my heart dropped when I saw four pavement-gray spirals begin to twist down from the overcast.
“Guys, look at that!” I said.
“Tornadoes?” said the Warlock. “What the hell?”
“No, I don’t think they are,” Cooper replied.
The tips of the descending spirals crackled with lightning, opened like the burning eyes of vast gods to reveal a blinding brightness behind them, and from them descended huge creatures that looked like crystalline orreries circling pulsing magma hearts.
“Shit, it’s the Virtii!” I hollered. “Y’all get in the car and get the hell out of here!”
I slung both my arms through the backpack straps, hiked up my skirts, and pelted down a corn row, running as hard and fast as I could away from the Warlock’s Land Rover.
“What are you doing?” Pal demanded inside my head.
Leading them away from you guys. I hope, I thought back, shielding my face from the lashing corn leaves.
“But you can kill these creatures!”
I killed one. With great difficulty, if you remember. I take on four, I’m dead.
“But we have Cooper and the Warlock to help us this time.”
They’d be good if there were one or two Virtii. If we fight four, there’ll be nothing left of us but scorched teeth and bad credit. Get everyone in the car and get them out of here.
“What are you planning to do out here on your own?” Pal sounded genuinely angry.
Planning to try to stay alive, first. I think I see some trees I can hide in for a little while. I’m betting there’s a back door to the Faery Tavern floating around out here someplace.
“They’ll enslave you if you go back there uninvited!”
Still better than being dead, right? If that happens, tell Cooper he better come back here and break me out.
I ran out of the cornfield onto a dirt road and promptly tripped over a muddy rut. As I tumbled forward onto my hands and knees, I felt the zipper and fabric at the back of my ball gown pop and rip. Swearing, I got to my feet, held my smirched skirts up with my flesh hand, and started running toward the trees again, my bodice slipping ominously downward.
A Virtus loomed above me like a manta ray preparing to suck up a shrimp.
“Surrender or be expunged,” it thundered.
Crap, I’m gonna die, I thought, still running. I’m gonna die in a prom dress in a stupid cornfield out in the middle of BFE.
I heard calliope music behind me, and suddenly Pal scooped me up underneath my arms and whisked me off toward open sky.
“Dammit, Coop, move, you’re on my nuts,” the Warlock complained from somewhere on Pal’s back.
“Dude, there’s no place for me to move to—” Cooper began.
“Christ, guys, why didn’t you get out of here like I told you?” I hollered back at them.
“I wasn’t just going to leave you out here!” Cooper sounded indignant.
“Nor was I,” added my familiar.
“Warlock, what’s your excuse?” I yelled.
“I didn’t want to get stuck changing diapers!”
Pal’s clawed fingers were digging painfully into my armpits, and my backpack was crammed up against the back of my head and neck; I couldn’t turn to see if our pursuers were gaining on us or if we were making good our escape.
“Where are the Virtii?” I yelled against the wind.
“The closest one’s, oh, a couple hundred yards back,” the Warlock replied hoarsely, a faint tremor in his voice. “It’s getting kinda glowy … that’s bad, right?”
“Very bad, yes!” I stripped the glove off my flame hand just in case we were forced to fight. “Pal, if you can get us away from them any quicker, do it!”
“I know a teleportation incantation—” my familiar replied.
“Yes! Teleportation would be double-plus good!”
“—but I can’t sing more than one spell. I’d have to land us first. They’d be on us before I could finish.”
I swore. “Fly faster!”
“I’m trying!”
We rose higher in the air, and a sudden choppy crosswind caught my skirts. I felt the zipper give entirely and my bodice slid down to my hips. The way Pal was carrying me, I couldn’t reach down to grab it. I tried for a charm but my adrenaline-soaked brain wouldn’t come up with anything useful.
“My dress! Guys, help!” I spread my legs to try to keep it from flying away; the heavy fabric flapped between my knees like a sail, jerking my legs back against Pal’s thorax. The wind whistled bracingly through my thin underwear.
“It’s too much drag!” Pal exclaimed. “It’s slowing us down; let it go!”