Mal’s fingers twitched, tempted to see how he liked getting pranked. Maybe a couple of weeping boils on his dick or a dozen centipedes in his ass crack would do the trick.
She was still considering the wisdom of the idea when all hell broke loose on the other side of the curtain.
Chapter Nine
You’d thinkwar would start quiet and build to a roar. Not this one. It started with shrieks that would curdle demon blood, roars that sounded like freight trains, shouts, screams, clangs of metal, pops, thumps, and thuds.
Mal tossed a protective shield around Nayena. It only protected against magic, but Mal was glad to see that the pixie’s companions rose around her, none appearing like they planned to stab her in the back. The other group of pixies came buzzing out, looking for the source of the noise, and dived through the curtain. Mal wasn’t at all certain that all of them had cleared out. A sniper or two might be left behind.
She snorted. A sniper. To take out a bride in order to prevent a wedding. How insane was that?
Nevertheless, the threat was real, and she wasn’t about to let Nayena be murdered. Or her husband-to-be. But first, Mal had to make sure she stayed safe.
A glitter bomb came flying through the curtain. Four more followed. They exploded as they hit the ground. The pixies practically spasmed and shot like bullets up out of range.
Mal dived back through the curtain, wrapping a shield around herself. Glitter bomb magic would eat it, but better than eating her. At least until she could figure out what to do next.
Nayena had risen up high enough that Mal couldn’t maintain the shield around her, so she let it go. Hopefully the pixie could take care of herself for a little while.
The curtain turned into a spiderweb and dissolved as the glitter bombs took effect. If someone had been trying to break into the pixie grotto, they’d succeeded. They’d busted down the door anyway. There was still the issue of the battle raging outside.
Mal dodged a…something. Blue with tentacles and armor and fungus ridging out all over it and a shiny gelatinous protrusion that could have been an eye or a cancer or maybe a kidney. It didn’t seem to be done becoming whatever it was going to be because it was still growing and sprouted a bunch of things that could have been penises or possibly thick hair. And it stank like boiled cabbage.
She ran into a giant, or rather, a giant’s calf, as she avoided the swipe of a big pole axe, which said giant happened to be swinging. He glanced down at her and snarled.
Rude. She flipped him off and lit his topknot on fire. Since he was a ginger, it matched. His copper-colored eyes widened as he realized his danger, and he started slapping at his head with his free hand.
“Knock yourself out, asshole,” Mal said. “Please and hurry.”
More glitter bombs exploded.
Mal shot bolts of mage fire at them, hoping to incinerate some of the dust. Then she turned her attention to lighting up more topknots, then boots, and moved on to pants and weapons. Pretty quickly the battle turned into stomping and slapping and shouting and whining. If only someone could start playing some good Cajun music, it would be perfect.
She stood back as much out of the fray as she could, sending firebombs at the pixies who kept wanting to dive-bomb the distracted giants and hoping Law would show up and do his Walker, Texas Ranger, thing.
For a second she imagined him jumping around, kicking giants’ butts, dressed in tight jeans, cowboy boots, and a cowboy hat and chortled to herself.
Something whizzed by her head with a sort of ringing metallic sound, the kind you get when you slide steel against steel.
Mal blinked, tracking a blur of blue as it whipped past her and into the crowd of angry giants. It took her a good three seconds or more to register that it was a dragon.
Adragon.
A small dragon, admittedly, but a dragon, nonetheless. It looked to be about seven feet long or so, nose to tail, with a wingspan of about ten to twelve feet. It twisted and turned through the air, flipping over, without hardly slowing down, and pivoting like it was on ball bearings.
Its flames were bluish white and lit whatever they hit on fire, including steel, stone, and glitter bomb creatures. It crossed paths with a green dragon, this one slightly larger and spitting liquid. Acid, maybe. Whatever it was melted things like a bucket of water on the Wicked Witch of the West.
As she scanned the rioting crowd, Mal realized that there were more dragons zooming in and out. Orange, gold, brown, green, blue, and white. They seemed to be leaving both the giants and the pixies mostly alone.
One giant snatched a little dragon out of the air and threw it to the ground. She stepped on its throat as it wriggled and flapped it wings. She said something to it and smiled in a very unfriendly way. A gold ring with a small red jewel dangling off it gleamed in her nose. She held out her hand, and blue magic wreathed her fingers. It looked oily thick, almost sludgy.
Mal didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know the oversized bitch was about to kill the dragon. Not that it didn’t deserve to be dead. On the other hand, maybe it didn’t deserve to be dead, and Mal didn’t really feel like letting the colossal colostomy bag get away with killing the dragon on her turf. Well, Law’s and LeeAnne’s turf, but she was an employee at the moment, so it counted.
Mal flicked a lash of electric power out to encircle the giant’s neck. Instantly the massive woman went rigid, her muscles locking up. Mal flicked again and the giant rocked forward and back and kept going, falling flat.
The little dragon flailed and rolled over, launching itself into the air, quickly climbing out of reach of those on the ground.
Something hit Mal hard from behind—so hard her teeth rattled. The force flung her forward off her feet. She landed face down on a churned-up area of dirt and grass. Pain exploded in her face, nose, and lips. She tasted blood. She coughed, trying to breathe, sucked in dirt, choked, coughed again. Rolling onto her side, she tried again to breathe, tried to see through the involuntary tears blurring her eyes.
