spurt blood from a string of holes linking his navel with his forehead. Crimson liquid sprayed the wall behind him, then the whole of his head above his glassy eyes disintegrated. As he toppled backward, his lifeless fingers let my ankle slip free.
The other ogre, who had increased tension in preparation for the troll's punch, whipped me out from beneath the troll's falling fist. I felt the warehouse floor shudder with the blow, and Golnartac's enraged scream shook the corrugated tin walls like a summer storm. Another screech, this one of ogre-pain, sang out in counterpoint to the troll's cry, and the pressure on my left ankle evaporated.
Suddenly I found myself tumbling and rolling across the concrete floor. I landed on my left shoulder and felt a grinding crackle in my ribs, but I used the pain to force my body to react. Adrenaline flooded through me yet again and dulled the pain. I scrambled to one knee, fists balled, then coughed a wet laugh of triumph and joy.
Kid Stealth stood on one ogre's back with his smoking Kalashnikov still pointed at the ogre he'd blown away. The sickle-shaped claws on his artificial, birdlike titanium legs dripped ogre blood-the other talons just clung on to the dead body beneath him. He'd been what I saw moving through the girders above the warehouse floor, and he'd nailed the one ogre while dropping down to rake his claws through the second.
The troll remained down on one knee, cradling his broken fist to his chest. Above the hand, right over where the troll's heart should have been, rode a red dot. Back by the warehouse's side door I saw the stocky outline of Tom Electric. The laser-scope on his armor-piercing rocket launcher twinkled reassuringly at me.
Behind and above Tom four more people appeared. Two were the local gillettes I'd taken to calling Zig and Zag. Also armed with Kalashnikovs they flanked the most beautiful member of Raven's crew, Valerie Valkyrie. She looked over at me with horror on her face, while the two street samurai covered the Halloweeners. Plutarch Graogrim, an ork, moved away from Zig and Zag, keeping his pistol trained on Charles the Red.
I saw Sampson go pale and I knew Raven had arrived. I looked over at Doc as he stepped from the shadows. The blackness rippled off his coppery skin and clung to him long enough to deeply score lines around his muscles. Tall, even for an elf, he looked human because of his extraordinary build and the high cheekbones his Amerind blood granted him. His long, black hair fell down over his leather vest to mid-chest and all but hid his pointed elven ears.
I like to pride myself on having silvery eyes and a scary stare, but the incendiary look Doc gave Sampson put even my best effort into the amateur category. His eyes burned with blue and red highlights as if an aurora rippled through their black depths. Muscles tensed at the corners of Raven's lantern jaw and the flesh tightened around his eyes.
Raven's voice sliced through the silence like a laser through cheap tin sheet. 'You had a message for me?'
Those six words might as well have been.50 caliber slugs for the effect they had on Mr. Sampson. He shook his head violently and cursed. 'No, dammit, not here, not now!' His hands flew up and around like snakes writhing in pain, then something flashed and Sampson vanished.
The Halloweeners started jabbering nervously among themselves, but the click-click-click of Kid Stealth's talons against the concrete as he ran over to cover them killed their conversation. 'I have nothing on IR.'
Raven stared at where Sampson had stood as if memorizing all that had just happened. He looked up and over quickly, back along the path Stealth had used to come into the warehouse, then nodded as someone yelped in pain. 'He went out the way you came in, Stealth.'
The Murder Machine smiled. 'A strand of razor wire can cut you bad when someone booby-traps his backtrail.'
'Time enough to track him later,' Raven said, then trotted over to where I knelt. He dropped down beside me and wove a quick spell that cut the pain at the same time it told him what was wrong with me.
'Take it easy, Wolf. Nothing that won't heal in time.' He gave me a smile that buoyed my spirits, but it sank into a thin line of concern as I reached out and grabbed his hand.
'Doc, I need some help, now…' I looked over at Golnartac. 'I want him…' Raven looked deep into my eyes. He didn't use any magic, at least no magic I could feel, but he knew what I was thinking. 'Wolf, you don't have to do this. Lynn is safe. Give yourself time to heal. You know if I use magic and it goes wrong, or there's a complication, it might stay that way.'
He looked over at Kid Stealth. 'For him, for any of the others, the possibility of replacing a defective part mechanically is there. For you, for me, that option is not possible.'
'You heard Sampson, Doc. You heard what they were going to do to Lynn.'
'That was their fantasy, but we've stopped them, my friend. I only deal in realities, and reality says she'll be fine.'
'Yes, but I won't be.' I pointed at the troll and he sneered at me. 'Sampson called a tune, and the troll would have gladly played it. Well, I've got a variation on a theme to teach him.'
'This is stupid, Wolf.'
'We're here, Lynn's here, because / was stupid. I want to spend the rest of my life with Lynn, but to do that I need to know I can keep her safe. He always had an advantage over me, and now we're just about even. I have no choice, Richard. I have to do this.'
I saw the lightplay in his eyes quicken. I only called him Richard when it was truly important, but he still did not want to damage me permanently. 'Wolf, there has to be another way.'
I shook my head. 'Don't fix anything. Just kill the pain long enough for me to reach the Old One.'
Raven stood and helped me to my feet. 'And if the troll kills you?'
My eyes narrowed to silver slits. 'Don't worry about it. You only deal in realities, remember?'
As Raven's spell washed over me like a warm, spring shower, I retreated deep into my heart of hearts. I swam through lines of pain that shimmered like heat lightning playing through dark thunderheads, but the spell took me beyond its touch. At times the going was difficult, but I forced myself on, haunted by the knowledge that I had almost gotten Lynn killed.
The Old One regarded me with an eager look of bloodlust on his face. 'Leave it to me, Longtooth. Give yourself to me and I will destroy the troll.'
'No. I gave myself over to you and your powers meant nothing without intelligence guiding their use. I need everything you are, but I must have it onmy terms, undermy control.'
The Wolf spirit yipped high laughter. 'You are in pain and are weak. What makes you think you can control me now?'
My anger and outrage at having failed to keep Lynn safe tightened around him like a net. 'It is enough that I know Imust control you. I need your speed and your strength. I need your heart and your endurance. You will meet my needs in my way. You failed, and you owe me the chance to put it all right. It must be a man who destroys that troll, and I will be that man.'
The old wolf tilted its head in an attitude of curiosity. 'But you are not a man-you are more.'
I ground my teeth together. 'Tonight I will settle for being just a man.'
The Old One sensed my need and my pain. 'Very well, I agree without condition. This is my gift to you, Longtooth Man-warrior.'
The warehouse swam into focus again, but the heightened senses made it all seem as if I had never been there before. I smelled terror from the Halloween-ers and death rising from the ogre bodies. I watched tremors threaten to tear the sellspell medic to pieces as I looked at him. All of Raven's aides looked at me differently than they would have normally-physically I remained the same, but they knew I was not exactly myself.
No, my friends, I am more myself than I have ever been in your company!
I turned and met the troll's evil gaze with an eagerness that daunted the monster ever so slightly. I moved away from Raven and into the center of the warehouse's open floor. I forced my left hand into a fist and bit back a cry as bones ground together in my forearm. Pointing at Golnartac, I waved him forward. 'Come here, you. You're mine.'
His laughter had the same grating quality as fingernails being raked across a chalkboard. 'Little man will make little smear.'
The troll lumbered forward, but I struck with a speed powered by my anger. As he swung a ponderous fist through where I had been, I darted forward and drove two punches and an elbow into the muscles bunched above his right knee. My blows crumbled flesh to dust, but the creature's rock-hard muscles absorbed the impacts more efficiently than a black hole sucking in photons.
