Hexed

reception desk without disturbing the matronly woman sitting there; she seemed to be emotionally involved with a game of solitaire on her computer. There were two full-time employees working at the attendance window (because taking attendance and getting money from the state is the most important job at public schools), but they were listening to parents lie on the phone about why their children weren’t in school that day, so they weren’t even looking up to see what was dripping all across the industrial carpet in the hallway. The doors to the courtyard gave a high-pitched squeak when we opened them, and the sound of pouring rain caused the attendance clerks to look up, but we slipped out without them spotting us.
    Class was in session and the courtyard was deserted. We were underneath a roofed area that traveled around the perimeter, providing shelter for rare rainy days like this but usually offering shade the rest of the year. Thick ropes of runoff water slapped noisily on the concrete before coursing in swift rivulets toward drainage grates.
    I turned on my faerie specs and had no trouble figuring out where Basasael was lurking. He was directly across from us, perched on the steel roof, in a Doppler-shifted cloud of wrong. The feathered wings he had eons ago were now leathery and batlike. The rest of him was still humanoid in appearance, just blackened and spiky and pulsing with evil, like a subwoofer vibrating a car’s windows and blurring the view.
    What made him particularly repellent at the moment was his open mouth, out of which dangled another teenage victim’s leg—some poor kid who’d been on his way to the nurse’s office, perhaps, or called down to see the counselor. As we watched, the fallen angel’s teeth crunched down and his lower jaw slid sideways in a grotesque chewing motion.
    Coyote saw it at the same time I did. » Too late to help that one, I reckon, « he whispered to my right. I couldn’t see him in the normal spectrum, but with my faerie specs on, he looked like a colorful collection of light streams, shifting chaotically within his form but not unpleasantly—just unpredictably. I handed him six arrows out of the quiver.
    » I’ll put my first arrow through his head; you go for the heart, « I whispered back. » Then just keep shootin’ until he fuckin’ dies. «
    » Wow, you learn all that strategy from the U.S. Army men? «
    I grunted in amusement. » No, I learned it from Attila the Hun, who lived an’ died without ever knowin’ you were here. «
    The two of us drifted apart naturally, hunters of old. We did not need to discuss strategy. When it’s two against one, the two should separate so that if the target counterattacks one, his back is left open to the other. When we’d formed a triangle—Coyote and I at the base and Basasael at the top—we nocked our arrows and nodded at each other. I slid out of my sandals and stepped into the rain so that I could draw power from the earth. First I filled my bear charm back up, in case I needed to cast something on the sidewalk, then I drew enough to pull back the bow, just as Basasael was finishing off his teenage repast. I held up five fingers to Coyote, folded in my thumb, then my index finger to indicate a countdown, then pulled the bowstring to its limit. I took quick aim and let fly in time with the countdown.
    I was already grabbing another arrow as our first volley sank home. My arrow pierced the fallen angel’s left eye, and Coyote’s thudded solidly into the center of its chest. It screeched on several wavelengths and shuddered my bones as it toppled backward onto the roof, surprised and clutching at the shafts.
    Normally, if you shoot something in the head with an arrow, it doesn’t have enough motor skills left to reach up and pluck the arrow out. And shooting a critter in the heart generally robs it of the strength to stand up and roar defiantly at unsafe decibel levels. Basasael wasn’t normal, for he did both of those things.
    A white bubbling wound was left behind in each case, but the fallen angel threw both the arrows down into the courtyard, spread his wings, and crouched in preparation to spring at one of us. He saw us both clearly; my camouflage spell kept us hidden from human eyes but not from his.
    » How many arrows we gotta use to kill this thing? « Coyote yelled.
    » All Mary said was we’d have to pierce it more’n once. «
    » Yeah? Well maybe you shoulda pinned her down to a specific number