Tempt the Stars

to his what-the-hell face, it also wasn’t a demon.
    It looked like maybe I’d been right at the start, I thought wildly. I should have brought Scully. Although I wasn’t sure even she’d have been able to categorize
that
.
    It emerged from the mist between the trunks and paused, as if looking for something. Maybe its head, because it didn’t appear to have one. Unless you counted what looked like part of a croaker sack that somebody had stuffed and then crammed into the neck hole. Where it sat, wobbling around like a bobblehead under a floppy hat, staring at nothing because the eyes looked like they’d been Sharpie’d on.
    It didn’t make any more sense from the neck down. It was roughly the size and shape of a person, if the person was a barrel-chested linebacker on stilts. A lot of it was mismatched metal, and a lot of it was glass, the latter mostly a bunch of round containers set into indentations in what I guess was its armor. Most of those were sloshing with some silvery-blue substance, blending in with the mist, but a row of little gold ones crossed the front on a diagonal, like the potion bandolier Pritkin sometimes wore. But if they were potions, I didn’t know how it was supposed to grab one.
    Since it had what looked like gardening shears for hands.
    For a moment, I just stared.
    I knew I should probably be terrified, but I was having a hard time with it. Maybe because I was looking at something that any good horror movie producer would have fired his art department for. It looked like the Tin Man from
The Wizard of Oz
and Edward Scissorhands had had a baby. It looked like somebody had gone Dumpster-diving and built a robot out of the trash. It looked . . . well, it looked stupid.
    “Homunculus,” Pritkin breathed, without my having to ask.
    Not that it helped.
    “What?” I demanded, suddenly more angry than anything else. Because no, just no. The universe kept throwing these curveballs at me, and I was mostly going with it, but not when it came down to decapitated robots. I had principles. I had standards. I had—
    A face full of muck when Pritkin suddenly shoved me back down.
    Something flashed and something sizzled. And it looked like the Tin Man managed just fine with those shears of his, after all. Because when I looked up, I was seeing the world through more than a veil of mud. A bunch of glowing, golden strands had woven themselves around us, hovering maybe an arm’s length away in a nice, neat circle. Like we were the catch of the day.
    Which, okay, yeah.
    “Pritkin . . ”
    “When I tell you to run,” he said calmly, never taking his eyes off the creature, “go for the trees. Don’t stop and don’t look back.”
    I didn’t bother arguing, since I didn’t see a way for either of us to go anywhere. “And how do we lose the net?”
    “Like this!” he said, and gave me a shove.
    And suddenly, the net looked like another balloon, one that had just been pricked with a pin. I had maybe a second to realize that it had been caught on the outside of Pritkin’s shields, and that by popping them, he’d bought us a couple of seconds to slide underneath the floaty wisps that were falling down on every side like a spiderweb. And then I was scrambling on my belly through the mud, and lurching to my feet and starting to run—
    And realizing that he wasn’t behind me.
    I spun to see him fighting with the net, part of which had caught the back of his shirt. That wouldn’t have been a big deal, but the other half had adhered to the ground, and it must have found a better hold than the slimy leaves. Because his best efforts were only stretching it, like bubble gum between a sidewalk and a shoe, and he wasn’t going anywhere.
    “Go!” he told me, furious, when I turned to help, maybe because the Tin Man had started lumbering down the slope, with the clumsy-cute gate of a toddler just learning to walk. A manic toddler armed with deadly blades and potion bombs.
    Or maybe there was another reason, I thought, as the air rippled by my left ear. Something hit the muck in front of me, and something else failed to hit me between the eyes. Because I’d already rediscovered the ground.
    I might not know how to deal with magic robots, but I understood bullet etiquette just fine.
    Pritkin cursed and dove down beside me. “Now what?”
    “I told you,” I hissed, grabbing his lapel. “Tony’s boys. Now lose the damned shirt!”
    “Why didn’t I think of that?” he snarled. And then