Since this was about to turn ugly I roughly stopped the people coming up behind me, while still letting the people who were already crossing off. “Sky bridge is closed for maintenance. Sorry. Go around.”
“Aw, come on,” said a very round, very red, Kool-Aid Man. “The food court’s right over there.”
“Trust me, pal. You don’t want to crash through this wall.” I really wasn’t in the mood. “Seriously, we’re about to have a rumble here.”
“Ooh, a flash mob.” He took out his phone to take video.
For a very tense moment, the regular, unwitting people kept getting off the sky bridge, as an increasingly annoyed crowd backed up behind me, until it was just us, the girl, and the snake people, one of whom was staring at his phone, then at the red backpack, and then back at his phone. “That’ss her.” He hissed, and by hissed, I mean he really put the accent on the s sounds. “Sseize the ssstone.”
That was a very obnoxious affectation. I’d long thought the Church of the Temporary Mortal Condition held the title for most annoying death cult, but that fake lisp nonsense sure bumped these guys up the rankings. “Shove it up your asssss,” I said. “Just talk normal, doofus.”
From the way they all pulled out knives, I think my words actually hurt the snake cultists’ feelings. They had been trying extra hard to be frightening.
The girl looked between us and the cultists, then grinned and said, “Ooh, MCB dorks versus snake pricks. Nice.”
“We’re not MCB, and we don’t want to hurt you.” Trip was ever the diplomat, as he appealed earnestly to the possibly psychotic shape-shifter. “I can’t say that for these other guys. We just want the Ward. We can protect you from them.”
She actually laughed. “Aw, that’s cute.” The girl had a very normal, vanilla, middle-American accent, and sounded about as old as all her faces looked. “But I don’t need protecting.”
Then she punched the wall, cracking the thick glass with one tiny fist, and then threw her shoulder against it. The glass shattered as she crashed through.
It was a pretty good drop to the street. Easily far enough to break a bunch of bones, but she didn’t actually hit the street. She fell in a shower of broken glass, landed on the roof of a moving car, rolled, slid down the trunk, and somehow hit feet first, as we all stared in shocked disbelief. She saw me watching, then put her hand to her forehead, pointer finger and thumb extended to make an L, calling us losers. Then she started running again.
The witnesses loved that stunt and started clapping for her.
Trip immediately transmitted. “She’s jumped off the sky bridge and is on the street level . . . heading . . . I have no idea at this point. I’m lost.”
“Oh, screw that. I am not jumping out the window after her.”
Even if I had been tempted to break my legs, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity anyway, because that’s when the cultists decided to try and murder us.
The five of them rushed Trip. I thought about just pulling my .45 and dropping them all, but overpenetration is a bitch, and there were about a hundred innocent bystanders just behind them whom I really didn’t want to put holes into by accident. So we’d do this the old-fashioned way. Hopefully Trip wouldn’t get stabbed before I got there.
Except Trip surprised me by pulling out a canister of pepper spray and hosing them all down with it. The cultists screamed and clutched at their eyes. One still managed to slash at him, but Trip leapt back before he could get clipped. I passed Trip by and threw a hook to the cultist’s midsection hard enough to pancake his liver. He bounced off the glass.
Even partially blind and gasping, a moron with a knife is still extremely dangerous. I caught an incoming stab and twisted the wrist hard. He squealed when the bones broke, and I slung him around into one of his buddies. Their heads hit so hard that I knew they were on a one-way trip to concussion town. Trip kicked the next one in the leg, and when that dirtbag dropped to one knee, Trip slugged him right in his stupid fake fangs. Or at least I was assuming they were fake the way they snapped off and went flying. Trip managed to hit him three more times before the silly-looking weirdo flopped to the carpet.
The last snake man still standing was orange dye-faced, crying, wheezing, coughing, and had dropped his goofy butterfly knife, but in his other hand was his phone. Since he’d been looking at it earlier, it must have had the tracking app on it. “Give me that.” I snatched the phone from him. Then I kicked him in the balls really hard, just on general principle.
It had only taken a few seconds to leave them all unconscious or weeping on the floor.
“That was awesome!” shouted Kool-Aid Man, because apparently the observers thought that had been some sort of elaborate staged event. “I’m posting this on Instagram!” Thankfully for us the crowd’s density and enthusiasm were the only thing keeping the cops from getting through. Except then the cloud of pepper spray wafted over and people started to freak out when it got in their eyes. They thought they had it bad? I’d been closer and it was really irritating my asthma.
“We’ve got to go.” I did glance briefly out the hole the shape-shifter had made, calculated the drop, and decided that I liked my ankles unshattered, thank you very much. We started toward what had been the snake end of the bridge. We were moving through the crowd again fast, but pretty much lost, and on the lookout for the cops. “I didn’t know you carried pepper spray.”
“I never leave home without my spicy treat dispenser.” Trip shook his hand out. “Ouch. This is why right here. I think I broke my pinky on that guy’s
