I saw its head turning, and simply let myself fall. Arms spread, face down, landing in the snow, three-quarters of the way across someone’s backyard.
“Wait,” Green Eyes whispered, her voice breaking due to the smallness of her words, the individual components so faint they used parts that weren’t practiced much.
“Go,” she said, and she was off me. Slithering away. Or swimming.
I went, no longer burdened by my passenger.
To the shed, then the fence beyond.
I tensed as I saw her in the snow, freezing almost right under the thing’s nose.
It didn’t notice.
She was camouflaged.
She’d maybe even camouflaged me, being on my back, helping to offer just a bit more white to join the reams of snow.
I waited, now close enough I had to be careful of the humans seeing, making sure I wasn’t letting the Ritchie brothers or the Benevolent slip my noose.
I hopped the fence, landing in a crouch in snow, then moved to the side of the porch. Snow had piled up and between rails in the railing, making it a simple wall.
Green Eyes approached me. She extended a hand.
I started to reach for her hand, but she shook her head.
She pointed. At Evan.
I didn’t dare speak, with the guardian homunculus so close. I could only pass Evan to her, and in absence of words, will a message to her.
Don’t eat Evan.
She moved with glacial slowness, scaling the side of the house.
If I looked, I could see some of the homunculus. Its flesh looked like it was ninety percent callus, the worst sort of callus that appeared on the feet, as dirt and sweat colored it yellow and gray. Being homeless, working for a farmer, living at Carl’s commune, I’d had chances to build up some pretty gruesome calluses.
But it went a step beyond. Large patches of its flesh had almost ossified, or calcified, or something. It, in simple terms, looked as tough as dammit.
Makes me think of those biopunk movies, I thought.
Green Eyes reached the roof. Helped in being silent and unnoticed by Evan’s presence.
As she moved through the snow, though, a lump of snow fell from the roof. A miniature avalanche, much like the one I’d created earlier.
Green Eyes pounced on the gargoyle, setting her teeth into its neck. Her tail scraped and stripped flesh from one wing, rendering it to tatters, and one layer of flesh from the thing’s side. She made a screeching noise, and the thing howled at her, in return.
It was my cue.
I was nearly silent as I went around the railing. The stairs had been shoveled clear, as had the porch, but there was enough snow to dampen my foosteps, and the noise of the fight was a distraction from the sound of broken branches.
My eyes were on the practitioners. Their focus was distracted. I could flank the group, hit them hard, and there were a half-dozen places I could escape to if I needed to. Over the edge of the porch and into the neighbor’s yard, onto the roof, onto the neighbor’s roof, back to the backyard I’d just approached from…
The porch had two sets of stairs. One leading into the backyard proper, the other had a gate at the bottom that opened to the driveway. The gate was open, and the practitioners were there.
The Ritchie brothers, there. Mason Hall-McCullough the Benevolent was there, too, but he was halfway down the driveway, at the side of the house.
All unaware.
Until the Satyrs behind me screamed. Battlecry screams.
Eyes fell on them. Standing behind me, still in the backyard.
My own eyes found them. I saw the glares. The anger.
It was Jeremy’s bad karma, quite possibly, that was bleeding over to me. The Satyrs were upset. They had loyalties to Sandra, and I’d killed one of their kin.
They were following the letter of the law, but not the spirit.
They’d revealed me. Ruined the element of surprise.
I broke into a run, leaped into their midst.
Practitioners needed opportunity to practice. To say words, to draw symbols, or use the right item in the right way on the right thing.
I faced a cluster, a pack.
“Deus-” one started.
I smacked him in the mouth with my forearm, goblin-chain-and-barbed-wire included.
I saw another drawing sheets of paper from his pocket.
I simply struck them out of his hand with the butt-end of the Hyena.
Throwing my weight against the group, I shoved the closest practitioners back into the ones behind. They were a group, on or at the base of the stairs, without much room with the house, fence, and railing all in close proximity.
“I was asked to kill specific individuals,” I said. It was easy to speak while I fought, as I didn’t really need to breathe. My words came out strange, wind whistling past trees, albeit with force behind them. “By Duchamps. For Duchamps.”
Green Eyes and the gargoyle fell from the roof, in a heap. She was covered in blood, and I had no idea how much of it was hers.
“Eric Ritchie, Stan Ritchie,” I said. “You’re next on the list.”
I saw heads turn.
Stan and Eric. A green jacket and a black jacket. One had a thick mustache, but his beard was scarcely more than stubble, a step behind in growing in. The other had thick glasses, a book in one hand.
“I’m on the list too!” Mason Hall-McCullough called out, almost cheerful.
“Wait your turn!” Evan shouted.
Some had fallen, being pushed back, or finding that snow, ice, and other’s people feet made for lousy footing. I walked on them, pushing my way forward, keeping the rest on the defensive, retreating in a space that was almost painfully confined.
I was almost surrounding myself, leaving barely injured practitioners behind me, and there was nothing saying the Duchamps in the house couldn’t come out.
Except the Satyrs.
Even though they’d given me away, they were staying true to their role. One had headbutted a practitioner, knocking him down, and the other was standing by the door.
In the time I’d looked, one practitioner had found opportunity to grab a fine chain from their coat.
I stabbed to one side with the Hyena. The chain was struck against the wall, falling loose from the practitioner’s grasp, the blade piercing brick, millimeters from cutting the webbing between the practitioner’s fingers.
In this, like this, Karma was on my side.
Declare my opponents, stick to the plan. Be what I was supposed to be.
Using one hand to help, I grabbed the side of the gate, and I hauled myself up, perching on one corner post, Hyena held out as a warning, my eyes quickly moving between the various practitioners, searching for any more telltale signs, for lips that might be moving in an incantation.
Higher ground, albeit precarious. I held the Hyena out, broken blade visible. Light from a nearby streetlamp shone through the tangle of wood and bone that was my arm.
A bit of theatrics.
“I’m only interested in them. Stay, and I’ll deal with them and leave,” I spoke.
For a long moment, I thought they were going to listen.
Then one practitioner in motley garb flung an arm out.
A toad. A large toad.
Perceptions seemed to warp, the thing moving too fast toward me.
Thing was, it wasn’t foreshortening at play. Not a thing growing bigger because it was closer.
It was getting bigger because it was getting bigger.
Evan took flight, and gave me a push as he did it.