It was more peaceful where we were. I didn’t breathe, but Green Eyes could. I couldn’t feel much, not heat or cold, exactly, but I could feel the pressure of her chin, and the movement of her body with each breath she took. I could feel her heartbeat, distant. It was almost reassuring, like having a heartbeat and lungs of my own again.
Quiet, calm, laced with a kind of tension. As if we were snipers, waiting for hours for a possible shot.
Time was running out. Was my guess right? Would this work? Or should we send the satyrs out to find a pay phone?
Were they capable of figuring out who the last target was? All they had to do was connect the last dot. Through magic, enchantment, any number of divination tricks, summoning spirits.
Or they could ask. They just had to figure out, to hear where I’d gotten the names from, and then they could grill the various kids in the chatroom. I had little doubt they could get the information they needed out of people.
Would they walk into the metaphorical crosshairs?
It didn’t do to dwell. I glanced at Green Eyes, and noted the bite mark on her collarbone.
“How’re you holding up?”
“Wish I got to eat more of the people we stopped,” she murmured. “Wish you got more raw bones and dead wood in you. But all in all, this is good.”
She snuggled a little closer.
Having been where I’d been, experiencing what I’d experienced, knowing it was only partial, I had no grounding in what to do. I’d had girlfriends. I’d had more than enough tender moments, back at Carl’s compound, but now, like this, being what I was? The only reason I wasn’t panicking at the idea of physical contact was because I’d left so much of myself behind. I’d disconnected from Blake the human.
But maybe this was a possibility because we were monsters. Green Eyes was probably never going to be a tool to manipulate me. I wasn’t about to be something she could look at as food. Or at least, not quite, in both cases.
I settled one hand on her back, and pulled her closer, more to reaffirm that it was good.
She made the smallest noise in the low part of her throat.
Evan piped up, “While we’re talking about food, you wanna know what I never did when I was alive? I never had sushi.”
“I was getting to be fond of you, nugget,” she said, “Don’t go and change my mind.”
“Well, I liked you pretty much right away, so there. Maybe I’m just a better person,” Evan said, his head poking up beneath my sweatshirt, a little lump at my back.
“If you are, then learn to be quiet when a girl’s trying to enjoy a moment with the boy she likes,” she said, very gently pushing the lump under the fabric down.
“Oh. Oh, dang. Shoot,” he said. “Didn’t realize. Now I feel bad.”
He sounded genuinely upset.
“Don’t,” Green Eyes said. She stroked one section of the sweatshirt. I could only assume Evan’s head was under it. “It’s good.”
“Speaking of good,” one satyr spoke up, “You were right, bogeyman.”
I could see people moving out.
I watched, noting the number as they continued moving around the side of the house.
The number was the most important thing, here. It set the tone of the coming confrontation. How hard a fight would it be, and who would be fighting?
There were two big possibilities here. Either Sandra would send a select group, or she’d send everyone that was willing to go, with only stragglers remaining behind, I assumed.
“Five,” I murmured. “Ten. Twelve…“
“Fifteen,” Green Eyes updated the count, as three more left the house.
“No lucky number.” This from the satyr that had been cozying up to Green Eyes.
“No,” I agreed.
The group added up to twenty.
Probably closer to being everyone that was willing to go.
Good.
That was ideal.
We moved quickly, down from the roof, then along the sides of the street. As planned, it was Green Eyes and I in the lead, the satyrs trailing behind.
Sandra was there. More confirmation that it wasn’t the elite contingent. Sandra wouldn’t have left the people with doubts alone to commiserate. It wasn’t that she was manipulative, which she was, at least a little, but more that, well, she had a group to look after, and I would have stayed behind, if the positions were reversed.
I caught a glimpse of Needledick the Goblin King. His familiar was with him, still humanoid. He’d collected the axe I’d driven into the one Ritchie Brother’s groin, and held the serrated sword again.
I’d left the axe behind on purpose. A spur of the moment thing. It struck me as the kind of thing the goblin would come after me for.
I really didn’t want to pick another fight with a goblin of its caliber.
The diagram drawer was there too.
If we accidentally gave ourselves away, we’d have him to deal with again. I didn’t want that either.
If seven was our lucky number, and if all went according to plan, then succeeding here would be key.
If I’d had a heart to stop, it would have stopped as I saw the diagram drawer look back, his fear spiking and staying at the new height.
Recognition?
He said something to the practitioner beside him.
The fear rose a bit more.
We reached the main street.
More open area, less cover to help us. More white behind us, making us silhouettes against a pale background. Without speaking a word, we collectively fell back a bit more. Even the Satyrs, I imagined, had hunted enough to have instincts on this front.
I was only beginning to consider possibilities for slowing them down and getting ahead of them, now that they seemed to be moving with more direction, when Sandra acted.
A gesture, a movement, her chalice raised high.
The group blurred, as if I were wearing strange bottle glasses, and then the colors shifted, growing more stark. When they moved, they moved fast, out of sync with reality and the space around them. One footstep covering the length of two parking spaces, the legs not stretching, the individual not moving in any odd way, just… moving farther. The heightened colors left a trail behind them, odd, veering too far in odd directions.
In moments, they were gone. Down two blocks, then around a corner. The trail of colors dissipated in their wake.
Leaving their pursuers, us, in the dust.
“Did they see us?” Evan asked.
“No,” Green Eyes said. “There would have been more fear, or less fear. They were the same. They were just-”
“Covering more ground,” I finished. “Did they leave smells?”
“Yes,” the first satyr said.
“You can track them?” I asked.
“Yes,” the satyr said.
We switched roles. The satyrs led.
This was complicated. I wished I knew Sandra better, to guess how she thought, how she strategized, and what she might do in this sort of situation, everything on the line.
It, in the end, took five or ten minutes to catch up. Others watched us, and with each one, I had to wonder if they’d left watchdogs, guardians, reporting back to them.