Just as I was about to instruct everyone to aim for the hands, I noticed something very odd.
The dust from the pixie that Chuck had shot at close range had attached to my fallen pixie. She was in the process of fixing her Achilles, but the dust finished the job for her. And then, to make things really fun, the dust started attaching to the rest of her body, where it proceeded to heal her.
She was growing.
“Uh, guys,” I said while pointing a shaky finger.
Rachel yelled out a spell as she flew through the air with her hand out like she was a superhero. Her fist connected with her pixie and an explosion of energy tore a massive hole right through it.
Again, the dust hit my pixie.
Again, it grew bigger.
“Uh…guys,” I said even louder.
Felicia was attached to her pixie. She was clawing, biting, and doing everything she could to tear the poor thing to shreds. I know I shouldn’t have felt any sympathy for it, but Felicia was vicious.
My pixie grew even more.
“Seriously, guys.”
A flash of light came from my right, over by a set of darkened windows. Jasmine wasn’t known to be much of a fighter, but she was often quite clever. She had thrown up a fireworks spell, which caused her pixie to get distracted. This gave Jasmine the time to step inside and stick a timed spell on its leg. When she’d run away, the pixie was short one limb.
And there went my pixie’s size again.
“Guys,” I hollered without the connector, “my fucking pixie is getting bigger every time the dust hits her!”
Apparently, my pixie noticed this as well because she got a nice sinister grin, stood up, and started running to all of the dust piles. Each one she hit merged with her immediately and she grew even more.
“Oh boy,” Rachel gulped. “Didn’t see that coming.”
“Nope.”
But it got worse.
My pixie stepped down on Rachel’s fallen pixie, smashing its head in a horrific visual of disturbing death.
She grew.
This gave us a slight reprieve, though, because the other pixies had caught on to what was happening and they didn’t like it any more than we did. Different reasons, obviously, but we shared an eventual outcome. Still, we’d let them fight it out as we figured out the next steps.
“Everyone, get over here,” I called, running to a spot on the floor where there was no dust. “We have to figure this shit out, and fast.”
The only two who hadn’t joined me were Serena and Turbo. They were off doing something that Serena felt was important to stopping these beasts. Seeing that she’d always been deathly accurate about things in the past, I let her do her thing.
“Glad you’re with us, Chuck,” I noted. “And very happy to hear that Griff is going to be okay.”
Everyone gave him a pat on the arm or shoulder to show support. Jasmine full-on hugged the guy.
I looked past him and saw that my pixie was nearly twice her original size. All the other big pixies had been destroyed now, but my pixie used their remaining dust to grow and grow. Her height hadn’t gone up as much, but her physique was bulging and her arms were getting longer. The only reason I could think of that would make sense for that was it allowing her to keep us at bay.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “We don’t have much time. That pixie is getting huge and I don’t think she’s going to make it easy for us to get in close.”
Felecia growled in agreement.
“But we have numbers on our side,” noted Rachel. “She’s only got two arms.”
“Which means we need two volunteers to be at the receiving end of those arms,” I replied soberly. “And while I hate to say it, those two volunteers need to be mages.”
Jasmine and Rachel looked at me like I had lost my mind.
“Sorry, guys, but it makes the most sense.” I motioned at myself, Felicia, and Chuck. “We have guns.” Then I pointed at Warren. “He’s got…” I paused, pursed my lips, realized that Warren would make the perfect fodder here, and then looked back at Jasmine and Rachel. “Okay, so I only need one of you mages to volunteer.”
“But—” started Warren.
“I could have you on the brute force team,” I stated, clearly lying so as not to hurt his feelings, “but this thing isn’t a skeleton.” I was referring to the time he’d torn those zombie skeletons limb from limb. It had been quite the sight, but there was a huge difference between fighting a bag of bones and facing off against a massive pixie. “So unless you’ve—”
He held up his bat, tapping it slowly against his palm. I glanced over at the pixie he’d demolished with his clubbing and changed my mind.
“Okay, so it’s back to the two mages.”
“Ian, you have to realize that—”
“That you two are going to get crushed, Rachel?” I interrupted. “I realize that it’s a possibility, and it sucks.” I pointed at my pixie. “But if you go after her hands with an energy pulse like you did a couple minutes back against your pixie, you may be able to mitigate the hit. That will give us enough time to take out the damn thing’s midsection.” I glanced at Warren. “If we can get it on the ground, Skull Thumper here will finish the job.”
“I love it when you give me tough names like that,” mused Warren, clearly not catching my sarcasm.
“Question,” said Jasmine while pointing at my pixie. “Why is she carrying dust to the middle of the room?”
That was odd. She was keeping a wary eye on us as she pushed a mass of dust around. I would have expected it to make her larger and larger, but it was as if she was saving it for something.
Oh shit.
“She’s going to use it for healing,” Chuck announced before I could. “That’s not good.”
“It really isn’t,” agreed Jasmine.
“Time to fight before she—”
I was too late.
She turned and grinned at us, signaling she was ready for battle.
It was go time.
Chapter 24
We moved out onto the gymnasium floor, getting ourselves into an umbrella pattern with Rachel and Jasmine at the top.
They didn’t look happy about their position in this battle.
Neither was I, truth be told.
I’d seen what had happened to Griff and what Chuck had gone through. I honestly had no desire for Rachel and I to go through it, too. But I couldn’t show favoritism. When we were on the job, she was an officer just like any other. Frankly, I hated putting any of them in danger, but that was all part of being the chief and, like it or not, Rachel and Jasmine were the best choice for taking the hands off this pixie.
“Everyone ready?” I asked through the connector.
I saw nods out of the corner of my eye.
“Okay, Rachel,” I sighed. “You’re on.”
She stepped forward and put her hands on her hips, giving the pixie the onceover. Then she slowly started shaking her head.
The pixie grimaced, looking concerned.
“What?” challenged the beast in her booming voice.
“Nothing,” Rachel replied. “It’s just that you look ridiculous.”
The pixie studied herself for a moment.
“Why?”
“Well, your skirt doesn’t really match your shirt,” began Rachel. “Your hair is…well, I don’t even know what to say about that, and you’re not even wearing shoes.”
We were all slowly fanning out while waiting for just the right moment. My guess was it’d be soon, seeing that Rachel was clearly already pushing some buttons. She excelled at that.
“Oh, like you’re one to talk,” the pixie retaliated. “Blond hair, blue eyes, brown leather that’s so tight it looks painted on.” The pixie scoffed. “I may be dressed eccentrically, but at least I don’t look like a two-bit whore.”
“Oooh,” I groaned to myself while wincing. “That was the wrong thing to say.”
“Same goes for your dainty little friend, too,” not
ed the pixie, clearly not recognizing the danger she was putting herself in. “So you’re a whore and she’s a slut.” She nodded proudly. “Yes, that about sums it up, wouldn’t you say?”
Rachel and Jasmine took off so fast that it made Rot look slow in comparison.
They were both in superhero flight-mode, with their fists out. The problem was that they didn’t have any glowing stuff going on with their hands. In their rage, they’d neglected to power up.
Translation: They were fucked.
“Go, go, go!” I yelled.
The entire team swarmed in on the big pixie, ready to shoot, claw, bite, and…swing a bat. Yeah, okay, so Warren’s contribution to the battle wasn’t great, but if he ever got to the pixie’s head, we’d be in business.
Rachel flew back the way she came, smacking into the far wall with a thud. Jasmine hit next to her a second later.
I couldn’t look.
Once I was in close enough, I jumped up and stuck Boomy right on the pixie’s elbow. The bullet nearly tore her arm in half, which was enough to elicit a shriek, but dust pulled up from the pile behind her in a jiffy. She was healed before I hit the ground.
Chuck had blown off one of her knees with his shotguns, but it was fixed just as fast.
This clearly wasn’t going to work and the pixie knew it.
She reached down and snapped up Warren, bringing him to eye level. To his credit, he pulled the bat up over his head and bonked her right on the nose with it. Her eyes grew dark and he dropped the bat. It landed right on Chuck’s foot. From that height, it was enough to cause Chuck to yell, “Fuck!”
“Uh…” started Warren, looking like he was about to piddle. “If it means anything to you, I rather like your skirt and shirt combination. It’s eccentric, sure, but that just makes you interesting.”
“Thank you,” she said before throwing him back to meet the wall near Rachel and Jasmine. “I like your outfit, too.”
She reached down for me next, but I dived out of the way and shot her toe off.
No, it wasn’t doing permanent damage, but at least it was hurting her. Of course, that just proved to piss her off even more, which wasn’t a great thing.
“Ian,” Serena piped up, “we have things going here, but you’re going to have to hold on.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked her while dodging yet another swipe from the pixie’s massive hand. “You said you had a plan, but you never told us what it was.”
Chuck fired his shotguns again and again. It was buying us time, but that wouldn’t last.
“There’s an industrial vacuum over here,” she explained. “I saw it when we came in from the other entrance. Turbo has been working on making it run even faster.”
“Uh huh,” I groaned after getting thrown into the bleachers. That hurt. “A vacuum.”
“What does a vacuum do, Ian?”
“Same thing my life does most of the time,” I answered. “It sucks.”
“Specifically dust and dirt, yes,” she said.
I sat up and cracked my neck, waiting for the spasm in my back to die down.
“Wait a second,” I said once Serena’s words fully hit home. “You’re talking about treating this pixie like she’s just a big-ass dust bunny?”
“Precisely.”
“Well, all right then.”
I jumped off the bleachers as Felicia flew toward me. I ducked. She bounced off one of the seats and flew right back into the fray. Oh to have that level of agility. I was more agile than the average person by far, but a genetically enhanced werewolf such as Felicia was an insanely powerful springboard.
“Could use some magic here, too,” Serena added.
I glanced over at Rachel and Jasmine, who were both sitting up and rubbing their heads.
“Rachel?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she replied. “We’ll help her, Ian. You guys keep that pixie busy.”
There was no need to tell me twice.
I turned and ran toward the pixie with Boomy in hand and menace on my mind.
Chapter 25
I shook my head and found that I was again looking up at the ceiling in the gymnasium. I didn’t even remember getting clobbered that time.
Felicia was getting up on one side of me and Chuck was rousing on the other. Obviously, the massive pixie had gotten the better of all three of us simultaneously.
Thump.
Uh oh.
I sat up as my head swam and saw that she was heading over to finish the job. Unfortunately, when I reached for Boomy I found that he was gone.
“Huh?” I said aloud while frowning. “Where the fuck did I—”
Thump.
No time to worry about it.
“Chuck,” I said, pushing him, “get up. Felicia, you okay?”
She growled in reply, and it wasn’t an angry growl either. It was one of those I-think-I-just-got-hit-by-a-train kind of growls.
Thump.
“Come on, guys,” I said, jumping to my feet. “Get up now!”
The huge pixie actually stopped beside the three of us and went, “Muwahahahaha!” She sounded like a total tyrant, and that irked me for some reason.
I spun around just as she was about to stomp us into oblivion and gave her a very firm look as I wagged an admonishing finger up at her.
She halted, lowered her foot carefully, and blinked at me.
“You’re not a nice person,” I said flatly. “Not nice at all.”
Her features changed suddenly to look very pouty. She dropped her head a little and glanced away.
“I…” she started. “You know what? You’re right.”
“Yes, and…” I paused and lowered my finger. “I am?”
“Yeah.” Her eyes flashed and her foot came back up. “I’m not a nice person.”
“Shit!”
We all jumped and rolled and screamed and yelled, but that pixie had one big-ass foot.
I dodged it.
Chuck dodged.
Felicia wasn’t so lucky. She yelped like a puppy getting a rabies shot as the pixie’s foot crushed down on her leg.
Like a shot, I launched at the pixie’s calf and started tearing at it as Felicia limped away. Chuck shot the pixie’s foot clean off. She shrieked and started to fall forward. The dust was rushing over to heal her, but since she wasn’t right on top of it, we had a few seconds between each hit.
“Keep shooting,” I demanded.
Chuck went to oblige my request, but she swiped at him and knocked him on his ass. Then she kicked me away.
When I looked up from my place on the court, I found her crawling back toward her healing pile of sand.
That’s when the sound of an industrial vacuum went on.
It was so powerful that the pixie’s healing dust started zooming out of the room in a stream.
“Nooo,” she cried as she tried desperately to get over to what was left of it.
Whatever Turbo had done to that vacuum, it was impressive. So much so that it was starting to pull me, Chuck, and Felicia along, too. Worse, I saw Boomy across the way, and he was wobbling.
“Oh crap!” I yelled as I did my best to run toward my beloved gun. “Come to daddy, Boomy. Come to daddy!”
Boomy didn’t listen.
He simply lifted up and started flying toward the vacuum, being sucked away into a set of blades that would forever change his personality.
Don’t judge me. I talk to my dick, remember?
“Stop the fans,” I cried. “Stop the fucking fans.”
“Don’t worry,” Rachel yelled out. “I snagged your precious gun before he went in. It’s called magic. You have the ability. Learn to use it.”
Well, someone was being a little snippy.
“Thank you,” I replied heavily, but there was no way she could have heard me from here, and I wasn’t speaking through the connector. I opened a channel. “Thank you.”
Felicia was having a tough time keeping herself from getting pulled into the stream a
s well, but she was a lot bigger than Boomy so I was able to get to her and pull her beside the bleachers where the suction was less problematic.
“Do you need an emergency portal?” I asked.
She growled a “No.”
“You’re not just being stoic?”
Another growl.
“Okay, I’m going to help Chuck.”
I stood up and saw that Chuck had made his way over to the fallen pixie and was preparing to make her one with the vacuum.
He had jumped on her back and pointed both shotgun barrels right at the back of her head. The blasts sounded simultaneously, sending a river of sand toward the vacuum. But that didn’t stop Chuck.
He just kept firing and firing and reloading and firing again. He didn’t stop until there was nothing left of that pixie but a pile of dust that was speedily being sucked away.
He collapsed a second later and was moving toward the vacuum.
“You can slow that thing down now,” I commanded through the connector. “The pixie is dead.”
The sound of suction lowered and Chuck stopped moving toward the doors, but the dust was still making its way toward the exit. Warren was rousing now and looked to be searching for his bat.
I got to Chuck and rolled him over. He was fine, just exhausted.
“How are you feeling?”
“Sated,” he answered.
“We still have the uber to get after,” I reminded him while helping him back to his feet. “He’s the one responsible for injuring Griff, remember?”
He nodded dully as I walked him over to where Warren was still fumbling around. Clearly my wizard had gotten his bell rung pretty hard. So had I, but I healed way faster than he could ever hope to…unless he had a shot of elixir, of course.
“Warren,” I said, jolting him from his search. He spun around and swung at me. I caught the punch in my hand and he froze. “The pixie is dead.”
“Oh,” he mumbled. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I replied. “I appreciate your instincts, actually. Just have a seat and recover for a few minutes while we figure out our next steps.”
Swarm of Fire Page 9
