It worked! Adrenaline washed through me, and I waited, hardly breathing, my gun pointed at him, afraid to look away to see how Jenks was. Hot damn, it had worked, and he was down!
I took a tense step forward, intentionally scuffing my shoes. Eloy didn’t move, slumped on the floor with his arm twisted at an awkward angle half under him. “Jenks?”“I’m okay! He’s down,” he said in disgust, and I flicked my gaze to him then back to Eloy. “His aura went passive. God-blessed mother moss wipe of a pixy. Flew right into it. It’s not sticky silk, Rache. It’s worse. I’m stuck to the floor like a troll booger on the underside of a bridge.”
Gun pointed at Eloy, I edged closer, bending to reach for a zip strip from my boot. “You need some help?”
“I need half a fairy farting brain!” he snarled. “No. You’ll rip my wings off. I’ve almost got it. Zip-strip him before he wakes up, will you?”
He subsided into half-heard swearing as the glow from his fitfully moving wings lit the slumped shape of Eloy, his back rising and falling as he breathed. Trent’s charm had worked.
In the distance, I could hear voices echoing in the dark. They could be thirty feet, or three hundred with the way sound traveled. “We’re over here!” I shouted and, gun pointed, I wedged a foot under Eloy to roll him over.
“Rache! No!” Jenks shouted, still stuck to the floor.
His eyes were open. The spell had played itself out that fast.
“Crap!” I exclaimed, pulling the trigger, but he was faster, and his foot swung out, connecting with my ankle. I fell, my foot going numb. My arms flailed, and my head hit the side of the cement tube as he shoved me.
Stars were born and died underground, and I felt myself falling, my side scraping on the rough walls of the tunnel. Idiot! I should have double-tapped him!
“You are one tough bitch,” Eloy was saying as he stood over me, and I groaned when he kicked my middle, my air huffing out as I clenched in pain. “Anyone else I’d kill right now, but I’ll be back for you in about a week. Count on it.” Crouching, he pulled my head up by my hair. “A lifetime of rest and relaxation wait for you, madam cow. Your blood is going to wipe the scourge from the world and make it clean again.”
“You bastard . . .” I gasped, still clenched over my middle. “This is our world, too.”
“And the monkeys and the donkeys, but we don’t let them live in penthouse suites.” He dropped my head, and my face hit the cement. My head throbbed, and my ankle felt like it was on fire as he yanked my arms behind my back and zip-stripped me with my own zip strip. The line energy I had stored washed out of me and my connection to it died. I was on my own.
“Cute,” he said as he picked up my splat gun. I clenched my eyes shut, expecting him to shoot me, but they flashed open when I heard him run for the air shaft instead. Wiggling, I rolled over, finally getting a good breath of air. Voices echoed in my head, real or imagined, I couldn’t tell.
“You chickenshit fairy flop!” Jenks shouted, his wings going like mad as he tried to unstick himself from the floor, finally taking his boot off and darting almost to the ceiling before dropping back down and trying to free his sword. “You’re the one who’s going to get the lobotomy. I’ll find you. I swear I’ll find you!”
By the light of Jenks’s dust, I blearily watched Eloy standing under the upper air shaft, shooting up into it with that can of spray. It looked like silly string, spreading out to make a thick net falling out of the ceiling. Tucking the can in his back pocket, he quickly gathered the strands into a thicker rope. The smell of propellant drifted to me, and I hoped I wouldn’t sneeze. My head hurt, and I was afraid I was going to vomit.
My fingers pushed against the cold floor and, panting, I levered my upper body up. “Eloy!” I croaked, but he didn’t even look as he reached over his head and started climbing. His feet swung wildly until finding the walls, and he was gone, my splat gun shoved at the small of his back.
“This is exactly why I don’t like weapons,” I whispered, licking my lip to find it swollen. “They can always be used against you.” Pissed, I sat, my back to the wall, cursing myself as I felt my ribs, and Eloy’s noise diminished.
“Rache. You okay?”
“Yes.” I went to rise, but my ankle gave way and I fell back, my breath hissing out. “No.”
“Maybe we’re getting too old for this,” he said, and I leaned forward so he could reach the zip strip.
“Just break it, will you?” There was a thump from the tunnel, and I grimaced.
“So call Glenn already,” he said, and I felt a light pressure on my wrists as he wedged his sword into the fastening clamp. “No shame in asking for help.”
“Radio is dead,” I said, and Jenks swore.
“Those mother moss wipes with the fancy equipment are not working for the FIB,” he said, then swore again, blaming Tink, the sun, and the stars all in one long breath.
My hands were suddenly free, and I pulled my arms to my front. I reached for a line, relishing the scintillating energy as it ran like a chattering stream through my neural network, washing away my slight headache. “Oh, that feels good. Thanks, Jenks.”
“I broke my Tink-blasted sword!” he said in disgust, and I realized why the elaborate swearing as he came around front. “Look at it! Snapped it clean through.”
“I think I sprained my ankle,” I said, nauseated as I put a hand to the wall and slowly stood. “He’s got my gun, too.”
Jenks hovered before me, a green tint to his dust as he looked at his best garden sword, the pixy steel snapped at the hilt. I eased my weight to my injured ankle, and hissed, jerking it up again. “You want to call it?” Jenks said, and I glanced at the mouth of the tunnel.
The memory surfaced of Winona fighting Gerald as he stripped her, and Chris dancing in delight as the curse made with my blood twisted her into a monstrosity. Eloy’s slurs and misplaced superiority made my eyes crinkle in renewed anger. My pulse hammered. I wanted him. I wanted him bad.
“Hell no,” I said, and Jenks threw his broken sword at the wall. It made a sliding ting as it hit and fell, and I felt bad for him even as he darted to the mouth of the upward-facing tunnel, more determined yet. Hobbling, I managed the few steps to the shaft and looked up into the dark. The end of Eloy’s makeshift rope dangled, looking too thin to support my weight. “He climbed that?” I said, and Jenks went up and down like an impatient yo-yo.
“It’s only five feet. Then it goes at an angle.”
Five feet. Straight up. My upper-body strength wasn’t that bad, and I reached for the makeshift rope. The sticky lacework clung to me, and I started to feel a little better. The slimy rat had kicked me when I was down. Took my gun. Tied me up with my own zip strip. Made Jenks break his sword. It was enough to make me wish that Trent had given me a charm to turn people inside out.I could hear thumps from the shaft, and knowing no one—not even the mysterious alpha or beta teams—would be guarding the other end of the air shaft, I tensed my arms and started up. “Move it, witch!” Jenks shouted, and I swung my body weight, trying to get my good leg up to help support my mass.
Jenks was right, and I found the other end of the weird rope stuck to the wall of the shaft where it made a sixty-degree angle and sloped upward. My ankle wasn’t hurting as badly, and panting, I wiggled my way up, hitting my shoulder on the wall as I struggled.
“Good God, Rache,” Jenks swore, hovering an inch before my nose as I lay in the shaft and tried to catch my breath. “Think you can make any more noise?”
“He knows I’m coming,” I wheezed. “Get out of my way,” I added as I got my arms in front of me and started dragging myself forward on the flats of them. I didn’t know what I was going to do without my gun, but I drank in the line as I went, filling my chi again with the line tasting of earth and ice-rimmed moss. Jenks hovered for a moment, then darted ahead. Slowly the shaft grew dark, but it didn’t matter. There was only one way to go.
The shaft was only two feet tall, and about as wide, made of dark metal, and claustrophobic. The edges where it was soldered together were thick, looking like someone had been in a hurry as I dragged myself over them. If this was a Turn-instigated shelter, then it had probably been constructed in a matter of months. The shaft could come out anywhere, but I bet Eloy had a car waiting already. He was that kind of planner. Who had given him the gun when he escaped from Glenn? Who had cut his zip strip?
A sudden commotion ahead of me brought my head up, and I waited a breathless moment as I heard Eloy shouting, thumps, and Jenks’s laughter. I gathered myself to surge forward, and the pixy was back, grinning. “What did you do?” I said, and he landed before me, dust spilling from him bright enough to read by.
“I got your gun back,” he said. “He had it stuck in his waistband in the back, and he couldn’t do anything when I shoved it out and dragged it off him. Dumb place to put it, if you ask me. It’s up about twenty feet, waiting for you. He might scoot backward to get it, but I doubt it. He knows you’re coming. He still has his pistol.”
And maybe four bullets. “Thanks,” I wheezed, feeling renewed hope as I resumed inching forward, dragging my lower body along. My ankle throbbed, and I ignored it. I wanted my gun. The shaft was rising at a steeper angle, and I could smell cold cement. Slowly the sounds of Eloy’s passage faded, and I pushed myself into moving faster. The shadow of my gun slowly appeared, and I grabbed it, my knuckles scraping as I crawled forward with it in my hand.