Author: Wildbow

Finish Off – 24.8 | Pale

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

“How were you here before us when we were the second vehicle out front?”

It took Avery a second to realize the question was directed at her.  Her attention was on the weather, and watching out for trouble.  A metaphysical, psychic, spirits-plucking-the-chord-of-connections call-out was almost drowned out by the freezing rain drumming against the hood of her coat.  The lights of the fire engines flashed across their surroundings, white-blue and red.  No sirens, thankfully, or it would be even harder to hear.

They were far enough down the road it didn’t make sense to walk, and Avery could see the fires of some of the burning buildings.  Branches littered the road.

Avery pretended not to have heard.

Here and there, some Others made forays.  A group of ghouls, maybe, all organized under a singular, especially lanky ghoul.

They ran into a fritzing glitch in reality, and then they were gone.

The person asking shouldn’t have taken any special note of Avery, and Avery’s bracelet was supposed to tell her if anyone spotted her.  The person who’d called her out wasn’t one of Bristow’s Aware, and it wasn’t one of Kennet’s.

One of the locals from the nearby tourist town, if she looked at the connections with her Sight.

Goblins were getting fidgety at the sidelines, standing guard and not having much to stand guard against, that others weren’t dealing with first, like Zed.  People were getting antsy and looking for answers.  Avery turned and saw a bunch of elderly people arguing with Mr. Black, Brayden’s dad.

People.  Entrenched, angry people that Avery had to herd.  People she wasn’t good at engaging with.

She’d spent so much time building connections far afield, but now she felt like she hadn’t made enough connections at home.  She hadn’t ever connected with Mia, George, Wallace, or Caroline like Verona or Lucy had.  She hadn’t dug into her duties at the council with Theodora.  She hadn’t gotten to know the Foundlings enough, when the Lost were supposed to be her thing.  She knew a handful, but Snowdrop had a better grip on the post-Summer goblins than Avery had on the foundlings, thanks to the goblin sage thing.

She checked her phone, but it was leaking pus from within the casing.  Where pus bled beneath the screen, there was a television static texture.

Ugh.  Her pocket was already ruined, so she put it back there.

Maybe the shitty weather was eating away at her morale, especially with the echoes tainting it, but-

“Helloooo!”

-it felt like everything she’d let slip through her fingers had settled here.  And it was the big thing she was being counted on to do, now.

“Girl with the freckles!”

Avery turned.

“Yeah, you!  How are you here already!?”

Avery, Avery, Avery.

Voices calling from multiple directions.  The ‘Avery’ call was Verona.  The signal from the main group to here.

“I’m a fast runner!” she called out, before raising a hand, to get the attention of some of the unmasked foundlings and denizens on the road.  “Do you guys need any help!?”

Which was the signal from Avery to those on the road.  Go.  Some branches had fallen across the road and frozen there, and the foundlings and the more athletic denizens were obstructing efforts to remove them more than they were helping.  Pushing while others pulled.  Stepping on branches.  With the rain, it was easy to do.

“I think we got it!” someone hollered.

Slowly at first, then faster, they began to get stuff clear.

Liberty was out in the flanks- Avery could sometimes see the little orange streak as Liberty flew through the trees.  Goblins milled around them on all sides.  Theodora was near the back.  A key piece of this next phase.

A siren chirped, then started its wailing.  The moment a gap in the sea of fallen branches was clear, it began easing its way through, picking up speed as soon as it was past.  People who’d pulled over to the side of the road to make way for emergency vehicles began to follow, with volunteer crews working to clear the way some more.

Avery hopped down from the branch she was standing on, and jogged through sodden snow with spiky outgrowths from the Storm now as nubs, rounded off by regular freezing rain.

Circling past a tree, Avery black roped a few times.  Snowdrop, secure in her bag, poked her nose out, climbed free, and became human.

Avery was testing Innocence, running off and disappearing, now relocating to town, but she had a key job here, making sure the coast was sufficiently clear.

A few Foundlings, re-masked, had already come forward.

The fire engines who she’d seen leaving passed her- two normal ones, and one with a cylindrical-ish back.  Foundlings ducked out behind trees and buildings before they could be seen, and Avery did the same.

Snowdrop went off tromping in the direction of the buildings, raising her arms.  “Aaaaa!”

The goblins picked up the cry.  A discordant, distant ‘aaaaaa’ of very different voices, from the deepest to the shrillest.

“We gotta muss with the people who are coming!” Snowdrop called out.  “Screw with the innocents, we’re turning on Kennet, Liberty, and everyone else!  Aaaa!”

The goblins took up the cry.

“Let’s make some noise, show them what we’re all about!”

There were more cheers.

“Take all that practice you’ve done dodging Innocence and throw it out the window?  We’re going off book!”

More cheers.

The rain came down hard, but it wasn’t Storm hard.  Just regular shitty weather.

With her Sight, Avery could see the wards on walls that weren’t facing the walls.  Suppressing and absorbing the Storm, their effects marked out with handprints that took on a glow and had frost or electric crackling, water running down from them, or some combination of two or three of those things playing into one another.

The shouts of the goblins died down like a lingering echo.  The goblins had disappeared into the gloom of the bad weather, following Snowdrop’s orders.  Snowdrop remained there, crouched, and turned to Avery to shoot that snaggletoothed, awkward grin.  A bit intense in the eyes and at the edges of the familiar bond.

Avery thought of Ramjam, of Lewdtube, and Butty.

More by the familiar bond than by word or gesture, Avery agreed.  She nodded.  Go.

Snowdrop leaped, became an opossum, and disappeared into snow.  Goblin hands grabbed her to help her on her way.

It was an early evening kind of dark out, closer to nighttime than day, with the overcast sky just being that overcast.  There were no streetlights, and visibility was made worse with pouring rain.  Fire struggled against the downpour, with the brightest fires being inside buildings, smoke streaming skyward. Elementals danced through the smoke, and surrounded the building… fewer than she’d expected, honestly.

Avery circled around buildings, wary, staying out of the way as the first cars pulled down the road, headlights bright.  Skittish elementals fled the light, eyes leaving streaks in the dark- white-blue for the cold elementals, yellow-white for the lightning, and a deeper blue-black for rain.

Across the road, separated from her by maybe thirty feet or so, she could see a bogeyman watching the arrival of the cars, his head moving side to side.

It was one she’d glimpsed before, when Lenard had been around.  A man, bald, with relatively unattractive features, a large, once-broken nose and the sort of double chin that one had if they were overweight, except he wasn’t that overweight.  What Declan had once described as a ‘thumb’ head, with the way jaw segued into shoulders.  He wore a very old t-shirt, once bright yellow, now what Verona would’ve termed ‘babyshit’ yellow-brown, with some cartoon thing on the center now mostly faded, only a spiral of something shiny from the original image remaining behind – maybe a mascot for a candy company.  Below the waist, it was cargo shorts, hairless calves, and sneakers.  He had skin that was alternately dirty, bruised, or scuffed with light wounds, enough that there was a camouflage effect in the gloom.  Pieces of candy, one wrapped and one not, were wedged into his eye sockets, and looked artificially bright in the gloom, especially in contrast to his skin.  Wrapper and wet, hard candy caught the light of headlights to shine where everything else was dark, candy wrapper a hot pink, the piece of candy a mint green and white swirl.

He held a lollipop barely able to go in his mouth, and greedily suckled on one edge of it as he stared at her, drool running down the disc to stick, hand, wrist, and elbow.

Avery shifted position, and he froze, tensing.  Lollipop still half-wedged into his mouth, he smiled wide, not breaking eye contact or blinking.  If it was possible to blink with pieces of candy for eyes.

Just as horrifying as the bogeyman’s appearance was the lollipop song Kerry had once been so fond of, playing in Avery’s head.  Lick, lick, lickety slick.  Lick, lick, lickety split…

Not a bogeyman effect.  But the song had left deep scars.

She turned her mind toward crowd sounds.  The cheers they got at the Kennet Arena for the home team.  She brushed fingers along her arms, reminding herself of those golden checkmarks.

A goal scored.  The noise of the crowd, roaring in her mind’s… ear?

The passage of cars and trucks between them and the flashes of passing headlights obscured her vision.  Avery saw him twitch, and tensed, much like he had.

It was, in its weird way, calming.

Showdown, huh?  Avery thought.  Contained area, set rules, clear objectives.

Put all other problems aside.  Make the world small.  Her side and the other side.  Protect the Innocents, get the Innocents in.  Some of those Innocents were in the know, some were traps.

She ‘played’ the cheering of the crowd in her mind to drown out the lollipop song as he gobbled, slurped, and champed at the edge of the lollipop.  Except this was an away game, technically, but… whatever.  Maybe she could kick enough ass-

Her mind flashed to the Family Man, repeatedly kicked into the suffocation zone.

-no.  She could kick enough ass that people would cheer, even in an away game.

Put everything else out of mind.

She moved first, heading left, deeper into Charles’ little settlement here, and to where snow had fallen off a slanted roof to pile up behind the building.

He moved right, toward the southern end of the settlement, to where the settlement thinned out and where the cars were.

He was fast.  Faster than her.

Avery ran up the snowbank, then up the sloping roof, moving onto all fours to get the traction necessary.  Up, over- black roping while she was still out of anyone’s clear line of sight.

Onto the other side of the sloping roof on the far end of the street.  She slid down on her side, dropped ten feet onto snow, landing in a running position, and then dashed.

She could see him, at one point where the line of incoming vehicles had slowed down.  Some were pulling over and getting out of cars.  Others were forming a kind of traffic jam.

He’d thrown something, and it shattered a car headlight.

“Oh my god,” someone was saying, as they got out of a car.  “They’ve got their shitty little cabins up blocking the view of the river!”

Another headlight of the same car shattered as Avery closed the distance.

It created a gap.  In the procession of vehicles entering Charles’ setup here, things were illuminated with light.  Avery saw as a family climbed out of a car.  Mom, dad, older sibling, and, door bumping into a snowbank, a kid Kerry’s age.  A boy, all bundled up in winter stuff.  Barely illuminated now.

Avery didn’t even see Mr. Lollipop at first, as her eyes went from studying the gloom to peering into the lighting around the cars.

He’d dashed in, hurdling the snowbank on the side of the plowed road, grabbed the kid by the back of his coat, and swung him face-first into the snowbank that was now behind him, as he landed.

Avery ran after him.  There weren’t any good black rope targets near the road.

The kid, face full of snow, stunned with the suddenness of it all, didn’t even make a sound.  Mr. Lollipop carried the kid in one hand as he crossed that gap of darkness he’d created between cars, slipped over the snowbank on the far side of the street, moving fast, obscured by the lack of direct light.  The only person who could’ve clearly seen was bent over one of his shattered headlights.

Avery ran up the best available path to the crest in the snowbank, brought knees to chest, as if she was jumping cannonball-style into a pool, triple-tapped her shoes, and then stomped into the top end of the snowbank.  Air-boosting herself over the road and onto the far side.  Her bracelet ticked once, suggesting only one person had properly glimpsed her.

Ticked three times as she landed.  She turned, checking direction, and saw the bus.  Her people.  That was okay.

He was already at the treeline, dashing into the woods, slobbery lollipop in one hand, kid in the other.

Fuuuuuuck.

That poor kid, that-

Fifteen conflicting thoughts collided inside Avery’s head.  Self-condemnation, worry for the kid.  The fact they’d set up this plan, they were barely a minute into things, and they already had this bad a fuck-up?  More worry for the kid.

“Kelly!”

Avery turned.

It was Theodora, by the bus.

“I wasn’t fast enough,” Theodora said.

The fact she was admitting to failure when she had the peerage of Ann and Deb?  Probably kicking herself as much as Avery was, for letting one get by her this fast.

“He went that way,” Theodora pointed.

“I saw.  Um.  I’ll go.  Keep watch?  Be ready.”

Theodora nodded.

“And…”  Avery lowered her voice, moving over to the side, to be more sure no Innocents would hear.  “Be bait?  I think that bogeyman goes after kids, specifically.”

Theodora nodded again.

Avery judged distances, looked for ways to break line of sight, and decided to fall forward, onto stomach and face.  The crest of the snowbank, which piled up higher than the cars were tall, blocked the view from the cars.  There was some view from the bus, but it wasn’t a good angle.

Black rope.

Avery landed on her stomach, rolled forward, and got to her feet, deep in the woods, in the direction he’d gone.

Sight on.  She looked for the trail.

The sound of rain was muted, with the snow-covered branches overhead.  There was no sound of puttering vehicles.

Dark woods, covered in handprints, with wispy thin connections running through.

Connection between kid and family, and between bogeyman and Abyss.  One bright, fading out as it went.  The other tattered with edges catching on things.  It flicked and snapped from one dark thing to one broken thing.

She followed that trailing thread, fighting to run fast enough to not let it get away from her.

The bogeyman had apparently stopped, enough that her ability to clearly see and follow the connection threw her off a bit.

There, bogeyman crouched over, kid with back to tree.  Gagging sounds.

Avery knew she could draw her lacrosse stick, move quickly and quietly, deliver one heavy blow.

But that would be five to ten seconds too many, where the kid was- she didn’t know.  She couldn’t see.

“Hey!” she shouted, instead.

The bogeyman turned, pink candy wrapper and mint-swirl-on-white eyes on her.

The kid had a mouthful of candy, and it looked like the bogeyman was using a fistful of licorice as a ramming rod to get more down the kid’s throat.

“You-”

The bogeyman ran off to the side.  Avery used her shoes, tapping, aiming, looking for a gap between trees-

And threw herself forward.  An air-rune boosted pounce.  The bogeyman’s quickness wasn’t limited to running, and he intercepted her with a swipe of the lollipop through the air.

It stuck to her clothes and hair.  He bounced off a tree, hard, then used the fact she was stuck to something he held to swing her around, down in an arc to the ground.

The ground rippled.

No damage done.

At least until he pulled it free with a ripping sound.  She felt the hair pulling out of her scalp.

The kid was crying between gagging sounds as he threw up handfuls of candy.

“Come on,” Avery said.

She wanted to give him more care, but she was worried this would get more out of hand.

So she picked him up, hand around his middle, a pressure which seemed to help him get more candy out.  Head dangling off to her side, he kept throwing up or spitting out candy.

It had been like, thirty seconds.  Yet there was so much.

That was all it took, right?  That was the risk, the huge issue with what they were doing here.

Bringing Innocents in was a risk, and this made that very clear.

She ran back through trees to the treeline, then crossed a bit of snow to get back to the snowbank.

She put the kid down and looked.

It must’ve taken the bogeyman a bit of time to find a gap to cross the road.  He was way further down.

Theodora was on the far end of the road, too, standing on a high vantage point, wearing high-end fashion, with earmuffs and a kid version of the kind of coat Avery’s mom might wear.  All black and gray.

Just a little imperious.

If Kerry liked Kinley, Caroline’s kid sister, fellow horse-lover and horse-rearer, Kerry would probably idolize Theodora.

Avery wanted to shout out for Theodora to watch out, as the bogeyman moved through the dark areas where the rain and poor lighting made him very hard to track.  A specialty, maybe.

Theodora glanced over her shoulder at Avery, seeming to want to say or signal something, and her eyes went wide as the bogeyman grabbed her from behind.  Pulling her into shadows.

“Fuck,” Avery swore under her breath.

The kid had made his way back to his parents, wailing.  Parents were freaking out.  Candy was stuck to throw-up at the front of his shirt.

“Where on God’s blessed earth did you get candy?” the mom asked.

Avery crossed the road, taking advantage of stalled traffic.

“You!  Did you give my son candy?”

“…saved me,” the boy managed, between gaggy, hiccupy sobs.

The bogeyman was doing the same thing.  Carrying Theodora away.  This time, he wasn’t going into trees, but seemed to want to just get as far away from everything as he could.

Not giving Avery a clear avenue to catch up.

Black rope, maybe?

The bogeyman slowed.  Then slowed more.

Avery managed to catch up.

He dropped onto his knees, and Theodora managed to land with feet beneath her.

She held a knife, and she’d stabbed him in the lower abdomen.  With her feet under her for leverage, she dragged the blade up, opening stomach, parting skin at the sternum, and shifting angle to drive it up into throat at an upward angle, pointing toward the brainstem.  Her expression was cold, confident, superior, as she looked him in the face.

Blood, guts, and about five hundred types and pieces of candy, some wrapped, some not, spilled out of the bogeyman.

“Wish I was more up to date on my bogeyman classifications,” Avery said.  “But this one’s pretty messed up.”

Theodora glanced off to the side to make sure the coast was clear.  “He’ll be more messed up once I-”

She became an adult, hand holding the knife steady while she brought her knee into the end of it, to drive it up.

The bogeyman caught her knee.

He hurled Theodora into Avery.  The two of them crashed together.  With their weight combined, they sank into snow.

“Get off me,” Theodora said, while being more on top of Avery than Avery was on top of her.  She swore in a language Avery was pretty sure wasn’t from Earth.

“Bogeyman logic.  You can’t really beat, slash, or kill them.  You have to defeat them,” Avery said, as Theodora extricated herself, climbing to her feet.  “Turning into a kid was good, turning his thing against him.  Once you became an adult.”

“Right,” Theodora said, one word, that suggested she wasn’t up for helpful tips.

Avery got up, climbing out of the depression in the snow.

The bogeyman was making his way away at a good clip, heading back toward the settlement.  Others were over in the woods, eyes glowing in the gloom, as they looked across the ten to fifty foot gap -it varied- between treeline and the plowed road with cars inching forward.

So much to deal with.

Liberty soared overhead, driving her Steamjunk glider contraption, a barely visible streak of orange flame in the sky.

Avery whistled, best as she could, to get Liberty’s attention.  She waited until Liberty turned, then pointed at the offending others.

Liberty turned again, then did a bombing run.  Avery could barely make out dark shapes dropping in her wake.

Avery knew Liberty could make goblins small enough to be strung along a keychain, and apparently Liberty was using that, because she was dropping dark shapes that inflated to bigger sizes.

The Others at the edges of the woods were met with an airdrop of goblins from above, who became full size just as they got close to the ground, or shortly after bouncing off a branch or hard surface.  There was commotion, and the bright and menacing eyes in the woods went dark as they were smashed, hit, or forced to turn around and deal with more immediate problems.

Liberty wolf-whistled as she swooped past Avery, pointing at Avery, a mirror of what Avery had just done.  She might’ve winked, but with the goggles and high velocity, Avery didn’t see clearly.

Mr. Lollipop wasn’t moving fast, almost tripping over spilled guts with candy stuck and spilling out of them, and he had to keep to shadows, which kept him from moving in a straight line- the parked bus Theodora had summoned had a lot of light being shed through the windows from the interior.  Eerie green in tint, though that might’ve been Avery’s bias.

“I’ll see about dealing with this guy.  Watch our rear?” Avery asked.

“Yeah.”

“Good baiting.”

“Sure,” Theodora said.

Avery picked up her pace.

The bogeyman matched her, picking up speed more and more as she got closer.

He swiped his lollipop down, and his trailing intestines stuck to the lollipop.  He twisted it up like he was getting spaghetti, slammed it into the open wound on his stomach, getting most of it in there, and pushed his stomach closed, all while awkwardly running.

Avery used her air shoes, which slowed her down a fraction, but gave her a burst of speed after that more than made up for it.

She got close enough for fingertips to graze the back of his shirt before he found his own momentum.  More consistent than hers.

She used the air shoes a second time, to try to keep pace, and fell just short before the burst of speed ended.

The third time, the air spirits decided to play with her, and she somersaulted in the air, snow rippling with impact beneath her as she fell hard.

She would’ve sworn if she wasn’t panting for breath.

She’d wanted to get him before he got too far away.  Right now she was closest to the bulk of the Innocents who were getting into town.  The stopped fire trucks were slowing things.  People parked where they could, climbing out at the south end of town, and were spreading out into a crowd.

One with stragglers.  One that might have kids.

Over to Avery’s right, she could see more Others fighting goblins in the woods.  They weren’t ones that Liberty had dropped in.  And there was Snowdrop, on the edge of it all.

Snowdrop became human and showed herself as Avery got closer.

“We’ve got the inside of Charles’ thing all secure,” Snowdrop said, panting for breath as much as Avery was.  “Kicking ass.  So don’t worry about it.”

“It’s bad here too, I think.  I might be needed-”

“I’m telling you, we have it handled.  No humans needed.”

Avery frowned.  “And Liberty can’t?”

Snowdrop looked up, searching for Liberty.  Avery felt a tug as Snowdrop borrowed from Avery’s ability to see longer distances.  “Could.”

“I’ll handle it back here,” Thea said.

“You coming or-?”

“I’ll come,” Snowdrop said.

Avery gave Snowdrop a high-five and then pushed Snow’s hood around her head as she jogged by, which produced a note of amusement.

Avery whistled again, moving deeper into shadow, away from the road.

She could hear Liberty coming, and raised her hands.

As Liberty swooped down, a goblin came lunging out of the woods, about Avery’s size, mostly naked, hair wild, eyes bugging out.  It was something frenzied, shivs in each hand, turning so fast as it swung that its extended, lolling tongue almost went all the way around its head to slap the side of its face.

She had to give up on grabbing Liberty’s hands as Liberty passed, pulling her lacrosse stick off her charm bracelet.  It came out to full length as she brought it in a downward swing, and the goblin’s forward momentum didn’t let it move much.  She smacked it firmly on the head, spellwork on the base of the plastic portion of the lacrosse stick’s head making the hit far heavier than it had any right to be.

The goblin’s mouth cracked shut, the tongue was severed, and it stumbled, faceplanting.

Liberty was doing a wiggle, trying to see what had happened with Avery, and Avery moved her stick, drawing a zig-zag path through the air.

Avery wasn’t much of a skiier or snowboarder, as much as she liked going fast and lived in a ski town with cheap season passes.  The long waits to go up the ski lift for the short trips down the hill were too frustrating.  Ten minutes up, if lines were taken into account, a couple minutes down.  Plus she’d usually gone with family, which meant like, three to four trips before everyone wanted to go get hot chocolate, or she’d gone with school, which meant forty-five people her age making the lines longer.

But she understood principles.  When learning, especially with snowboarding, a zig-zag was a way to slow down.

Same in the air.

It let Avery run to catch up.  She put the lacrosse stick away.

Noticing what Avery was doing, Liberty took some more exaggerated loops.

Wind shoes… don’t mess with me here…

Avery bounded into the air.  Liberty dipped.  Avery nearly smashed her head into Liberty’s chin, in the light miscommunication.  Liberty caught her around armpits and ribs.  As she caught Avery’s weight, the contraption at Liberty’s back complained, engines squealing.

“I’d say today’s a good day!” Liberty shouted, grunting.  “Except goblins died!”

“Yeah!” Avery called back up.  Rain pelted her and the wind rushed past her.  She reached up and grabbed onto the harness Liberty wore, lifting herself up to a more comfortable position where Liberty’s lower arm wasn’t threatening to guillotine Avery’s chest off as gravity pulled her down into it.  The engine at Liberty’s back chugged, straining, and a gremlin that was part of the rigging gabbled excitedly, banging metal.

“Where am I putting you!?”

Avery used Sight to try to track the Bogeyman, but could only make an educated guess.  What she got, though, was a good view of what was going on.  She could see friendlies, she could see threats, and she could see the firefighters and the people who were gathering.  Zed, Nicolette, and a few of the less combat-ready practitioners were hanging back and out of the way, behind some of the buildings.  Nicole Scobie, Ann Wint’s daughter, Mr. Harless…

Further down the way, she was pretty sure she could see where Lucy and Verona were.  She was tempted to go find Lucy and Verona, get the rundown, cooperate with them… but that cost time, it cost opportunities.  Mr. Lollipop would possibly get another kid.

Some of the St. Victor’s kids had come out with one person who might’ve been part of Helen’s family.  Maybe that was what Snowdrop had been concerned about.  She stuck out a leg, pointing with a toe.  Somewhere Mr. Lollipop might be near, but also close to that action too.

“Right on!”

Avery pulled herself up a bit more, again.  Liberty adjusted her grip to something better and less guillotine-y.

“You’re way more comfortable wiggling than even some goblins I grab!”

“Can’t be hurt from falling, remember!?”

“Riiight!”

“You can drop me in somewhere Innocents don’t see!”

“Luck!” Liberty called out, swooping.

She didn’t drop Avery so much as she spiked Avery into the ground, swooping to add velocity and depositing Avery full speed and full force into snow.

The ground rippled faintly as Avery landed amid plumes of snow.

Liberty cackled and did a barrel roll on her way up and away.

Mr. Lollipop was a priority.  He was too good at dodging Innocence.

She made a beeline for where his connections might’ve been, circling around the group of people on the street, who were complaining, almost awed as they took in how much Charles had shit up their local business and stuff by dropping a street of buildings along a nice scenic route tourists would take to the tip of the peninsula.

To them, though, it was some sneaky assholes plying some government person to get the A-Ok to develop this land, in a ‘sneak it in and apologize later’ type thing.  What would they do, un-develop the land?

Mr. Black was out front, playing the asshole, someone who knew business, knew land, knew customer service.

Mr. Lollipop was out there too.  He skirted around that whole group, and didn’t try to make a play for Brayden.

Here, at least, there was more to work with when using the black rope.  Avery could black rope ahead, zig-zag, move unpredictably.  Mr. Lollipop glimpsed her, took evasive action, and after he’d gone around two corners, she could be there, ready to intercept.

He reversed direction.  She chased.

He tried to trick her, turning a sharp right.  She followed, and he’d climbed partially up a wall, sticking to the eaves of a cabin with the sticky lollipop.  He jumped free, and she only barely heard the ‘paff’ of his landing before he sprinted off, glimpsing him as he dashed around behind another cabin.

Black rope, black rope.  Intercept.  She stepped out from around a building and swung her lacrosse stick.

He managed to stop in time to avoid running into the incoming weapon.  He reversed direction, scrambled at a faster-than-human speed that only ramped up as he kept moving, and she followed.

He went low, for a slide, going beneath a cabin that had been raised up, that had slight gaps where the piled up snow didn’t quite meet the base of the raised up cabin.  A dark gap.

She almost followed, except she saw a yellow eye in the dark that wasn’t Mr. Lollipop’s.

Her foot went up, and she kicked the base of the building, arresting her forward momentum, so she wouldn’t slide in after.

Six different Others came spilling out of the darkness, clambering toward her.  More were lurking in the space beneath the cabin, waiting for an excuse to come out.

Before they could get up and start running instead of crawling, she threw a spell card.

The dark space was tightly packed, moist with water, and narrow.  The spell card activated, and craggy ice exploded within, with a bit of that icy crust punching through snow, seizing around the feet of some of the crawling Others.

Avery kicked an incoming goblin in the chin, sending it tumbling back toward the gap and toward its friends.

A follow-up card sealed that end of things in ice.

Some goblins came running up, and Avery was ready to react, except she recognized them from Snowdrop’s goblin sage announcement.

“Group under there.  Get more guys, make sure they won’t come out?” Avery asked.

There were nods.

She turned away, leaving them to it, circling around the building to see if there was any sign of the bogeyman.

More goblins joined that handful who’d come running, and together, they tossed some stink bombs under the cabin before blocking the gap on the far side.

Mr. Lollipop had gone under and out the far side, by the looks of it.  The blood trail of black-red blood from his split open body dragging against snow was obvious enough.  Except it stopped bleeding as he’d stood up.  He’d gotten away.

She had to stop him.  She had to handle the situation Snowdrop had pointed out.

Different tactic.  There weren’t many kids around, so maybe…

She ran over to where Zed and Nicolette were.  She kept an eye on proceedings.  She even ventured closer to things.

“We might not agree on everything, but this is an important development,” Mr. Black said.  “We’re looking to get on any local boards, business co-ops.”

“You’re not a part of what we’ve built.”

“We’re prepared to get lawyers involved if it comes down to it,” Mr. Black said.

“Ridiculous.  No.  This isn’t a fight you’re going to win.”

“Oh,” the person from the Kim family said.  He flashed a smile at Mr. Black.  “I think we’ve already won.”

He glanced Avery’s way, and she felt her bracelet tick about five times in a second, cube rotating against skin.

He wasn’t being hostile, though, and she had other concerns.

She carried on to where Zed and Nicolette were, running there.

“There you are,” Zed said.  “Innocents are coming in?”

Avery nodded, getting her breath.

“What do you need?”

“Generally?  One of the Kims is talking to our Innocents.  I couldn’t really engage without making it worse.  But I’m worried.  He seemed cocky.”

“Should I?” Harless asked.  “Unless you think it’ll get violent?”

“If I thought it’d get violent, I’d be there, handling that.  I think you should be okay?”

The man nodded.

“As for what I came her for…” Avery said, taking a second to get another breath.  She pointed at Ann Wint’s daughter.  The girl was dressed very preppy, a bit severe, and had a claymore-style sword at her back that had a chain wrapped around part of the blade and the handle, which she’d slung over her head and one shoulder.  She otherwise looked like a smaller, younger version of Ann, very straight black hair in a severe lopsided bob, square-ish face, straight sharp nose and smaller eyes.  Her mouth had the most expressiveness to it, pinching closed, moving from side to side.

“Me?” the girl asked, once she was done expressing.

“Ann’s not okay,” Nicolette said, quiet, as she passed by Avery.  “Go easy on her.”

Fuck.  Avery turned to follow Nicolette as Nicolette went to a bag to get stuff.  “Not okay?”

“Shot and unconscious.  Tashlit healed her some.  Getting Ann stabilized was one thing.  But the cost for Tashlit to get her back to being-”

Nicolette stopped herself as Ann Wint’s daughter came over.

She looked like she knew.

“Kid hunting Bogeyman I feel like we need to deal with,” Avery said.  “Can you handle yourself?”

The girl’s eyes momentarily widened, betraying fear.  “I’d need to know more.”

“Mr. Lollipop, hunts kids, apparently force feeds them candy, maybe until they burst.  If you’re willing to be bait, that’d be my third win against him, I think that counts enough that I can send him to the Abyss.  But that’s only if you’re ready.”

“You can’t see it because of the Storm being concentrated on the north end right now, but there’s an Other they suspect to be a Titan,” Zed said.  “So be aware, account for it.  It might be the hammer that gets dropped on this whole thing.”

“Was that what Snowdrop was worried about?” Avery asked.

“No idea.”

“Are Luce and Ronnie dealing with it?”

“Hope so.”

“Frig,” Avery murmured, under her breath.  She looked at Ann’s daughter.  “Give me a quick yes or no?”

She saw the hesitation.  Fear.

“No?” Avery said, before the girl could reply.  “No, if you’re not enthusiastically ready, let’s say no.  Stay, do your thing, I’ll figure something out, I guess.”

“Seth’s coordinating some of the side Others,” Zed said.  “I tried messaging you about it, but-”

Avery pulled out her phone.  It was dripping that static pus.

“Yeah,” Zed said.  “Keep an eye out for that too.  It’s injured but dangerous.”

Too much.  Too many things.

“Alright, thought I’d ask.  Stay in this safer warded zone, Ann Junior,” she said, glancing at the protective marks.  A lot of that probably owed to Melody Kierstaad.

“That’s not my name,” Ann’s daughter said, affronted.  “Beatrice.  Bea.”

“Right.  Sorry.  I should go.  Thanks for running interference, Zed.  It was working pretty well.”

“Universe wants to preserve Innocence, so it helps out, cuts costs, lets coincidences happen.”

“Wish it’d help me out by helping me deal with this bogeyman.  Creepy asshole.  I don’t suppose you could point me in the right direction, Nicolette?  Especially if it has prey?”

Nicolette looked pained, as if Avery had pushed something sharp into her face and she couldn’t do anything about it.

“Storm’s not as bad,” Zed remarked.  “It’s pushed back around the Titan child.”

“I’m still trying to- nevermind.  Here.  Taking the time to argue over it is almost as bad as just handling this.”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to be a pain,” Avery said.

Nicolette quickly laid down some cards.  “He’s close, other side of that building there.  It doesn’t look like he has a victim.”

“Hopefully I can surprise him,” Avery murmured.  “Thanks.”

Nicolette responded with a tight nod, before picking up on the other augury stuff she was doing.

Avery jogged out, judging the surroundings, wondering what might be fastest.

A hand grabbing her from behind made her react, wheeling around, ready to strike-

“I want to help.”

Avery debated sending the girl back to Nicolette and Zed, but… she was already getting tied up with the bogeyman.  There were other threats.

“Alright, um, let’s see.  Anything you can do about bogeymen, or holding your own, avoiding being crammed full of candy if he gets you?”

“I think I can handle myself,” the girl said.  “My mother is a remarkable practitioner.  I know some things.”

“She’s definitely remarkable,” Avery said, quiet.  “I’m worried knowing some things isn’t enough.”

“Don’t think I’m some idiot, even if I’m new to this.  I know what you’re implying.”

“Okay, first off, volume.  There’s an Other we’re wanting to surprise.”

“A bogeyman.  Our area of expertise,” Beatrice Wint said, not as quietly as Avery would’ve liked.

Avery held back a sigh.  She turned, shaking her head, trying to get the lay of the land.  Even if Beatrice Wint bought her a few seconds or helped seal the Other while Avery got it on the back foot…

“Punh.”

“What?” Avery asked.

She turned to see what Beatrice was saying or doing, and then turned in a full circle.

She caught a glimpse of Mr. Lollipop sprinting away, Beatrice in his arms.

Avery gave chase, using the black rope to close the gaps.

‘Punh’ was apparently the sound a haughty ten year old made when getting snatched up by a bogeyman running at Olympian sprinter speeds.

Avery black roped around, black roped up, over to rooftop, where she crouch-ran awkwardly along the peak, spotted him, then black-roped to intercept.

She managed to smash him in the stomach with her lacrosse stick.

Beatrice had a jawbreaker crammed into her mouth, an orb as big as Avery’s fist, with one of the kid’s eyes squinting shut in apparent pain.  But she was able to move some, taking advantage of the bogeyman being doubled over to move the chain that was connected to the sword at her back, over his head, against his neck.

Almost like she was strangling him from the side.

He picked up the pace again, and avoided Avery as she black roped around again.

As he pivoted, though, the sharp end of the sword got shifted, the kid pulling on it, and he got stabbed in the thigh near the knee as he brought it up and over.

He crashed into snow.  Beatrice tumbled free, and Avery hurried over, grabbing Bea’s arm-

The kid fought her.  Pushing, resisting.

So Avery stood back.

Let Beatrice stand, on her own.  Pull the sword free, holding it awkwardly by handle and chain.

She was bleeding really badly.  Maybe from the hard fall with a sword awkwardly positioned at her side.

The bogeyman got to his feet in time, and Beatrice was there, impaling him in the stomach.

He dropped to a sitting position, and she almost fell over as his weight shifted, pulling the sword to one side as he flopped over.

Beatrice reached up with one hand, hand going to mouth, to try to pry the ball of hard candy free, then dropped her sword.  She used both hands, making increasingly frantic sounds.

“Hey,” Avery said, one eye on the bogeyman.  “Hey, here, hey!”

The kid finally relented, letting Avery drop to her knees.

It wasn’t easy, and tooth grated against hard candy- one tooth was already broken, probably from the insertion.  It was progress by millimeters, marked by sharp and grinding sounds of tooth enamel against what might as well have been stone.

And with a snotty nose and basically two hands and a fist sized jawbreaker around her mouth, Beatrice hadn’t been breathing well.  She gasped and began letting out sobbing breaths once the ball was free.

“Sorry,” Avery said.  “Letting you get taken.  I thought we might be still inside wards.”

“Antique sword,” Beatrice said.  “Something old that’s been taken care of, preserved.  Timeless.  Ow.  My tooth.”

“Sorry,” Avery said, again.

The exchange wasn’t really- both of them were saying a lot that wasn’t necessary and not saying enough, at the same time.  This had to be a lot for Beatrice, especially if it was her first scary moment with an Other.

Which it might’ve been, by the looks of it.

The kid picked up a sword by handle and chain again and kind of battering-ram stabbed the bogeyman in the heart with the tip.  “That should do it.”

“Good.  Thank you.  Let’s get you back to Zed and Nicolette.  I’ve got to shepherd our guys.  I’m overdue for something my familiar wanted me to put eyes on.”

“Yeah,” the kid said.  She had to try three times before she remembered how to sling her sword behind her back.  When Avery put out a hand, she didn’t take it.  “I don’t need my hand held.  I killed a bogeyman.”

“Right.  But it’s how my practice works.”

“I see.”

The kid kind of slapped her hand into Avery’s reaching one.

“Eyes closed.”

Avery black-roped them forward.  The crowd was growing.  A collection of Innocents, Aware, and knotted people.  It made black roping around harder.

“Don’t-”

Beatrice’s words were cut off by another use of the black rope.

“Don’t tell my mom I cried?  If she lives?”

With the rain, Avery hadn’t even known.  Even now, she couldn’t see the kid’s down-tilted face.

“If she turns out okay, and I get the opportunity?  I’d like to tell her that I came asking for help with a bogeyman, you helped.  You had the tool, you used it.”

The kid looked up at her.  Her eyes were red, and she had blood at her lower lip, leaking from a broken tooth.

“Yeah?” Avery asked, escorting the girl past the barrier to Zed and Nicolette.

“Fine.  Thank you.”

“You know it’s okay to cry, right?  It’s allowed?  Helps even.”

“Not if I’m going to be a chainer and destroyer.  Just when I thought you might be alright, you go and prove my mother right.”

Avery, exasperated, turned.

They were here.  Innocents.  The Aware.  People on all sides were fending off the worst threats.  Avery had managed at least one of the better dodgers of Innocence.

Judges were the custodians of Law, handling everything that filtered past other hands.  Past Lords, past gods and whatever else.  A lot of that time, that stuff filtering through was management of basic Innocence.

Charles wasn’t good at that.  It wasn’t something he dwelt on.  He hadn’t seemed to put much thought into it with his Lords, unless Avery included the neighborhood Other.  The ‘ordinary family’ on the black box.  Charles hadn’t appointed agents.

The Kims, from what Avery had seen and heard, dressed in really dramatic, severe ways.  High fashion, lots of black and white, lots of lace.  Except Helen, maybe.

Not exactly the sort of image that played into being a good Innocence-managing public face.

That left other options.  The ex-forsworn.  Griffin.  Seth.  Lenard.  Josef.

The first two were under twenty, Lenard oozed awfulness, and Josef Miller was a reclusive alchemist, according to Nomi’s notes.

How many people did that leave, who could really handle a bunch of Innocents crashing into their whole situation?

Peering into cabins, to look at the interiors.  Avery peeked for herself, as she walked around the crowd, watching for trouble.  Making sure no dangerous Others were lurking just inside a cabin door, ready to storm into the street.  The cabins were only facades.  Inside, there were floors, the four exterior walls, and the ceiling.  No divisions, no bathrooms, no furniture.

Avery could remember back to when they’d founded Kennet found, and how people from Musser’s contingent had gone straight to Miss’s town hall to look into the local Law.  Reading things and informing themselves effectively locked things down, putting eyes on the words on the page kept Miss from inventing new rules and applying them as if they’d been there from the start.

Glamour was perception-driven, but in some ways, it was similar.  Houses made of glamour, hardened on the outside somehow -Avery suspected Tooth fairies had helped- were all damaged, worn down, strained by the Storm, with interior rooms gone, maybe even melted away.  Rain leaked into interiors.

Putting Innocent eyes on those rooms locked it down.  Glamour couldn’t fudge things, grow, or heal the buildings.  If people came and wondered why, it would raise questions, especially if they hadn’t seen work crews come in.

Rendering all these buildings unfit for habitation.

Charles had a lot of hostile Others, but they were disorganized.  The Others of Kennet and allied areas were holding ground okay, at least for the moment.  Their efforts didn’t have to be perfect, even against an enemy that was, for raw back-of-the-playing-card stats, or for players on the ice, stronger.

Ten goblins breaking through to attack here could do some damage, but what then?  They’d get seen, get fought off eventually, or get away, but Innocents would see, remember, and it’d be a major breach.  One that arguably went back to Charles.

Avery circled around, making eye contact with some of the Kims.

What kind of mental calculus were they doing?

This couldn’t be all of them, if Avery went by what had been reported from the fight at the Blue Heron.

“You haven’t contributed tax dollars, you haven’t prepared for weather.  Fires like we’re seeing here- they spread!  If that fire got to the treeline, it could affect our entire community!”

“It’s handled,” the man who might’ve been head of the Kims said.  “The fires are almost out, the worst of the weather receded.”

“It’s handled by our fire teams, using water tenders we paid for with our tax dollars!”

“And you saved your buildings you were so worried about.  Bully for you.”

That only made the angriest of the ‘not in my backyard’ NIMBY types angrier.  Some looked ready to froth at the mouth.

Others kept coming in.  Matthew was here, his Hosts in training lingering behind, helping fortify the perimeter, protecting these Innocents.

Avery circled around the edges of the crowd to get to Matthew.

She saw a group of parents find their son.  He resisted being hugged, looked a little shell-shocked, even.  Like the last twenty-four hours hadn’t been easy.

Avery figured she probably had similar things going on.

Others had already reunited. A group of three girls were all together.  One girl was injured.  Another had a scrawled tattoo with angry red flesh covering half her face.  The only word Avery could make out was ‘Fuck’.  The woman Avery presumed was the girl’s mother was on her knees, doing her best to cup her daughter’s face in her hands, without touching angry tattooed flesh.

“Your opossum okay?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Been rough,” he murmured.  “Wouldn’t surprise me if-”

Avery shook her head.  “Sore, but I’m okay.  Ronnie and Luce?”

“At the edge of the Titan situation,” he murmured.  “They’ll loop back this way.”

“And the Kims?”

“Trying to restrain the Titan.  Might be too big for them.”

“So they summoned it, it got loose-?”

“Verona had Anthem Tedd throw the blood stone through a crack, into the alchemy the Titan was bathing in.  Upset alchemical balances, tainted the mix, now it’s agitated and stronger.”

“Right.  Sounds about right,” Avery replied, taking that in.  “Do we know how the Kims are dealing with it?”

He shook his head.

“Gonna loop around,” she said.  “Call my name three times if I’m needed?”

“Yeah.”

The image in her mind’s eye was a group of the Kim practitioners doing some ritual that caged everything inside, like, some horror-made web of hands or something.  Trapping the Titan and Innocents, Avery, Lucy, and Verona and all their friends from the Kennet high school in a bubble and letting them die.

Avery matched her pace and position to the group of the St. Victor’s recruits.  They were the new recruits, with no recognizable faces.  They peeled away, leaving parents behind.  One mom broke into sobs.

“Is this a cult?” someone in the crowd asked.  “The way those kids are acting, the way they’re dressed…”

“It was, once.  It’s mainly a family now,” the Kim spokesman replied, before smiling a thin, unconvincing smile.

Avery followed the group, keeping a healthy distance away, but keeping them in view.  Until they were behind a cabin.

Several of them looked at her, as she stood in the rain.

The first of them picked up a phone.  Dialed out.

The visual glitch Avery had seen swallowing up some of the attacking ghouls a bit ago appeared once again.

Swallowing up the boy.

The girl with the ‘Fuck’ scrawled from temple to the center of her forehead, and a ‘You’re’ across cheekbone to nose, a tired look in her eyes, looked over at Avery, glaring, wary.

A phone rang, and one of them raised it to their ear.

A call from the person who’d just left?  Avery was jealous that they had working phones, here.

The girl with the tattoo dialed out.  Then she fritzed out of existence, teleported to some distant location.

The rest of the group was so eager to follow suit, they all seemed to dial at once.

Avery moved on, patrolling, worried there wasn’t more pushback.  She saw some of their people, and battles being fought and won, or fought and lost, by their people.  A few foundlings were overrun by a mob of goblins, and Avery sprinted over, checking the coast was clear, before she splashed them with water.

Clean water bothered goblins, and it’d feel like a lot more of a bother considering the temperature.  They’d freeze.

Avery signaled Snowdrop, and maybe a minute later, some allied goblins burst out of snow, attacking the chilled group.

Then, after a quick order from Avery, they ran off to reinforce the gap in the perimeter that mob had come tearing through.

Avery eyed the wall of bad weather that existed at the north end of town.

Avery had to get further from the group meeting to reach out to Liberty.  Liberty came down in a swoop, landed running, and needed Avery’s help to not have so much momentum that she crashed face first into snow.

“What up?” Liberty asked.

“You got gas to keep flying?”

“Gas, but I’m cold.”

Avery nodded.

“Any sign that there’s some ritual in the works?  Something big?”

“Not seeing anything like that.  Maybe indoors?”

“Big house?”

“Mostly demolished.  Bunch of their people in one standing part, partially medical, partially non-fighting types.  Some of those kids in private school uniforms who don’t have any fight left in them.”

“Their parents might be looking for them.”

“Might be.  I dunno.  Not sure how we’d get to the stragglers if we wanted to.”

“We want to.”

“Yeah.  Well, back to your question, they’re in there like sardines, too crowded in to really do much.  The room the meeting is being held in is protected, and will stay that way a while.  But no rituals indoors, I don’t think.”

“Okay.  Thanks.  Good work.”

“Sheepfucker,” Liberty said, shaking out a goblin from her keychain.  It was covered in fluffy white wool but had a face like a meth addict pug.  “Keep my ears warm.”

It pulled out wads of wool, then held massive fistfuls by Liberty’s ears.  Like a living pair of earmuffs, hugging the back of her head.

Is that a sheep who’s a fucker, or a goblin that fucks sheep?

Which would be worse to have hugging the back of my head, with immediate access to my ears?

The engine revved, gremlins babbled and gabbled as they debated how to get her flying again, and then Liberty took a running start and began flying again.

Avery, doing her loop, saw a glint of gold.

Stuck in a snowbank near a garbage can, a small statuette, gold.  A horse, rearing, mingling two or three different materials.  Some dark wood and glass.

She used Sight to track the connection, and followed it to Tenmercy, who stuck to the shadows, avoiding Innocents.

This is one of yours?

She could see some others.  The boy with the video game eyes who’d been outside the Arena.  Apparently he’d been let out, and he’d come here.  Avery blamed the Aurum Coil.  He didn’t have his big technomancy Other with him, but he was out there.

All were keeping a very healthy distance from just about everything.  Stalking.

It made Avery worry.

One trap, maybe, laid here.  An expensive looking horse aimed for a little girl like Kerry’s bestie Kinley.  Or Caroline.  Not quite right to be an art piece for an adult- at least, that was Avery’s instinct.

The instinct wasn’t one she could put words to.  The more she dwelt on it, the more uneasy she felt.

Rather than reunite with friends, she circled back, climbing up the back of a roof to then she studied the crowd until she spotted Theodora.

Okay.  That secured some things.

And Clementine.

Avery navigated through the crowd, constantly wary, until she could bump Clementine’s arm.  “Come.”

This felt wrong.  Like everything had been pulled back on a slingshot, and Avery didn’t feel like they were prepared for it or in control of the trajectory.  They’d cleared a path, a lot of their people were on the fringes, fighting.  Lucy and Verona were out front, dealing with the Titan and probably a pile of other stuff.

The relative quiet made it feel like Avery was doing something wrong.  The arguments were over buildings.  The Kims were tied up.  Even as someone pushed one of the younger Kims, they didn’t lash out.  Mr. Black got a shove too, which made some sense, since he was pretending to be on the same side as the Kims.

Was Avery playing into this by pulling Clem away?

“There’s an item,” Avery murmured, guiding Clem.  “I think it’s bad.”

“Trust those instincts,” Clementine replied.  She stopped in her tracks to look at Avery.  “What’s going on?”

“It’s a nice looking item.  I’m not sure what it’s about.  But I’ve got a little plan for you in mind.  I need to know, how many items do you have on you?”

“Fifteen?  About that.”

“How many would you get rid of forever if you could?”

“Of these?  Nine.”

“If you could pick one of those nine to get rid of?”

“Depends a lot on what you mean by ‘get rid of’.  If I get rid of something bad and it finds its way to the general public…”

“Walk me through it?”

Clementine did, with brief descriptions.

Once they’d settled on an answer, Avery gave Clementine her instructions.

Then, standing guard, she watched as Clementine reached into her bag and picked out some metal tongs.  She collected the horse figurine, and held it at arm’s length.

Avery navigated the crowd.  The Kims were watching her, she was aware, but there wasn’t a lot they could apparently do.

Well, that was wrong.  There had to be a lot they could do, but they weren’t willing to cross that line.

So they were playing nice.  Playing along with the story, even.

And there had to be more to it, because they were too calm, too confident, and if Lucy and Verona had released that Titan, and it was that damn close, being calm and confident didn’t make sense.

Avery found Melissa and Bracken.  “You good?”

“Good enough.”

She gave a nod to someone who had nothing to do with anything, who had a neckwarmer, balaclava, and winter hat on under his hood, and he squinted his eyes at her.

Vaughn, scarf pulled up, lower face bandaged.  She leaned in and he leaned down.  “Hey, I don’t know if you want to get clear again, but… I think stuff’s about to go down.”

“How bad?”

“Calamity?” she threw out a word.

“Then I’ll stay.”

“Er, but your thing?”

“It’s the little things that get to me most.”

“Hmm.”

“There’s a story behind it, but…”

“Yeah, I know.  Um.  But if we’re planning a rescue and that somehow counts?”

He raised his chin a bit.  Rain pattered against his glasses.  “Alright.  Where do I go, then?”

“Away from the crowd?”

“Okay.”

“Where’s Pauline?  The woman who gets lost weird places?”

“I… guess she got lost somewhere.”

“Then hopefully she’s out of the way of this trouble?”

“Hopefully.”

Avery, Avery, Avery.

The call came from farther away.

“Alright.  Luck.”

Avery reversed direction, and started to head around to meet with Verona and Lucy.  Vaughn went the opposite direction, backing off.

The slingshot felt like it was being pulled back further.  No telling exactly when it would be released, or how.  The Kims, or some errant Others breaking through friendly lines, thinking they could do enough damage to turn things around, killing enough people that it left no witnesses and brought breached Innocence back to zero?  This Titan people were apparently so concerned about?  Avery wasn’t sure.  It was obscured from view by the weather.  Some elemental as big as a house?

However it happened, there wouldn’t be much time to react.

The Storm was swelling.  The wardings were a strained bubble, ready to pop.  People at the north end of the crowd were already feeling the weather worsen, ducking low or pulling hoods down with both hands.

Running north as well, to meet with Lucy and Verona, Avery was running into the worst of it.  The rain came down harder, her ability to see and hear got worse.

She crashed into the other two, arms out, in a kind of clothesliney sort of hug.  They did the same, and they immediately sank into a huddle.

“Set?”

“I sure hope so.  They aren’t pushing.  I think- remember what I said about seeing multiple Helens?”

“Yeah.”

“I think they sent all the decoys,” Avery told them.

“The non-decoys are trying to wrangle the Titan.  They’re doing better than we expected,” Verona huffed out the words between pants for breath.

“Right.  Um.  So now what?” Avery asked.

It was a situation of both sides setting something up.  A mess of a situation, each side trying to make things land in the other side’s court.

Like a stupid game with Declan or Sheridan.  Who got upset and overreacted first?

Avery had tended to ‘win’ because she didn’t tend to play.

This time around, it was the Kims who weren’t playing, exactly.  They were insulated.

Avery squinted her eyes shut, forehead resting against Lucy and Verona’s.  Cold water ran down her sleeve where she had it at Lucy’s back.  A tick of her bracelet made her lift her head.

Nothing too problematic.

“I’m worried if we upset things with the Titan, that puts too much onus on us,” Verona said.

“If we put more pressure on someone key?” Lucy asked.

“Who?” Avery asked.

“Hey!”

“Getting kinda cold, and these arguments people are having are getting circular and weird.  When does this end?”

“Don’t be so sure you want it to,” Lucy said.  “But I wish I knew.”

Avery reached out to Snowdrop, and felt Snowdrop making her way over.

Traveling by Warrens, Avery guessed, from the underground, slightly askew movement.

Emerging from the debris near a house.

“Things are great at the outer edges,” Snowdrop reported.  “We can hold them back all day.”

“How long?”

“All day.”

“I mean, specifically.”

“Minutes, hours, days, weeks, months.”

Avery could visualize things.  The state of the game, who was where.  The crowd at the middle of town.  The storm out ahead.

“They’re champing at the bit,” Snowdrop said, before champing for demonstrative measure.  “Moment they break through our lines, not that that’ll ever happen, they’re all in.”

“They need enough numbers to be confident,” Lucy said.

“Which is probably just enough to think that if the Titan comes tearing through, they can catch and clean up the rest,” Verona added.  “This crowd is a pretty juicy target.  Only reason they wouldn’t, I guess, is…”

“Seth’s probably saying it’s not a sure bet?” Avery guessed.  “Nicolette said.  Don’t know if you guys ran into anything about him, or-?”

“Definitely ran into Seth complications.”

Avery took a step back, walking backward up the snowbank, for that extra eight to ten feet of vantage point to look over things.

Menacing Others moved through shadows behind her.  One cackled in a way that made her skin prickle.

The fire trucks were putting out fires toward the middle-south part of Charles’ setup.  The crowd was at the middle of things.  Everything at the north end, Kim house and Titan included, was obscured by the warded-back Storm.

“I think the fire trucks don’t realize there’s more than one fire,” Avery said.  “Which is why they held back.”

“Do we want them to realize there’s more fire?” Melissa asked.  “We wanted to drive this mob through their town, right?  To the vital areas?”

Avery looked at her old hockey and soccer teammate, opening her mouth, trying to formulate a response that didn’t give tacit orders and set off this situation.  Because if this really did come down to the wire, being the person to say the words that led to the bursting of the bubble…

Melissa seemed to read her.  “We want the fire trucks out that way.”

Innocents and Aware, because of the way the Seal had been written, were a separate group.  It was what Bristow had used to insulate himself.

Melissa called out, “They aren’t putting out all the fires!  Isn’t that some liability bullshit!?”

There were murmurs and shouts.

People from the nearby town looked angry, their focus on things much different than preserving this setup Charles had put up overnight.  There were some back and forths.  Probably the only reason things didn’t get violent was that it was mostly people over fifty in the local town, with the occasional family, and on the other side, it was the Kims, who didn’t want to provoke things, and a bunch of Kennet and Kennet-affiliated people pretending to be part of Charles’s setup here.

Some word got out, someone at the southernmost end of the mob waved down a fireman, who jogged closer.  A few words, pointing.

He said something into the radio set built into his uniform, pulling a corded bit up to his mouth.

A moment later, a fire engine chirped.

The crowd began to move, parting and climbing up snowbanks to get off the road and let emergency vehicles pass.

Innocence added to the ward, pushing things back.  The burning house became visible, along with the edges of the Kim manor.

Several of the Kims obscured the way.

The fire alarm chirped, then honked, loud enough the people closest to it covered their ears.

“Let it burn!” one of the Kims hollered.  “It’s fine!”

“You want to let my house burn!?”

Mr. Figueroa.  He came down off the snowbank, getting right in the man’s face.  “You don’t like that we built here, so you want to let our shit burn, is that it!?”

“We built here, not you!”

“Fuck you, no!  We have just as much right!” Figueroa roared the words into the man’s face, grabbing at his collar.  It said a lot that the Kim guy wasn’t freaking out and folding, because Figueroa looked like a bodybuilder, tall and wide, and spat flecks with each shouted word, so in the guy’s face that it looked like he could bite his nose off.

“You have no right.  I’ve never even seen you before.”

Firemen had to climb out of the truck, forcibly separating the two, and moving them apart.

Avery, tense, watched everything.

Because if this went wrong, they’d have an instant to react.

More Kims obstructed the firefighters.

“What’s in that house?” Avery asked Lucy.

“Burned Others.  Enough to raise questions.”

“Right.”

“And the Kim place?  If enough Innocents get over there, it’ll have a Sharon-like effect.  Or an effect like-”

“My finder’s knots.  The down to earth baseballs.”

“Right.”

“I want it known, I’m saying no!” the Kim shouted.

The rain was getting worse.

“I’m trying to stop this!”

“Reducing responsibility,” Lucy murmured.  “Question is, when do they say this isn’t worth it?  That the risk of taking on responsibility is outweighed by their chances trying to wipe us out?”

“Perimeter’s doing great, at least,” Snowdrop muttered.

Avery squeezed her familiar around the shoulders.

The fire truck, rounding a corner, pulling into the kind-of-driveway that had been set up alongside the four walls and a roof to make the cabins legitimate and possible to get around between, and as it did, one of the Kims made a move.

The fire truck fell over onto its side with a crash.  The one behind it almost collided into it, and the one at the rear that might’ve had all the water they were using, skidded on ice, bumping lightly into bumper.

“There we go,” Lucy whispered.

Slingshot snapped.

The Storm immediately swelled, weather worsening.  The Titan, barely controlled, came their way.

Avery saw it as an orange swell behind the cloud cover, barely humanoid, but threatening to push through that last layer of clouds.

As it did, fragile wards snapped and broke, bringing elemental havoc.  Wraiths and echoes were in that storm.

And behind them, a jousting match.

Theodora pulled out the horn, holding it overhead.

The sword swallowed guy was apparently keeping an eye out for her, because he made a move, coming out of cover to go straight for that horn.  A magic item for the greedy dude possessed with a magic item.

Clem was there, moving to block.  She held the gold horse statuette thing like a weapon she was ready to use.

With a blur, obscured by rain and darkness, the kid leaped the snowbank, covered more ground than he should, and snatched it.

Clementine drew a knife.

And he disarmed her, taking it.

Clementine didn’t have any shortage of magic items.  This one was a recent find, apparently, that hadn’t come up earlier.  Pretty simple.  An enchanted knife that struck mortal blows.

The kid, still heading toward Thea, amid rain, dark, and the scattered crowd, had his Other move, leaning in, barely visible, to try to tell him something vital about what he’d picked up.

The teenager flinched, alarmed, nerves on edge, and stabbed the Other he was hosting in the neck.

The gimmick with the knife, the awful curse, was that when held, that happened.  People accidentally killed loved ones, pets, and friends.  Clementine had said she’d brought it more because she didn’t want to leave it anywhere near Corey.  She’d made her apartment off limits while she was gone, but the knife was something she definitely didn’t want Corey accidentally carting off.  The knife was here so it wouldn’t be used.

The Other wasn’t the sort to die from the knife blow, but it was solid enough to punch, hit and throw, and it was solid enough to be hurt and slowed down.

The Titan made its appearance.  A child, maybe ten years old, muscular for their age, but still lanky, hair wild, eyes glowing like suns, more glow coming from deep inside its throat.

“That’s bigger than I thought it would be,” Avery remarked.  “They made that with alchemy?”

“We think it was a big project Teddy and Josef Miller were working on together for a while,” Verona remarked.

“No kidding.”

It made a sound that started as a squeal and became a roar.

The crowd collapsed, falling like dominoes.

Dust plumes rose up.

Lucy pulled out a carbonated beverage from the side of her bag, turned it into a gun, aimed, and fired.

Hitting one of the Kims, who was unfolding limbs, getting ready to throw a car.

The rising dust began to obscure things.

Theodora, in child form, wearing a horned headdress and tattered, silvery skins, swept the horn around in circular motions.

Stirring up more dust.

People had fallen asleep, just after they’d glimpsed things.

Now Theodora stole them away.  Calling on Law to help support her practice, rescuing Innocents and preserving the peace.

The Kims were encouraging the Titan to attack.  They didn’t seem to have a lot of control, but they could hold it back and have the cage door pointed this direction.

Titans who grew to age ten in half an hour apparently didn’t have great parents teaching them how to regulate emotions, because this kid was ready to throw a tantrum.  As he did, muscles bulged, veins stood out, and those forking veins glowed and became crackles of forking lightning, too.  The Storm intensified, then followed his cues, becoming accents for his every sweep of the arm or stomp of the foot.  Swept arm, sudden gale of wind propelling frozen rain.

Stomped foot, lightning struck.

Avery hunkered down.  The Storm was way worse than it had been.  It immediately soaked her through.  If her wards were still up, they were melting.

Kims worked their sticks, and their bodily shapes distorted.

Many of them had combat forms.

The rain obscured them as they stretched out.

Avery felt hair stand on end.  Something pulled at her-

And Lucy pulled from the other direction.

Hauling Avery down, back, and behind the outside corner of a cabin.

“They’ll break your bones with that if you stay in their view too long,” Verona remarked.

“Good to know.”

“It’s temporary bone breakage.”

“Running into a lot of that, I guess,” Avery commented.

Some Aware, Denizens, and Foundlings remained from the crowd, and quickly retreated.

“Let it be known,” Lucy said.  “They fucked up with Innocence here.  That’s bad karma.”

“Terrible karma,” Verona added.  “Dozens of people with Innocence threatened?  Wow.”

“Our side protected them.  That has to count,” Lucy said.  “Transfer the karmic debt to us.  Way I see it, this should be enough to revoke power from the Kims.”

The Titan, stomping forward, lightning striking once or twice with every footfall, slowed.

Rain that came down decreased in intensity.

The world ticked down like a slowing clock that hadn’t been wound enough.  The ticking became more apparent.  Mechanical.

Time slowed to a hundredth of what it should be.

And that mechanical sound bled into another sound.  Whirring, the legs of a centipede striking hard surfaces as he whisked on past them.

“There appears to be some dispute, because the other side is saying something that’s the opposite,” the Aurum remarked.  “I’m happy to arbitrate it.”

“You got this?” Avery murmured.

“Think so,” Lucy said.  Verona nodded.

“I’m going.”

“You, Ms. Kelly, should stay,” the Aurum said.  “You played a large role in the involvement of Innocents.”

“She can appoint me as her representative,” Lucy said.  “And the other side has people who aren’t part of this.  If we’re tied up here-”

“Wouldn’t that be a shame?”

“-it’s not something you can compel by Law.  Especially when this is a matter better suited to the Alabaster.”

“Given the stakes, all three,” Verona said.

“Now who’s trying to tie everyone up?” the Aurum asked, eyebrow arched his centipede forming a knot before undoing itself.

“It’s Law, and you know it.  We’re in our rights to ask for a Judge who fits the problem at hand.”

“A transition, a change.  You’re altering Awareness.  Transitions are my jurisdiction.”

“At the very least… Alabaster’s involved too.  Or do we need to get into your bias and level of involvement?”

“Do we?” the Aurum asked.  The smile fell off his face.

“I’m clear to go?” Avery murmured.

The Aurum flicked fingers to one side.

Avery jogged off, bringing Snowdrop with.

She could see the flash of white as the Alabaster came in, to weigh in.

The Sable followed a moment later, a slash of darkness coming down like a lightning strike, churning up those spiky black rocks as it met ground.

Three Judges.

Then Avery pushed past the area where time was slowed.  The Storm resumed, soaking her through.

The area with slowed time was tinted in different colors, and it pulsed with energy.  Enough that the Others surrounding the area weren’t willing to approach.  Avery, reaching for a pocket, felt her hand pushed off course.

Wouldn’t do if this kind of mediation could be rigged for Others to surround and prepare to pounce the moment it ended.  Or if traps could be laid.  At the very least, they’d be dropped back into a situation roughly the same as the one they’d been in when the Judges had stepped in.

She let Snowdrop go small, and tucked her somewhere warmer, inside her coat of antlers.  She fixed her mask, and then she ran.

Deeper into the Storm.  It soaked her through, head to toe.  It chilled.  Lightning struck dangerously close to her, and runework she’d done earlier glowed, warding off the worst of it.

Past the Kim house, which didn’t have more for her.

The Allaire forsworn had gone out of their way to not be a part of this.

They hadn’t been violent.  Hadn’t attacked Kennet.  But they were on Charles’ side.

Avery knew she was sticking her neck out.  Her parents would be so pissed if they knew she was doing this again.  At least the Aurum was tied up with something.

Charles’ setup caught the light and shed a red tint.  It moved as she moved, perpetually out of reach.

It would take a day’s travel to get to.

But the Allaires had their own houses up here too.  Houses made of glamour that had suffered like the other houses had.

People stepped out of the rain as Avery drew closer.

She recognized a handful of them.  A woman with burnished gold hair that seemed to stay picturesque even when soaking wet.

Rabbit Killer, who wore a slim black coat, his shadow askew compared to the ambient lighting, which wasn’t much.

The… Daeva?  The woman that appeared young and pretty to innocents and old and horrible to people who’d done great wrong.

Not as pretty as she’d been, once.  Avery had a feeling it was because of what had happened with the Family Man.  Blood on Avery’s hands.  Or shoes.

There were others.  Familiars Abraham Musser had stolen.  Not all.  Some might have gone back to their practitioners.  Avery didn’t see the raven-haired one who’d had the glittery toga-ish halter top.

Another figure stepped outside.  A woman with light brown skin, wearing white.

“What the hell are you building for Charles?” Avery asked.

“You expect us to tell you, because you made it this far?”

“If you’re not willing to tell me or try to sell others on it… is it that good an idea?” Avery asked.

The woman stared at Avery for a few seconds.

“Come in out of the storm.  Have bread and tea.”

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter