Staked (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #8)(70)
They start shouting at me to drop my weapon, Orlaith barks at them, Beau yells at them to stop f*cking around and take me down, and I grin. Their uniforms are awful polyester blends and I can’t mess with them, but their shoes are made of leather. Natural material there, even if treated with chemicals. Almost identical to the leather of the chair I was just sitting in. I bind the closest guy’s right foot to the back of the chair, high up, and the binding simultaneously yanks his foot up in the air and the back of the chair down. They rush to meet, both toppling over and dragging across the floor toward each other, effectively blocking the other guards from getting to me. I repeat the binding on the others, and soon they’re all immobilized and cursing, kicking at the chair. They won’t stay that way forever—eventually they’ll slip out of their shoes, but I plan to be gone by then. I turn around to bid Beau a mocking farewell, since I’ve delivered my message, and discover that he’s pulled a gun out of his desk and he’s pointing it at me. My amusement at the guards disappears.
“Aha! Not so funny now, is it?” he says. “You shoulda stayed dead, Granuaile. Pretty thing like you is gonna hate what’s left of your life in prison. Now, put that f*cking stick down slow or I’ll pop you in the knee. My boys there will testify I had no choice. And drop that axe too; then we’ll talk about what you’ve done to the wells.”
His condescending sneer—a frequent nightmare from my youth—sets off a rumbling quake of rage inside me, and the careful admonitions I had made to myself last night float down the River Lethe.
“Okay, okay,” I say, and slowly begin to sink to my knees, seeming to comply. Then I mutter the words to trigger invisibility, and as soon as I wink out of his sight I drop down behind the desk and roll out of the gun’s line of fire, moving to my right and his left, away from my hound.
“Hey, now,” he says, standing up and waving that gun around, searching for me. Orlaith is growling at him, and through our mental link I tell her not to move.
“Don’t f*ck with me. No telling who could get hurt,” he says, the gun barrel drifting in Orlaith’s direction.
It’s not a direct threat, but it’s not subtle either, and if I was angry before, now I’m ready to erupt. I come up on his left, raise Scáthmhaide, and bring it down hard on his extended right wrist. It’s a blow across his body, but that’s why long staffs are handy. He shoots a round into the top of his desk before letting go, at the same time making a high squeal of pain because I’ve shattered the bones in his wrist. He clutches it, takes a step back, and I drop Scáthmhaide to lay into him with my fists. Doing so makes me visible and he sees me coming but not in time to do anything about it except reflexively widen his eyes. I crunch my fist into his face, and he lets out another cry as he collapses. I follow him to the ground and keep punching him in the body as I shout.
“No!” Whud. “Telling!” Fump. “Who!” Thud. “Could!” Smack. “Get hurt!” Whump.
<Granuaile!> Orlaith’s voice intrudes, and I look up at her. <You said you didn’t want to be violent!>
“Oh,” I say in a tiny voice, rearing back and realizing that Beau has curled up into a defensive fetal position. I have just beaten the hell out of an old man. An evil old man, to be sure, but I’ve failed miserably at keeping the moral high ground. Now the entire confrontation will be about my violence instead of his decades of ruining the earth for profit. I’m torn, because it felt so good to lay into him like I’ve always wanted to, but I also wanted to be better than that.
<Also, watch out for the dudes.>
Looking up, I see that a couple of the guards have won free of their shoes and one is circling around the desk to get behind me while the other is moving to the door. He opens it a crack, shouts to the secretary to call for backup, and closes it again. The other two guards will be free in another couple of seconds. I need to leave.
The guy who’s trying to pounce on me from behind moves too slow; his body language screams that I spooked him with the shoe thing. He can’t explain that shit with science so he’s got a clenched-teeth aggro face and nostrils flaring like a bull. Still, when I scramble to my feet, retrieving Scáthmhaide, he somehow summons the courage to try to bash me in the head with his baton. I knock it aside and then before he can swing it back around I whip the bottom end of my staff up into his unprotected groin. He goes down with a whimper, all the aggro gone and the totality of his existence now consumed with the throbbing of his bruised balls.
Movement in my peripheral vision alerts me that one of the guards is climbing over the chair and lunging for the desk. I get there a split second faster and snatch up Beau’s dropped gun.
“Nuh-uh,” I say, pointing it at him. “Back off. Drop the batons. All of you, away from the door. Move fast, now, or I’ll drop you with a bullet to the knee.”
I gesture, they scoot, and I mentally tell Orlaith to head for the door. She growls as she passes them, essentially exchanging positions with the guards, and stands in front of the door. The three guards—the last one finally free of the chair—keep their hands up and their eyes on me. Beau is still lying on the ground, moaning. With the guards disarmed and Orlaith out of danger, I take my eyes off the three guards just long enough to carefully step past the one I’d nutted. Couldn’t have him tripping me up.