“Shit,” I said, hesitating there in the archway. “Shit! Okay, follow me.”
Usim shouted at Wren, “Mom, this way!”
She was already coming, charging at us like a bull, and I didn’t wait around for her to arrive. I turned and dragged Usim inside and across the storage space then clattered the first flight of stairs. Then I paused and told him to keep running as I blipped an entire vending cart into my domain and waited about four seconds until Wren--demon-Wren, Hulk-Wren--stomped into the room from the stairs.
The minute she passed the doorway I dropped the cart behind her, to slow any pursuit and said, “He’s one flight down!”
She shot me a look of pure hatred but kept moving. I followed, careful of her powerful tail sweeping behind her as she ran. To my surprise, the tip of her tail looped around boxes and planks and shelves and threw them behind us to build a barricade around the cart. Whoa. Prehensile.
She whipped a box of screws at my head, too, but my webtouched senses helped me dodge.
“Fuck off!” I snapped. “You need me to get Usim out of here.”
She growled and started down the final stairs, and the cart behind us exploded into a thousand pieces. I caught a single glimpse of Tiral-ur stumbling over the wreckage, then clattered down to the bottom floor.
“The crates,” I told Wren. “Fill the doorway with crates, pack them tight. Usim, head back the way we came in.”
“Then follow us, mom!” Usim told her. “Fast!”
“Just get Usim away,” Wren snarled at me.
“Go, go!” I told Usim, and he crawled through the hole I’d torn in the chickenwire then squirmed into the passageway I’d cleared in the bottleneck wreckage.
As Wren hurled crates to block the doorway--crates that must’ve weighed ten much as she did--I tried to think. Which was hard, given the adrenaline thundering in my head. I needed to collapse the passageway after Usim was through the bottleneck, to stop Kathina and her soldiers.
Sure. That wasn’t so hard. I could do that. But could I leave his mother behind to die? Well, yeah. Yeah, I could. She’d tried to kill Erdinand. I could absolutely bury her alive.
Could I really abandon her? Could I reward Usim for his help, for his bravery, with a dead mother, torn apart by her own soldiers? Well, goddammit, that question answered itself.
“Fuck,” I muttered, then stalked forward to stand beside the stairway where nobody would spot me as they walked down.
“What’re you doing’?” Wren snapped at me.
I materialized a hatchet into one hand. “Waiting for Tiral-ur.”
“He’s invulnerable, human. He’ll tear you apart--and I’ll get to watch, so that’s good. Where’s Usim?”
“There’s an exit tunnel through there.” I nodded at the wall of rubble behind the crates. “Get your boy. I’ll slow them down.”
She bared her hulked-out crocodile teeth at me. “I’m not done with you.”
“This isn’t the time for sweet talk, my little songbird.”
The thump of boots sounded on the stairs past the barricade.
Wren turned and thundered across the sub-basement, shrinking with every step so she’d fit through the passageway. I adjusted my grip on my hatchet and went motionless, trying not to breath. I’d wait for Tiral-ur to break through, then chop into his neck from behind.
This is for you, Oksar. This one’s for you. A good man, a good friend, a good father.
This one’s for you.
A heavy thud hit the other side of the barricade. Wood cracked and shifted. There was a grunt and the crates moved a few feet. So Tiral-ur managed to burst through a single cluttered cart upstairs, but not through heavy crates packed with goods. He might be incredibly durable but he wasn’t incredibly strong. Just regular super-strong.
The barricade shifted a foot, and then another. Then the top half of a speckled green crachen appeared in the gap, bracing himself as he shoved through.
Brace for this, you crabby fuck. Standing against the wall behind him, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t give any warning. I didn’t care about a fair fight, I just wanted blood. I wanted revenge.
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I shifted my weight and chopped my hatchet at his neck, trying to remove his head in a single blow. I swung with all my might and all my anger.
My blade cut into the shell at his neck ... for about a half an inch. Holy crap. Talk about invulnerable. My emerald-level hatchets could chop deeper than that into goddamn steel. Still, even though I only cut a finger’s depth into him, he still bellowed in pain and surprise.
My hatchet jammed in his shell so I summoned the other one and swung again, aiming for his eyestalks. That time the blade glanced off his clamshell-head without even scratching him. Then he swung his pincer-arm at me and I heard one of the twins yelling behind him, with Kathina’s voice calling for blood more faintly.
And announcing that she’d blast through the blockade with her shield. Which was good to know.
I backpedaled fast, using my extended awareness to keep my footing on the wreckage-strewn floor. I resummoned my trapped hatchet and threw the other at Tiral-ur, which bounced off his shell without even chipping the surface.
“I’m gonna snip you into pieces one inch at a time,” he growled, still shoving through the barricade. “The longest anyone’s ever lasted is three days. You’ll beat my record.”
“You’ll get your chance,” I promised, then I spun and sprinted for the back wall.
One step behind the crates, I transformed into smoke. I wafted into the narrow tunnel I’d cleared in the rubble, using my momentum to move five or six feet. Then I turned solid and touched a big chunk of mortared-together bricks on one side of the tunnel. I blinked it into my domain for two seconds before returning it in the middle of the passage behind my heels.
The passageway wall shifted at the sudden change. My stomach dropped and I braced myself to turn to smoke again, but the rubble didn’t collapse on me. Well, at least not immediately.
I grimaced and heard the twins arrive in the room behind me. Then I heard Tiral-ur crawling after me into the bottleneck tunnel. I squirmed forward, shifting a few stones from my hands to my feet--into my domain and back out again. I glanced behind myself to check for the best placement, and for pursuit, and I crawled face-first into Wren’s oversized ass, which filled the space like a cork in wine bottle.
“The fuck are you doing big again?” I said. “Shrink down!”
“Run, Usim!” she called in the other direction. “They’re coming. Fast, keep moving, keep going! I’m right behind you!”
“Oh,” I said.
She smiled in my mind.
“What the fuck?” I said aloud.
Ahead of me, Wren stopped shouting at Usim to run and snapped, “Don’t swear at me, human. You’re the reason he’s in danger.”
“It’s cute how you take no responsibility for your own actions,” I told her, then turned to smoke again.
That time I wafted forward, alongside Wren in the cramped tunnel. My gaseous form brushed her neck, swirled around her hips and between her legs. It was weirdly intimate. And despite being followed by murderous gemmed troops, I couldn’t help but notice my proximity to a sexy demon.
And let me just say, for the record: She-Hulk was smoking hot.
Anyway, I returned to my body on the other end of the bottleneck, facing the rubble. And despite my desire to at least partially collapse the tunnel on her, I said, “Get your Avenger-looking ass out of there!”
Wren jerked in surprise at my change of location. “What the hell?”
“I can drop the rubble on you or behind you, you Six Cove fuck. You know what I’d prefer, but for some reason your son actually likes you.”
She scowled at me then shrunk to her normal size and started wriggling from the passageway.
And that’s when I realized the tunnel was empty around me. Usim wasn’t there. Well, of course not. He’d kept running when his mother yelled at him to made tracks. Yet Tansy wasn’t there, either. Which made no sense. There was no way she would’ve abandoned me.
Except maaaaybe to run off and massacre some Sixers. But no. Tansy took her pledge to me deadly seriously. I didn’t like to think about what this mean, but she’d vowed to serve me. To guard me. To protect me and obey me.The whole thing had made me uncomfortable, yet when I’d told her that, she’d said, “So what? I didn’t vow to make you comfortable, I vowed to keep you alive, so why don’t you just shut up?”
Which, to be honest, wasn’t how I expected my one and only vassal to speak to me.
“Tansy!” I peered into the dark tunnel leading into the cellars. “Hey! Where you at? Tansy?”
“Collapse the fucking passage,” Wren snapped, as she rose to her feet beside me.
I opened my mouth to say something snotty, but then I heard frenzied activity on the other side of the bottleneck. Moving the stones? Clearing the blockage? Yeah, that’s what it sounded like. Plus that invulnerable crachen was still crawling toward me through the half-blocked passageway. He didn’t care if he got buried by an avalanche. A few tons of stone wouldn’t hurt him. He’d just nap until rescue crews dug him free.
So I leaned deeply back inside, while keeping most of my awareness on Wren behind me. Ready to turn to smoke the instant she moved to stab me in the spine. She didn’t, though. She just stood there in a ready stance, her sword drawn, prepared to face whatever might come through to threaten her child.
I crawled a few feet into the tunnel then stretched out my right arm and pulled a slab of stone into my domain. I immediately tried to return the slab in a slightly different position, one that blocked the path. There wasn’t enough room, though, so nothing happened. I tried a few different spots, waving my hand around like an idiot. I couldn’t pop the stone anywhere: there needed to be an existing space for it or it wouldn’t emerge.
As I lay on my stomach on the rubble, a cascade of shattered bricks crashed into the passage ahead of me, tumbling down from above. Ah. Apparently that slab of stone had been holding up something important. I tried backing away but the landslide was moving faster, and almost engulfed me.
I turned back to smoke for a couple seconds and surfed the landslide in gaseous form until I emerged beside Wren again.
A cloud of dust billowed from the bottleneck. The rubble inside collapsed into the passageway I’d dug. The dust particles mixed with my smoke, but for some reason that didn’t keep me from returning to my body. As I became solid again, a few last clatters and thumps sounded from the rubble.
“Well on the bright side,” I said, wiping sweat from my forehead, “they’re not getting through that anytime soon.”
“Alex!” Tansy called from the darkness behind me. “Hurry! The kid ran into the Old City!”