“Incoming!” Cole yelled.
The tower began to shake hard enough that I had to brace myself against the wall. A crack appeared about ten feet above my head and worked its way to the top.
“Bloody hell!” I heard Lymon say. “Those are amazing effects!”
“Ow! Dammit!” Bergman yelled. “Jaz! Tabitha’s going for my nads! Astral’s chasing her own tail, and my mother taught me never to hit a girl!”
“Let her go, Miles!” I ordered. “And get those civilians under cover! Now!” The crack widened. I realized the only original wood was the material we’d been able to touch. The rest was gnome grown. And because people never noticed what they passed every day, rarely even looked up, no one had realized.
I clicked on the safety and stowed Grief in its holster. “I’m going in!” I said. The crack was now the width of my shoulders. But even if I jumped I wouldn’t be able to get a hand on the edge.
“Do you need a lift?” I’d run to Kyphas’s side of the tower, where she stood tossing her boomerang up and down so casually you’d have thought we were about to have a distance-throwing competition.
“Yeah.”
Giving me her I-know-more-than-you-do smile, she leaned over and cupped her hands. Which was when I hopped onto her shoulders and sprang onto the roof.
“Hey!” Her protest, backlit by Cole’s chuckle, was quickly lost in the wave of sound that washed into the tower as the sky car arrived right after me.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-THREE
My hands sank through a foot of plant material until they found a solid support. Knowing a two-by-four when I felt one, I grabbed hold and flipped the rest of my body around to join my hands inside the tower.
My collarbone twanged as I asked it to contort more than it had since I’d broken it weeks before. But it held, giving my legs a chance to find the stud that angled up to meet the one I held. I worked my way to the floor of the tower just in time to look over and see Kyphas land on the balls of her feet beside me.
She grinned. “I’m better than you are.”
“Go ahead,” I told her, giving her Lucille’s winning smile. “Keep thinking that.”
A frown marred her perfect brow as the sky car came to a rumbling halt inside the cube, its temporary door already growing closed as the passengers waited for the stairs to roll to their door. Except no grunts were running around the massive wooden hangar pushing trolleys full of suitcases or waving orange-tipped dildo lookalikes to direct everybody else where to go.
I watched the car sway above the floor’s center, its cable glinting in the lights that had begun to glow the moment the roof shut. They’d been strung like Christmas twinklers along the frame of the building proper.
The planted sections of tower had their own set of support beams that had folded back to admit the car and then returned to center. I reminded myself to give Bergman a tour if we all survived this.
“Cole! We’re going to need you here as soon as—” I whispered. I heard a pop. “What the hell?”
“Don’t worry. Just a gum-bubble breaking. I’m on my way. Where should I leave Jack?”
“There will be no dumping of my dog. You figure out how to haul his ass up here or you don’t come.”
“Weakling,” Kyphas sneered.
“Spinster.”
She tossed her boomerang in the air and glared.
Vayl dropped to the floor, rolling to soften the impact. I saw fang flash as he ran, blending into the shadows even better than those of us who were standing perfectly still.
“I believe the Space Complex is safe for now,” he said as he joined us. “But we must free Ruvin immediately. Johnson has begun to show signs of illness.”
That meant the larvae could arrive at any time!
“How are we supposed to get to him? I don’t see any stairs,” I said. Before Vayl could suggest a plan, the gnomes began to climb out the sky car’s door. Working with remarkable cooperation, holding on to one another from wrists to ankles, they formed a living ladder that reached the floor. Johnson and Tykes came next, stepping on heads and fingertips, occasionally slipping. The gnomes moaned as Tykes made his way down because his waist alone had more rolls than a school cafeteria. He fell the last five feet.
The two gnomes left in the sky car came to the door, holding a struggling Ruvin between them. It looked like they intended to drop him. Apparently larvae didn’t care if the midwife’s flesh was full of broken bones, only that it still lived.
“Go!” said Vayl just as a shirtless Cole burst through the plant roof carrying Jack next to his chest in a homemade, sleeve-fluttering sling.
Kyphas flung her boomerang toward Ruvin’s guards. She hit the one on the right so hard that his nose imploded and blood sprayed out the door as if somebody had turned on a hose full of cherry Kool-Aid. I saw him stagger backward just as I slammed into the gnome ladder. The two nearest the bottom dropped to the floor.
I sprang up, grabbing the lowest hanging guard by his fancy pants and hoping he believed in belts as much as he felt that broken ankles should be discussed but never experienced. He wriggled and kicked, but didn’t think of loosening his grip until I’d latched on to the next gnome in line.
Later Vayl confessed he was so concerned about me falling and breaking another bone that he nearly let Cole and Kyphas do the rest of the work. They did make a disturbingly fluid team. While Kyphas immobilized an Ufranite on the floor, Cole stripped off the shirt sling and let Jack run, giving himself full access to the Parker-Hale he’d packed on his back. His first shot took out the second sky car guard, but not before he’d given Ruvin a hard
