I glanced around.
Nobody was in the area, unless you counted the fight going on overhead, which looked like it was winding down. The thrashing had caused the tentacle around the devil’s arm to loosen, and he’d seized his chance. He’d grabbed the squid thing, trying to rip it apart, and giving Louis-Cesare a chance to escape.
And me a chance to assemble my crew.
I ran over to the not-moving vamp, crawled inside my purse for a second, and came up with another Spider’s Bite. I threw it on the bastard, watched it web him up, and dragged him inside. Fucker.
Then I moved over to the bottom of the now wrecked cage that the devil had been in, with its huge door hanging off its hinges and the metal bars twisted or broken. Another slumped figure lay beside it, having been tossed there at some point in the fight. I checked his meaty neck for a pulse, and it beat strong and steady. He might not be smart, but he was tough. He was also starting to come around.
I threw a couple of pairs of cuffs on the bruiser, hands and feet, then added a third to connect them in back and hogtie him, just to be safe. Then into the purse he went. Okay; that was three.
Where was number four?
Surprisingly, four was still in it, spraying both of the creatures above him with bullets, apparently not realizing that his friend was no longer in need of rescue. That was good. It kept his attention elsewhere.
And in all this, it wasn’t like he could hear me sneaking up on him, was it?
A moment later, number four was secured, leaving only one.
But the dark mage was wilier, and very much aware of what had just happened. He had simply been too far away to
stop it. But now he was running at me, both hands consumed by black, oily-looking clouds, which based on what had happened to the squid, were intended to drain me of magic and/or life as soon as they touched me.
Great.
To make matters worse, Louis-Cesare, who should have been down by now, had become stuck—literally. The blue gel that the squid’s body had thrown out was apparently harmless, but very sticky. Which meant that it wasn’t harmless since it had glued my hubby in place, stuck to what was left of the squid’s body as it and the devil reached crunch time.
I reached back into my bag of tricks, grabbed a grappling hook, and slung it at a passing rickshaw. It caught the back seat, jerking me up and over the dark mage’s head before he could grab me, which was good. But it was traveling in the wrong direction, which was not. The maneuver also seemed to really piss off the mage, who dropped the power sucking spell in favor of a lasso, and a moment later, he was in my face.
So, I put a fist in his, something he hadn’t seemed to expect, because mages never do. They’re so used to finding magical solutions to problems that they sometimes forget that the old fashioned, bare knuckles type works, too. In fact, it worked a little too well, because the bastard let go of the lasso and started slip and fall away.
I caught him. I almost tore my shoulder out of joint in the process, but I caught him. And got my legs around him a moment later, because he was a dead weight and I was holding us both up one-handed while being jerked across the damned sky!
Even worse, the lasso spell hadn’t faded away yet. It was lashing me like a burning rope every time the damned rickshaw driver changed direction, which was often because the mages were back. They had regrouped and were heading into the fray, seeing an opportunity to finish this.
And in the process, they were freaking out my driver, who encountered grim war mages everywhere he turned, who were not happy to see him. One of them plucked him out of the driver’s seat and yelled something at me; what I didn’t know because I was busy, damn it! And I don’t speak Cantonese.
But I’d managed to get my free hand into the bag and felt around. I needed something to hold the mage, but it would have to be something special. Something he wouldn’t immediately know how to counter, something that would take him by surprise—
Something like that, I thought, as the pissed off war mage got tired of talking and threw a cuff at us, which latched onto the mage’s ankle. It quickly started climbing his body, spewing out chains with locks every few inches. And, knowing war mages, each one of them probably required a different spell to release.
That’ll do, I thought, and stuffed my purse over his head.
A second later, he was gone, and that made five.
The team was assembled, although they hadn’t impressed me much so far. But at least they knew where Eternity was, which was more than I did. Now I just had to get out of here.
Another cuff was thrown at me, but missed because I was launching myself into the now empty driver’s seat. A second after that, I was peeling away from the war mage’s rickshaw, back toward the fight. Right alongside a phalanx of other vehicles, because the mages were diving as one.
I dove faster. Louis-Cesare was tiny compared to the creatures they were fighting, and I didn’t know if they’d see him or not. And the kind of combined spells they could throw might not be survivable, even for a master. So, I floored it, heedless of thrashing tentacles, battling giants, and pursuing mages. But spells travel faster than people, and they were gearing up to throw, and—
And they had to abort, sending colorful spells shooting off into the night, because a huge limo was suddenly rocketing into the scene, like a shiny black bullet.
Several spells hit the side, which had thrown itself between Louis-Cesare and the mages. I expected to see it go up like a fireball, but it must have been warded. Because, instead, all I heard was—
“Short stuff! Grab him!”
I grabbed him.