“Boyd,” I rasped, bracing myself against the bar, my tongue fat in my mouth. “I didn’t like you before, but now you’ve pissed me off.” The words stuck to the insides of my cheeks, one syllable hiccuping into the next, but he caught my meaning okay. Maybe it was the accompanying straight kick into his gut.
He managed to grab my foot as he toppled forward, but I closed the space between us, balancing my weight on his shoulders as my kneecap collided with his nose. From there, I just hammered the back of his neck until Boyd joined Bill in la-la-land.
Above me, Diana laughed. She’d changed into pink tulle and fishnets, but was still channeling a music hall version of Raj Barbie, looking like a neon ornament in the muted branching of the stark hallway. “Two down, Olivia. Only five more to go.”
I whirled to find the remaining half-dozen dealers lined up, single file, the ones near the front popping their knuckles and rolling their necks. They knew what I could do now, so I’d lost the element of surprise. However, the dealers near the back looked bored, the final one even glancing at his table to making sure his pot was safe while he stepped away. Meanwhile the players-men who’d once been both agents of Light and Shadow-had shuffled to the wall of lanterns, four and five bodies deep, a wall of flesh and muscle to overcome on my way home.
Okay, I thought, first things first. I returned my attention to the men who worked for the house.
The last dealer was right to be unconcerned, of course. Even fresh, it would have been a challenge, but as it was, I’d expire from dehydration and exhaustion long before reaching him. So I held up my hands in surrender. The first dealer, severely pock-faced with odd silvery eyes, shot a smile at the guy behind him, and I hit the floor, yanking the lighter from Boyd’s shirt pocket. Then I grabbed Bill’s ever-brimming liquor bottle and prayed the liquid that extinguished the will to fight would ignite like gas in the pretty green bottle.
It flared like a torch gun, and for the briefest of moments I considered throwing it in the direction of the beautiful, carefree laughter still raining from above, but the dealers were closer, faster, and rightly alarmed. I hurtled it forward, my body swinging with the movement.
I am a great fighter, but my pitching arm has always been shit, and the improvised bomb landed to the right of where I’d intended, directly between the lined dealers and huddled players…and atop one of the poker tables.
Felt and cards went up in a searing conflagration, the dry air hungry for fuel. Fire uncoiled across the table like a whip, and within seconds a handful of men guarding the wall started screaming, breaking rank in the tight formation. For once they moved at a normal speed, yanking at their clothes, clenching their throats, and scraping at their chest and necks.
Every eye gaped at that table and at the flaming little disks sparking with color, tiny tabletop fireworks of vibrant blues and yellows, greens, golds, and violet. Those men’s powers popped and sizzled like Roman candles and stunted sparklers, but the air wasn’t scented with sulfur or barium or black powder. Even the dealers leaned toward the inferno, inhaling deeply of toasted cinnamon and warmed coconut. The women upstairs started crying out, some weeping, some running their hands along their bodies in pleasure as power floated up to them.
As horrified as I was by what I’d inadvertently done, I couldn’t help inhaling the tiny bits of lost power wafting my way. They whetted my tongue, revived my energy, but also stirred the unconscious men at my feet. Before they could rise, or the dealers stopped getting off on someone else’s destroyed power, I sprang toward the wall of men, focusing on the holes left by those I’d inadvertently attacked.
I plowed through the remaining agents like they were bowling pins. Indeed, pushing them aside wasn’t much different than a gym workout; they did nothing to resist me, because they couldn’t. Their sole purpose was to form a wall of flesh, and my job was to dismantle it…body by body.
I took the most direct approach, because even with the added distraction of the flaming chips, my limbs were growing heavy and weak. I wanted to drop to my knees, put my cheek to the splintered floor and cry. But I was almost there. One last big bastard to plow through, a sandy-haired man with empty button eyes and outstretched hands, and then I could yank the cover off that second lantern and go home.
The thought spurred my strength. I barreled into him and delivered an elbow that caught him in the larynx, a little extreme, but I’d feel guilty over it later. Hell, I’d go to confession if it meant returning to a patriarchal society.
Not everybody felt the same. At the end of the line, while the dealers were still leaning over the burning poker table like kids beneath a broken piñata, and the rogue agents littered the floor like discarded toy soldiers, there was one man left standing. He had a dusty bowler hat on his head and a knife in his hand.
It was Mackie, the piano player. He stood erect, like he’d been pulled straight by levers and strings. Twisting the knife like a butcher would, I saw that he moved as quickly as I did, but my attention was on his face as he lifted his chin, his leather skin rearranging itself over his frame. Creepy when still, he was terrifying when animate. His eyes were missing altogether, black sockets empty as craters. His teeth were rotted away, mouth caught in an eternal grimace.
“Sleepy Mack,” I said slowly, licking my lips as I kept an eye on that deadly blade. The only indication he heard me was a wide-lipped snarl. Great. I took a step back. “That chip thing was an accident. I wasn’t really aiming for the table.”
Obviously a man who cared about results, not intentions, his arm arced through the air in a full-forced swing. Training took over as I stood beneath that falling blade, and I defended and countered at the same time. I thrust my left arm up to connect with his wrist, shifting my weight with it despite my instinct to recoil. At the same time, I burst forward, delivering a straight punch to his jaw, which I envisioned disappearing through the back of his head.
The blade allegedly holding the last of Mackie’s soul flew from his hands. There was a collective gasp, and the look on his face was more like I’d severed a limb than disarmed a weapon. I kept moving forward, knowing but ignoring that he’d nicked my left forearm, and attacked with everything I had left. My goal was to imprint his final expression of bereft surprise upon my knuckles.
The next few seconds were so fast I’d remember them forever. Mackie was stronger than the others, as dense and tough as jerky, almost petrified from living so long in a room that was also a kiln. No wonder he had no conscience. His brain was probably as rotted as the meat of a walnut. So I was guilt-free as I hit him again on the button. As good a shot as it was, it only popped his head straight back. He was reaching for me even as it snapped forward again.
And now the fucker was starting to growl, a high-pitched whining that intensified as he returned to offense. I sprang, my knee exploding into his temple, into his ribs so he’d buckle, again and again, and still he didn’t go down. I kept pummeling him, but it wasn’t until I picked up his piano stool and whipped it across his face that he fell to the ground and stayed there.
Mackie was down. Bill was up. And Boyd was charging.
But it was too late. I still had breath in my body, and with two steps and an overhead stretch, I also had the lantern off its hook and in my hand. A stunned cry drowned out even the rushing feet, and as my gaze met Diana’s shocked one above, I took an extra moment to smile and blow her a kiss.
In doing so, I extinguished the flame.
Smoke carried me. I was familiar with the sensation now, the weightlessness accompanying the obscured sight, the gritty vapor so paralyzing it was almost heavy. The cries and yells and voices I left behind blurred like streaming colors outside a speeding vehicle, and after I’d outrun them, there was a moment of supreme silence in which I was flipped vertically and diagonally and horizontally all at the same time. It was a whipping motion, strange because I never even moved, but this, I now understood, was a worlds-crossing. There both was and wasn’t ground beneath my feet, and though breathing, I hadn’t taken in air since extinguishing that lantern. And while nothing and everything changed, I had enough consciousness to recognize the shift when it occurred, like tectonic plates were grinding against one another. The sound made my teeth ache at their roots, though I eventually realized I was grating my lower jaw against the upper. I stopped, the aching ceased, and the smoke gradually cleared.