turned toward him, her face knotted in an angry snarl-a look so un-Our Lois that McGovern might have fainted in shock at the sight of it. Her hands clawed at the sides of his face, reaching for his ears.
One of her fingers dug into, his cheek. Atropos yapped like a dog whose paw has been stepped on, then grabbed her by the waist again and whirled her back around.
He turned the scalpel's blade inward, getting ready to slash.
Ralph shook the forefinger of his right hand at it in a scolding gesture. A flash of light so pallid it was almost invisible shot out from the nail and struck the scalpel's tip, momentarily knocking it away from Lois's balloon-string. And that was all there was; Ralph sensed that his personal armory was now empty.
Atropos bared his teeth at him from over Lois's shoulder as she bucked and twisted in his arms. She was not trying to get away, either; she was trying to turn and attack him. Her feet flailed out as she threw all her weight against him again, trying to squash him against the wall behind them, and without having the slightest idea of what he meant to do, Ralph lunged forward and dropped to his knees with his hands out. He looked like a manic suitor making strenuous marriage proposal, and one of Lois's thrashing feet came close to kicking him in the throat. He snatched at the hem of her slip and it came free in a slithery little rush of pink nylon. Meanwhile, Lois was still yelling.
["Miserable little thief! Here's something for you! How do -you like it?"] Atropos uttered a squeal of pain, and when Ralph looked up, he saw that Lois had buried her teeth in his right wrist. His left hand, the one holding the scalpel, flailed blindly at her balloon-string, missing it by less than an inch. Ralph sprang to his feet and, still with no clear idea of what he was doing, pulled Lois's pink half-slip over Atropos's slashing hand... and his head.
["Get away from him, Lois! Run!"] She spat out the small white hand and stumbled toward the barrelhead table in the center of the room, wiping Atropos's blood from her mouth with atavistic loathing.
... but the dominant expression on her face was still one of anger.
Atropos himself, for the moment just a bawling, writhing shape under the pink half-slip, groped after her with his free hand, Ralph slapped it away and shoved him back against the side of the archway.
["No you don't, my friend-not at all."] [Let me go! Let me go, you bastard You can't do this!] And the weirdest thing of all is that he really believes that, Ralph thought. He's had it his own way for so long that He's completely forgotten what Short-Timers can do.
I can fix that, I think. Ralph remembered how Atropos had slashed Rosalie's balloon string after the dog had licked his hand, and his hatred for this strutting, leering, complacently insane creature suddenly exploded in his head like a rotten-green roadflare. He grabbed one side of Lois's slip and twisted his fist twice around it in a savage winding up gesture, pung it so tight that Atropos's features stood out in a pink nylon deathmask.
Then, just as the blade of the scalpel popped through the fabric and began to cut it open, Ralph whirled Atropos around, using the slip as a man might use a sling to whirl a stone, and sent him flying across the archway. The damage might have been less if Atropos had fallen, but he didn't; his feet knocked against each other but never quite crossed. He hit the rock facing of the archway with a thud, voiced a muffled scream of pain, and dropped to his knees. Spots of blood bloomed on Lois's half-slip like flower-petals. The scalpel had disappeared back through the slit it had made in the cloth, Ralph sprang after Atropos just as it reappeared and lengthened the original cut, freeing the bald creature's staring, bewildered face. His nose was bleeding; so were his forehead and right temple. Before he could begin to get up, Ralph grabbed the slippery pink bulges that were his shoulders.
[Stop it I'm warning you, Shorts! I'll make you sorry you were ever bo-] Ralph ignored this pointless bluster and slammed Atropos forward, hard. The midget's arms were still tangled in the slip and he caught the floor with nothing but face. His shriek was part amazement, mostly pain.