Chapter 6
I turned in the direction of the yell and saw a drunken college student dressed in an Islanders sweatshirt holding a wildly squirming leprechaun over his head as if he were the Stanley Cup, much to the amusement of his equally inebriated companions. Like all of his kind, the leprechaun sported bright red hair and bristling whiskers. However, instead of wearing the stereotypical breeches buckled at the knee and gartered hose, he was outfitted head to toe in scaled-down Versace.
"Don't let 'im go until he gives you his Lucky Charms!" one of the friends shouted. This particular witticism triggered a round of loud, braying laughter from the surrounding crowd. Since I had suffered my share of mischief at the hands of the local Wee Folk, I will confess to a certain schadenfreude at the fairy-fellow's predicament.
"That's racist!" the leprechaun yelped. "Let me go, ye bloody nump!"
"Don't do it, Jared!" one of the college student's friends advised. "If you capture one of 'em, they have to grant you three wishes!"
"What are ye, five?" the leprechaun snapped as he continued to try and free himself. "None of that shite from the fairy tales is true! Now put me down!"
"No way!" Jared said, shaking his head. "Not until you give me your pot of gold."
"Are ye daft as well as drunk?" the leprechaun growled. "I don't carry me gold around on me person. Besides, it's all tied up in commodities right now."
"And I say make with the gold, little dude!" Jared laughed, shaking his captive like a piggy bank, as if a cascade of bullion might pour from the leprechaun's tiny pockets.
Suddenly Lafo was standing in front of the college student, the sleeves of his shirt pushed up to reveal his muscular forearms. "I'll have no horseplay in my establishment!" he barked, his voice booming like surf against a rocky shore. "And don't you numps nowadays know enough not to antagonize the Wee Folk?"
"There's no reason to get all butthurt, bro'," Jared replied as he set the leprechaun down. "I wasn't gonna really do anything to the little fucker. Me and my friends were just having some fun, that's all." The college student turned to offer a conciliatory fist bump to the victim of his bullying. "We're cool, right, little dude?"
The leprechaun responded by pulling a short shillelagh from the sleeve of his jacket and pointing it at the college student. "So ye want me Lucky Charms, eh?" he asked, his high-pitched voice trembling with rage. "Well, by damn, you'll need them, boyo! May you feast on hogwash and sleep in filth; may you root with your nose as the farmer till'th!"
Jared doubled over as if punched in the gut by a phantom fist, and dropped to the floor. The college student's cries of confusion and pain quickly turned into porcine squeals as his hands and feet transformed themselves into trotters and his nose grew and broadened into a twitching pink snout. He frantically thrashed about as he tried to free himself from clothes that no longer fit his newly acquired physique, which came complete with a curlicue tail.
The sight of the transmogrified student's distress triggered a chorus of laughter from the NusWa and Calf's regulars, who were every bit as amused by Jared's ordeal as the frat boys had been by the leprechaun's.
"Oh my God!" one of Jared's friends wailed. "What did you do to him? Turn him back, you little freak!"
"Never!" the leprechaun snarled defiantly. "And if you ask me, I have improved his appearance immensely."
"Damn it, Tullamore," Lafo snapped. "You know I don't allow spell-slinging in my joint! Last thing I need is the Paranormal Threat Unit breathin' fire down my neck."
A couple of frat boys lunged at the leprechaun, but Tullamore was ready for them. He nimbly sidestepped his bigger, clumsier opponents, moving so fast it was impossible to keep track of him. One moment he was thumbing his nose in front of his attackers, the next he was dancing a jig behind them.
The laughter from the Kymerans watching from the sidelines grew louder and nastier each time the disoriented college students tried to rush the toddler-sized Tullamore. Cackling with laughter, the leprechaun jumped onto a nearby table occupied by another group of humans and began frantically step-dancing like a pocket-sized Michael Flatley, sending their drinks flying in every direction.
One of the humans jumped to his feet, cursing loudly as he wiped thick, sticky barley wine off his suede coat. "You're paying for my dry cleaning, squirt!"
"You'll have to catch me first, nump!" Tullamore retorted as he flipped him the bird. The leprechaun jumped off the table and landed on the back of the transformed Jared, who squealed in fear and began running in and out between the close-packed tables and booths. Tullamore slapped the pig-boy's rump with the shillelagh like a jockey going for the winner's circle as he was chased by Jared's friends and the man in the ruined jacket.
While the regular patrons of the Two-Headed Calf might have been enjoying the chaos created by Tullamore's taunting of the humans, Lafo clearly had had all that he could stand. He yanked open the front door and gestured angrily toward the street.
"Take it outside, Tullamore!"
The leprechaun grabbed Jared by his porcine ears and dug his heels into the pig-boy's haunches, sending his steed squealing out of the bar and into the night, his pursuers chasing after him like an unruly pack of hounds. Most of the Calf's regulars poured out into the street as well, eager to have a good laugh at the numps' expense. To my surprise, Hexe got up to follow them. However, unlike his fellow Kymerans, he didn't seem the least bit amused.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"Someone halfway sober has to keep an eye on this before it gets worse," he explained.
"Wait for me!" I shouted, grabbing my peacoat.
By the time we made it outside, there were at least sixty people, a third of them humans, gathered on the sidewalk in front of the Calf's bay windows, watching Jared's friends chase after Tullamore as he rode their buddy up and down the street like a racehorse. Thanks to curious passersby stopping to rubberneck and neighbors pouring out of their nearby homes and businesses to see what all the fuss was about, the crowd outside the Calf grew to well over three hundred in the span of just a few short minutes.
The humans were shouting alternately at the leprechaun to turn their friend back into his true form and at Jared to stop running around, goddamn it. S, g human Meanwhile, the Kymeran onlookers continued to laugh and shout encouragement to Tullamore. One of the frat boys lunged at the leprechaun, but Tullamore tugged on Jared's ears as he would the reins of a horse, wheeling his mount about so he was headed in the general direction of Ferry Street, home to Golgotham's leprechaun community. Suddenly the man in the suede jacket moved to block his path.
"Ye'll have to do better than that, boyos, if ye want to catch me!" Tullamore shouted. In the twinkling of an eye, a pair of huge white wings, like those of a swan, unfolded from the pig-boy's shoulders. The leprechaun dug his shins into his mount's flanks and with a startled grunt Jared soared into the air with a single flap.
Jared's dumbfounded friends stood and stared as he sailed away over the rooftops, accompanied by gales of laughter from the assembled Kymerans. "Bring him back, you little bastard!" one of them shouted, shaking his fist at Tullamore's rapidly disappearing backside. "That's my roommate you're flying off with!"
Once he realized the leprechaun was not going to reverse his flight plan, Jared's roomie turned to face his companions. "What am I going to tell his mother?" he moaned.
A Kymeran with hair the color of lime sherbet stepped forward and clapped the distraught college student on the shoulder. I recognized the wizard as Oddo, one of Hexe's occasional clients, who came to the house whenever he needed a hangover cured, as he had a tendency to get drunk and sling spells in public-a definite no-no in Golgotham.
"Don't fret, lad," Oddo said, slurring his words only slightly. "Your pal will show up in a day or two. . . . Of course, he'll be a few dozen yards of sausage hanging in a butcher's window by then. . . ."
"Holy fuck!" the roomie gasped in horror.
Oddo guffawed and slapped his knee, pleased by the shocked look on the college student's face. "What did I tell ya? The nump fell for it, hook, line, and sinker!" he shouted to the Kymeran onlookers gathered on the sidewalk, who promptly added their belly laughs to the chorus.
"It's not fuckin' funny!" the roomie yelled, pushing Oddo aside.
The wizard staggered backward, more surprised than harmed by the attack. He pointed his right hand at his adversary, the six fingers bent at angles impossible for human digits to duplicate, and made a sharp upward motion, as if hailing a cab.
The college student shot six feet into the air like a marionette yanked offstage by the puppeteer, his arms and legs flailing wildly as he screeched at the top of his lungs: "Stop it! Put me down!"
"I will-but only after I make sure you and the other numps have learned your lesson about sticking your noses in places that don't want you," Oddo replied. He made a twirling gesture with his right hand and the levitating student began to spin like a top, going faster with each revolution.
"Please! Stop!" he wailed. "I think I'm gonna-I'm gonna-"
I assume the rest of his sentence was puke, because that's exactly what he did, in copious amounts under high pressure. The cluster of humans directly underneath him nearly trampled one another in their attempt to escape the unwelcome downpour, only to be shoved back by Oddo's drinking companions, much to the delight of the assembled onlookers, who laughed even louder than before.
In the confusion, She eet int one of the humans trying to escape accidentally stumbled into Oddo, causing him to lose control of the wildly spinning college student. The poor bastard went flying like a rock from a slingshot, sailing through the bay window of the Two-Headed Calf with a mighty crash.
The crowd fell instantly silent as Kymeran and human alike stared, dumbstruck, at the smashed window. The most shocked expression belonged to Oddo, who seemed genuinely stunned by what had just transpired. But before the green-haired magician could apologize or find out if the victim of his prank was hurt or not, a frightened voice cried out: "The Kymies are trying to kill us!"
The underlying tension between the Calf's regulars and the human interlopers finally burst forth, and within seconds the humans were throwing tankards and barley wine bottles at what they perceived to be the enemy. Luckily, the majority of Kymerans weren't so drunk that they automatically retaliated with sorcery; instead they protected themselves with their right hands, flicking aside the various missiles hurled in their direction before they could make contact.
Lost in the middle of the chaos, Oddo quickly found himself surrounded by angry humans. An arm flailed out and punched him in the face. Oddo put his right hand to his mouth, his eyes widening in astonishment when it came away bloody. Surrounded and outnumbered, he dropped back, his eyes growing darker as he lifted his left hand.
Suddenly Hexe was no longer at my side, but pushing his way through the crowd. He grabbed Oddo by the left wrist, pulling the warlock's arm back and pinning it to the small of his back. "Stop, Oddo!" he shouted. "It's bad enough as it is already, without you making things worse!"
The drunken wizard struggled to free himself, only to stop upon recognizing Hexe. As the flicker of hellfire cradled in Oddo's palm winked out, a bottle came flying out of nowhere and struck Hexe in the head. A couple of Kymerans quickly darted forward and grabbed him and Oddo, dragging them into the protection of their circle.
I dove into the crowd and made my way toward Hexe, putting my formative years in the mosh pits to good use by throwing elbows and knees in every direction, and God help anyone or anything that got in my way. Suddenly a Kymeran with a turquoise mohawk stepped in front of me, deliberately blocking my path. He smelled dangerous, like gunpowder and a lit match.
"Keep to your own, nump!" he growled, raising his left hand in warning.
"Leave her alone, Skal!" Hexe barked, pushing his would-be protector aside. "She's with me!"
Skal lowered his hand and stepped away, but the loathing in his eyes as he looked at me did not disappear. I pushed past him and threw my arms around Hexe, only to gasp at the sight of blood running down the side of his face.
"Oh my God, baby-you're hurt!"
"Scalp wounds bleed like a bitch, but it's superficial," he reassured me, pointing to the laceration just above his left temple.
Suddenly the air was filled with the wailing of sirens, and a couple of old-fashioned paddy wagons drawn by centaurs outfitted in riot gear rounded the corner. The wagons had the letters PTU stenciled on their sides and flashing blue lights mounted on top.
Hexe muttered, "About damn time."
"You'll tell 'em I didn't mean to put the nump through the window, won'tcha, Serenity?" Oddo asked anx Sddofont sizeiously. "They'll believe it comin' from you."
"Of course I will, Oddo," Hexe said, doing his best to calm the worried sorcerer.
The doors of the paddy wagons flew open and members of Golgotham's peacekeeping force, the Paranormal Threat Unit, jumped out onto the streets. Composed of a mixture of Kymerans, "gifted" humans, and other paranormal races, they were outfitted in specially charmed and modified police gear designed to handle the dangers unique to the magic-using community they policed.
The leader of the PTU squad, a tall Kymeran woman carrying a bullhorn and dressed in full-body armor and riot helmet, stepped forward to address the unruly crowd. "Everybody calm down! My name is Lieutenant Vivi of the PTU and I want your hands where I can't see'em!"
While the Kymerans did as they were told, placing their hands either behind their backs or in their pockets, the humans in the crowd exchanged confused looks, unsure as to what to do. Baffled by the instructions, one of the humans automatically raised his hands over his head.
"I said keep 'em where I can't see 'em!" Lieutenant Vivi snapped.
Pale green ectoplasm shot from her right hand, wrapping itself around the befuddled human like bandages around a mummy. Within a heartbeat the human was cocooned in the viscous substance from the neck down, rendering him completely immobile. The remaining humans started to shout obscenities and push and shove one another in a panicked attempt to escape, mistaking the restraint of an unruly suspect for another attack.
Lieutenant Vivi raised the bullhorn to tell the crowd they had nothing to fear, but her words were drowned out by the scream of sirens approaching from the other end of the block. The PTU officer frowned and turned to stare at the NYPD Emergency Services Unit truck lumbering its way up the cobblestone streets.
The look of relief disappeared from Hexe's face, to be replaced by one of alarm. The sight of New York City's finest in Golgotham was as jarring as spying a centaur trotting through Central Park.
"Bloody abdabs!" he gasped. "What are they doing here?"
As the PTU responders stared in disbelief, an armed ESU squad poured out of the truck, riot shields and tear gas guns at the ready. At their head was a tall, muscular man with a gray crew cut, dressed in a Kevlar vest. He, too, was carrying a bullhorn, which he used to address the crowd.
"NYPD! Everybody freeze! Put your hands up where I can see 'em!"
Now it was the Kymerans' turn to look bewildered. For a brief moment the groups of feuding humans and Kymerans were united in confusion as they alternately lifted and lowered their hands above their heads, uncertain which authority figure they were supposed to obey.
"I was wondering how tonight could possibly get worse," Hexe said with a groan of disgust. "Now I know."
The PTU commanding officer strode angrily over to the ESU leader. "Hey! Who do you think you are?"
"Lieutenant Daniel Trieux, New York Emergency Service Squad One, Lower Manhattan," he replied curtly. "And you are-?"
"Lieutenant Vivi, Paranormal Threat Unit. This ain't Lower Manhattan, Lieutenant-it's Golgotham. You're outside your jurisdiction. My team has things under control. I need you to stand down."
"Sorry, no can do, Lieutenant," Trieux replied sternly. "Nine-one-one received a call stating humans were under supernatural attack at this location. I'm under orders to extract all humans from the area and transport them to the Fifth Precinct."
"This is a PTU investigation, and the only place anyone's going is to the Tombs via PTU escort." Lieutenant Vivi scowled. "You can pick 'em up from there. Like I said, we have things under control here."
As Lieutenant Vivi argued with her NYPD counterpart as to who had the authority to haul the collective butts of the unruly crowd to jail, the Kymerans gathered outside the Two-Headed Calf began to mutter among themselves in their own language. Normally NYPD never ventured past the Gate of Skulls, leaving the peacekeeping in Golgotham to the Paranormal Threat Unit. Although I couldn't understand what they were saying, it wasn't hard to figure out that they were not pleased by the surprise arrival of New York's finest. The same was true for the locals thronging the streets, who eyed the ESU team the same way gazelles size up a lion at a watering hole.
"They're going to surrender me to the humans, aren't they?" Oddo moaned, mopping the sweat from his brow with a filthy handkerchief. "They're going to cut off my fingers because I attacked a nump." He held up his hands, flexing the extra ring fingers that allowed Kymerans to work their magic. "I'm not gonna let that happen," he said, his voice wavering on the verge of tears. "I'm not gonna to let them take my magic!" Before Hexe could convince him that his fears were unfounded, Oddo began pushing his way through the crowd, shouting at the top of his voice: "The humans want my magic! They're gonna cut off my fingers!"
The wizard's paranoia swept through the assembled Kymerans like wildfire. Within seconds what had been grumbling turned into full-fledged dissent.
"Go home, numps!" bellowed a Kymeran with a salmon pink afro. "Nobody's taking our fingers!"
"Golgotham is ours!" yelled Skal. "Leave now, before it's too late!"
"Everybody calm down!" Hexe shouted, trying to make himself heard over the sea of angry voices. "The police are just here to escort the humans out of Golgotham!" But it was no use; the mixture of alcohol, paranoia, and discontent had turned the unruly crowd into an angry mob.
"Gardy looooo!"
My hair stood on end at the sound of the traditional warning call of magic being unleashed. I turned and saw Skal draw back his left hand like a baseball pitcher winding up for a curveball and hurl a fistful of hellfire through the night air. A wild cheer rose up from the Golgothamites as the fireball landed atop the roof of the ESU truck, which proceeded to burn like it was made out of plywood.
I heard Lieutenant Trieux shout something through his bullhorn, followed by a series of dull whumps. Suddenly a dense reddish cloud rose up from the cobblestones like an evil fog. My nose began to burn and my eyes filled with tears. The surrounding crowd started coughing and hacking as the rapidly spreading fumes enveloped everyone in the vicinity-Kymeran and human alike.
Hexe grabbed my hand and dragged me through the wall of smoke. Although my vision was blurred, I saw Lieutenant Vivi point her right hand at her NYPD counterpart, encasing Lieutenant Trieux in his very own ecto-plasmic cocoon. The last thing I saw, before a rolling, blood-tinged cloud obscured my view, was the ESU team turning t Seami>"Nobodheir weapons away from the crowd and aiming them, instead, at the PTU forces.
"We've got to get back to the house before these fools start slinging blind," Hexe said as he led me through the chaos. All around us those caught up in the riot wailed and shrieked, urging one another to do battle, but the mob had no leaders or logic behind it, only blind animal fear.
Figures stumbled in and out of the low-hanging cloud of tear gas smoke, like lost souls trying to fight their way free from Hades. A crying Kymeran woman with coral pink hair staggered out of the fog, blood flowing down the back of her neck. Hexe motioned for her to join us, but she shook her head and went in the opposite direction upon realizing I was human. A satyr with a freshly broken right horn went clattering by, bleating in pain and fear, blood streaming from his broad nostrils. I glimpsed Skal, the Kymeran who had hurled the opening salvo, running through the haze, laughing maniacally, his left hand on fire.
Suddenly a policeman in full riot gear, his face obscured by a gas mask, materialized from out of the fog, blocking our path.
"Let go of the girl, Kymie." Although his voice was muffled, there was no mistaking the intent behind the semiautomatic pistol pointed at Hexe's chest.
I opened my mouth to yell at the cop and tell him that Hexe was trying to save me, not hurt me, but all I could do was cough and choke on the burning air. Hexe tightened his grip on my hand, but did not respond to the policeman's threat.
The cop took another step closer, raising the sight of his weapon to Hexe's forehead.
"I said let her go, Kymie."
Just then there was a huge boom, as if a giant had clapped his hands beside my head, momentarily robbing me of my hearing. The policeman turned to look at where the ESU truck had been a moment before. It took me a second to realize that the vehicle's gas tank must have exploded. As the policeman turned back to face us, Hexe quickly raised his right hand and the ESU squad member froze in place. We stepped around the living statue and continued running in the direction of Beekman Street, desperate to put the madness behind us.
Suddenly a blinding light stabbed down from above, accompanied by a thunderous roar and a wild wind, which tore apart the localized cloud of tear gas and the black smoke from the burning tires, dispersing it into the side streets and alleyways, as well as the nearby homes and businesses of countless innocent Golgothamites. I looked up to see an NYPD helicopter circling overhead like a mechanical vulture.
An armed police officer standing in the open bay of the copter pointed in our direction, and the spotlight swiveled to follow us. A second later the copter dropped so low I was afraid it might hit the roof of a nearby building. The backwash from its rotors was so strong it nearly snatched me out of Hexe's grip. He stopped to scowl at the machine hovering overhead and lifted his right hand before his face, as if shielding his eyes from the glare of the searchlight. A moment later, the light wandered away, the occupants of the helicopter apparently no longer interested in us. We managed to get back to the boardinghouse without running into any further trouble.
Once we'd made it inside, Hexe slammed the door behind us and then slid down onto the floor of the foyer in exhaustion, resting his back against the wall. As I knelt beside him and kissed him, he grabbed me and pulled me close. We sat there for a long moment, trembling like foxes that had just escaped the hounds, secure in the knowled Sn td me andge we were safe in our den.