As I passed through an intersection, I turned my head, watching them.
Here and there, there were traces of fear. I could sense it, clarifying me. All the same, all put together, they weren’t that scared. Safety in numbers. They were armed with a half-dozen to a dozen different forms of practice, and they were aware of me.
I needed to create doubt. To shatter their confidence. For now, I was content to match their speed.
Green Eyes trailed a bit behind, watching my back. Evan worked to watch both of us, circling me a few times, when the Duchamps had a better sense of where I was, then looping back to check on Green Eyes when there was enough raw architecture between me and the practitioners to offer an illusion of security.
With each time we came into each other’s view, I noted my opposition. The pyromancer was in the group. I’d noted him earlier, and it was a question of keeping tabs on where he was.
Mason Hall-McCullough the Benevolent was there as well. Spry for an old man, he had white hair that was neatly cut, combed straight back from his face, and he had a trimmed white beard with a pencil mustache. Prayer beads were hung from his neck, folded over so that they formed two loops. Each bead was the size of a fist, solid wood, alternating from red to brown, and was engraved with a symbol. A smiley face, a sun, a four-leaf clover. He walked with his hands in his pockets, but his jacket was open, and he didn’t seem to be bowing to the cold of the wind, even without a hat on his head.
I reminded myself that he could be a trap. A name given because he was one of the hardest to touch.
The two brothers were somewhere in the crowd too, but being dabblers, they lacked any discerning marks, and were hard to pick out. I looked for men who could be brothers, but didn’t see anything. I didn’t want to ask Evan, because I needed him focused, and I wasn’t sure how easily his gaze could be identified with attention to connections.
The spellbinder, as far as I could tell, wasn’t here.
As next targets went, I kind of liked the Pyromancer. Career criminal, he’d gotten his wife hooked on drugs. ‘Ruined her’.
I was already pretty goddamn jealous of anyone who had someone. Knowing that he’d had it and he’d ruined it? That he’d perverted it and made it something ugly? I wasn’t a fan.
I tried not to pay too much attention to him, lest I give something away.
Sandra, I noted, was watching me. The Troll loped beside her. Big, with braided white hair clasped in place with heavy workings of iron, and an animal gleam in its eyes. Sandra moved through the group, meeting the High Priest of Dionysus near the divide between man and woman. They spoke, but were much too far away to be heard.
The wind picked up a bit. It barely bothered me now. The only flesh I had was at my face. I finished crossing the street. The back of a laundromat blocked my view of the group.
Only a half block until the next intersection, if it deserved being called that. Almost an alleyway.
Evan was lingering. Communicating something to Green Eyes.
I quickened my step as I reached the gap, to minimize how much time they had to draw a bead on me, in a mystical sense, and saw straight down the alley.
Only a moment, only a sliver of the group visible.
Something had changed.
Eyes forward, now, I searched my recollection. What I’d seen of the group before, what I’d seen after. Not quite a ‘spot the differences’ puzzle, given how the group had shuffled and some people had walked further ahead or back, but… there was something.
Troll, the thought crossed my mind, an instant before Evan whistled.
I was already moving. Picking up speed.
It came down from above, and the general sensation of its arrival was akin to a car being thrown from the rooftop. A crash, the very ground shuddering, and sudden, violent movement, as it rebounded from the landing.
Unlike the allegorical car, Sandra’s troll didn’t come to a stop after hitting ground. Without a heartbeat’s pause, it came for me.
Faster than it looked. Enough that I wasn’t absolutely positive that I was going to be able to put distance between us.
There was an eerie kind of grace to her, in the same general sense that I imagined a train going off rails was probably pretty amazing to look at. Everything about the the movements made sense in the general ‘A leads to B’ sense, and everything about her advance made me pretty damn certain I didn’t want to be near her.
She pulled a water meter off the back of the building in passing without slowing down even a fraction, tearing it free of thick metal pipes and fasteners. It was one of the bigger meters, nearly as large as a microwave, but with the general aesthetic of a parking meter.
I glanced back again, just in time to see her throw it. Again, without slowing. She simply used the forward movement to drop into a four-limbed forward lope, moving like a gorilla might.
I moved a bit to the right, still heading full-bore away from her. The water meter struck the ground to my left, hard enough that it bit through ice and snow and hit pavement with force enough to spark.
“Dodge!” I heard Evan’s voice, distant behind me.
I did. Heading left, to where there was more snow and less ice on the ground.
A trash can hit the ground, and skidded on the ice, contents spraying out in front and around me.
Hardware stuff. Boxes of paper and plastic containing individual parts, gears, and splinters of wood from crates or pallets.
As nice as it would have been to arm myself or collect something, I couldn’t afford to slow down. I couldn’t afford to lose my focus, as I risked slipping on one bit of trash or another.
Commercial stuff. Commercial buildings.
Benefit of being downtown.
I was approaching the next intersection. I didn’t get tired, but I doubted the troll did either. My focus was on watching where I stepped, trying to make my movements more efficient as I ran.
I eyed the building at the corner. A new age store of some kind. Women’s clothing, visible in the display. Cheap looking, from the security fence on the exterior windows and door to the sign posted in the window.
Evan passed me, then circled.
I extended a hand, then a finger, and beckoned.
He set down on my finger.
In the moment I wasn’t looking, just as I reached the sidewalk before the intersection in question, a satyr came at me. A headbutt.
Evan jerked. I sidestepped. I narrowly missed being hit. He grabbed at me, but fingernails failed to catch on my sweatshirt.
I switched course, heading for the Duchamps.
I saw them stop. I saw implements come out.
Enchantment was all about changing the relationship between A and B. Influencing it with spirit or general effect.
If I misled as to what ‘B’ was, the basic plan fell apart.
I switched course a second time, heading for the display window.
“Unlock!” I shouted, flinging Evan. “Then back!”
He found his bearings, and flew past the loose chickenwire fence that had been lowered around the shop window. I saw the lock pop, the security fence automatically raise.
I’d meant the door, but that worked too.
Enchantment started to settle around me. One of the teams of three. Same practice they’d employed earlier. If the relationship was between me and the ground, well, there wasn’t a lot I could do to get away from ground.