“I’m disappointed,” Friar said in his silkiest voice. “Where’s the lovely Lily?”
“She couldn’t make it.” Rule looked at the man on his left, then the two on his right. He didn’t speak or signal with his hands, but the glance must have meant something. The tallest one’s eyes widened. He returned his gaze to Friar, his expression giving away nothing. “What did you have in mind, Robert?”
“Why, an exchange, just as I said.”
“Adam King isn’t here.”
“No, he’ll remain my guest awhile longer. Jasper will join him. They’ve been pining for each other—I’m quite looking forward to reuniting them. But you’ll still make the exchange, I’m sure, given the terms. You’ll give me Cullen Seabourne. In return, I won’t kill any of the pretty girls here.”
Rule was silent for several heartbeats. Then he smiled slowly, a smile as hard and pure and cold as Arctic ice. “What pretty girls?” he said. And shouted, “Go!”
A great many things happened in the first two seconds.
The lupi charged, flowing forward across that shiny floor absurdly fast. Glass shattered up high. The thug with the knife dropped it and reached for his gun. The one with the gun swung it toward the racing lupi and deafening sound crashed and ricocheted through the gymnasium. Four enormous wolves leaped off the bleachers—the windows, they must have come through the windows!—and if Jasper had thought the men were fast, the wolves were unbelievable. In the next second they would—
Beside him, Friar shouted something over the bestial roar of the guns.
All six girls sprang to their feet brandishing wicked-long knives—and flung their free arms over their eyes.
The sun exploded right there in Hammond Middle School’s gymnasium.
Jasper’s eyes squeezed closed, but he still saw light—searing, intolerable brightness. His eyes streamed. He gulped and gasped and realized there was no heat. No heat, only that terrible brightness.
He heard screams. Screams, not gunfire, and the meaty thud of fighting. He forced his eyelids to lift, but he couldn’t see anything. Blind. He’d been blinded, and oh God—
“Hold still,” Rule’s voice said right next to his ear. He felt Rule’s hand on his, still bound behind his back. A second later his hands parted. They tingled and stung and he brought them to his face with the duct tape still tight on his wrists, but severed. “I can’t see.”
“Nor can I,” his brother said, and shoved him out of the chair.
He landed heavily on his side, and now there was heat—the fiery breath of a furnace.
“Goddamn elves!” someone shouted.
“Cullen!” Rule roared. “Your fire’s too damn close!”
“That wasn’t mine!”
“Shit,” Rule said, and rolled on top of Jasper, covering him with his body.
“They’re getting away,” Seabourne cried. “Out the window, I think—take that, you slimy, pointy-eared bastards!”
Then it was silent. Almost silent. Jasper heard breathing—his, Rule’s, and was that the panting of a wolf nearby? He felt Rule shift. “My vision’s coming back,” Rule said.
“Mine’s not,” Cullen said sourly.
“What were you throwing fire at if you couldn’t see?”
“Elves. Goddamn elves glow plenty bright to my other sight. They’re gone,” he added.
“Yes,” Rule said, and rolled off Jasper. “They left their two gunmen behind, however. Or their bodies. Can anyone else see yet?”
“I can, a little,” someone said.
“Good. See if the gunmen are dead. Jasper, I have to check on Ian. He’s down.”
Jasper blinked his streaming eyes, still seeing only the afterimage of that intolerable brightness, and sat up. He heard movement from several directions. “This one’s dead,” a voice said. Then there was the low whine of an animal in pain.
A moment later Rule spoke. “Ian’s alive, but they took his front left leg off. I’ve tied it off. Cullen, I need you.”
A voice announced that the “other one” was still alive, and did Rule want him to stay that way? Rule told him yes. More sounds of movement. Cullen said, “Damn elves. No, I can see well enough now. I’m going to cauterize the stump. I’ll put the no-pain spell on first, but I can’t leave it on, Ian. You know that. It’s going to hurt like a mother in a minute.”
Someone came over to Jasper. “Is that your blood or Rule’s?”
“I…” Jasper touched the front of his shirt, just now realizing it was damp. “It’s not mine. Is Rule hurt?”
“Took a bullet in the shoulder, looks like,” the voice said cheerfully. “That’s not too bad,” he added a moment later, maybe in reaction to Jasper’s expression. “If the bullet didn’t go through he’ll have to have it dug out, but there’re a lot worse places to get shot.”
“I guess so.” Rule had been wounded when he covered Jasper with his body, shielding him. Jasper passed a shaky hand over his face.
“You still can’t see?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know who I’m talking to. Maybe I should know your voice, but I don’t.”
“Oh, sure. You only heard me that once in the stairwell, and you can’t identify us by smell. I’m Barnaby.”
“Barnaby, what in the hell just happened? Those girls—”
“They weren’t girls. At least not human ones. Some of them might have been female—I mostly saw what you did, so I can’t say for sure. But they were elves. So was Friar. The one who looked like him, I mean.”
“Elves.”
“Yeah. Rule had an idea we might run into one elf. He wasn’t expecting a whole fistful, but he had us wear these charms, just in case. They’re Nokolai work, though, so they didn’t work great for us. They did help some. The elves looked like girls to me, but in a wavery way, like they weren’t quite in focus. It’s hard to attack someone who looks like a young girl,” he added, “even if you know she isn’t. Even if the image is kind of wavery, it’s hard.”
“I guess it would be.”
“They didn’t smell quite right, though. They smelled human, but like they were all the same human, so that helped. Plus the charms worked like they should for Rule and Cullen, so they told us we were looking at elves, not kids.”
Jasper frowned, puzzled. “When did they tell you?”
“Oh, before we came in. Scott got here ahead of time and he reported to Rule, who wanted to see for himself. Scott and Joe were on the roof, see, with a rope to let them look in the window. Rule saw elves, not girls, so he had Chris and Ian stay with Scott. He wanted wolves coming at them through the windows, see, and Chris and Ian can Change really fast, almost as quick as Rule.” Regret entered his voice. “We were maybe a little slow on the attack because of how they looked to us, but we’d have had them. If they hadn’t had that big flash-bang, we’d have had them.”
Jasper digested that. Friar hadn’t been here at all. Some unknown elf had been talking to him, wanting him to choose which girl got hurt. Only they weren’t girls. The glow he’d seen hadn’t been a spell. They’d glowed because they were elves, and the not-Friar elf hadn’t intended to harm them. He’d manipulated Jasper into offering to be hurt.
After a moment he said, “You call that a little slow?”
“Any hesitation in a fight can be deadly.” That was Rule. “Barnaby, can you walk on that leg?”
“Not really,” Barnaby said apologetically. “I can hop on my other one, though.”
“Go see Cullen.”
Barnaby sighed and, from the sound of it, got up. Jasper realized the whiteout of his vision wasn’t quite complete. At the edges it was turning gray and fuzzy. His heart jumped. Maybe he wasn’t permanently blind. “Barnaby said the girls weren’t girls. They were elves, but they all smelled the same.”
“Ah. Now that is interesting.”