Page 36 of Guarded By the Krampus

“Which one of them’s biggest?” I shouted out to Sylas, making an educated guess.

“There’s one…that’s just…orbiting…to the west,” he said, with grunts. “I can’t reach it while I’m maintaining the antenna’s integrity though.”

I grit my teeth—I couldn’t safely run down to get the door I’d burst off of its hinges to hurl, not while I was carrying Sylas’s baby. So I reached out to the nearest dish and tapped, thud-thud-thud, tap-tap-tap, thud-thud-thud, hoping that Nex and Sarah would hear.

“Ace?” Sarah’s voice burst into my ear a second later. “Are you okay?” she asked, likely because she couldn’t help herself, then no doubt thinking hard. “You’re up there—Sylas is helping—but you need—a—a ranged weapon!” The line between us went dead for a moment, before she picked up again. “Nex says don’t touch that dish you just hit again—but that there should be another one, ten feet higher up, and six feet to your left. It’s redundant!”

I nodded, even though no one could see me but Lucian, and began very carefully climbing.

“Four minutes,” Nex informed me, as I became level with the dish and started scooting out. At this height the antenna’s structure had begun swaying, and I didn’t know if that was because of my weight, or the continual pounding Sylas’s smoke-shield was taking outside. I crept sideways, and Sylas noticed my change in direction at once.

“What’re you doing?” he demanded.

“Getting a weapon!” I shouted back. The dish loomed in front of me—a huge, concave circle of steel and bolts. It was heavy, yes, but I’d carried worse—and I was lucky, the dish and the drone that counted were on the same side. I got one arm around its edge, bracing my shoulder against it as I worked my cloven hooves under the support brackets like a pry bar, wedging them off, one by one, while trying to keep my center of gravity low, and Lucian carefully balanced against me.

The dish came off into my free arm with a groan of steel, and I grunted, bracing it against my body. It was about three feet wide, and heavy, maybe fifty pounds.

“You’re gonna need to take Lucian back, Sylas,” I called out. “And I’m gonna need a clearing.”

“Timeframe?” he shot back.

I heaved the dish up higher with one arm. “Now!”

Lucian’s slight weight disappeared as did Sylas’s smoke, and my sightline toward a larger drone, bristling with antenna of its own, was clear. I leaned out as far from the antenna as I dared, feeling like King Kong, and then I hurtled the dish overhead, likeI was throwing an axe, with so much force that I had to let go of the antenna to finish the movement, plummeting thirty feet straight down.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The impact of my hooves hitting the roof’s concrete jarred through my body and my teeth slammed shut so hard that one of my molars chipped, but I ignored that, spitting it out and looking up to where I could see the stars—because all of Sylas’s smoke and the plastic scent of exploded C4 was clearing.

Was the Nightmare okay? And his baby?

And what had happened with Nex and Sarah?

“Sylas?” I shouted, immediately concerned.

He coagulated in front of me, baby-sling and all. “After you made your move, they departed.”

And the antenna was still in one piece, so—“Ace!” Sarah shrieked, coming through the open roof door. “Are you all right? We lost contact with you?—”

I was already running for her, crunching through drone rubble and scanning the ground for unexploded ordinance.

“Back inside!” I demanded, picking her up like she weighed nothing. “Sorry—it’s just not safe?—”

“You’re alive!” she squeaked as I squeezed all the air out of her. “What happened?”

“He hurled a dish like a discus, taking the largest drone out of the sky,” Sylas intoned from beside me.

“And without it around, I managed to override their security systems, and send the rest of them home and armed,” Nex said, from…I didn’t know where.

“You’re not supposed to be free range, Nex.”

“Hmm,” he said, mimicking thought quite effectively. “I suspect a lot of things have happened tonight that we shouldn’t tell our superiors.”

“You’re not wrong there,” I muttered. “But—as for now.”

“We’re safe,” Sylas said, putting a gentle hand against the sling he carried, making Lucian coo.

“You all know what that means then, right?” I asked everyone surrounding. “It’s time to get our stories straight.”

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