Page 54 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

Those perfect eyes slitted. “Why?”

“Stop it,” Rhosier said to her. “She isn’t going to spell you—”

“How do you know that? How do you know anything about these people? You met them the same time I did!”

“Not him,” he nodded at Pritkin. And then he paused, sniffing, and his face crumpled up in a by-now-familiar way. “What is that?”

“Oh, no,” Alphonse said, getting a whiff. “Oh, hell, no.” He looked at me. “Send them back!”

“Enid,” Generys gasped, looking at her sister. “What is it?”

“You just told her my name!” her sister raged.

“Send them back!” Alphonse said to me. “I am not dealing with that shit again!”

“Shit would smell better,” I gasped, my eyes watering, but I did nothing. I was out of juice, being between cycles of the portal, so I looked at Pritkin.

“You fed them,” the infuriating man said. “Now they’re attached to you.”

“Fed who?” Enid demanded, looking about wildly.

“I’ll introduce you,” I said dryly, facing up to it. “In here, Pinkie,” I called, and a moment later, someone came through the door.

But it wasn’t Pinkie.

Chapter Sixteen

Alphonse jumped in front of me just in time, as half of a silver sword was suddenly sticking out of his back. I stared at it, having no choice being only inches away, with the dark blood of a master dripping off the end pointed directly between my eyes. And then I was backing up, and Alphonse was pulling the sword out with a growl and attempting to stick it into the fey who had tried to skewer me.

Only I wasn’t sure which one that was as there were suddenly a lot of them. Alphonse’s new sword rang on no less than three others, and there were plenty more muscling into the room behind them. It felt like another tide was swamping us, this one made out of flesh.

Alphonse was shoving me toward the rear exit while slashing at whoever tried to get behind him. But the door I’d glimpsed earlier was blocked by a bunch of what looked like beer barrels. They were full and heavy, but I was motivated and started shoving them aside to make an exit, and nobody got past Alphonse, possibly because Pritkin, Rhosier, and the kitchen maid Enid were lighting up our attackers.

The invading horde found themselves met by a barrage of spells that it didn’t look like they’d expected, as some of them hadn’t even had shields up when they came in. And when you’re dealing with the kind of magic that Pritkin was able to put out, that was ill-advised. As demonstrated when one of them went up like a Roman candle, burning to death inside his expensive suit of armor.

Within seconds, liquid fat was gushing out of the joints, the acrid smell of burning meat filled the air, and shields bloomed everywhere. And I moved the last barrel, grunting in effort before turning around to yell at the others and tell them to fall back. Fall back and let’s get out of here!

Only I didn’t get the chance. I was abruptly shoved against the still-closed door by the blue surface of a ward, hard as glass, which had pushed past my defender and pinned me to the wall like a bug on a pin. It barely gave me a chance to breathe, much less to get the damned thing behind me open!

“Get out!” Alphonse yelled as I was squeezed so tightly by the ward that fighting was impossible. “Shift! Shift!”

Yeah, only I couldn’t right now, but I had no way to explain that to him as I also couldn’t drag in enough air to speak. Just as he couldn’t reach me past the shield between us. Which the fey who had cast it was now walking through because it was his shield; it didn’t bind him. He had a naked sword in his hand, and I was unable to move or even turn my head enough to get a good look at the guy who was about to kill me.

Desperate, I tried the first spell I’d ever mastered back when I was at Tony’s. It drew on my magic, not the Pythian variety, and it still worked. A rune floated up into the air, almost in the fey’s face, causing him to grab at it as if it was a tangible thing.

And at the same moment, a burst of strength hit me, flooding down my arms to my fingertips and making me feel like I could run two marathons back to back. And I had better. Because when its effects wore off, I would be out of it for days, as the spell concentrated every bit of energy I had into one short-lived burst.

That meant I was screwed for tomorrow’s challenge, but if I died in here, I wasn’t making it anyway. And it looked like I still wouldn’t because, even after putting everything I had into it, I didn’t budge! And then somebody started shrieking.

It wasn’t the fleshy candle guy who had never had the chance. It wasn’t our waitress, who had been screaming since the horde came in, although at a much lower decibel level. It wasn’t even human.

And it was preceded by a stench so bad, so eye-watering, so throat-closing and head swimming, that the fey who was about to gut me looked back for a second in disbelief. And my hand, which had been fumbling around the door behind me, finally grasped the latch. And slid the bolt back, feeling like I broke my wrist in the process, but not caring because it worked!

I stumbled into a small stone hallway so quickly that my butt hit the floor. The fey could have followed me, but he was too bust scrabbling at his gorget with a mailed fist, like he couldn’t breathe, either. And then it got worse.

The familiar reek of the Horror Twins hit me, causing my eyes to flood and my throat to seize up. And to keep on doing it to the point that it felt puckered because they’d cranked the stench up to eleven. Alphonse had been right, I thought, as my attacker and I clawed at our necks almost in unison; that stench was a bioweapon, and one he was suddenly way more worried about than me.

I scrambled back, heart thudding, lungs screaming, eyes watering so much that I could hardly see. So I didn’t know what was going on in there, just that a bunch of people had started hitting the walls, very fast and very hard. I also learned that what I’d thought of as Pinkie’s shrillness was nothing to what he could do when really pissed off, as it sounded like a few dozen soprano air horns were going off in my ears, increasing the confusion.

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