Chapter 44 Clarice
CLARICE
Clarice realized what was happening as soon as Bruno shoved her into the romp room with the kids, and she cast around for something, anything that she could use to protect them. A picture book wouldn’t stop a gunshot, but it might stop a tranquilizer dart.
She grabbed the nearest book from the couch and slipped it up under her sweater before she rose to face the door with Bruno as it crashed open. To her surprise, the moment the door smashed open, he melted into a dark ball in a dark room.
But no, that made sense. His armor would protect him against a dart, if they noticed him at all, and he’d be the only one left standing if the goons got the rest of them.
“They’re just kids!” Clarice yelled, hoping to take their attention from the space where Bruno had been standing. “I’m not armed! Don’t shoot! Please don’t shoot!” Maybe they hadn’t seen him in the dim room.
They did shoot her, of course, and Vivian as well.
Clarice was morbidly sure the darts were going to go right through If You Give a Mouse a Cookie as she made an artful topple towards the couch.
Hopefully the darkness would cover any terrible acting on her part.
How fast did tranquilizers take effect? Was she overplaying this?
Vivian went over quickly, Shane shrieking in her arms.
Clarice lay as still as she could, her heart hammering, and her breath ragged and far too loud.
They’d be able to tell she was panting in fear.
There was no way they would be fooled. And even if they were, what could she possibly do against a whole lot of armed brutes?
Even if they weren’t carrying more lethal weapons (and they probably were!), they were clearly big, strong men with no scruples.
They didn’t want to hurt the kids, but they wouldn’t hesitate to do what they had to in order to stop the adults.
Someone found a light switch as more of them came into the room and tried to figure out which one Tara was.
Gil yelled at them and it took all of Clarice’s willpower not to move as it sounded like one of the men took Shane from Vivian’s limp arms and went for the crib where Zach was sleeping.
Clarice kept her eyes closed but tried not to look like she was screwing them shut.
“OUCH!” The man’s voice slewed into swearwords. “She burned me!”
“What the fuck is that?!”
There was a poultry shriek of fury and flapping wings, the sizzle of sudden fire, and a trample of hoofed feet, just as the lights overhead went out again.
This was her chance, but now that it was here, Clarice wasn’t sure what to do. Someone large tripped over her and she screwed up her courage and kicked upward as hard as she could towards what she hoped was a crotch.
It connected with a wild yelp of pain and Clarice got to her feet, gritting her teeth and peering into the darkness.
She’d already been assaulted and nearly kidnapped and not able to do anything about it, and she wasn’t going to be as helpless this time.
She certainly wasn’t going to let anyone hurt a bunch of kids.
She plucked a dart from the sweater on her chest and stabbed upwards at the shadowy form taking a swing at her.
Someone was on fire to one side of her, and there was a ghostly white shape swooping down on the other attackers.
Thanks to sheer surprise and good luck, she got the dart right in the bottom of her assailant’s jaw, but not hard enough to stop his fist or drive him back.
Clarice had a moment to acknowledge that perhaps she was not a natural-born fighter as his punch, one-handed because he was holding Shane, landed on the side of her head and made her see stars in the darkness.
He immediately grappled her. As hard as she struggled, he was faster and stronger and more skilled, and when he finally went unconscious, he knocked her straight over onto the couch without even trying, Shane squashed between them.
“Clarice? How are you awake?”
It was Bruno who materialized to push the heavy body off of her and help her get up with a screaming Shane in her arms. Bruno had one of the tranquilizer guns in his hands.
“If you give a mouse a cookie, you might not get shot!” Clarice pulled the second dart out of her chest and the book gave a slide for freedom as she stood.
She shoved it back up in case more shots were fired, tucking her sweater awkwardly into her waistband with Shane struggling in her elbow, and looked around.
Most of the kids were huddled in the corner, but not all of them.
A leggy wolf puppy was growling and baring its teeth at a still form on the floor.
There was a fluffy eagle chick with a lashing lion’s tail pecking at the prone man’s helmet and a white bird with silent wings was swooping between curtain rods.
Flickering flames lit the whole scene as Lucy stood before a wall of fire that had two figures backed into the corner, shielding their eyes as they fired wildly into the room, missing everyone.
Snik, snik!
Bruno’s shots were much more deliberate and feathered darts appeared in their throats before they sagged to the floor as there was a shout just outside the door.
Would one dart be enough if they weren’t shifters?
“Hey! Over here! This way! The kids are getting away!” Was that Darius, trying to sound grown up?
The fire went out with a little hiss and Clarice stood panting in the room that was filled with smoke and darkness again.
Footsteps and shouting in the hallway made everyone turn in alarm to face this new threat, but there was a pop like a transformer had blown, followed by a lightning sizzle, a tremendous crash, and a thrashing crackle straight out of a movie.
As Clarice was still trying to sort out what happened, Darius appeared in the door and yelled, “Don’t go down the hallway! It’s electrified!”
“Electrified?”
“It’s pressure activated!”
“Juliette said she’d left some protections in place,” Bruno observed.
“I guess that’s what she meant.” He gathered up the dropped dart guns and went out into the doorway to drug the stunned and twitching men from a safe distance with Darius as Clarice was left with a pitch-black room full of sniffling children.
“Okay, kids,” she said as brightly as she could. “Let’s do a headcount and help Tara’s mommy take a nice nap more comfortably.” Shane had stopped struggling quite so hard, but still was definitely not happy to be held by a near-stranger. “I have Shane. Call out your name so I know where you are!”
“I’M GIL!” Gil promptly volunteered. “I have a BABY!” Zach was whimpering, but appeared not to have been badly hurt when he was dropped in the fray. Maybe babies were bouncier than Clarice had feared.
“I’m Tara,” the little girl whispered, appearing at Clarice’s side as her eyes adjusted to darkness again.
The wolf pup yapped and Gil explained, “That’s GABBY.”
The white owl, the brightest thing in the darkness, plummeted from one of the curtain rods and resolved into Amy. She gave a wordless little blat and fell forward on her face, where she lay, sides heaving dramatically.
“I’m tired,” Lucy declared, swaying slightly in place.
Gil and Tara helped arrange Vivian more comfortably on the floor, folding her arms like she was a vampire in a coffin and straightening her legs. Clarice was trembling and didn’t feel capable of lifting her up to the couch, but she got a pillow under Vivian’s head.
“Can we get the lights back on?” Clarice asked, when she tripped over a couch cushion and almost flattened some poor kid.
The book under her sweater was making another break for it, and she wondered if it would be okay to take it out yet.
There was something decidedly weird about being in a house with so many unconscious people.
Like it was backwards-haunted, she thought, trying to tamp down her near hysteria.
“I turned all the circuits off at the fuse box when I turned on the hallway stun circuit to slow them down,” Darius explained, returning with Bruno. “The system takes two minutes to charge, so I tripped them all and ran. No one can get back across it to the fuse box.”
Tara whispered something.
“What, honey?” Clarice groped for her hand in the dark. “Your mama will wake up soon.” She’d felt for Vivian’s pulse and it seemed strong. Shane stopped kicking and seemed content to lean his head against Clarice’s cheek, though he occasionally whimpered and tested her grip.
“How’d you know about the hallway, Darius?” Bruno wanted to know.
Darius dragged a foot on the carpet. “I called my mom,” he admitted grudgingly. “She told me what to do.”
Bruno clapped him on the shoulder, by the sound of it. “It was well done.”
“I DID GOOD!” Gil crowed. “I DIDN’T SHIFT!”
“You all did really well,” Bruno said kindly. “We can wait here until the others come.”
Clarice didn’t really relish waiting the entire night in a dark house with hungry kids cut off from the kitchen. “At least the bathroom is on this end of the hallway!” she said, trying to find the bright side.
Tara was tugging at her hand. “I can go,” she said.
“The hallway is electric,” Clarice reminded her. “It will shock you and put you to sleep like the men.”
“I can walk without touching it,” Tara said confidently. “I’m lucky, too.”
Clarice stared at her. All she could see in the gloom was a vague shape and the faint reflection off her big eyes. “Um…”
Tara seemed to think that was permission, and she flowed down into a tiny deer-like form that shimmered slightly in the dark. She took a few silent steps and, sure enough, was floating slightly off the floor.
“Okay,” Darius said, like this wasn’t the slightest bit unusual.
Maybe it wasn’t, for him. He was used to shapeshifters, and Clarice had only known about them (for sure) for a week.
He knelt to talk earnestly to Tara. “There’s a metal door on the wall inside the closet in the living room.
It’s up high, you might need a chair. The handle slides to the side, it’s kind of tricky.
You have to open it, and then look for a switch—kind of like a light switch, but sideways.
There are a whole bunch of them, and you have to look for the one that has a red dot on the end.
That’s the only one you need to touch. Can you do that? ”
“It’s safe?” Bruno confirmed.
“Only the hallway is electrified,” Darius said. “It was meant as a trap. And if she’s not putting weight on the floor, it won’t trigger.”
Tara trotted through the air down the dimly lit hallway, careful not to touch the men or the walls, and disappeared into the living room. Over the snuffling of the children, Clarice heard the scrape of a chair, the sound of a door, and a distant click.
“I’ll check it,” Darius said, but Bruno stopped him.
“I will.” Bruno stepped cautiously out into the hallway, one small step at a time, testing the floor until he got to one of the men and prodded with a foot.
“IS HE DEAD?” Gil asked, pressed between Clarice and the doorway to see out.
“No,” Bruno said, maybe a little too quickly. “He’s asleep. We should tie them up before they wake up and make trouble. I’ll turn the rest of the fuse box back on so we have light.”
“THAT WAS EXCITING!” Gil said, apparently not the slightest bit traumatized.
Clarice realized she was trembling and wished she was half as resilient. She really was going to have to get a business card from Bruno after all of this.