Chapter 14 #2
A cane catches her across the ribs. She grunts, a sound punched out of her, and I'm swinging the steel tube wildly now, smashing everything that reaches for her, but there are too many and they're too fast.
She stabs a third time and the taproot gives.
The sound is enormous. A wet, fibrous ripping that fills the greenhouse like a scream. Every cane in the building goes rigid. Trembles. Then drops, lifeless, crashing to the concrete in a thundering cascade of dead wood and deflating leaves.
Junia lies on the floor in the wreckage, arms still wrapped around her middle. Blood runs from a dozen thorn gashes across her shoulders, her forearms, the backs of her hands. Her jacket is shredded.
She unzips what's left of it and pulls out the rosebush.
Intact. Every root. Every cane. No breaks.
She holds it up to me, grinning through the pain.
I drop the steel tube and take the rosebush from her hands.
The root ball is slick with nutrient slurry and warm against my palms, alive in a way that makes my throat tight.
Every node intact. Every graft junction solid.
Twelve years of work, saved by a woman bleeding from a dozen punctures who refused to let go.
"Up. Let me see."
Junia rolls onto her side and pushes to her knees. The thorn gashes across her shoulders weep thin red lines through the ruined jacket fabric. Shallow. The thorns dragged more than they pierced. She'll need cleaning, antiseptic, bandaging. But nothing deep enough to need stitches.
"It's cosmetic." She waves off my free hand. "Wrap the rose."
A stack of burlap sacks sits against the supply wall, the kind Valerius uses for his bulk magical compost deliveries.
I grab one with my teeth, shake it open one-handed, and set the rosebush on the potting bench.
Junia is already beside me. Her bloody fingers work the burlap around the root ball while I hold the canes steady, keeping the thorns pointed away from her torn skin.
"Tighter on the left side. The lateral roots are exposed."
She cinches the burlap and tucks the excess underneath. I pull a length of twine from the nearest rack and she ties it off, three wraps, pulled firm. The root ball sits snug in its sack, heavy and secure.
"Phone." She holds out her hand.
I pass it over. She scrolls through the photos, counting under her breath.
Eighty-three images between both our devices.
Every stolen plant. Every label. The nutrient tanks, the magical infrastructure, the flytraps guarding the collection.
Enough evidence to get Valerius expelled from the HOA, fined by the municipal board, and possibly arrested.
"Cloud backup?"
"Uploaded the second I had signal." She hands the phone back. "Even if he smashes both our devices, the files exist in three separate locations."
Smart. Vicious. Gorgeous, even soaked in plant fluids and her own blood.
I hoist the burlap-wrapped rosebush against me with one arm and offer her the other. She takes it, pulling herself upright. Winces when the motion stretches the gashes across her shoulder blades. Locks her jaw and doesn't make a sound.
"We go out the side window. The one the thornvine blocked is clear now." I nod toward it. The dead canes have collapsed away from the frame, leaving a gap wide enough for both of us if I angle sideways. "Over the back fence, through the Hendersons' yard, home in four minutes."
"Three if we run."
"You're not running. You're bleeding."
"I'm bleeding AND running. Pick up the pace, Danger."
She moves ahead of me through the wreckage.
Dead canes crunch under her boots. Flytrap heads squelch.
The grow lights hum overhead, still blazing at full intensity, turning the destroyed greenhouse into a crime scene under interrogation lamps.
Every stolen plant. Every shattered tank.
Every inch of evidence, lit up and undeniable.
The side window is six feet off the ground. I shift the rosebush to my left arm and grab the window latch with my right. Rusted. I wrench it. The latch snaps clean off in my fist.
Metal, old and cheap. Not magical. Just neglected.
The window swings open. Cool night air pours in, carrying the smell of wet grass and suburban quiet. Freedom, three feet wide and six feet up.
"I'll boost you. Hand the rose over once you're through."
"No. Rose goes first." Junia takes the burlap sack from me, stretches up on her toes, and slides it onto the outer windowsill. It teeters. She steadies it with both hands, pushing until the weight settles on the far side. Safe.
I cup my hands. She steps into the stirrup, and I lift her straight up like she weighs nothing. She grabs the sill, swings a leg over, and drops to the other side. A soft grunt when her boots hit dirt.
"Clear. Hand me the—"
A thin line of blue light snaps across my left shin.
The sensation is instantaneous. Not pain. Recognition. Magical tripwire. Orcish warband territory was lousy with them. Different magic, same principle. A perimeter alarm designed to trigger the moment someone passes through.
The greenhouse doors slam shut with the force of a battering ram hitting a castle gate.
The glass panels rattle in their frames.
Dead bolts engage, three of them, bang bang bang, punching into their housings in rapid succession.
The side window behind me is still open, but I am facing the wrong direction, and the sound already coming through the front entrance tells me the window doesn't matter.
A service door I didn't notice bursts inward. It was hidden behind a rack of fertilizer bags, camouflaged by careful placement.
Two guards.
Not the stone gargoyles from the property border.
Flesh and blood. An Elf and a Dwarf, both wearing black tactical vests stamped with the HOA crest in silver thread.
The Elf is wiry, fast on his feet, already spreading left to flank.
The Dwarf is a fire hydrant made of muscle and bad intentions, moving right.
Both carry stun batons.
The batons crackle to life. Blue-white arcs of magical current jump between the contact points, spitting and popping in the humid greenhouse air. Not lethal. Not meant to be. Designed to drop a full-grown Orc to his knees and keep him there while the authorities arrive.
"Flynn!"
The guards fan out, cutting off the aisle between me and the exit, batons humming, boots crunching through the dead thornvine debris.
I roll my shoulders. Six-foot steel tube. Still on the floor. Three feet to my left.