One of her coins bounced off the head of a wolf, who slipped and rolled into the path of a charging moose.
“Unlucky pennies,” I guessed. The moose trampled the wolf, which didn’t get back up. “Nice.”
Nidhi pulled off the road and killed the engine. I scooped Smudge onto my shoulder, grabbed the books, and snatched the keys from the ignition. I hurried to the back and popped the trunk. The Triumph had better protective spells than any of us. I shoved the books inside and slammed the trunk.
Lena handed me the shock-gun. “How many were you able to get?”
“Ten, including Bi Wei’s.” Beauty had fallen apart when I tried to pull out the eleventh book. It wasn’t enough.
I counted five fallen beasts, but others were circling the three Porters, trying to get up the hill to surround them. In addition to the wolf and the moose, there were several deer, two dogs, what looked like a fox, and a handful of rats. Sparkles on the ground showed where Toni had taken out many of the bugs.
I stopped to shoot at a metal snake which was trying to circle around to flank them. My third shot took it down, but attracted the attention of its friends, and the metal mob that had pursued us from the library was closing in fast.
“I hope you have a plan, Vainio!” Toni shouted.
Lawrence used the confusion caused by our arrival to fire at another wolf. The metal body began to hum like a tuning fork, the sound rising in pitch until my eardrums threatened to rupture. Then the wolf simply blew apart. Shrapnel dented a deer, but it regained its balance and kept coming.
“I need a hand. ‘Eat me.’ End of chapter one.” I yanked Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland from my jacket and flung it toward Whitney. I gave Nidhi a boost up the hill and started to follow, but the moose had recovered from its collision with the wolf and was charging toward me.
“Mine.” Lena sprinted past, swords raised. Just before she collided with the moose, she jumped to the right and stabbed one of her swords into the joint where the front leg met the torso. The move took her off balance, but she turned her fall into a roll and bounced to her feet, gripping her remaining weapon in both hands and knocking a rusty dog aside.
The moose staggered. Sprigs of green sprouted from the shaft of the sword. It was the same trick she had used with the toothpick and the metal beetle back in my office. Her bokken grew through the moose, entangling and paralyzing the inner workings before it could reach me.
“Incoming,” Whitney yelled, pointing toward the swarm of birds and bugs flying up the road. She turned her attention to my book, reached inside, and yanked out a small glass box.
I scrambled up the hill to snatch it from her hand. Inside was a small cake. Currants spelled out the words “EAT ME.” I collapsed on the dirt, opened the box, and set both it and Smudge on the ground. “Time for lunch, buddy.”
A swarm of rats had cut Lena off from the rest of us. I readied my gun, but before I could aim, Lawrence shouted, “Watch the trees!”
A pair of wendigos bounded toward us. I rolled and hit one in the leg. Lawrence shot the other, causing the ice that armored its skin to shatter. I didn’t know what kind of weapon he was using or where he had gotten it, but next chance I got, I was definitely looking that sucker up in the Porter database.
On the road, Lena jumped onto the back of the dying moose and smashed a rat off of her leg. Another sank metal teeth through her shoe. She cried out, then kicked off the shoe and rat both. More rats climbed up the moose. I grabbed another book, hoping Whitney or Lawrence could control the rust magic better than I had.
I didn’t get the chance to find out. With crumbs of magic cake stuck to his mandibles, Smudge charged into the fray.
I had cared for that spider since high school, and he had saved my life more than once. He was more than a partner. He was family. And despite all we had been through, the primitive, reptilian part of my brain wanted only to get as far as I could from the flaming spider I had magically enlarged to the size of a station wagon.
Apparently magic rats felt the same way. They jumped off of the moose and backed away.
They weren’t fast enough. Smudge snatched the first one up without breaking stride. His mandibles punched through the metal body like an old-fashioned can opener, and then he was moving toward the next.
Exhaustion and triumph made me giddy. I pumped my fist in the air and whooped like a hockey fan at the bar during playoffs. Smudge grabbed a possum-looking creature and bit into it. Two rats tried to climb his leg, but his flames deepened from red to purple, and they fell back.
There was little question that Smudge remembered what these things had done to him back at the house. Nor was there any doubt in my mind that he was enjoying his payback.
I began firing into the second wave, trying to slow their approach. Once Smudge cleared most of the smaller creatures away from Lena, he charged toward the swarm Toni had been holding off. As he neared, fire rolled off his body and legs. Glowing bugs fell like rain.
Toni shouted and dropped to the ground. She slapped frantically at her dreadlocks, swearing up a storm. Smudge’s enthusiasm had burned through her yo-yo string as well.
“Easy, buddy!” I shouted. “She’s on our side!”
With everything I had seen today, the sight of a giant flaming spider slinking sheepishly back to the road barely warranted a second glance. Whatever guilt he felt didn’t last long. He skittered toward the railroad tracks and reared up on his back four legs to snatch an oversized batlike thing from the air. The rest of us took up positions around Nidhi.
“Whitney, get your Pratchett ready.” Toni jammed her straw through her belt and pulled out a portable fan, roughly the size of a small digital camera. “The rest of you, cover us.”
Lawrence and I shot at anything shiny that got too close, while Whitney switched books and started reading. Lena moved toward the trees to intercept another wendigo.
Whitney hobbled over to join Toni. Her face was white with pain, but she made it. She clutched Toni’s shoulder for support, then opened another book with her free hand. “Isaac, get your spider out of there.”
I switched my gun to my left hand and grabbed a laser pointer from another pocket. I had to shine the dot directly over Smudge’s face to get his attention, but once I did, he was all over it. I played the laser over a metal coyote, which Smudge happily trampled as he pursued the elusive red dot uphill.
“Man, you have the weirdest pet,” Toni said. The plastic blades of her fan whirred to life. “Brace yourselves!”
It was as if she had uncorked a portable hurricane. The wind blew insects and birds back, and even the larger creatures had to dig their claws into the pavement to hold on.
We were out of the wind’s direct path, but the negative pressure yanked my coat like a cape, the weight of my books threatening to drag me away. I pocketed my gun and grabbed the broken concrete foundation of the water tower. Lena stabbed her bokken into the ground and clutched it with one hand. Her other was locked around Nidhi’s wrist.
“How are we supposed to shoot these things if we can’t even stand?” I yelled.
“It’s a two-part plan. That was part one.” Toni and Whitney stood together in the eye of the storm, seemingly untouched. Whitney maneuvered her open book like a tray full of fine china, raising it above and slightly in front of the fan. Then she tilted the book forward.
Liquid spilled from the pages and sprayed forth like mist. Toni and Whitney turned together, moving to and fro like firefighters attacking a blaze.