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“Run!”
“Where?”
“Anywhere!”
And I tried. But before I could move, three things happened at once. A bunch of dark silhouettes shot out of the tree line, the creature lobbed its potion, and Pritkin gave a massive jerk on what turned out to be the end of the line of party favors.
And oh, shit.
If I’d thought the last trip to childhood bliss had been hell, it was nothing compared to this one. I kind of wondered about magical parents who thought that giving their kids an acid trip as a toy was a fun idea. But then, I guess you weren’t supposed to set off a case all at once.
It felt like my body was trying to turn inside out. It felt like all my internal organs had turned to mush. It felt like a fun-house mirror looks, with everything pulling into weird, distorted shapes and patterns. I’d have been sick if I still had a working stomach; I’d have screamed if I could have remembered how.
As it was, I just lay in the muck and watched the vamps stumble around, because it seemed to work on them, too.
The elegant, deadly horde had fallen out of stealth mode like they’d hit a wall. And were currently in wobbly-legged party mode, which was a lot less impressive. It would have been good times if the creature had been stumbling around, too.
Unfortunately, the toys didn’t seem to bother it at all. Pritkin noticed, and slurred something drunkenly, but I didn’t hear most of it over the screaming toys and the yelling vamps. But the next second he was free, and naked except for the ass-kicking boots. Which I hoped were about to live up to their name. Because the latest potion bomb hit down as he reached for the weapons he’d shucked off, forcing him to jerk back empty-handed.
He didn’t try again.
He snatched me up, got an arm around my waist, and we stumbled for the tree line.
And weirdly enough, the fact that neither of us could manage to walk in a straight line actually helped. Nets hit down in front of us, in back of us, and to either side, but not on us. Like maybe the creature couldn’t figure out where we were going, either.
But while we might be drunkenly reeling all over the place, we were reeling fast. Pritkin put on an extra burst of speed as we approached the trees, and I was right there with him. We were almost to the thicker part of the woods now, where any net would tangle in the branches before it could land on us. Things were looking up—
Or they would have been. Except that this Tin Man must already have been to see the wizard. Because brainless he wasn’t. Either that or his aim was suddenly terrible, spraying potion bombs in a rapid-fire line—at the trees right in front of us.
The result was a long, sticky, billowing web of holy shit, opening up practically in our faces.
For a second, I was sure I wouldn’t be able to stop, since my legs were only taking orders about half the time. But either Pritkin was less affected by the spell, or ass-kicking boots have better traction than Keds. Because he managed to twist and wrench and flop us to the side, hitting the dirt inches away from the long line of netting.
A gust of wind made it billow out over our heads, and I yelped and hugged the ground, just as the Tin Man readied another shot.
One it never had a chance to take.
Tony’s boys might be a lot of things, even lousy shots with the forest fun-housing around them and a moving target and not being able to focus their eyes. But they weren’t quitters. Having a homicidal asshole for a boss tends to do that for you. They’d regrouped while we ran, and lousy shots or no, when you’re spraying as many bullets around as they suddenly were, you’re bound to hit something sooner or later.
“Bugger,” Pritkin said, sounding almost casual. Because yeah. There was nothing we could do.
I didn’t see the bullet that connected; everything was happening way too fast for that. But I sure saw the result. Everybody in three counties probably did, as the Tin Man detonated in a burst of searing white light and a mass of sizzling, smoking potion balls. I felt the wash of heat even halfway across the clearing, as a dozen separate eruptions burned through the forest all around us and lit up the air overhead, like unearthly comets.
One of them strobed Pritkin’s face in blue-white flame as it tore overhead, close enough that I was surprised it didn’t set his hair on fire. But not everything was so lucky. A second later, it slammed through the net and then into the tree line behind us. And I hit the dirt again, muck be damned, because I’d seen a few explosions in my time.
But I didn’t see one now.
Instead, something shot back at us from the tree line, passing over our heads like a river of wood. Which I didn’t understand until I noticed the flowing bark and bulging limbs and leaves the size of car tires spilling out of the forest behind us. And more swelling roots that were suddenly rushing everywhere, over and under the soil, trying desperately to support formerly petite-sized trees that were surging upward like two-hundred-year-old redwoods.
And you know, you’d think something like that would hold your attention. And it might have—if the rest of the comets hadn’t taken that moment to discover gravity. They arced high above the treetops, brilliant, blue-white, and burning against the pinpricks of the stars for a long instant. And then they came hurtling back to the ground, silhouetting a bunch of seriously freaked-out vamps before disappearing with loud whooshing sounds into the wet and fertile soil.
Which promptly went nuclear.
Everywhere a comet hit down, it lit up the ground like an X-ray for a couple of seconds, showing glimpses of gigantic things squirming around under there. I stared, because it looked like Cthulu had gotten lost and ended up napping beneath rural Pennsylvania. And he didn’t seem happy about being disturbed.
He was no more unhappy than I was.
“Cassie! Come on!”
