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I assumed he meant the shutters, but I didn’t know. What I did know was that a fey was leaning off the side of his capsule, targeting us with one of those energy spears. I threw the wrench, hoping for the best but not expecting much. Hitting a moving target when you are also moving is not easy.
But a second later, he was picked off and went sailing into the gloom.
The others did not go back for him. They did not even pause. What they did do was to send a barrage of energy bolts, exploding enough of the cave formations around us that it looked like we’d been caught in a blizzard. I hit the floor to avoid the stony shrapnel bursting through every window, but Ray was not as quick. I heard him scream in pain, and the sound sent what felt like an electric current through me.
How dare they hurt him, for no more than the crime of helping me?
How dare they?
The fey craft appeared out of the fake blizzard, screaming toward us, and I screamed back and jumped for it. They did not seem to have expected that, and abruptly veered off. But not before I landed on their ship, pulled three of them overboard, sliced another’s throat with my tiny knife, and plunged my broken sword into a fifth’s abdomen.
That did not stop him, however. Armor must not have fit under the Anubis costumes, as those fey had not been wearing any. But these had on full plate. They also had swords, maces and knives in addition to the energy weapons, although I did not see why.
Those were more than sufficient.
I discovered the truth of that when one was jammed against the bottom of my spine and activated. I assumed they must have had different settings, or the entire lower half of my body would have been blown away. As it was, it just felt as if it had.
My legs gave way and I collapsed to the floor, a leering, too-white face above me, which did not leer for long. I cracked his neck, saw his eyes turn up in death, and started to kick him off of me. Only to discover that nothing below my waist still worked.
I had no way of knowing if that would be permanent, but right then, it didn’t matter. Right then, all that mattered was killing fey. And the one who had collapsed on top of me had a spear in his hand.
There was nothing to show me how the energy weapons functioned, but it had a wickedly sharp tip so I shoved it through another fey’s eye. The rest had not seemed to realize that I was still conscious until then, but at that point, they all started piling on top of me. I suppose the idea was to immobilize me with the weight of their bodies.
Their armor covered bodies.
I tested a theory and pressed down a little flange on the side of the spear, which looked something like the steering mechanism on the capsule. And, oh, yes, that worked, I thought, as what felt like a lightning bolt tore through me. But it tore through them first, starting with the one on top of the pile that I had targeted and spreading downwards.
And I was not wearing a metal suit.
I must have upped the voltage when I played with the flange, or else dhampirs were partly immune. Because some of them were screaming and some were flopping and some had gone limp. I started to smell the unmistakable stench of burning flesh, which would have been more gratifying had I been sure that it wasn’t mine. I tried to let go of the trigger, but my fingers were no longer following my commands. Nothing was. My head had rolled to the side, my tongue had begun to loll, even my eyes were determinedly staring into those of a dead fey instead of at anything useful.
This . . . might not have been my best plan.
I finally felt the spear be ripped away from me, yet the removal of the problem did not help much. My teeth were chattering as if I was cold, my heart felt like it was skipping every other beat, and my body was trembling except for my legs, which had never even moved.
But my eyes were back under my control, and when I told my hand to flex, it actually worked. Even better, there was a sword coming within reach, as one of the fey clawed his way out of the pile. I managed to grab it from its scabbard and shove it at him. It missed by a mile: my aim was terribly off, but there were so many other fey close by that it hardly mattered. I stabbed another in the arm pit, and the wickedly sharp blade pierced his chain mail.
He screamed, and the fey whose sword I had taken turned around and tried to belt me in the face. But he seemed as rattled as I was and also missed, although the action brought him close enough to kiss. Or to bite through his jugular, so I did, feeling his death throes above me while his warm, wet blood cascaded over my face and breast and hair.
I laughed; I didn’t know why. I had meant to roar instead, hoping to disorient my attackers further, and buy myself a few more seconds. But what came out instead was wild, almost hysterical laughter.
But it seemed to do the trick.
The fey who could still function began getting off of me. They began getting off of me quickly. But, ironically, that left me more vulnerable than before, as those who had not been injured started poking at the diminishing pile with swords and spears, trying to skewer me.
They hit their friends half the time instead, but the other half they hit me, resulting in both of my legs taking wounds. I did not feel them, but they were there, and th
ere are plenty of arteries in the legs. I needed to retreat before I bled out, but . . .
I did not know how.
I tried my stun scream, but it did not work, possibly because my brain was still jittering around in my cranium. It left me wailing like a banshee for no apparent reason, on an enemy vessel surrounded by foes who did not seem to recall that they were not supposed to kill me. To make matters worse, there was nothing close enough to jump to, even had I been able; my spirit form persistently refused to manifest; and I was having difficult thinking straight, which made formulating a plan virtually impossible.
But then something strange happened.
“Augggghhhhh!!! Motherfuckers! Come at me, bra!”
I looked up the sound of a familiar voice. It was distant, yet rapidly getting closer. The still conscious fey looked up, too, seemingly confused.
