killed me. I let fly with my shot and it sailed above his right shoulder, much to my chagrin. Dropping my bow because there’d be no time for another shot, I leapt back under the roof and drew Fragarach with my right hand and another blessed arrow from my quiver with my left.
I positioned myself behind one of the roof’s supporting steel posts so that Basasael would have to pick a side to attack from and reduce his speed accordingly. It turned out the post was not something he considered to be an actual obstacle. He simply bashed it aside with his right arm as his wings spread to brake his flight, and the post obligingly ripped out of its moorings and buckled a portion of the roof as if it were made of Nerf rather than steel.
“Don’t you feel the least bit ill right now?” I asked. I could see the courtyard through the yawning white hole in his head. It was still boiling and hissing, eating away at his substance-as were the other two wounds-but in terms of real damage it only seemed to have pissed him off.
His feet touched down on the concrete rather than the earth, so Cold Fire was out of the question; he answered me by belching a gout of bright orange flame at my face. It looked exactly like the ball of hellfire Aenghus Og had thrown at me. “Hey!” I shouted as the flame passed over me, giving me a brief sensation of heat but otherwise leaving me unharmed, thanks to my amulet’s protection. “You’re the bastard who made a deal with Aenghus Og! You’re the one who’s been behind it all!”
I heard the squeal of the office doors opening to my right: Someone was coming out to investigate what all the ruckus was. They wouldn’t be able to see me or the demon, but they’d sure see the mangled post lying in the rain and a dangerously drooping roof. They’d also be in mortal danger. It’s the sort of situation that gets duelists killed: a split second of distraction, flicking the eyes away for a shadow of a moment, and suddenly it’s all over. Basasael was counting on it; perhaps he saw my eyes move, perhaps he didn’t, but he shook off his surprise that I didn’t burn and took advantage anyway. He was still a good four feet away from me, but his right arm shot toward my chest and his fingers extended, then his claws did likewise, telescope fashion, aiming for my heart. He wanted to pull one of those Mola Ram maneuvers, ripping my still-beating heart out of my chest and then laughing at me as I watched him eat it. I dodged to my right as quickly as I could, raising my left arm to let the claws pass under, but I wasn’t quick enough. I felt four rotten black spikes pierce my side, scraping against the outside of my ribs and penetrating clear through to keep me pinned to the wall.
I grunted in pain and retaliated quickly, because part of him was pinned too: I drove the tip of the blessed arrow down through the back of his corrupted hand and on through the palm. He howled and yanked his hand away, withdrawing the evil claws from my side, and in that moment of reprieve I risked a quick glance to my right.
A wide-eyed female administrator in conservative dress was talking rapidly into a handheld radio. “There’s some damage to the courtyard roof and some strange animal noises, but I can’t tell what’s making them.”
“Get back inside, lady!” I yelled. “For your own safety!” That was the best I could do for her just then. Basasael looked as if he was going to move in closer and tear my head off, so I raised Fragarach in a defensive stance and winced at the burning in my side. As the fallen angel bent his knees and hissed at me, arms spread in a wrestler’s stance, preparing to spring, it occurred to me that maybe Coyote should have managed to shoot an arrow or two during the fracas.
Where was the trickster? Had he taken off and left me to face the fallen angel alone? He’d been known to do that in several stories told about him: Get the white man to agree to a course of action, then take off at the critical moment and make him look like a fool. I didn’t know what more I could do to this creature by myself. Four holy arrows had obviously done some physical damage; he’d loudly announced that he felt pain from them, but he still kept coming. A morbid thought wandered into my consciousness and said hello: If Basasael ate my dumb Druid ass, would the Morrigan be able to bring me back fully functional, resurrected from-what? Angel poop? That raised another question, at once metaphysical and profane: Do angels, fallen or otherwise, have assholes?
Coyote provided an answer in singular fashion. I heard a sickening, juicy squelching noise, and Basasael forgot all about charging me. He stood straight up on his clawed toes, feet together like a wooden nutcracker doll, his black eyes bulging and his throat ululating in a bean sidhe howl of agony that made me clutch my ears-or, rather, my one good ear and my one mess of pathetic cartilage niblets.
Coyote shouted “Ha!” once and then began to yip in amusement, scampering across the courtyard in his animal shape, taunting the fallen angel, and Basasael launched himself skyward to give chase.
While he was thus diverted, I took the opportunity to sheathe Fragarach and grab the school administrator by the collar, dragging her back to the office doors. She yelped in startlement, and I shouted at her as I tossed her inside, “Put the school in lockdown now! Just do it before someone else gets killed!” Every school in America had a lockdown procedure they followed to keep students safe in an emergency.
“What? Who got killed?”
“Take attendance and you’ll find out. It’s what you’re best at, because the gods know it’s not teaching them English. Damn kids don’t know the difference between an adjective and an adverb!” I needed to shut up. Stress was making me take my frustrations out on this poor frumpy lady who probably never got laid.
“Who are…? Why can’t I see you?”
“Lockdown! Attendance! Stay inside!” I slammed the door shut for extra emphasis and hoped that would galvanize her to the proper course of action. Turning back to the courtyard, I saw that Basasael was trying to fry Coyote from the air with his great balls o’ fire. Coyote was thus far a mite too fast for him, but I wasn’t sure how long that would last or if Coyote would be able to withstand a direct hit of hellfire.
I scurried over to where I’d dropped my bow in the courtyard. It was still camouflaged, so I couldn’t see it, and it took me a few frantic moments to stumble into it. The act of bending over to pick it up exacerbated the wounds in my side, and, duly reminded of them, I drew power to close them up and begin the tissue-mending process.
Two arrows left. Coyote had presumably dropped the remainder of his somewhere. I nocked one and tried not to laugh at the image of Basasael flying around with a feathery shaft sticking out between his cheeks. I chose my own target carefully, and the bowstring thwocked as the arrow sailed up and through the fallen angel’s right wing. It tore a magnificent white hole through it and began to widen, which caused Basasael to screech and tumble ignominiously to the earth-precisely where I wanted him.
“Doigh!” I shouted, pointing my right index finger at him and drawing strength from the earth as I cast Cold Fire. I immediately felt weaker, as if I were suffering from low blood sugar; my muscles were like leaden weights and sluggish to obey my commands. It wasn’t as bad as the first time I’d cast it, when I completely collapsed from the effort, but it was a fact that I wouldn’t be pulling that bowstring again today. I’d have to lie down and spend some time recuperating.
The school’s loudspeaker crackled to life, and a stern voice of authority boomed metallically off the courtyard walls. “Teachers, please go into lockdown at this time. Once again, teachers, please go into lockdown immediately.”
Apparently the repeated unholy shrieks from Basasael and random jets of flame in the courtyard had convinced the administration something was amiss, and this, on top of the commands delivered from a mysterious disembodied voice who seemed dissatisfied with the school’s English instruction, compelled them to act.
Basasael began to rise slowly from the ground, the arrows clearly (and finally) bothering him now. As yet he betrayed no sign that the Cold Fire was working on him, but I had hope it would take effect in short order.
Coyote, returned to human form, had dashed back to where his bow and arrows were and called to me, “What’d ya do to him, Mr. Druid?”
“I’m not sure if I did anything,” I called back. “You might wanna shoot him a couple more times.”
“Oh yeah, that brilliant strategy ya learned from Attila the Hun. Almost forgot.”
As Coyote nocked an arrow and began to pull the bowstring, Basasael was ripping the arrows from his hand and his belly and making horrible noises in the process. He was gingerly trying to deal with the final arrow (Mercutio’s phrase about the “blind bow-boy’s butt shaft” took on new meaning in this situation) when Coyote’s shot took him straight in the throat, choking off all further screams. It allowed us to hear the sound of approaching police sirens.
“Yeah!” Coyote whooped and pumped his fist. “Sit down and have a tall glass of shut-the-hell-up!”
I was quickly turning loopy because, as the fallen angel was nonverbally communicating his distress with an impressive array of spastic twitches and concomitant white ejecta from his wounds, I was thinking, It’s too bad we’ll never get a chance to talk over a cup of tea. Besides the Morrigan, I rarely had conversations with beings older than I was, and I treasured them whenever they happened along.
