Reap the Wind (Cassandra Palmer 7)

Like a guy stuffed under a seat, for instance.

Another volley came streaming overhead, bright as fireworks in the gloom, the little troll screamed, and we fell. And this time, I didn’t think we were going to catch at all. We plummeted six, maybe seven stories, and then caught lopsided and slung around and almost turned over.

Because our little floatation device was trying to make a run for it.

It was kind of hard to blame him. He’d been ripped down from the roof, beaten and battered and almost drowned, and then forced to power our clumsy escape attempt. And now his friend had just started wailing on him.

“Stop hitting him!” Pritkin was yelling, trying to prize one little guard off the other. “Stop hitting—”

“If I stop hitting him, he leave,” the other guard panted. “He say, he not need us. He say, we can all go to earth for all he cares!”

“That’s what we’re trying to do!”

Pritkin grabbed the bigger guy’s arm, but not before he’d gotten a few good thumps in, and the little guard’s outrage at the attack made him forget about everything else for a moment. He swung at his friend, red faced and furious, and our ride abruptly evened out, became smooth even. I stared around, but I hadn’t imagined it. The little troll couldn’t freak out and fight at the same time, and if his nervous system wasn’t overloading, we weren’t falling.

Which was a problem, because the guys up top had stopped firing.

Maybe they’d figured that out, too. Or maybe they were just afraid of hitting their buddies. Because they were gaining.

I sat there in awe, watching them practically run down the damned cliff face. They were moving as fast or faster than someone could rappel, but they didn’t have stakes or rope or any equipment at all. And they didn’t need it. Because the rock itself was helping them.

I hadn’t been able to see what they were doing along the riverbank; it had been too dark. But it was lighter in here and I was closer and there was no doubt about it. Fissures and cracks were opening up wherever they needed them, little lips were bulging out from solid rock under their feet or sinking in for handholds. One stumbled and a whole ledge shot out of nowhere to catch him.

It was as if the whole damned rock face was putty that re-formed itself to whatever configuration they needed, as malleable for them as the water had been for Pritkin. And as bad for us. I grabbed Pritkin’s arm. “Do you know any fey insults?”

“What?”

“Insults. Abuse.” I shook him one-handed. “Can you swear in their language?”

“Why?”

“We need them to fire.” I looked pointedly at the trolls, who were back at it again.

And young or not, Pritkin had never been exactly slow. He glanced at me for a second, then at them. And then started yelling something at the fey above us that the spell wouldn’t even try to translate.

But I guess it must have been pretty bad, because the two trolls stopped midpunch to gape at him. And then at the barrage of lightning bolts being hurled down at us again like we’d managed to piss off Zeus. Give me time, I thought hysterically, as we dropped again.

And caught.

And dropped.

And caught.

Our little pontoon was starting to look pretty beat-up, but it was nothing to how bad things were going to be if we didn’t hurry up. Because we’d never fully straightened out from that initial tumble, and had been drifting closer to the rocks every time we stopped. And when I turned around again, the cliff face was—

Right in front of me.

Like the guy with half a face perched on top of it.

Chapter Forty-four

I stared at the fey from the river in horror, not understanding why he wasn’t dead. I had shot him. Two gaping wounds, one under his chin and one in his forehead, were a testament to that. Along with the blood and gore that matted his hair and splattered his chest. And the powder burns that covered half his face, starkly black and ugly against the otherworldly pallor of his skin.

He looked like an accident victim; he looked like a corpse. He should have been a corpse, because the angle of one of those bullets had to have taken it straight through his brain. A senior-level master might have been able to come back from something like that, but nothing else I knew.

Nothing else until now.

Because instead of keeling over, he was leaping maybe twelve feet straight out, from a tiny outcropping onto the end of our boat. And sending us hurtling backward from the impact, almost into the hail of spears from above. And then slamming right back into the cliff again, like a pendulum on a clock, when Pritkin and the guard threw themselves forward in an attempt to knock him off.