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Graffitied monsters didn’t get tired, but master vamps did.
Tomas was toast.
Until his four crazy-ass partners decided to get busy, and help their friend. I saw Zheng over by the group, gesturing and pointing. They’d been hanging back until now, probably thinking that this was above their pay grade. And that prize money is no good if you’re not alive to spend it.
But it looked like their buddy being taken had changed things, and they were moving in. The dark mage did something that caused a plume of smoke to engulf one of the flailing tentacles, which slowly started to lose color as its strength was sapped. But the main body of the creature did not seem affected, nor did the other arms, and I didn’t think he had time to take it piece by piece.
The ugly bruiser with the torn-up face opted for a more direct approach. He ran and then launched himself at one of the flailing arms, using its momentum to send him soaring at the bulbous head. Where he landed and proceeded to attack with what looked like a large hatchet or possibly a battle ax.
That would have worked fine on a real animal, which might have broken off its attack at a threat to its head. But this thing didn’t appear to notice or care if it did. Maybe because it didn’t run on blood like the rest of us, but on pure magic, which it still had plenty of. The bruiser could probably cave in the whole head, and the tentacles would still work.
I didn’t know if he had enough brain power to figure that out, but somebody else did. The girl stepped forward and raised an arm. The guy, who I was assuming was her brother based on looks, was firing everything he had at the squid. That included a rocket that exploded a mass of blue-green slime out of the thing’s body when it detonated, covering a third of the ring.
The girl just continued to stand there.
For a moment, nothing happened. And then slowly, from far beneath the ground, a rumble could be heard. I didn’t know what was happening, but assumed it wasn’t good. Because the mage squad suddenly dropped their lassos and fled, and the sort of orderly—for Hong Kong, anyway—exodus became an all-out rout.
People screamed, vehicles bolted, even the ponderous platforms, which handled like a semi with all the tires flat, started to move away. Why, I wasn’t sure, although something was definitely happening now. Something bad, I thought, as the ground swelled, as pipes broke and spewed water everywhere, and as bridges rocked wildly even as hundreds tried to get off.
And as a tiny finger of blue light speared up from below, tearing a hole in the devil and causing him to roar and fall back a step.
“Stop her!” Louis-Cesare said, grabbing my arm. “She’ll rupture the shield!”
“The—shit!” I said, finally realized what I was seeing. That the crazy woman was trying to use the power of the lines to fight her battles for her, and was going to kill us all in the process. “How in the hell—”
“She’s a jinx. Don’t let her so much as look at you.”
Great.
“And what are you going to do?” I demanded.
He kissed me briefly, but fiercely. “Save Tomas.”
Shit.
But he was gone before I could stop him, because of course he was. The damned man had just tried to kill him, but letting someone he’d once been responsible for get eaten wasn’t in Louis-Cesare’s nature. It was in mine, but nobody had asked me.
I said a bad word and ran straight for the girl.
It was harder than it looked. The ground was streaming with shadows and colors, because some of the crazy cavalcade up there had multicolored lights hanging off their buses or draped around their balconies. A few even had strobes on their party barges, which sent wildly waving disco lights across the remains of the park, and flashed blindingly bright in my eyes.
They were confusing, although not as much as the waves of dirt being flung upwards by the tentacles, or the massive feet of the demon, which were slamming down here, there, and everywhere, threatening to pound me into the ground. Or the water blasts from the ruptured pipes, which were trying to drown me in the gigantic mud puddle forming under my feet.
Or under my knees, since it was already that deep in places, causing me to flail, and making each step a hard, sucking slog. I wasn’t getting anywhere this way, I thought, watching the tentacles waving about everywhere. And then reaching up and grabbing one going in the right direction, which ripped me out of the mud and launched me at the bitch causing all of this.
I didn’t make it all the way there, as I had to let go when the tentacle started to head back up. But I hit a mostly solid piece of ground and was up and throwing myself at her a second later. And I wasn’t in the mood to be gentle.
She went down and then out when I belted her upside the jaw, possibly hard enough to break it. I threw some magical cuffs on her and kicked her into my purse, because I couldn’t carry her through all this otherwise. Then I took off, running and leaping and occasionally falling through the chaos, heading for the side of the ring and the shadow of a now deserted broadcasting booth.
The two announcers had long since fled, although the nearby Jumbotron was still running with images. I didn’t try to figure them out; I was far too close. And the same was true when I turned back to the fight, which was so high above my head that I couldn’t see anything.
But nobody had turned off the second Jumbotron across the park, which gave me a perfect view of Louis-Cesare stabbing his sword hilt-deep into a giant squid eye. And unlike the side of its head, which the creature hadn’t seem to give a shit about, it was Not Happy with this latest attack. Probably because a blind animal is very soon a dead animal.
It sent out another of those skull-piercing shrieks, echoing off the buildings and pulling a collective groan from the remaining crowd. It also thrashed wildly, trying to find this dangerous new threat—and in the process dropped the old one. Tomas went tumbling out of the beast’s mouth, Louis-Cesare reached for him and missed, and the now tiny looking body plummeted straight for the ground—
Before a slashing tentacle smacked him my way.
I started slightly as he hit the Jumbotron, causing all of the colors and images to scatter wildly for a moment. And then to stabilize, when he peeled off and fell limply to the ground, face first. He just lay there, as if dead, but he wasn’t dead. He was a first level master and while that probably hadn’t done him any good, he’d recover.
