“You mean hurt them.”
“Not necessarily,” I said quietly. “But guys like those two jokers only respect strength. If you show them that you have it, they’ll get the idea.”
Irwin frowned harder. “No one ever talked to me about it like that before.”
“I guess not,” I said.
“I’m … I’m scared of doing that.”
“Who wouldn’t be?” I asked him. “But the only way to beat your fears is to face them. If you don’t, they’re going to keep on doing this to you, and then others, and someday someone is going to get hurt bad. It might even be those two jackasses who get hurt—if someone doesn’t make them realize that they can’t go through life acting like that.”
“They aren’t really bad guys,” Irwin said slowly. “I mean, to anyone but me. They’re okay to other people.”
“Then I’d say that you’d be helping them as well as yourself, Irwin.”
He nodded slowly and took a deep breath. “I’ll … I’ll think about it.”
“Good,” I said. “Thinking for yourself is the most valuable skill you’ll ever learn.”
“Thank you, Harry,” he said.
I rose and picked up my broom. “You bet.”
I went back to sweeping one end of the cafeteria. Coach Pete stood at the other end. Irwin returned to his writing, and the Bully Brothers came in.
They approached as before, moving between the tables, splitting up to come at Irwin from two sides. They ignored me and Coach Pete, closing in on Irwin with impatient eagerness.
Irwin’s pencil stopped scratching when they both were about five feet away from him, and without looking up he said in a sharp, firm voice, “Stop.”
They did. I could see the face of only one of them, but the bully was blinking in surprise.
“This is not cool,” Irwin said. “And I’m not going to let you do it anymore.”
The brothers eyed him, traded rather feral smiles, and then each of them lunged at Irwin and grabbed an arm. They hauled him back with surprising speed and power, slamming his back onto the floor. One of them started slapping at his eyes and face while the other produced a short length of heavy rubber tubing, jerked Irwin’s shirt up, and started hitting him on the stomach with the hose.
I gritted my teeth and reached for the handle of my mop—except it wasn’t a mop that was poking up out of the bucket. It was my staff, a six-foot length of oak as thick as my circled thumb and forefinger. If this was how the Bully Brothers started the beating, I didn’t even want to think about what they’d do for a finale. Svartalf or not, I couldn’t allow things to go any further before I stepped in.
Coach Pete’s dark eyes glittered at me from behind his sports magazine, and he crooked a couple of fingers on one hand in a way that no human being could have. I don’t know what kind of magical energy the svartalf was using, but he was good with it. There was a sharp crackling sound, and the water in the mop bucket froze solid in an instant, trapping my staff in place.
My heart sped up. That kind of magical control was a bad, bad sign. It meant that the svartalf was better than me—probably a lot better. He hadn’t used a focus of any kind to help him out, the way my staff would help me focus and control my own power. If we’d been fighting with swords, that move would have been the same as him clipping off the tips of my eyelashes without drawing blood. This guy would kill me if I fought him.
I set my jaw, grabbed the staff in both hands, and sent a surge of my will and power rushing down its rune-carved length into the entrapping ice. I muttered, “Forzare,” as I twisted the staff, and pure energy lashed out into the ice, pulverizing it into chunks the size of gravel.
Coach Pete leaned forward slightly, eager, and I saw his eyes gleam. Svartalves were old-school, and their culture had been born in the time of the Vikings. They thought mortal combat was at least as fun as it was scary, and their idea of mercy embraced killing you quickly as opposed to killing you slowly. If I started up with this svartalf, it wouldn’t be over until one of us was dead. Probably me. I was afraid.
The sound of the rubber hose hitting Irwin’s stomach and the harsh breathing of the struggling children echoed in the large room.
I took a deep breath, grabbed my staff in two hands, and began drawing in my will once more.
And then Bigfoot Irwin roared, “I said no!”
The kid twisted his shoulders in an abrupt motion and tossed one of the brothers away as if he weighed no more than a soccer ball. The bully flew ten feet before his butt hit the ground. The second brother was still staring in shock when Bigfoot Irwin sat up, grabbed him by the front of his shirt, and rose. He lifted the second brother’s feet off the floor and simply held him there, scowling furiously up at him.
The Bully Brothers had inherited their predatory instinct from their supernatural parent.
Bigfoot Irwin had gotten something else.
The second brother stared down at the younger boy and struggled to wriggle free, his face pale and frantic. Irwin didn’t let him go.
“Hey, look at me,” Irwin snarled. “This is not okay. You were mean to me. You kept hurting me. For no reason. That’s over. Now. I’m not going to let you do it anymore. Okay?”
The first brother sat up shakily from the floor and stared agog at his former victim, now holding his brother effortlessly off the floor.
“Did you hear me?” Irwin asked, giving the kid a little shake. I heard his teeth clack together.
“Y-yeah,” stammered the dangling brother, nodding emphatically. “I hear you. I hear you. We hear you.”
Irwin scowled for a moment. Then he gave the second brother a push before releasing him. The bully fell to the floor three feet away and scrambled quickly back from Irwin. The pair of them started a slow retreat.
“I mean it,” Irwin said. “What you’ve been doing isn’t cool. We’ll figure out something else for you to do for fun. Okay?”
The Bully Brothers mumbled something vaguely affirmative and then hurried out of the cafeteria.
Bigfoot Irwin watched them go. Then he looked down at his hands, turning them over and back as if he’d never seen them before.
I kept my grip on my staff and looked down the length of the cafeteria at Coach Pete. I arched an eyebrow at him. “It seems like the boys sorted this out on their own.”
Coach Pete lowered his magazine slowly. The air was thick with tension, and the silence was its hard surface.
Then the svartalf said, “Your sentences, Mr. Pounder.”
“Yessir, Coach Pete,” Irwin said. He turned back to the table and sat down, and his pencil started scratching at the paper again.
Coach Pete nodded at him, then came over to me. He stood facing me for a moment, his expression blank.
“I didn’t intervene,” I said. “I didn’t try to dissuade your boys from following their natures. Irwin did that.”
The svartalf pursed his lips thoughtfully and then nodded slowly. “Technically accurate. And yet you still had a hand in what just happened. Why should I not exact retribution for your interference?”
“Because I just helped your boys.”
“In what way?”
“Irwin and I taught them caution—that some prey is too much for them to handle. And we didn’t even hurt them to make it happen.”
Coach Pete considered that for a moment and then gave me a faint smile. “A lesson best learned early rather than late.” He turned and started to walk away.
“Hey,” I said in a sharp, firm voice.
He paused.
“You took the kid’s book today,” I said. “Please return it.”
Irwin’s pencil scratched along the page, suddenly loud.
Coach Pete turned. Then he pulled the paperback in question out of his pocket and flicked it through the air. I caught it in one hand, which probably made me look a lot cooler and more collected than I felt at the time.
Coach Pete inclined his head to me, a little more deeply than before. “Wizard.”
I mirrored the gesture. “Svartalf.”