“Don’t worry, Mike. We’re leaving. Right, Carl?” I look meaningfully at the con artist with eyes that both plead and command.
Carl’s eyes dart around the room. Walter and the fiend, me, the three Irish fire hydrants, and back around again. He’s weighing his odds, and that’s what he does for a living. For a moment I hold out hope that he’ll make the right choice and quietly come outside. Then his face settles, the decision made, and I can tell from the half smile that sneaks onto his face that it’s the wrong one.
“Dammit,” I mutter. I look back over my shoulder at the crowds of normal humans passing by only a few feet away on the other side of the thick, curtained glass. Then I speak to Katie, who’s looking more nervous with every second, and say the words I’ve waited a lifetime to say.
“Katie, bar the door.”
Carl bolts for the door, which means he’s basically running right at me. He jumps over Walter’s grasping hands, making quick gestures at me with both hands.
I’d like to imagine that I look bored when whatever spell he’s trying to weave evaporates when it hits me. I mean, really. It’s like he doesn’t know me. Then he’s practically on top of me and I have only a second to appreciate his expression of shock at finding me still standing in his path before I stiff-arm him brutally in the shoulder. Rocked forcefully off balance, he stumbles headlong into a stone wall and sinks to the floor, crying out in pain.
His body has barely hit the floor when Walter springs forward, the fiend digging into his shoulder like a kid holding onto a sled and looking like it’s having a hell of a good time. Still in mid-air a rolling pin hits him in the side of head at what seems like Mach Two. Forward momentum keeps him hurtling forward but the trajectory wobbles and he lands in a two-being tangle on the floor right next to Carl.
Before I can try to grab Carl the leprechauns press their attack. Pappy and Mike jump on Walter, while the third one (Sean, who is now weaponless after hurling his rolling pin) leaps at me. By rights anything that size shouldn’t be able to cover fifteen feet at a bound, but magic usually trumps physics. He comes at me like a wrecking ball: thick, heavy, and tough as concrete, and absolutely devastating if you’re immobile. Fortunately for me I’m more agile than your average building.
I simply duck (deeply) and the leprechaun flies swearing over my head. Somewhere behind me he crashes into the same wall that felled Carl, only he leaves a bigger dent. As I stand up I’m greeted with a round of cheers from the remaining diners, who have now officially become an audience. I don’t have time to flip them off. I’ll get to it later.
Carl is getting jerkily to his hands and knees. I grab him by the belt and try to pull him towards the door, but he’s hauled out of my grasp so quickly I almost lose fingers. Pappy and Mike are holding him upright (on his knees he’s about their height, an odd visual).
“Sorry, Ian,” Pappy says, not looking at all sorry. If anything, he’s fighting a smile. “You know we can’t resist a good donnybrook.”
“You’re just maintaining the stereotype,” I say. “You know that, right?”
“Where do you think it came from?” he says with a laugh.
I shrug. “I guess you’re right. Okay, then. When in Rome…” I give him my best right cross, right on his crooked little nose. He falls on his ass, sputtering and clutching his face while I clasp my bruised hand to my chest, swearing. Little bastards have heads like Blarney rocks. Mike, looking outraged, cocks back the arm holding the ladle but before he can swing it Carl’s half-balanced body is yanked away from him with enough force to spin him in a tiny circle.
“Finally,” Walter says, voice harsh with triumph. He holds Carl a foot off the floor by the shoulders, while the fiend drools something red and starts to hone its claws. Carl chooses this moment to become aware of his surroundings, sees what’s right in front of him, and screams his head off while squirming like a hooked worm.
Oh, come on. I couldn’t get a shot off on Walter even if I was willing to draw my gun now (leprechauns hate guns – bet you never read that in the fairy tales). As the fiend reaches grasping claws towards Carl’s face I grab the ladle out of Mike’s hand, leap forward and down and smash it with all my strength on Walter’s left foot.
He yelps, hopping backwards and dropping Carl right on top of me. He’s not huge but he lands awkwardly, knocking the breath out of me. While I gasp and choke I feel for the package in my pocket and to my relief I find it intact.
Carl scrambles off me, not even thanking me for breaking his fall, then he pushes himself to his feet and tries for the door again only to find Sean is waiting for him. With a squeak he wheels around, only to find Walter’s enraged face waiting for him. One last turn and there’s Mike and Pappy, who has blood running out if his nose and the most unnerving smile you’ll ever see outside of a circus.
Completely given over to panic, Carl bolts, zig-zagging through the room like a caffeinated rabbit. All three leprechauns chase after the jinx and, with a shout, the human and the fiend start chasing them until they are nothing but a chaotic Looney Tunes blur of running, dodging, and shouting, all to the cheers and applause of the audience. I heave myself into a seated position, catching my breath while I watch them blast through the room in a circle around me.
All I wanted to do was a little Christmas shopping for my girlfriend. Was that too much to ask?
As I get my feet under me the bizarre chase plows into the restaurant side of the pub, and the audience shrieks as the fight is suddenly upon them. What did they expect? A bar brawl that would politely remain confined to one area? Carl weaves through the crowd, sending people sprawling out of his way. He’s weaving micro spells as he does, trying to send enough bad luck in his wake to throw off his pursuers, but the phrase “luck of the Irish” wasn’t born for no reason. Everything he does the leprechauns counter by sheer instinct, and the fiend and his human are swept up in their wake.
Finally, Carl does a brilliant fake to the left before he jukes to the right. Mike, in the lead, falls for it and runs right past him, but Pappy is wise to the trick and when he catches up to Carl he gives the man a wallop with his mallet right in the groin. Carl drops, clutching himself and gasping for air, in too much pain to even scream. As Pappy and Sean pick him up Walter makes a roaring charge at the leprechauns, but they drop Carl to the side and each of them jumps nimbly out of the way, allowing Walter to pass in between them.
Right at me.
“Shit!” I have time to gasp before he’s on me. Up close Walter and his fiend are much more dangerous than at a distance, as the two feet of chain between their collars allows plenty of room for both of them to fight hand and claw to hand, but the man is still wobbly from taking a flying rolling pin to the temple. I slip a loping overhand right, letting him stumble past me, and as I pivot back in his direction I drive my left knee into his kidney area with all of my hundred and eighty pounds behind it. An agonized wail escapes him as he sinks to one knee and I launch myself bodily at him, hoping to use my mass and momentum to bring him down to earth. The three of us fall against a table alongside the wall where an Asian man in a suit the color of burnished oak is still sitting, watching the brawl with paralyzed amazement.
We fall as one against the table, with Walter taking the brunt of the impact. For just a second the fiend on his shoulder wobbles, so I grab it with my right hand and shove it off its perch and face first into the Asian man’s bowl of thick Irish stew. It chokes and sputters, slashing blindly with its small, razor-honed claws, but it’s panicking and missing my hand entirely for now.
I grab the back of Walter’s head with my left hand and, with more force than might strictly have been necessary, I drive the man’s forehead into the wall and he sinks to his knees in front of the table with the all the grace the Hindenburg showed. Moving quickly, I let go of his head and pick up the Asian man’s heavy steak knife with my left hand. Then I use my right forearm to pin the fiend’s head in the bowl and use my right hand to grab hold of the thin gold ch
ain that’s binding them together.
Apart from being immune to magical energies, my touch disrupts spells that are already in motion. Like, for example, the link between Walter and the fiend. It was given shape as a gold chain, but that’s just symbolic of the mystical tether between them. To everyone else in the world the binding spell is something like a marriage vow: nobody can sever it but the two people who forged it.
To me, of course, it’s only thinly wrought gold.
The chain comes apart on the second slash of the knife. The fiend’s bubbly screams peak, then quickly taper off as whatever energies tied it and Walter together hemorrhage through the broken chain. I relax the pressure of my forearm, standing up carefully. It lies there, face down in the stew, utterly dead. The diner has a piteous look as he regards his ruined dinner. I can sympathize. The leprechauns make great stew. I point casually at his now overly filled bowl.
“Don’t eat that,” I say. He doesn’t answer me.
I walk over to where Carl fell, patting my pocket to make sure the small bag is still in there. Along the way I stop to help Pappy to his feet.
“Sorry about the mess,” I tell him.
“Ach, don’t worry about it,” he says, checking his nose to see if the bleeding has stopped. It has. “It’s been too long since we’ve had any fun. That was worth the mess.”
“We’ll take care of him, too,” Sean points at Walter.
“Be gentle,” I say. “He just had a forced exorcism.”
“Ah, he’ll be okay. All he needs is a pint and a bite.” The three leprechauns laugh and high-five each other.
All I can do is shake my head. I don’t understand leprechauns. I walk carefully through the debris of the pub, take Carl by the nape, and haul him outside so I can put him on another bus. It’s time to go home.
Swim Like Hell: A Visit to Superstition Bay Page 28
