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30

I had a fleeting moment to wonder what Katy would think, if she could have seen me right then.

Standing in a huge stone cavern, concealed inside a little tugboat, sailing down the Willamette River south of Oregon City.

Standing ready to fight to my death against an eight-foot-tall, yellow-furred, black-winged bat creature. In defense of a family of oversized talking otters.

The thought pissed me off.

If I was going to die today, I didn’t want to do it with Katy in my thoughts. So instead I allowed myself to marvel for a moment at how weird my life had gotten in the last forty-eight hours, and then focused on the fight itself.

Appropriate that I was having the biggest fight of my life in a venue big enough to fit multiple Major League ballparks.

My fight had an audience, too. Crowds of nychtera on the cavern ceiling high above. Two more holding hostages — Brikatika’s mate and offspring.

That was Chiron’s cheering section, and the moment he took wing, the air filled with screeches and chirps of encouragement.

Well, many of them were also … letting go from excitement, and the falling guano made the dry air smell worse than any sporting arena I’d ever been to.

My own cheering section — Vasco, Magellan, and Brikatika — tried shouting encouragements too. But honestly, I could only really hear Magellan’s.

My ears were still ringing from that painful screech earlier, but the barking of a sixty-foot-tall beagle is hard to miss.

“Assert your dominance, Scott!”

It doesn’t sound quite so … creepy in Doggerel.

All of that, though, I was only aware of in the background. Same way I was aware of my pounding heartbeat, the sweat on my brow, the tension through my muscles, the flood of energies and adrenaline preparing me to fight for my life.

My main focus was on Chiron.

My eyes locked with his hateful brown orbs.

His powerful wings cut through the air the way I cut through water when I had a speed boost.

A hundred feet and closing.

Fifty feet and closing.

Twenty feet and closing. I could smell the blood on his breath now.

He let out another ear-piercing screech.

That one was too much for me. Blew out my eardrums and left me stone deaf.

Ruined the strike I’d been planning. But I did manage to duck under his reaching claws.

Good. Those claws carried some kind of poison. I remembered their fiery, spreading pain all too well from our last encounter.

Chiron flew past. Cut a tight arc straight up into the air and came back at me while I was still rolling to my feet.

So I used the movement to my advantage. Turned the roll into a leaping strike. My body a spear.

I tagged him in the gut. Both fists, backed by energy and momentum. It was like leaping into a furry side of beef fist-first, but I felt him give.

I landed. Whirled. Fists up and ready.

Chiron was still in the air.

Chiron pulled a kind of somersaulting turn in mid-air. Arced high. Mouth moving like he was trying to taunt me.

Joke was on him. I couldn’t hear him.

I could feel the breeze his wings kicked up though, as he swooped down away from me, then back up. Building speed in his odd, fluttery flying pattern.

I kept my stance, right where I was. Turned with him. Gauged his speed. Tried to guess his approach.

I’d seen him come at me twice. Both times he arced back up into the air.

False strike this time. He swooped down, but juked right before he came close enough for my leaping kick.

He flipped around in the air. Came back at me twice as fast. No idea how he could do that. Didn’t seem possible.

Then he was on me. No time to think. Only react.

But I was a Locksmith for a reason.

Just before his claws could grab me, I spun in place and jumped through a portal, aiming for a spot in the air about thirty feet up and twenty-five feet away.

So many calculations, done so fast in my head. All of them might as well have been done by feel. My ability to sense space turned into an ability to assess speed. To estimate angles.

I leaped through a small, red and green swirling portal…

…and came out in mid-air…

…right above Chiron.

I grabbed his back fur with both hands. Clung to the hot, musky fur.

Chiron barrel-rolled in midair, trying to shake me, but I clung all the tighter.

I tried kicking his wings, but my strike bounced off.

I started laughing. I couldn’t hear myself, but I could feel the sound bubbling out of me.

This was wild. A better ride than any roller coaster I’d ever been on, and I’d ridden them all, as often as I could.

I think I whooped. Couldn’t be sure though.

I know Chiron was somehow managing to get even angrier at me. I could see it in the way he jerked his head around, trying to figure out if he could bite me.

No good there.

So he switched tactics.

He turned us back down toward the floor. Right now at a height of about a quarter-mile. And he started speeding toward that fatal, rocky surface.

No.

He couldn’t be trying to ram.

The guy wasn’t immortal. No nychter was. He’d never survive that crash either.

He started rolling in the air again. Got me clenching tight. Clinging to his fur.

Then he yanked his wings in and somersaulted.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

While still barrel-rolling, thanks to his momentum.

I admit it. For all my training, I was good and dizzy now.

Looking back, I like to think the dizziness was a side-effect of the damage to my inner ears.

Either way, I started throwing up all over his fur.

Worse, I was having trouble keeping my grip.

And the ground was coming at us awfully fast.

He spread his wings all at once, but he’d managed to flip over.

I was underneath him now. And he was levelling out his flight.

He was going to scrape me off along the floor.

No choice then. I’d been hoping to somehow use his flight against him. Now trying to do that might prove fatal.

I gritted my teeth. Said a small prayer to any gods that might have watched over Locksmiths.

And I let go with one hand.

Stupid. I know. But I didn’t have a whole lot of choice. It was the only way I could make the gesture to open a portal.

“Alethia.” No idea if I whispered it or screamed it. Since I couldn’t hear myself, all I could do was force my lips and tongue to go through the motions.

And I opened the biggest portal I could. Bright cobalt blue. Smelling of roses. Frizzing with electrical tension.

And I opened it maybe ten feet in front of Chiron. No way he could evade it, not even as agile as he was in the air.

We soared right into that portal—

—and came out in the long hallway under Mount Hood. The strains of Mozart’s twenty-fifth symphony filled the air, along with the faint scent of roses.

The two of us came to a gentle halt, right there on the white marble floor. Smack in the middle between the brown stucco walls, with their strips of rose-covered wallpaper, running the length of the walls at waist height.

See, that was why I didn’t try using a portal as an attack earlier. Sure, I would have loved to open up a portal in front of the zooming nychter and have him pop out right in front of the cavern wall. Knock himself unconscious and win the fight.

Nice and easy, right?

Wrong.

Travel by portal kills momentum.

So when Chiron and I came through into that hallway, we were going no faster than if we’d taken a slow, casual step.

But I expected that. And he didn’t.

As we passed through that portal, I let go of the back of his fur with both hands.

The instant we arrived on that red runner carpet, I slammed both fists into the back of his skull, with every erg of power I could put behind the blow.

I staggered him.

I dropped to the carpet and took two steps back, putting my back against that heavy oak door at the near end of the hallway. Started running.

Chiron tried to take wing, but failed. He’d tried to go straight up, as though he were still in the enormous cavern. Too dazed from my blow to realize he could have gone straight forward.

Not enough room, when the ceiling was only ten feet up, and the walls were only seven feet apart.

Cramped as the conditions were here, even if Chiron could take wing, he wouldn’t have been able to continue his aerial attacks on me.

Which was the whole point.

Chiron put it all together just a little too slow.

He turned around just in time to intercept my best flying kick. The one that lassoed him with energy, and accelerated me right into his torso at amazing speeds.

That knocked him to the floor.

But the tough bastard wasn’t out yet.

I tried for another kick while he was down. He grabbed my foot. Tried to bite me.

Before he could, I kicked him with the other foot.

He let go. Shook his head.

I didn’t let him start to rise. I jumped in to start beating on him.

It was a trick.

He tucked in his claws and raked the front half of my body, collarbone to belly. Tore my good silk shirt to ribbons and opened me like a letter.

No.

He didn’t.

Pain all through my body, but I could feel myself laughing. Yes, he’d raked the holy hell out of my front. But my guts stayed right where they were. Sometime during the fight, I’d set up my own energetic line of defenses.

Not enough to keep him from hurting me. But definitely enough to keep him from gutting me.

Just another little surprise for old Chiron. One he wasn’t ready for.

Now I was inside his defenses. So I turned every bit of that pain into fury, and started pounding away at him while the fiery pain of his poisonous claws spread down my body.

Chiron fell to the marble floor. I hit him a few more times to make sure he was out.

Somewhere in there I felt a portal open, but I didn’t have time to worry about that. I kept punching.

Only when I was sure Chiron was out did I allow myself to collapse onto the cool marble floor beside him.

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