Hexed
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.
» Dóigh! « 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
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