61) Death from above

Hiram’s head jerked up as the door knob above his head began wiggling around just before something hit the door behind him, causing the Sabatour’s body to twitch. Probably more from surprise than the force of whatever had hit the door on the other side, because however dangerous the White Bats might be, they were still light weights.

The old man looked over at me, “I can scare them off Harry, but it will hit you too.” He grinned. “Plus this may be the best place to fight them. Even if they do gnaw the hole up there bigger, we can still pick them off one at a time as they come through.”

He flicked his hand back and forth between us, “Plus with us this low to the ground, they can’t really get us without your Coyotes getting them.”

Pausing, the man for once got a careful, serious look on his face. “So… the only real problem we got here is you not holding up your own weight Harry. It looks like you aren’t going to be shooting for shit with your shoulder messed up, so maybe focus on doing your healing thing on it and let me do the shooting for now?”

I glared at him but finally nodded as I reached up to focus all the Primordial energy I was able to pull out of the air to push into my shoulder as Life Essence. Hiram grinned at me. “Of course, if I’m going to do all the work for now, I should get a bigger share.”

Grinning back at him, or perhaps grimacing would be the better word, I agreed. “Deal, I’ll give you double shares. Two for you, and one for me… and one for Wylina, one for blue-”

He started arguing, but Blue’s yip brought his attention to the three coyotes all sitting back so they could look up at where the first of the white was launching itself into the room.

Which was my favorite kind of problem, someone else’s.

Me, I was focusing everything I had on my shoulder, pushing the warmth into the parts that hurt the worse. As I lay there wincing at the sound of gunfire coming from nearly directly over my head, along with all the barking and screeching, I thought about how my power worked.

I had never gotten an ability from Hermit for healing, I just pushed Life Essence into anything that felt like an injury, or even just hurt.

And I left scars after I was done.

From what I understood, actual healing powers fixed up damage like it had never happened.

Which meant that what I thought I was doing was just making my body heal faster on its own.

And that meant it was limited. I doubted I could regrow arms or something, hell, I doubted I could replace a tooth… or fix my diabetics… or old age.

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In fact, I think healing the coyotes had gone faster, and taken less effort, than fixing up my wrinkly old

butt.

I’m not sure how long coyotes live, I never checked, but Wylina was still younger for a coyote than me as a human. By a whole lot. That might make a difference in how easy it was for extra Life to fix someone up.

And maybe if I knew what I was doing, what exactly I was sending that Life Essence into me and others to fix, and what Life couldn’t heal, I might be better at this.

Or at least quicker. By the time I felt ready to open my eyes and start shooting it

was already over.

Hiram had taken two of them out of the air with his bird shot, and I didn’t mind him claiming their Stones even if it had been the coyotes who had finished those Whites off after Hiram took them to the ground with pellet riddled wings.

But the coyotes had gotten the other three all on their own, although Wylina had taken a shortcut along her side in doing so.

Bits of the Whites's bodies lay here and there in the room, with their black blood splattered all about the place.

Hiram seemed pretty pleased. “Two of them flew back out the hole they came in by, so I’m pretty sure we managed to scare them off even without me showing them what they really had to Fear.” He poked himself in the chest with his thumb. “Me.”

I brushed something wet off of my face and wiped it off on my pants without looking to see what it was, “So, we can just wait here now., right? We know which room to avoid and sooner or later a new exit will open up since that’s what happens when an entrance gets blocked.”

The Grinning man didn’t grin. “If we walk out of the dungeon the man in charge of the Border Patrol was supposed to keep intact, then he will have done his job and will have enough pull that he can do whatever he wants to us. If we walk out out a dungeon that vanishes behind us…”

He grinned.

“Then he’s a failure that nobody will back up. We gotta finish the job Harry, or we lose. We lose big.”

I stared at him for a moment and then grunted as I rolled over on my side and began to push my way to my feet. Wylina moved up close and set her shoulder against my hip, letting out a groan of complaint as I used her to push myself to my feet.

“I can’t…” Shrugging, I walked back behind the desk at the far end of the room, picked up the rolly chair, and sat down while I tried to find a way around Hiram’s thinking.

He did something over by the door that involved opening it briefly, and then shutting it while talking to the coyotes. I was glad he had found someone other than me to yap at.

Best possibility. We walk out of here and the guy in charge of the Border Patrol people writes us off as either too valuable as seventy five years olds that would be needed, or not worth fighting over with someone else that sees us as valuable.

Worst possibility. Someone with power is pissed off enough to want to make us examples, regardless of if we destroy the dungeon or not.

...The first isn’t going to happen, and stopping the second one…

...Rank two stones. I’ve never heard of them at all.

They’re valuable, but only if no one else has the chance to walk into here and shoot some White Rank two bats themselves.

“Hiram. I’m in… but we need a better plan than going in shooting. A much better plan.”

The grinning man grinned.

“Well, I do have one idea Harry. After all, I qualified for the Sabatour class before I got the Fear Essence.”

He walked over to the desk and began pushing stacks of files off the edges making the two pups who had followed him over, while their mother lay down in front of the door, both let out started yipes as they danced aside. Before they cautiously wandered back to begin sniffing at the items he began laying out on the now cleared desktop.

“And being a Sabatour is all about ruining someone’s day.”

A block wrapped in gray paper, the one he had snagged from the elevator appeared in his hand, a wire still dangling from something stabbed into the block.

The Grinning man grinned. “Tick, tick, boom.”