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My other hand clenched on the box.
But there were too many of them and they were too spread out. I’d never manage to trap them all, not before one of them took me out. Or took Rosier out, although they looked like they were well on the way there already. And I didn’t have any weapons, and even if I did, I couldn’t fight them all. So what did that leave?
Before I could figure it out, Rosier went sprawling, hitting the ground with his hands over his head, trying to ward off the mass of steel-tipped boots that were slamming into him like the fists had been a moment ago. And I felt a wash of pure, cold rage hit me, because he hadn’t done anything to them, couldn’t have done anything in his current state. Nothing but die.
And that wasn’t happening.
I took a half second to memorize his location, and then I pushed open the door. Not a lot, just a couple inches. Just enough to throw in an already opening box.
And this time, I didn’t get the wrong one.
A second later, the room all but exploded in caws and screeches and whirling feathers and red demonic eyes. And damn, pigeons were scary up close, particularly when there were about a million of them. I darted into the fluttering mass and suddenly couldn’t see—I defy anybody to have seen shit in there—but I knew where Rosier had been, and a second later I grabbed him.
Or I grabbed somebody, anyway. And God, I really hoped it was him. But I kind of thought it was, because instead of cursing me into oblivion, the guy was hitting and kicking and trying to bite. Or maybe that was the birds, because who could tell in here? But I was getting hammered anyway.
Because he couldn’t see me.
“It’s me! It’s Cassie!” I yelled, right in his face—or what I hoped was his face—but it didn’t help. Because he couldn’t hear me, either.
Hell, I couldn’t hear me, not in the middle of Birdgeddon. But there was no stopping. Not in a room full of war mages, who any second now were going to deploy some spell I’d never heard of and kill us both.
And they probably would have, except for one thing.
Or make that two things, because I hadn’t just released the birds, had I?
And I guessed maybe some interaction had been going on, after all, because suddenly in the middle of the mass of birds was a mass of explosions, a virtual cyclone of curses flung by what I strongly suspected were two formerly trapped and now seriously pissed-off war mages, that caused birds to start dropping like rain.
But the other mages presumably couldn’t see any better than I could, and they didn’t know those were their
buddies, or that they’d just been released from bird hell. They didn’t know that the curses were being fired at the birds; they assumed they were being fired at them. And being war mages, they naturally didn’t stop to find out why.
I hit the floor, jerking Rosier down with me, and started crawling through a hail of blood and feathers and sizzling spell fire back the way I’d come in. Because there was no other choice. This must have been a holding cell and had no other doors or windows.
Which meant that there was nowhere for the now seriously panicked flock to go but around and around in a frenzy of fury.
Although surprisingly, that wasn’t the main problem, since it was mostly going on above our heads. The problem was the fist to my chin that had my head reeling, and the elbow to my stomach that knocked most of my wind out, and the crazed demon lord who at one point I think was gnawing on my arm.
Until I fished the other trap out of my pocket and smacked him upside the head with it.
And God, that felt good.
And so did being able to scurry ahead, burdened only by the trap that I shoved back into my pocket. A second later, I hit the wall, and a second after that, I found the door and grabbed the handle. And almost got trampled by a bunch of mages flooding in from the hall.
Damn it!
I jerked back against the wall, pulled up the hood on my borrowed coat, and waited for a break in the line. And then I bolted through a crowd of boots, staying low and keeping my head down, although I’d have had to do that anyway. Because I wasn’t the only one trying to escape.
The momentarily empty door had provided somebody else a path to freedom—or should I say, somebodies. Because cawing chaos burst out of the room along with me, over my head and around my body, a flapping, screeching, furious storm that almost knocked me down. But that also filled the corridor to the point that one more dark-coated figure didn’t attract any notice at all.
Pigeons, I thought fervently, racing for the stairs.
I loved pigeons.
And then somebody grabbed my arm.
“Here! Where d’ you think you’re going?”
I looked up wildly at a dark-haired mage I didn’t recognize but who must have been more observant than his buddies. Because a second later a cuff clicked shut around my wrist. The one I needed to grab Rosier’s trap and defend myself.
