The next door was locked, too. I jimmied it open with the crowbar I’d taken from the tool room. It made some noise.
A deep-throated bawl of animal sound came from the far side of the metal door. Something slammed against it, but not hard enough to bring it down, and the sound was followed by an immediate yowl of pain. I bared my teeth in a grin.
The far side of the door opened onto the lobby of an office building, very sparse. A light was blinking on a panel with a keypad on it, next to the door I’d just forced open. Apparently I had triggered the building’s security system. That was fine by me. The nearest police station was only a little more than a block from here, and the lights and the appearance of mortal police officers would probably make the gruffs fade and wait for a better moment to settle my hash.
But wait. If the building had a security system, I had to have tripped it when I came in the side door, and that had been a couple of minutes ago. Why hadn’t the cops shown up already?
The weather, most likely. Travel would be slow. Lines would be down, causing all kinds of power and communication problems. There would be traffic accidents everywhere there was traffic, and in the wake of all the manpower diverted to Marcone’s wrecked building, the station would be overloaded with work, even this late at night. It might take several minutes longer than usual for the police to respond.
A shadow moved outside the building’s front door, and one of the gruffs appeared there.
I didn’t have minutes.
I was moving before I had consciously recognized the fact, running for the elevators. The steel security gate inside the door would prevent the gruff from crashing through the glass to come at me, but that didn’t stop the gruff from lifting its submachine gun and opening up on me.
The gun sounded like heavy canvas ripping, only a thousand times louder. The window shattered and glass flew everywhere. Some of the bullets struck the security gate, throwing off sparks, most of them shattering, a couple bouncing wildly around the lobby. The rest came at me.
I had my left hand stretched out toward the gruff as I ran, and my will was focused on the bracelet on my wrist. Made of a braid of many metals, the chain of the bracelet was hung with multiple charms in the shape of medieval shields. The power of my will rushed into the bracelet, focused by the enchantments I’d laid upon it when I had prepared it. My will coalesced into a concave dome of barely visible blue energy between me and the gruff, and bullets slammed against it, shattering in bursts of light that rippled over the surface of the energy shield like tiny waves in a still pond.
All three of the elevator doors stood open, and I rushed into the nearest and rapidly hit the buttons for every floor up to the top of the building. Then I leapt out, repeated the process in the second elevator, and then jumped into the third and headed straight for the top. No sense in making it easy for the gruffs to follow me up, and even a moment’s delay might buy me the time I needed.
The elevator doors closed—then buzzed and sprang open again.
“Oh, come on!” I shouted, and hit the close-door button hard enough to hurt my thumb.
I growled and watched as the elevator twitched closed again, and then once more sprang open, a sad little ding emerging from a half-functioning bell. I was jabbing the button like a lunatic when the gruffs demonstrated their opinion of mortal security systems.
Sure, the touch of metal was anathema to the beings of Faerie. Sure, they couldn’t hammer their way through a metal door or bash through a heavy metal gate.
Brick walls, on the other hand, presented fewer problems.
There was a thunder crack of sound, and the wall beside the front door exploded inward. I don’t mean it fell in. It literally exploded as the momentum of a superhumanly powerful being struck the wall from the far side and shattered it. Bits of brick flew like bullets. A ceramic pot holding a plastic plant shattered. Several pieces zipped into the elevator and bounced around inside of it. A cloud of brick dust billowed through the lobby.
The gruff who had just one-upped the Big Bad Wolf bulled its way through the cloud, curling ram’s horns first. It staggered a step or two, shaking its head, then focused on me and let out another bleating howl.
“Augh!” I screamed at the elevator, jabbing the button. “Close, close, close!”
It did. The car began rising just as the stunned gruff brought his weapon to bear and opened up. Bullets ripped through the relatively flimsy metal of the elevator’s door, but my shield bracelet was ready and none of them found their target—who let out a howling, adrenaline-drunken laugh of defiance as the elevator rose.
What they say is true: There’s nothing as exhilarating as being shot at and missed. When the shooter happens to be a fairy-tale hit man, it just adds to the zest.
Fourteen floors later I emerged into a darkened hallway and, guided by the light of my upraised amulet, I found the door to the roof. It was an exterior door with a heavy dead bolt, and there was no way that the crowbar was going to get it open.
I took a step back, lifted my staff, and focused my will on the door. Once upon a time I would have just let fly with my will and blasted it right out of its frame, a fairly exhausting bit of spellcraft. Instead I pointed the end of the staff at the bottommost hinge on this side and barked, “Forzare!”
A blade of unseen energy, like that I had used on the padlock, severed the hinge with a miniature crack of thunder. I did it for the middle and lower hinges too, then used the crowbar to pry the heavy door out of its setting and hurried out onto the roof.
There was a lot of wind up this high, even though the night was fairly calm. The towers of the city could funnel even a mild breeze into a virtual gale, and tonight this rooftop was on the receiving end. The wind ripped my coat out to one side, and I had to lean against it. At least there wasn’t much snow—except where a portion of architecture created a lee against the wind. There it was piled deep.
It took me a second to orient. When you’re fourteen floors up, it gives you an alien perspective of streets and buildings that might otherwise be familiar. I figured out which side of the building I’d come in on and hurried to it, searching for the escape route I’d spotted on the way in.
It wasn’t the fire escapes, which decorated two sides of the building in a weathered steel framework. Those things are noisy as hell, and the gruffs would be watching them. Instead I leaned out over the edge and looked at the niche in the brick wall. It ran the entire vertical length of the building, a groove about three feet wide and two feet deep. There was one on either side of each corner of the building, probably there for the aesthetic value, rising like a three-walled chimney from the ground to the roof.
My breath went a little short. Fourteen floors is a much longer way down than it is up, especially when you aren’t using things like elevators and fire escapes. Especially when I noted the frost and ice forming on the building’s exterior.
I took a moment to debate the sanity of this plan. I’d cut the odds in my favor, assuming there were only three gruffs after me this time. One would have to watch the elevators. Another would have to watch the fire escape. That left only one to actively pursue me. I didn’t know how fast the gruff would get to the roof, but I had no doubt that he’d manage it in short order.
The idea of simply pushing the gruff off the roof with a blast of power had a certain appeal, but I decided against it. A fourteen-story drop might just piss the gruff off—and it would absolutely confirm my location. Better to slip away and leave them wondering if I was still hiding in the building.