’t the best idea. Because troll hearing works a lot better than troll eyesight, and Big Blue realized he had a hitchhiker. And flicked me off his shoulder like an annoying insect, one headed straight at the opposite wall, which was about to serve as a flyswatter.
