I coulda swore he squeezed just as he sat me down, but I have no doubt it was my lurid imagination working overtime.

We raced around the far corner of the alley to come out into a wide, but empty, street. It was a Saturday, and we were in the business district of Pittsburgh so we could have been in a ghost town.

Unfortunately, the street wasn’t near as ghostly as I’d have liked it. For sitting at the end of the block, parked rakishly across the intersection, was a familiar Escalade.

“Fucking Phaedra,” Anyan growled, just as we all threw up shields around our vehicle.

But it was too late. Phaedra had sent a wave of power surging over the ground that blew out our tires before our shields made it that far. The SUV bucked, swerved, then came to a halt as Ryu efficiently applied the brakes.

We bailed out of the SUV just as Phaedra exited the Escalade. The tiny, bald Alfar was wearing her leather biker gear, the hilts of various edged weapons bristling from her so she resembled a rabid, red-eyed porcupine. Kaya (or Kaori) was dragging Kaori (or Kaya) up the street with the help of our former prisoner, and they’d made it just about halfway to the Alfar.

Which meant we had about thirty seconds to take our Dr. Death back alive.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I wasn’t very good at math, but I didn’t think our odds were too bad. Granted, Phaedra was Alfar, but I knew she was pretty low on the Alfar power-scale to be the sort of lackey that she was. Plus, one of the harpies was obviously hurting, they had a noncombatant to keep alive, and Anyan had been more than a match for way more powerful Alfar in the past, right?

We may just do this, I thought as I wove my water-power through Anyan’s earth and air, feeling our shields further boosted by Ryu’s own essence-charged magic.

Striding forward, we watched as Kaya and Kaori neared their mistress. As soon as they could, the healthy harpy shoved our doctor toward Phaedra and immediately hustled her sister off, presumably to heal her.

I could hear the doctor yelling, “Help me!” to Phaedra, who held out her arms.

Harpies are out, I thought, watching Kaya (or Kaori) bundle her wounded sister into the SUV.

And Phaedra’s about to have her hands full with a sadistic halfling-doctor to protect, my brain purred with satisfaction.

Unfortunately, things never go to plan, do they? For the minute our prisoner neared Phaedra, the Alfar was suddenly holding a knife.

Phaedra smiled at us from around our former captive, just as the evil little woman sank her blade deep. Dr. Death jerked once, then again, then crumpled at Phaedra’s feet.

So much for plan A, I thought, just as plan B went all to shit as well.

For one second we were alone on the street; the next a little sports car raced around the corner. Like a circus freak emerging from a clown car, Fugwat Spriggan unfurled himself from the passenger’s side. I watched in trepidation as the driver himself was revealed: Graeme the rapist incubus, whose nasty, pain-infused juju immediately starting beating against our combined shield in waves.

“I was going to keep her alive,” Phaedra intoned, her voice Alfar-flat yet somehow betraying her pleasure in the scene. “Let Graeme play with her. See just how much rats like her know, so that we would know who knew too much. But you three just keep getting in the way,” she said as she drove a wave of power straight at us.

Graeme and Fugwat moved to join her, and I finally got a full-frontal view of the rapist incubus. A victim of Graeme’s sadistic cruelty, Conleth had applied his formidable power to melting Graeme’s face when given the opportunity. And while I knew magic could heal, what Con had done to Graeme was a whole new level of the old ultraviolence.

Sure enough, Graeme’s face was… off. Not like a human burn victim’s, but almost as if his once beautiful (if cruel) features had been replaced by bizarrely healthy-looking, fleshy wax. He looked repellent, and I couldn’t help but smile.

His exterior finally matches his interior, I thought as his eyes sought out mine and burned into me with their rage.

And here we have another pureblood who won’t be joining the Jane True Fan Club, I surmised, trying to swallow the fear that welled up in me at seeing the hate in Graeme’s eyes.

“Three against three.” The little Alfar smiled as she let loose another blast of her mixed-elemental force.

We didn’t buckle under the onslaught, precisely. But we did back up a step as our shields were shoved as if by the sweep of a giant’s arm.

I think we might be fucked, I thought, reevaluating my earlier optimism.

Luckily, however, I heard another car squeal to a stop behind us, as Anyan’s rented SUV pulled up with Daoud, Caleb, and Julian. Relief washed through me, although I wasn’t sure if, even with our reinforcements, we’d be able to take the Alfar.

“Fan out,” Anyan yelled, and we did. Or at least I tried to, for Ryu pulled me next to him, leaving a big hole in our line—just the sort of slipup Phaedra’d been waiting for.

With an evil smirk the Alfar lobbed something that looked like a mage ball but exploded like a grenade when it landed between Caleb and where I stood trying to extricate myself from Ryu’s grasp.

The impact caught the edges of my defenses, which I’d solidified to keep all the flying asphalt from hitting me. This was not the wisest move, however, as it also meant that the blast caught my shields, flinging me a few feet behind where I’d originally been standing. I skidded to a halt, sitting on my butt, my palms all scraped to hell.

And that’s when everything went supernova. Ryu and Julian engaged Graeme as Anyan sprang forward, concentrating his attack on Phaedra. Mage balls, and mage grenades, and mage-I-don’t-even-know-whats were zinging through the air, which was saturated with power and cries. I shivered as the barghest’s distinctive force roared out from him with its untamed, raw edge that almost matched the controlled hits of the Alfar in its ferocity.

Meanwhile, Daoud and Caleb were matching force with the spriggan. The satyr was lobbing power at Fugwat, while Daoud snuck around behind him, his hands in his waistband. If it had been anyone else, I would have wondered at the necessity of fondling yourself during a battle. But Daoud’s power, as a djinn, was that he could pull anything he understood, down to its molecular composition, out of his pants. Sure enough, after a moment or two of rooting around with a rather pained expression on his face, the djinn pulled out a handful of crazy bling. Huge ropes of shiny beads and jewels sparkled in the sun: diamonds, pearls, rubies, and emeralds. Light danced across Fugwat’s face as he stared like an addict confronted with an eight ball. I remembered Ryu once telling me that spriggans were like magpies, but we were in the middle of a battle. Surely he couldn’t be that obsessed with shiny things…

Just call him Shirley, I thought, marveling as Fugwat stared, openmouthed, at the jewelry hanging from Daoud’s hand, which the djinn waved back and forth like a metronome. I felt the spriggan’s formidable defensive magics slowly falter, then fade. Meanwhile, as Daoud wove his spell with the jewels, Caleb had been pawing the earth with his hooves, and as soon as Fugwat was undefended physically and magically, the satyr struck. Rushing forward at ramming speed, head down, Caleb hit Fugwat with a combination of brute force and his earth’s power backing up his formidable horns. The spriggan arced up, up, up into the air, before landing about fifteen feet away with a resounding thud.

Once Fugwat was down, Daoud and Caleb were on him; holding him in place with magic and their own bodies, till he was secured. Leaving Daoud to keep the spriggan contained, Caleb then went to help Ryu with Graeme. Julian, unfortunately, was sitting well away from the action, woozily weaving back and forth. My fellow halfling—never much of a fighter—had a pretty awful gash across his forehead, which oozed blood into his eyes.

And is that his thighbone jutting out of his jeans? my brain mused, forcing me to quash a wave of nausea in order to focus on the here and now. A broken bone would heal in minutes; there were bigger fish to fry.

Like a big-ass piranha named Phaedra, I thought, turning to where Anyan and the Alfar were duking it out.

Or you can just run away, the cowardly, scared-shitless part of my brain whispered.

Not an option, I thought grimly as I scampered closer to where Anyan had made his stand. Go, go, Gadget True…

The barghest was holding his own, but Phaedra’s relentless onslaught was slowly driving him back. He wove to the left, and I waited till he’d started his own barrage on Phaedra—stilling hers as she shielded—to sprint over to him. He saw me coming and let me into the circle of his defenses, which I immediately bolstered with my own power.

“What should I do?” I yelled.

“We need to get out of the open with her; she’ll just keep blasting away till we’re exhausted. We need to get her in one of these alleys, figure out a way to get around her shields and attack her physically…”

Anyan grunted as Phaedra really went at us, her eyes narrowed on me. Killing me would be the ultimate way for her to gain favor with Jarl, so my coming to Anyan’s side was a little like dangling a carrot in the ass’s face.

Maybe we can use that, I realized as I felt Anyan grab my hand and tug me farther to the left.