It was nice. Jarringly so, after the insanity outside. The owners had obviously spent a good deal of time doing the place up and selecting that couch to go with that rug to go with that chaise. She picked up the phone hopefully and was disappointed but not surprised to find it dead. Next step, look for weapons. There was a study upstairs with wooden bookshelves and a computer, but the desk was lamentably empty of handguns. Nor was there anything hidden in the bedside table, or even under the mattress of the master bed. It was a long shot, I suppose. The inhabitants of this house and, she feared, most of Muirie’s denizens were too liberal to have shotguns. Okay, so improvise.
The kitchen provided two very nice large cooking knives, which she taped to her forearms. The leg from an exquisite antique table became a very passable (if somewhat curvy) club. She couldn’t, however, find a map of the village, which would have been useful. From there, she hesitated. Streets or snickelways? If she used the streets, she’d probably find the pub much more quickly, but she’d also probably get killed much more quickly. Snickelways it is, she decided, and she let herself out the way she’d come in.
The alley was quiet except for the occasional distant screams, blasts of automatic gunfire, and, once, a sound like harps that shimmered through the passageways. Still only static over the radio. She took a moment to orient herself, using the plume of smoke rising into the air in the distance as a handy reference for the location of the pub. Then she set off at a trot, combat knife and club at the ready.
Felicity turned a corner and came to a T-junction, only to find herself in the middle of a standoff. On one side, a few feet from her, was a creature, poised to lunge. Facing it from several yards away was a woman in tactical armor. Behind her, filling the alleyway, was a roiling mass of water that stood like a wall.
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Felicity.
“Pawn, fall back!” the woman barked. The water behind her grew still for a moment, and then a torrent poured forth, a deluge that, Felicity saw in astonishment, split around the woman before coming together and hammering its way down the passage. Felicity stepped back hurriedly and watched the wave sweep toward the creature. Then she realized that the cascading water was also pouring toward her. She turned to run but the flow swept her feet out from under her and sent her skidding and bouncing against the walls on either side.
By the time she was able to get to her feet, the torrent had died away, but she felt strangely disinclined to go back and see how it had all worked out. Instead, she took a different route and found herself facing an actual thoroughfare. She peered cautiously around the corner and couldn’t see anything either threatening or promising.
This looks like it might go to the pub. Or at least in the general direction of the pub.
She proceeded cautiously, taking care to glance behind her every few seconds. Then a sound caught her ear.
There was a wet coughing off to her left, and she saw one of the creatures emerge from a snickelway opposite. She looked about and saw no escape routes on her side. The creature caught sight of her and stiffened. Think quickly. She ducked her head and, much to her own surprise, hurled herself through the window of the nearest house. She rolled to her feet, a little unsteadily, and then couldn’t help but scream as the creature burst through the wall and skidded past her into the kitchen. Why didn’t it just come in through the broken window? she wondered blearily. It was probably asking itself the same question as it pried its way out of the wreckage of the cupboards. The monster shook its head, almost human in its attempt to clear its thoughts.
They’re resilient, she thought. I’ll give them that. But not too bright. Then the thing focused on her, and she scrambled away up the stairs. She rounded the landing, bounded up the next flight, and then turned, club at the ready. She’d lost her combat knife in the trip through the window but tore the kitchen knife off her left arm.
Come on!
“Well, fucking come on!” she shouted. There was nothing there, no monster coming up the stairs. No sound of any movement in the house. Well, what does that mean?
And then it burst up through the floor directly behind her. Its hands closed around her head — No! — and in her horror, her mental defenses slipped and her powers flared. She had a fleeting impression of liquid pouring onto her face, and then she was back in her head, back in the present, and she stabbed behind her with the horrendously expensive Japanese cooking knife in her hand. To the surprise of everyone concerned, the knife actually went into the creature a little bit. Not a great deal, but enough that the beast let go of Felicity’s head.
Felicity dropped to one knee, retrieved her club from the floor, and whipped it up as she stood, bashing the creature in the chin. Not that she believed for a minute that would kill it. Without stopping, she changed her grip on the club, took a step to the side, and twisted to hit the monster in its knee. It buckled, and she spun around, using her momentum to whack the creature square in its lack of a face. The monster toppled backward into the hole it had emerged from, its yellow fingers scrabbling at the rim. Again. She brought the club down on one of the hands, and this time it fell.
Keep going! She turned and ran up the next flight of stairs, heading for the roof. There might be creatures on the rooftops, but there’s definitely one behind me and it’s in a shit mood. She scrambled through a tiny bedroom with slanting ceilings and out through a dormer window. She dropped lightly onto the roof of the house next door and clung to the tiles as she made her way across the rooftops. Finally she let herself down in another alleyway. She wasn’t sure if her recent movements had set her back or forward on her route, so she jogged until she found herself, purely by luck, on the pitch where the helicopter had dropped them off. Okay, now I just go to the pub the same way as before.
And then?
There was the temptation to turn her back on the village and run off into the countryside. The smoke hung thick in the air. Gunfire echoed, and she felt the occasional gut-churning sensation of a Pawn lashing out with his or her powers. Felicity didn’t know what pushed her to walk back into it. Maybe it was the thought of abandoning her fellow Checquy operatives. Maybe it was years of lessons about duty and responsibility. Maybe it was because her charge Odette was in there. Maybe it was because her friend Odette was in there.
Maybe it was all those things.
So she went back in.
Now that she was oriented, she made her way to the pub with relative ease. She was just approaching the last corner before the courtyard when something rushed out of a side passage. Felicity dropped to her knee and held her last knife low, ready to stab up, but it held out a hand.
“Stop! Checquy!” It was a man, in armor. A tall black man with a shaved head, he had a distinctly military air about him. A long gun was slung across his back, and he was holding a submachine gun identical to Felicity’s. “Trevor Cawthorne.” A Retainer, she thought. Must have been recruited from the army. He held out a hand.
“Pawn Clements,” she said, taking his hand and pulling herself up. “Felicity.”
“Yeah, you scouted the church,” he said. “I thought you would have got killed in the first confusion.” Felicity shrugged. “Nice club, by the way.”
“Thank you.”
“Is that — that’s not from a Clavell desk, is it?”
“Well, it was,” she said.
“Shame,” he tutted. “Wouldn’t care for some ammunition, would you?” He drew a couple of clips out of his vest and handed them over. “You have to be right up to the creatures to have any effect, right in their faces, but not as close as you need to be with a club.” Felicity gratefully accepted the clips and retaped her kitchen knife to her forearm. With a reloaded gun in one hand and her club in the other, she felt a little better. “You’re keeping the club?” he asked.
“Sentimental value,” said Felicity.
“Fair enough. So, why are you soaking wet?”