Chapter 15
JUNIA
The window frame bites into my ribs as I haul myself back through it.
Flynn doesn't see me. He's already moving.
His hand closes around the neck of a fifty-pound bag of enchanted bone meal and he swings it like a warhammer, releasing at the apex of the arc.
The bag hits the Elf guard square in the middle with a heavy thwack that sends the guard pinwheeling backward into a rack of stolen orchids.
White powder erupts. A cloud of calcium and ground dragon bone fills the aisle, thick as fog, and the Elf disappears into it, coughing, his stun baton carving wild blue streaks through the haze.
The Dwarf doesn't flinch. Dwarves never flinch. He ducks under the cloud, stays low, and charges Flynn's knees with the baton extended like a lance.
My boots hit the greenhouse floor.
Flynn catches the Dwarf's wrist. The baton crackles an inch from his thigh, close enough that the static lifts the hair on his forearm.
He squeezes. The Dwarf's face goes purple.
But the little tank is strong, absurdly strong, and he twists his whole body like a corkscrew, wrenching free and rolling backward with the baton still in his grip.
The Elf is back on his feet. Bone meal coats him head to toe, turning him into a furious white ghost. He spits powder, raises his baton, and both guards advance from opposite sides. Flanking. Professional. The kind of coordination that says Valerius pays well and trains his people better.
Flynn grabs the steel tube from the floor. Six feet of galvanized pipe. He holds it across his body, horizontal, the stance of someone who learned to fight with a weapon before he learned to read.
Two stun batons against one pipe. Bad odds even for an Orc built like a fortified wall.
My hand is already in my vest pocket. The vial is small, no bigger than my thumb.
Amber glass, cork stopper, the contents swirling with a pearlescent sheen that catches the grow lights.
I brewed it last Tuesday for the root system that kept attacking the drainage trench.
Slick-sap concentrate. Organic lubricant derived from ghost elm cambium, pressurized with a binding spell that activates on contact with any hard surface.
I designed it to make aggressive roots slide harmlessly off stone.
On tile, it will turn the floor into an ice rink.
"Flynn! Eyes up!"
He doesn't question it. Doesn't hesitate. His gaze snaps to mine and he jumps. Straight up, both feet leaving the ground, one hand grabbing the overhead irrigation pipe. The steel groans under his weight. His legs swing clear of the floor.
I throw the vial.
The amber glass shatters on the tile between the two guards. The sound is small. A pop. A tinkle. Nothing dramatic.
Then the slick-sap hits air and blooms.
It spreads like spilled mercury, coating every tile in a three-foot radius with a film so frictionless that light slides off it.
The Dwarf's right boot hits the slick patch mid-stride and keeps going.
His left boot follows. His legs split in a direction legs aren't meant to split, and he goes down hard on his back, the stun baton flying from his hand and skittering across the floor in a shower of blue sparks.
His helmet cracks against tile. His eyes roll.
The Elf sees it happen. Too late. His momentum carries him forward one more step.
His boot touches the slick zone and his foot shoots out from under him so fast he actually becomes airborne for a fraction of a second.
Horizontal. Parallel to the ground. The bone meal cloud puffs off him like a soul departing a body.
He lands face-first in a pile of shattered terracotta and stolen begonias.
Neither guard moves.
Flynn drops from the irrigation pipe. His boots land on dry tile, just outside the slick zone. He looks at the two crumpled guards. Looks at me. Looks at the spreading pool of iridescent sap.
"What IS that?"
"Slick-sap. Ghost elm extract." I'm already stepping carefully around the spill, testing each footfall. "I use it for aggressive root systems."
"You carry weaponized tree lubricant in your vest."
"It's not weaponized. It's a gardening tool."
"That Dwarf just did the splits."
"Unintended application."
Flynn stares at me. The bone meal cloud is settling around his shoulders like snow. A dead flytrap head dangles from his cargo shorts pocket. The tee shirt has a new tear across the front that exposes a strip of green skin and a glowing tattoo.
His mouth twitches. The corner pulls up.
A dimple appears in his left cheek that I have never seen before.
I've heard him laugh now, but a full, unguarded smile is still uncharted territory.
Until right now. Right now, standing in a wrecked greenhouse full of stolen plants, unconscious guards, and enough HOA violations to fill a filing cabinet, he grins at me like I just handed him the sun.
"Move. Before they wake up."
He grabs my hand. His palm is rough and warm and enormous around mine. We bolt for the open window, and he lifts me through first, passes me the rosebush, then folds his frame with a grace that has no business belonging to someone his size.
My phone buzzes in my back pocket.
A text from an unknown number. Three words.
You're both finished.
The greenhouse alarm screams to life.
Not a buzzer. Not a bell. A full-throated magical siren that shakes the glass panes in their frames and sends a column of violet light spiraling into the sky like a beacon.
Every ward Valerius embedded in this building activates at once.
The stolen plants inside thrash against their pots, agitated by the magical pulse, and the two guards on the floor start groaning.
Flynn's hand tightens around mine.
"Side panel. Now."
He doesn't wait for agreement. His free arm hooks the burlap-wrapped rosebush against his hip like a football, tucking the root ball against his ribs with the casual confidence of someone who has carried heavier things under worse circumstances.
His other hand stays locked on mine, and he pulls me sideways down the narrow gravel path that runs along the greenhouse exterior.
The violet light strobes overhead, painting the neighborhood in sick purple flashes. Somewhere inside, the Dwarf guard is cursing in a language that sounds like gravel in a blender. A heavy body hits a shelf. Glass breaks. More cursing.
"Flynn, the front gate has a ward lock, we can't just..."
He veers left. Not toward the gate. Toward the south-facing wall of the greenhouse where a series of decorative glass panels run floor to ceiling, each one etched with the HOA crest in frosted silver. Ornamental. Expensive. Probably custom-ordered from some artisan glassworks in the Elven Quarter.
Flynn drops my hand. He shifts the rosebush to his left arm, cradling it against him the way someone would hold an infant. His right shoulder drops. His weight transfers to his back foot. The cargo shorts stretch across his thighs as he loads his legs like springs.
"Cover your face."
I throw my arms over my head.
He hits the glass panel shoulder-first at full sprint.
The sound is extraordinary. Not the dainty tinkle of a wine glass falling off a table.
This is a detonation. A concussive, full-body explosion of tempered magical glass that blows outward in a glittering cascade.
The frosted HOA crest disintegrates. Shards catch the violet alarm light and scatter it into a thousand purple fireflies that spin through the dark air.
The frame buckles. The support beam above it cracks.
A section of greenhouse roof sags inward with a metallic groan that sounds like the building itself is offended.
Flynn bursts through trailing glass dust and wooden splinters.
He stumbles two steps, catches his balance, and keeps running.
The rosebush is still secure against him.
Not a single root disturbed. His right shoulder is shredded.
The tee shirt hangs in ribbons from his collarbone, and dark green blood wells from a dozen shallow cuts across his deltoid and bicep.
Glass fragments glitter in his skin like terrible jewelry.
I scramble through the hole he made. A jagged edge catches my sleeve and rips it clean off at the shoulder. The night air hits my bare arm, cool and sharp, and then I'm running. Gravel sprays under my boots. My lungs burn.
"You're bleeding!"
"Cosmetic."
"Flynn, there's glass in your..."
"I said cosmetic. Move your legs."
The violet beacon pulses behind us. A second siren joins the first, this one deeper, and the ground trembles as something heavy and stone begins to grind awake near the greenhouse entrance. Gargoyles. Valerius keeps gargoyles on the property like other people keep motion-sensor lights.
Flynn cuts hard right, vaulting a low boxwood hedge without breaking stride.
I hurdle it a half-second later, catching my shin on a branch, and the pain barely registers because adrenaline has turned my blood into rocket fuel.
We tear across the immaculate common green, past the decorative fountain with its tasteful water feature, past the community bulletin board with its laminated announcements about acceptable mailbox colors.
Behind us, stone wings crack open. The grinding gets louder.
Flynn glances back. His jaw sets. He shoves the rosebush into my arms without slowing down, and the weight of it nearly buckles my knees. The root ball is dense, packed earth and magic, at least forty pounds of living history wrapped in burlap. I clutch it against my stomach and keep running.
"Don't you dare stop to fight those things."
"Wasn't going to."
"Your face says otherwise."
"My face is wrong." He grabs my elbow and steers me left, through a gap between two identical beige houses, down a narrow service alley that stinks of recycling bins and lawn clippings. The gargoyle sounds fade. The alley is too narrow for stone wings.