Small Favor

Tiny blinked his other eye open, and though they still wouldn’t focus he let out a weak-sounding grunt. "Mortal," he rasped, "I am bested." One of his ears flicked once and he exhaled in a sigh. "Finish it."

I walked past the fallen gruff without stopping, noting as I did that the stroke of energy that had severed his leg had cauterized it shut, too. He wasn’t going to bleed to death.

I peered cautiously into the locker.

It was empty except for a single, flat wooden box about the size of a big backgammon kit. The back wall of the locker sported something else-the blackened outline of some sort of rune. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen Gard employing some kind of rune-based magic, but I’d be damned if I knew how it was done. I reached out with my wizard’s senses cautiously, but felt nothing. Whatever energy had been stored there was gone now.

What the hell? I reached in and grabbed the box. Nothing ripped me into quivering shreds.

I scowled suspiciously and slowly withdrew the box, but nothing else happened. Evidently Gard had considered her security measures to be adequate for dealing with a thief. Or a dinosaur. Whichever.

Once I had the case, I turned back to the gruff.

"Mortal," Tiny wheezed, "finish it."

"I try not to kill anything unless it’s absolutely necessary," I replied, "and I’ve got no need to kill you today. This wasn’t a personal matter. It’s done. That’s the end of it."

The gruff focused his eyes and just stared at me for a startled moment. "Mercy? From a Winterbound?"

"I’m not bound," I snapped. "This is purely temp work." I squinted around. "I think the hobs have mostly cleared out. Can you leave on your own, or do you need me to send for someone?"

The gruff shuddered and shook his huge head. "Not necessary. I will go." He spread the fingers of one hand on the ground and started sinking into it as if it were quicksand. As portals to Faerie went, that was a new one for me.

"This is a onetime offer," I told him just before he was completely gone. "Don’t come back."

"I shan’t," he rumbled, his eyes sagging closed in weariness. "But mark you this, wizard."

I frowned at him. "What?"

"My elder brother," he growled, "is going to kill thee."

Then Tiny sank into the floor and was gone.

"Another one?" I demanded of the floor. "You’ve got to be kidding me!"

I leaned against the lockers, banging my head gently against the steel for a moment. Then I pushed myself back onto my feet and started jogging back toward where I had parted with Michael. Just because the hobs were gone from this part of the station didn’t mean that there wasn’t still a fight going on. Michael might need my help.

I picked up the trail of body parts again, though by this time most of them were mounds of dark powder, like charcoal dust, pounded to a gooey paste by the building’s sprinklers. The patches of gunk got thicker as I continued in the direction I thought Michael had gone.

I followed the trail to the base of a ridiculously broad flight of stone stairs-the one that actually had been in The Untouchables. The parts were still recognizable as parts here. These hobs hadn’t been dead for long. They lay in a carpet of motionless, burning corpses on the stairs. Judging by the way they’d fallen they had been facing up the stairs when they died.

Several fallen hobs bore wounds that indicated that Michael had hewed his way through them from behind. White knight he might be, but once that sword comes out, Michael puts his game face on, and he plays as hard as almost anyone I’ve ever seen.

Not that I could blame him. Not all the remains I’d passed had been those of hobs.

Three security guards were down, one maybe ten feet from the stairs, the other two on the stairway itself. They had fallen separately in the darkness.

I’d passed several other bloodstains that had almost certainly been fatal to their donors, unless the falling water had made them look more extensive than they actually were. I’d never encountered hobs face-to-face before, but I knew enough about them to hope that whoever had spilled that blood was dead.

Hobs had a habit of hauling victims back into their lightless tunnels.

I shuddered. I’d give the troubleshooters from Summer that much: All the gruffs wanted to do was kill me, clean, and that would be the end of it. I’d been carried into the darkness by monsters before. It isn’t something I’d wish on anyone. Ever.

You don’t really live through it, even if you survive. It changes you.

I pushed away bad memories and tried to ignore them while I thought. Some of the hobs had obviously taken their victims and run. According to the books it was their modus operandi. Though this entire attack seemed to indicate a higher level of organization than the average rampage, obviously whoever was behind it wasn’t in complete control. Faeries share one universal trait-their essential natures are actively contrary, and they are notoriously difficult to command.

The hobs on the stairs were different from the ones I’d had to contend with at the front of the station. These all bore more advanced cutlery, probably made of bronze, and wore armor made of some kind of hide. To be clustered this thickly on the stairs, they had to have been at least a little organized, fighting in ranks, too.

Something had compelled these hobs to attack in unison. Hell, if the numbers of fallen hobs in front of me were any indication, the gang that came after Michael and me were probably stragglers who had gone haring off on their own, looking for a little carryout to take home.

So what had been the purpose of the attack? What the hell had drawn them all to the stairway?

Whatever was at the top, obviously.

Above me the light of the holy Sword flickered and began to fade. I chugged up the stairs as it did, still holding my fingers up to shield my eyes until the light dwindled, and caught up to Michael. He was breathing hard, Sword still raised over his head in a high guard and ready to come sweeping down. I noted, idly, that the stench of stagnant water had vanished, replaced by the quiet, strong scent of roses. I lifted my face again and felt cool, clean, rose-scented water fall on my face. Falling through the light of the holy Sword had improved it, it would seem.

The last hob to fall, a big brute the size of a freaking mountain gorilla, lay motionless near Michael’s feet. What was left of a bronze shield and sword lay in neatly sliced fragments around the body. Its blood spread sluggishly down the stairs, coated with blue-white flame as its body was slowly consumed by more of the same.

"Everybody can relax," I panted as I caught up to Michael. "I’m here."

Michael greeted me with a nod and a quick smile. "Are you all right?"