Chapter 32 All Is Lost, Including Herself
All Is Lost, Including Herself
On the upside, they didn’t crash into anything solid enough to kill them.
On the concerning side, several soft, grunting things went flying—to the side and over the top of the jag, close enough that Cha had to duck—and she could only hope none of them was Dy.
Or Warg, she supposed, since Dy was fond of the appalling creature.
Katu skidded to a stop so abruptly that he skidded sideways, hitting a few more soft, grunting things with the side of the carriage. Cha took in the scene with one, sweeping assessment.
Sugarplum—or its mostly identical twin, hard to say—held Dy wrapped in several appendages, holding the sorceress still so she couldn’t move enough to hurl a spell, one cloven-hoofed, weird finger-hand thing securely slapped over her mouth.
Another Sugarplum-looking fae held Warg, quite a bit less securely, probably as it’s not easy to hold onto the equivalent of a greased and pissed-off water balloon.
Warg twisted and howled with ear-piercing shrieks, trying to bite its captor with no success, but liberally spraying the creature with slobber, which—judging by the disgusted expression on the fae’s otherwise serene face—was just as bad.
Big Betty, still in cargo transport form, trumpeted in quiet distress as swarms of pearly imps with cherubic faces and stubby wings carried crates stamped with the Obsidian logo out of her cargo compartment.
Others lay in various grunting piles scattered about the big room, clearly the things Katu had hurled about during their dramatic entrance.
Cha didn’t know what species of fae they were. Some kind of Moonstone imp.
Black pixie dust swirled in the air from several broken crates, combining with the ever-present white dust to make a gray haze.
For a second, Cha winced at the waste of all that expensive Obsidian dust, thinking she and Katu had broken the crates—then she saw one of the imps smash an intact crate with a sledgehammer three times its size.
Check: cherubic Moonstone imps are super strong.
They also didn’t seem to care about the rest of their cohort, singing an annoying song as they continued with their carrying and smashing of crates task, ignoring their injured fellows and Cha with equal blissful obliviousness.
Not so much the case with the Sugarplums around the room, who now converged on them, even as Dy made wide, blue eyes at Cha, attempting to convey some mute message. Cha had no idea of the specifics, but the general “we’re fucked here” gist made it right through.
All of this took barely the time to blink and, before Katu had quite finished sliding to that sideways stop, Cha leapt to her feet, one foot on the center console and another on the dash, waving the sword and magic wand at the advancing Sugarplums. “Don’t do it,” she warned in her finest menacing style.
Which did nothing to slow them. Charming.
Figuring her best bet lay with the wand, since flesh wounds didn’t slow most fae much, with their super-quick healing, Cha tried to recall how she’d banished the iron demon and its puppy brigade. Moonstone and Ruby combined should work on Moonstone fae, right?
Hopefully this time wouldn’t take three tries.
Just in case, she tried building in a three on the first try, since magic liked threes so much.
“Once, twice, thrice, I banish thee!” she shouted flinging pretty pink sparkles onto the nearest Sugarplum.
Yeah, she didn’t know why she used old-timey language either.
It flinched like a demon spattered with angel blood, emitting a faint scream like a melting snowflake, then vanished. The other Sugarplums halted in their tracks. Oblivious to the ruckus, the Moonstone imps continued carrying, singing, and smashing.
The Sugarplum holding Dy—their personal Sugarplum, perhaps—said, “What is the meaning of this rude and arrogant intrusion, human?”
Rude and arrogant? Cha had just poofed one of its friends.
Gotta love a species that worries more about manners than, you know, life itself.
Though maybe Cha had only banished the thing, not murdered it.
She’d like to think that way because, though she’d do literally anything for Dy and she had a rep as a cynical badass bandit, but Cha really didn’t like to kill anyone.
She was an asshole, not a murderer. A girl had to have some standards.
“Release Dy and Warg,” she commanded, pointing the wand—gently—at the Sugarplum holding Dy.
She’d expected some back and forth, but maybe the poofing had served as sufficient intimidation, because Dy’s Sugarplum immediately released her and Warg’s Sugarplum dropped him to the ground, wiping its hands off in the universal gesture of relieved disgust. Warg, unfazed by the fall, scrambled to Dy, who crouched to put her hands on him.
Within a breath, the white and black pixie dust whorled into a funnel, spinning with tornadic glee into Dy, who looked momentarily like a monstrous toad—with wildly spronging golden corkscrew curls—as her mouth expanded to inhale the dust. Cha barely had time to reach toward Dy, to do what, Cha didn’t know, before Dy exhaled again, freezing all the Moonstone imps in mid-carry, sing, and smash. Even the Sugarplums froze in mid-sneer.
The ensuing silence was crushing. Cha checked to make sure she could move. Fortunately, the answer was yes. She didn’t know how Dy had managed to exempt her from the cloud of frozen doom, but good for her.
“What in the seven hells happened?” Cha demanded, jumping down from the idling Katu.
“Probably whatever happened to Monat,” Dy retorted, standing and lifting Warg in one easy movement. “We need to get out of here. I don’t know how long my spell will last.”
“Agreed, but…the shipment?”
Dy, having shoveled Warg into the cab of Big Betty, turned and shook her head.
“I don’t know. The Sugarplums kept asking where the astra was.
Then,” she continued when Cha opened her mouth, “when I also had no idea what they were talking about, started having the puttoes unload and search the supposedly decoy shipment.”
“Puttoes is what you call the imps, huh?” Cha asked absently, collecting her wits when Dy glared, then clapped her friend on the arm and squeezed. “I feared the worst.”
“This is pretty damn bad. Otto fucked us.”
“Yeah, he did.” Cha sheathed the sword, but not the wand, and climbed a few steps up the ramp to Big Betty’s interior.
Since they seemed sturdy and she was in a bad mood, she grabbed the puttoes in her way and chucked them off to the side, methodically clearing a path.
“Hurts my mercenary heart to see all this dust spilled and wasted.”
“Whatever the Sugarplums were talking about,” Dy said, climbing in behind her, “they clearly expected to be receiving something, not giving us something to return to Otto.”
“Which means Otto never expected us to return. He sacrificed us to a one-way delivery.”
“No wonder he was willing to promise so much coin,” Dy agreed.
“He never intended to pay us the rest.” In an uncharacteristic display, she punted a nearby putto off Big Betty’s bay.
“What?” she asked when Cha eyed her. “That song of theirs was getting on my nerves and they were carelessly hurting Betty.” She stroked the inside of Big Betty’s cargo bay and the elephant rumbled sadly, Katu sawing in sympathy.
“Want to kick some more of them?” Cha offered, and Dy’s worried frown dissolved into a reluctant smile.
“Yes, but we should get out of here before enchantment frays too much. You arrived in the nick of time, Cha—thank you.”
“Late, I would say.”
“You didn’t wait our standard thirty minutes, I notice.”
“You know me,” Cha replied with a grin. “Do you think Monat did complete Otto’s delivery and ours was the second?”
She surveyed the unbroken crates. The spilled stuff was mostly worthless now, so no point in gathering it up, much as that, too, pained her mercenary heart.
The value of the remaining cargo wouldn’t come anywhere near Otto’s promised payday.
It wouldn’t be worth even the platinum coin she’d carelessly squandered, but the remaining crated dust would fetch a tidy bit of coin.
Enough to keep Dy off the corporate circuit for a while and the kids in new shoes, or whatever they went through so fast.
“This decoy shipment had to cost Otto,” Dy observed. “Even if he was smuggling something to the Moonstone fae inside this stuff, how was he getting paid?”
“I don’t know,” Cha agreed. “It makes no sense, but I’ll tell you what does make perfect sense: whatever the Moonstone fae wanted, it’s still in here.
Let’s get this stuff back over the border to the human realms, find out what’s in here that had everyone so excited, and get Phin to locate a buyer for the dust. We can salvage something from this ill-gotten gig. ”
“Steal it?” Dy asked thoughtfully.
“Yeah.” She gestured at the putto-strewn loading bay. “I’ll clear a path. You rev up Big Betty and Katu and I will blaze us back down the Moonstone Throughway.”
Dy looked doubtful. “It’ll be daylight soon.”
“Go fast,” Cha advised. “Light up those leys, sorceress.”
“That’ll burn ambrosia,” Dy warned, “and remember that Betty is low.”
“I know a station right past the Moonstone border. We can make it.” She hoped. But, really, what other choice did they have?
Dy jerked her chin in a nod. “Let’s do it.”
They quickly booted the remaining putto workers from Big Betty, having to peel a couple off the crates they’d grabbed, while the stubby-winged imps glared at them balefully. Once done, Dy closed Betty’s gate and bumped fists with Cha. “We can do this.”
“You betcha we can, Goldilocks,” Cha replied, moving a broken crate from the path to the door leading outside, and trying not to inhale more dust than she had to.
“I’ll lead the way,” she said, hurrying around to the cab. “Try to keep up.”
“Cute,” Cha called after her. “Just get your adorable ass moving.” She hustled, moving crates and puttoes as Dy reversed Big Betty out of there.
A bit of movement caught her eye. One of the Sugarplums twitched, its colorless eyes tracking them, pointy muzzle moving in soundless shouting that would soon be real shouting.
Cha hurried even more, saying nothing to Dy, lest her partner hesitate in her escape.
They could still make it. Her still-sore shoulder twinged as she wrested the final crate at an awkward angle, but she got it cleared.
“Go go go!” she yelled to Dy, who goosed Big Betty, reversing out of the docking bay in a whoosh of Moonstone dust.
Once she confirmed they were clear, Cha dashed for Katu. At that moment—probably as Dy’s rapid departure attenuated the spell—the Sugarplums and puttoes all unfroze.
They all dashed straight for Cha.
She was still several lengths from Katu, with considerable obstacles in the way, but this wasn’t her first fae rodeo. Cha drew her sword and lashed the wand at the nearest onrushing Sugarplum. The pink sparks shot weakly, then sputtered out with a whine. Just fantastic.
“Once, twice, thr—” She broke off with a grunt as a putto body-slammed her groin at the perfect angle to be breathtakingly painful.
Hopefully it wasn’t a pussy-sparkle-killing blow.
That would just be the sour cherry on the shit sundae of her life.
The thing sunk pointy teeth into her thigh, adding insult to the pussy injury as the bite didn’t hurt nearly as much.
All qualms about murder lost to the moment, she stabbed it with the sword.
The putto weighed no more than a marshmallow, so she used the sword like a slingshot to fling it into the face of the closest Sugarplum.
“Thrice, I banish thee!” She finished the invocation and whipped the wand around. That didn’t work at all. Not even a feeble squirt of pink glitter. Seriously worried her wand had gone impotent, she tried one more time from the beginning. “Once, twice—”
Her breath choked out as unnaturally strong, ivory arms encircled her from behind, pinning her arms to her sides and squeezing all the air from her lungs, cracking a few ribs in the process. The Sugarplum—possibly her personal Sugarplum—lifted her off her feet like she was a bit of thistledown.
“Fuck me,” Cha muttered, which didn’t work either, and passed out.