Shadow's Bane (Dorina Basarab 4)

“The profits you were rolling in tonight. The profits you’re probably going to make every time those two take on some slavers. You’ve invented a whole new way to broadcast the fights, and only you have it. None of those other guys had your foresight—”

“Damn it, Dory!”

“—and word is spreading. I could barely get in the door tonight; by tomorrow . . . well, if there was going to be a tomorrow. But I guess not.”

The eye flaps of squintiness made a reappearance. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing. I know exactly what you’re doing.”

“I just need you to drive a speedboat. Can you do that?”

“Sure, but—”

“There’s one outside.” I nodded at the lolling door, beyond which, tied up at the pier where the slavers had left it, was the boat they’d been planning to use for a getaway. Only Eagle Boy had kicked them off before they could, leaving it conveniently situated for us. Well, conveniently assuming we could reach it.

“So I’m supposed to do what?” Fin whispered. “Load ’em onto the boat while surrounded by war mages? Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

He just looked at me.

“I’ll provide a distraction.”

“Oh great. Oh yeah. That’s what I need. A dhampir-led distraction!”

“Would you stop bitching?” I said softly. “Just get them on the boat; I’ll take care of the rest.”

“Sure. Fine. Whatever. This is why I never go anywhere with you,” Fin informed me. But he slunk off in the direction of the selkies, while I looked around for a distraction.

Huh.

This could be a bit of a challenge.

On the one hand, I was without my usual bag of tricks, which I’d been forced to leave in the car due to the sad lack of trust between us magical allies, and I was currently surrounded by war mages.

On the other hand, distractions were kind of my thing. When you’re typically the smallest badass in the room, you have to use whatever you can to keep the bigger ones from all piling on you at once. Because they do that. All the time.

The movie bad guys who suddenly can’t shoot straight when the hero is on-screen, or who politely wait their turn to have a go at you, just don’t exist in reality. I’ve never been in a well-mannered fight, or fought a gentleman warrior nobly giving me a chance to beat him. Well, not unless you counted Louis-Cesare—

I stopped that train of thought abruptly, because it hurt. A stupid amount. It was also useless, because there weren’t any Louis-Cesares here.

There weren’t any guys like him anywhere.

Stop it.

So.

Options.

Under the circumstances, there were really only two: the tower of treats in the form of all those crates, and Huey and Louie by the door.

The crates would be more fun, and thanks to the troll’s rampage, there were plenty of things to send crashing into them. But there were a lot of them, and I didn’t think the guys could possibly have gone through them all. They were probably going to cart them off and sort through them later, meaning they didn’t know everything that was in there.

And neither did I.

And sending up a two-story mountain of magical weapons, however weak-ass they might be, wasn’t a plan.

So, the boys it was. And since they were already looking at me malevolently, or as malevolently as they could manage past the now-red-and-swollen stripes across their faces, this should be easy. And it probably would have been—except that another distraction flew through the door before I had the time to start.

Actually, make that several. Okay, more than several, I thought, watching a whole stream of flying cameras charge in all at once. It looked like the reporters had decided that the only way to get a good look around was to come in force, so they had.