Those steroid-bulked athletes had nothing on his sudden fury.
Mated talya bond, indeed. Alyce was not a prize for the taking.
He hurled the lamp globe across the darkness.
Miraculously, the globe avoided every table leg and struck the skulking talya. The sound of breaking glass was loud in the stillness, and Alyce dropped to a crouch.
“You’re out, Pitch,” came a cry from above.
Barely visible in the red emergency exit lighting, Nim perched on the highest shelf, one hand braced on the heavy ceiling beam. She cut her stiff-held fingers across her throat.
On the ground, the male talya, Pitch, grumbled. “She didn’t tag me out. Westerbrook did.”
“How embarrassing,” Nim said cheerfully. “Good thing he wasn’t a salambe. Better luck next time, lover boy.”
Alyce hurried back to him and held out another globe. “Good throw. Only seven left.”
Sid clenched his teeth. How many had pitted themselves against her? The monsters.
But he refused to reach for the weapon. He wasn’t part of this game. Neither, though, could he in good conscience let it continue. “Someone’s going to get hurt.”
Nim clambered halfway down the shelves, then jumped. She landed in a lithe crouch. “That was kind of the point.”
“To hurt Alyce?”
“Stupid Bookkeeper. Of course not. To see who was willing to hurt for her.”
“That’s …” He groped for his suddenly missing words.
“Fucked up?” Nim supplied. “Hmm. It is, kind of.” She ducked back into the shadows.
“Wait,” Sid called to her. Pitch’s glare prickled between his shoulder blades. He ignored the talya until he stalked off. “Alyce, we shouldn’t—”
She brushed his arm. “This isn’t like when we fought the djinn-man, you and I.” Her earnest gaze met his, as hesitant as her fingers against his flesh. “This is for fun. No one gets hurt.” A crash and a muffled shout from somewhere deeper among the salvaged remains made him realize the game had continued, with the male talyan eliminating one another. Alyce grinned at him. “At least not hurt for long.”
Her sudden transformation from serious to prom-giddy made his breath catch. God, he’d forgotten she was still a young woman. Actually, she was not just a young woman, but in many of the ways that mattered, she’d been both cheated of and trapped by what she’d been at the moment of her possession. And yet she’d fought and killed some of the most formidable incarnations of evil walking their world. If the talyan needed to take the edge off the harsh realities of their existence with a fractionally less safe version of school yard dodgeball hide-and-seek, who was he to stop them?
Presupposing he could stop them.
He took Alyce’s hand. “I’ll try not to slow you down.”
“I limp,” she reminded him.
Whoever had triumphed in that other exchange would be stalking them now, with the advantage of superior strength and quickness, sharper eyesight and hearing, and a demon’s killer instincts.
They ducked into a row of shoulder-high racks strewn with odds and ends. Sid grabbed a fist-sized granite frog that would make a worthy missile and a … shite, the lawn gnome was plastic. But Alyce hadn’t slowed, so he hastened after her.
There. At the end of the row was a bank of smudged windows, charcoal gray from the October sky beyond. A talya-sized figure in black flitted past. Alyce breathed out softly and cocked her arm, her glitter-painted Christmas wreath–cum–ninja shuriken throwing star at the ready.
Sid whispered her name—or didn’t whisper, really, but more thought it and laid his tongue over the syllables, but she glanced toward him nonetheless. He tilted his head at the gnome in his hand and mimed lobbing it grenade-style into the next aisle, with a sweep of his other hand indicating the probable path of the investigating talya. She nodded and ghosted across the open aisle, staying in her row instead of crossing to the next row over with a shot at the talya.
She faded just a few steps into the shadows, lingering near the open aisle. Sid tossed the gnome over the top of the shelves, and the hollow plastic thunked noisily on the wooden floor.
Sure enough, the talya charged down his own row, parallel to Alyce. Without a glance at Sid, he crossed the aisle, fixated like a pouncing cat.
Maybe the talyan needed a movie night or two. Honestly, didn’t everybody know that trick?
Alyce bounded out of her hiding spot and nailed the talya in the backside. The wreath burst apart in a shower of fake bay leaves and silver glitter.
“Baird, out,” Nim called from another high perch. “Since when do you not watch your back, sparkle boy?”
“I was distracted, damn it.” The talya brushed at the seat of his jeans and grimaced at the glitter on his palm. “Well, could’ve been noodle art.”
Sid straightened, popping above the shelves where Baird could see him. “Yeah, that nickname would be worse.”
The talya shot him the middle finger and a big grin full of white teeth. “Al dente, asshole.”
From the corner of his eye, back the way they had come, Sid glimpsed a dark shape. Nim and Baird were trading another gleeful insult. Alyce stood halfway into the open aisle, her baby blue housedress much the worse for wear but still a pale gleaming target. She watched the byplay with her head cocked and that delighted little smile curving her lips.
Before he could call her name—whispered, shouted, or anything else—the bombardment was inbound.
As kitchen sinks went, it wasn’t big—more prep-sink-sized. It was still going to hurt like a son of a bitch.
As heroic dives went, his was kind of prep-sized too. But he just needed to get between Alyce and whichever talya was sneaking up on her in the hopes of winning—or pinning—her heart.
He was still in midair when the sink smashed into his shoulder—the feralis-bitten one, of course.
Alyce spun toward him in a pale blue blur. Before his knee crashed into the floorboards, her arms were already reaching out to him, slowing his descent.
She saved his skull, but the point of his shoulder rebounded off the floor. The gray numbness was obliterated in a blinding white wave of pain like newsprint in a gasoline flame.
He cursed, not quite as loud as Alyce with her double-octave growl of outrage.
“What the hell, Pitch,” Nim snapped as she jumped down to the floor. “You’re out of the Alyce game.”
“I wasn’t aiming at her.”
Sid righted himself, his good hand braced on the floor. Always nice to know he’d thrown himself into the line of fire for nothing.
Baird shook his head. “Westerbrook isn’t a valid target.”
“Not anymore,” Pitch said. “C’mon—I didn’t use the claw-foot tub.”
Pushing Alyce’s hand away, Sid drew himself to his feet. He refused to steady himself on the nearest shelf, and for a wonder his spectacles had stayed on. “That’s it. This game is over.”
Jonah hurried down the aisle toward them. A multipronged hook was attached to his stump in place of his right hand. “Why’s everybody standing around? She didn’t get everybody out already, did she?” He looked at Nim. “Do I owe you that fifty bucks?”
Nim shook her head. “Westerbrook called a halt. I think we shocked him with our childish behavior.”
Jonah turned a glower on Sid. “We’re not allowed a little fun?” Nim wrapped her fingers around his forearm, just above the cuff where the hook connected, becoming part of him. In the shadows of forgotten furniture, a half-dozen massive shapes converged, talya blackness broken only by heat-lightning flares of violet. They were the remaining hopeful suitors.