Cameron Haley - Mob rules

Three of them came at me with the weed whackers, while the other six hung back and lobbed glamours at me. I still couldn't use sorcery in the Between, but my own glamour worked just fine. I huffed and puffed and managed to block most of the spells that floated toward me like bad air. One got through. It settled over me and worked its way inside, and it turned me into a toad.

This was a bad choice of spells to use on me, all things considered, though the elf had no way of knowing that. I just hopped around and waited while the sidhe warriors sheathed their swords and started laughing. Then I shifted back to the Domino-shaped body I prefer, drew Ned and gunned a couple of them down.

"Ribbit," I said.

Honey corkscrewed down toward us, dropping pixie dust on the elves like confetti at a parade. Three of them collapsed on the street, laughing uncontrollably, and I was pretty sure Honey's magic was the cause rather than my amphibian humor.

One of the warriors had gotten close enough to take a swing at me, and his sword lashed out, reflecting the blue night as it swung in a flat arc at my head. I brought Ned up and caught the blade on the barrel. When the silver touched iron, there was a flash of sapphire sparks and the sword shattered.

"Sorry about that," I said to the elf, who stood there staring dumbly at his broken sword. Then I shot him in the head.

As necessary as it may be, witty banter in the midst of battle is never the most efficient angle to take in a fight. While I was commiserating with the sidhe warrior, one of the remaining three drew a silver hunting horn from her pack and lifted it to her lips. I cursed and was just able to aim and fire Ned before the sidhe sounded the horn. The shot took the elf in the chest and she crumpled without a sound.

Honey's sword was out and she was dueling two of the sidhe. They looked like they were trying to swat a fly with machetes. I couldn't get a clean shot with Ned. The elves lunged at Honey, and her blade flashed, slicing open a slender throat. She spun in midair and planted her sword in the other sidhe's eye. The piskie flicked emerald juice from her blade as the bodies fell.

"Domino, follow me." Honey flew into a nearby building and I followed her up three flights of stairs to the roof. The piskie flew to the edge and looked back at me.

"I saw it when I flew up here at the start of the fight," she said. I came up beside her and looked out over the city. Our vantage wasn't that high and we were encircled by the pale mist. But I could see what I needed to. We hadn't been unlucky appearing in the middle of the fairies, because they were everywhere. Some of the sidhe were camped, but others marched along the streets in columns that trailed into the mist.

A fey army was mobilizing in South Central L.A. Fourteen "We have to go, right now," I said when we made it back to the field headquarters in Crenshaw. I briefed my team on what I had seen while they gathered the weapons and arcane paraphernalia they'd need for the attack on the gate.

"We stumbled on an encampment a mile from the factory," I said. "They're all over Hawthorne. It seems like the whole Seelie Court is encamped in the city."

Honey disagreed. "The Court is vast. It's a nation, Domino. What we saw is just an army."

"The point is, Oberon has moved an army into position around the gate. Rashan seems to think he won't send them through all at once, but he's obviously ready to send some of them. That gate is going to open soon, and we don't have time to wait for more tags."

"We will make do," Amy said. She already had her shit together, and she sat quietly, preparing herself.

We piled into Frank Seville's Hummer, and I rode shotgun while he drove. Literally-I'd grabbed the Mossberg out of the trunk of the Lincoln before we left. The weapon might come in handy if the juice ran low during the fight.

We'd done everything we could to keep a lid on it, but civilization was coming undone in Crenshaw, and things grew steadily worse as we drove through Inglewood toward Hawthorne. The orange glow of fires dotted the skyline in every direction, and the only people on the streets were looters and thugs.

Honey and I went to work on the other members of the strike team, putting glamours on them that would offer at least some protection from fairy magic. I was hoping it would be an unnecessary precaution. If we destroyed the gate quickly maybe we wouldn't even see a fairy, let alone have to fight one. I wasn't willing to bet on it, though. And I didn't want to think about what would happen to my team if they went up against the sidhe completely unprotected.

At Centinela and La Brea, a line of burned-out cars had been towed into position across the street, forming a makeshift roadblock. I was willing to bet we'd find more just like them blocking all of the major arteries into Hawthorne.

Seville stopped and began backing up, and then the Hummer was rammed from behind by a massive green waste management truck. We were thrown forward and smashed into the roadblock, just as a rocket-propelled grenade detonated against our left front fender and tore away most of the Hummer's front end. The airbags deployed as the ambushers unloaded on the mortally wounded vehicle.

I threw up both my physical and magical shields as I battled the front and side airbags. I couldn't see anything, and all I could hear was the cacophony of combat spells and automatic weapons fire tearing the SUV apart. My defensive shields wouldn't last long, and if we couldn't get clear of the ambush, we were going to die.

I've mentioned before that I can't fly, and this is true. I can use my telekinesis spell on myself, or, say, a vehicle I'm in, but I'd discovered soon after learning the spell that this isn't the same as flying. The telekinesis spell is simple force magic, and what control it offers is a little crude. It's great for tossing vampires around, and it serves as the basis of my levitation spell, but it's not so great for flying.

Given the circumstances, I realized crude was better than dead. "All movements go too far," I said, and hit the twisted wreckage of the Hummer with the telekinesis spell. I picked up the truck and threw it about fifty yards down the street, beyond the roadblock and the kill zone. It hit the street with a hellish crash, rolled a few times and smashed through the metal and glass facade of a dollar store. We finally came to rest upside down. I hung from my seat belt and looked over at Seville.

"That'll buff right out, Frank."

"Fuck it, Domino. I've got GEICO."

We piled out of the truck and staggered into the street, looking back toward the roadblock. Papa Danwe's gangbangers had left the buildings, rooftops and alleyways to either side and were strung out in a line, scrambling down the street toward us. There were at least a couple dozen thugs in the little mob, and they never had a chance.

All six of us, plus Honey, unleashed our nastiest combat spells on them simultaneously. This probably would have been the most impressive magical performance I'd ever seen, except it all happened at once and I didn't really see anything. Magic lit up the street in rapid-fire flashes, and a sound like heaven falling to earth crashed around us. There was a lot of smoke, and when it cleared, the gangbangers were gone. Most of the buildings and storefronts were gone, too. What was left looked like the streets of Dresden after an Allied bombing run.

We all stood there for a moment and looked at our handiwork. A brick fell loose from a demolished building and clattered down a pile of rubble into the street. A shard of glass dropped from a shattered window and smashed against the still-smoking sidewalk. Then all was silent, but for a lone dog barking somewhere in the night.

We covered the rest of the distance to the old factory on foot. We followed the path marked by the friendly graffiti our taggers had put down. There were three more ambushes before we reached the factory. They all ended like the first had, and a lot more quickly. I couldn't be sure because there weren't any bodies to count, but we must have trimmed the size of Papa Danwe's outfit by at least a hundred.