Elite: A Hunter novel (42 page)

And then, they moved. Not much. They just arched their necks and brought their heads down a little farther. Just enough so that it was completely obvious that they were lazily deciding how they would attack us.

“So how should we do this, do you think?” Ace continued, an evil glee in his voice. “Should I let them pick off your Hounds first? Should I give your Hounds the option to desert
you?
Should—”

There was no warning. One moment, those monstrous heads were looming over us. Then in the time it took me to blink—

—in no more than a second, maybe less, everything changed.

Because something invisible
slammed
their heads together, just like those pre-Diseray ’toons, where one anthropomorphic animal would put a paw on either side of the heads of two others and slam their heads together to teach them a lesson.

They hung above me for a moment like that, mirror-image Drakken heads slightly deformed, flattened, against a space between their heads, invisible except for the fact that their heads were pancaked against it; it was poised right between them.

A moment later, whatever had just hit them let them go again, leaving the two Drakken reeling and swaying like a pair of drunks. If Drakken could be concussed, these surely were.

And before I could take another breath, I got a glimpse of something distorting the rain in the air between their heads, something like an invisible disk set edgewise toward me, made visible only by the way the rain didn’t fall through it. Then the Drakken’s heads
slammed
together again, impacting that disk.

This
time I snapped out of my paralysis and reacted. I gathered all the magic energy I could and fired off two of the most powerful levin bolts I’d ever produced at their distorted faces.

That force—no,
forces—
let them go again, as my levin bolts connected and blasted holes right in the centers of the Drakken’s foreheads.

And over the comm I heard Steel saying
“You’re welcome,”
while Hammer and Knight whooped in the background.

I started thinking instead of reacting, and I realized I had just seen Hammer
and
Steel
and
White Knight pull off the biggest Shield Slam that anyone had ever seen, with Steel’s rock-hard Wall between the two Drakken making sure Hammer and Mark got the maximum benefit off their head slam.

“Thank you,” I whispered over the comm. Whispered, because I could scarcely believe what had just happened. It was like one of Knight’s Christer miracles.

The Drakken, now quite, quite dead, toppled over like a pair of trees. They fell over sideways rather than squashing the Hounds and me; I think that was with a little help from Steel and Mark. When they hit the ground, it shook everything, and they sent up a huge splash of mud and water over us. And once again, we were inundated, and I had to wait for the rain to clear the mud off our Shields before I could see.

When the mud sluiced away, there were Ace and his Mage, staring at us, paralyzed with shock, as if they could not believe what had just happened to turn the tables on them.

But not for long. Now it was
my
turn.

The deaths of those behemoths had sent a huge surge of manna to our Hounds, and they filled me with so much magic I felt as if every hair on my body was standing on end. In quick succession, I sent off a levin bolt with a rider, a spell to turn Ace’s Shield brittle, and followed it up with a series of flash-bangs designed to leave him blinded and deafened. I followed
that
with Shield-pushes, concussive shoves like weaker versions of what Hammer could do, to test whether Ace had anchored his Shield to the ground or not, and give him a rude awakening in either case.

The answer was, he had not. He was “floating” his Shield, and that was a major mistake on his part. It meant that I could hit him with his own Shield, shove it right into him, hard, and I did just that.

The first push knocked him and the Mage over, slamming him with his own Shield as I shoved it back about ten feet. The second push sent them both tumbling into the mud as they lost control over what was keeping them out of the muck. And the third just added insult to injury, bouncing them around within the skittering Shield-sphere, like a couple of pebbles rattling around inside a gourd.

Then I landed a concussive blow on the top of the Shield, and it shattered, leaving them utterly unprotected—and clean, since the drenching downpour washed them both free of all the mud they’d collected on their trip.

That was when the Folk Mage decided he’d had enough. But instead of opening a Portal and pulling Ace with him as he’d done the last time, he
bamphed
out, leaving Ace standing there, with no Shield, no “battery,” and no backup.

Ace had been abandoned by his allies.

Guess Ace wore out his welcome. Or they decided he wasn’t worth the trouble of defending anymore.

With a look of utter panic on his face, he turned away from me and tried to run. But as I already knew, running in calf-deep mud in an epic downpour is an exercise in futility. I swung up on Dusana, and we pursued—but not before Myrrdhin and Gwalchmai, who didn’t need to wait for me to get on Dusana’s back,
bamphed
ahead of us and leapt on Ace, knocking him down into the mire until the rest of us could catch up.

Since Ace was already cut off, I took a little time getting Hold and Strike up out of the mud and onto Dusana with me. Meanwhile, Myrrdhin and Gwalchmai were between Ace and his escape path, teeth bared and growling. At least, I thought they were growling. I could see them vibrating, though I couldn’t hear anything over the pouring rain and the distant sounds of battle.

Finally we
bamphed
to where he was sprawled, and I looked down on him, on his hands and knees in mud so deep it was all he could do to keep his head above it, and I will not lie, I considered murdering him right then and there. It would have been easy: knock him unconscious, let him fall facedown in the mud and rain, and let him drown in it. Not one person would have blamed me. A horrible death but no less horrible than the one he had surely left Karly to, or the one he’d contemplated for me, as a chew toy between two Drakken.

It wasn’t pity that kept me from doing it because I hadn’t one drop of pity to spare for him. To my mind, craziness was not an excuse for what he’d done. The fact was, he’d started down that path before he went crazy, and “crazy” just came along for the ride. It was partly the feeling that although he deserved a wretched death, I shouldn’t be the one that delivered it. I wasn’t judge, jury, and executioner; I was only
one
of the long line of people he’d wronged. And it was mostly the fact that I wanted answers, and I wasn’t going to get them out of a dead man.

So I had Dusana clamp his teeth into the back of Ace’s jacket and haul him erect by his fancy collar. Then I had Shinje go all tentacles and wrap him up like a mummy, pinning his arms and hands to his sides and covering his mouth so there was no way he would be able to manage so much as a hint of a spell. Then, finally, I was able to consult my Perscom as to where on the field everyone was, and slog back through the mud to meet up with my team, the wrapped-up Ace in tow.

Not exactly a triumphal procession, but I’ve never exactly gone in for triumphal processions anyway. They were just another kind of fuss, and I’d had more than enough fuss in my life so far to make me wish for invisibility.

I’m not sure I have ever seen anything more welcome than that dome of Shield, rain sluicing off it, with everyone on my team packed together underneath it. They dropped it long enough for us to join them, then brought it up again, but at this point, it was less for protection against Othersiders and more to keep off the rain and keep
in
the blessed warmth that Hudson was generating. Oh, warmth at last! It was like Heaven. I was finally able to stop clenching my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering. Hold and Strike slid off Dusana’s back.

I wonder what he’s pulling the heat from. Somewhere out there, I bet there’s an ice rink forming.

The magic Hudson had invoked wasn’t doing anything about the mud, but once the Shield was up, our clothes started steaming and I, at least, stopped shivering. Not “dry” but at least a little drier.

“Handing team back to you, Elite Joyeaux,” Hammer said formally as everyone eyed Ace, who looked like nothing so much as a skein of muddy, multicolored rope with four sets of eyes and a pair of mud-caked legs. “Welcome back.”

“Very, very, very glad to be back,” I said fervently. “Excellent save, guys.”

White Knight—who was nothing like “white” at this point, since he was as mud covered as the rest of us—must obviously have joined my team at some point after I handed them off to Hammer. I raised an eyebrow at him. He grinned and shrugged.

He seemed to be smiling more and more these days. The great stone monolith was cracking, and so far as I was concerned, that was a good thing.

“And what brought you to our part of the battleground?” I asked.

He shrugged. “My Hounds got smacked out of the sky, then got driven into the mud, and the team had to go on without me. By the time I got them free of it, they were drenched, and their wings were too heavy to fly in this deluge, so once we got moving again, we hooked up with what was nearest. Happened to be your team.”

I looked at his Hounds; poor things, they looked utterly miserable, their legs sunk in the muck, their beautiful white coats caked with mud, their graceful white wings clamped tight to their backs, sodden and useless. I slid down off Dusana’s back, and with Mark’s help and Dusana’s agreement, we boosted them up onto Dusana’s back in my place. Dusana obligingly sprouted some new spikes to hold them in place. They looked much happier.

“My good luck that you did,” I said. “Seeing those Drakken heads splat together might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever had the pleasure of beholding.”

Knight, Hammer, and Steel grinned at each other and engaged in a three-way fist bump. I could foresee a very fruitful partnership there. I could also foresee me playing bait a lot….Oh, well. Steel was pretty mired too, and I didn’t envy him getting those casts cleaned out, even if they were hardened-resin bandage. Maybe when he got back, they’d just stand him in a shower until he stopped shedding mud.

“What are our current orders?” I continued, looking over at Hammer and not wanting to joggle the armorer’s elbow if I could get the information I needed without interrupting him.

“Protect the pylon,” Hammer said. “PsiCorps turned up, about a quarter of the strength of the last time, but they’re turning some of the bigger monsters, and that’s helping. We’re winning. Kent doesn’t know what’s happened since Ace made his appearance here—”

“So I’d better report in.” I toggled the general frequency. “Elite Joyeaux, status report.”

While I waited for an answer, occasional bands of demoralized Othersiders blundered into our sphere of influence. By the time they realized that they were in danger, we’d cut them down, adding to the overflowing manna and magic energy. There was
so
much, in fact, that we did something we’d never done in the middle of a battle; we started using it to heal up any injuries we or the Hounds had taken. Somewhat to my surprise, it was dour Tobor and saturnine Denali who had actual healing magic spells in their arsenals. Hunters with healing magic are pretty rare; we’re better at taking things apart than putting them together again.

“Status report, Elite Joyeaux.”

“Hammer has passed back team command. Encountered and recaptured renegade Ace. Folk Mage backing him deserted him. Currently experiencing only light opposition.” I figured that summed things up pretty well.

“Hold your position. Defend the pylon. Sending a pickup team for your prisoner. They’ll be coming from the other side of the Barrier; until further notice, anything that approaches you from this side is not a friendly, so attack at will and with lethal force.”

Well, that was clear enough. And it suggested that some of the enemy might have tried using illusions to pass as Hunters or army. Hags, probably, they were the best at illusions. So we held position and took out opposition until no more opposition was turning up.

I was frankly expecting an army squad to come fetch Ace, but what eventually came sloshing toward us out of the storm from the direction of the pylon was a special Apex PD unit. There were a half a dozen APD in body armor, armed to the teeth, and a medic. They even had two rocket-propelled grenade launchers with them, and I wished strongly I’d had
those
around when I’d first seen Ace’s Drakken. We dropped the Shield to allow them to join us.

They appeared very grateful for the heat, once we got it back up. “We’re here for the prisoner,” said the one with sergeant’s markings. “Special orders from Prefect Charmand.”

Oho. So Uncle is not going to let Ace slip out of his hands a second time.
No more chances for the army to lose him. No more chances for the army to stall off an interrogation. That cheered me up immensely. “Here he is,” I said as someone shoved the Shinje-wrapped renegade toward the newcomers. “Are you going to need to take my Hound with you?”