The woman wasn’t breathing, but she swung at me anyway, face red and eyes angry.
Good God! I thought as I evaded the first swing, deflected the second, then used my grip on the woman’s own arm to walk up her leg and flip over her head, dislocating her arm as I landed behind her.
Lenore screamed in angry pain, arm dangling useless as she came at me again.
I spun to the right, then left, hammering on her ear until Lenore rocked back, disoriented.
The crowd began chanting my name, which was both gratifying and disturbing. Pike was laughing, but I felt sick. Beating up Lenore was not fun.
“Rachel, look!” Mary shouted, and I followed her frantic pointing over the surrounding people. Guards. Lots of them, all with drawn wands. The yard was becoming empty as people peeled off from the fight and ran for all corners. Those who were too close to the guards knelt with their hands behind their heads, waiting until they were past before scrambling up and running for the gates.
“I’m gonna pulp your pretty little head!” Lenore screamed, oblivious.
“Crap on toast,” I whispered. The last time I’d had a fight in Alcatraz, the guards had busted my knees from behind, threatened me with a lobotomy, and thrown me in solitary.
Brow furrowed, I looked from the guards to the fleeing people and then to Mary pulling a grinning Ralph down to a kneel. I could feel the latent power in the wands growing, arcing from one to the other. We had seconds, maybe. Desperate, I ran at Lenore, jumping to slam both feet into her chest. I had to down her long enough for the guards to get here. The solid thump of impact seemed to rattle all the way to my brain . . . and then I hit the cold, salt-stained cement with a painful thud.
Howling, Lenore scrambled up and started my way, her one good hand opening and closing.
But the guards were close, little arcs of power stringing them together as they shouted at everyone to get on the ground.
“Pike, get down!” I shouted as I sat on my heels. “Hands behind your head!”
“What?” he said, but his eyes were sharp on the oncoming guards as the circle of onlookers broke up, half running as if hell was after them, the rest cowering on their knees.
“Do it!” I shouted, and he laboriously knelt down, his hands laced behind his head.
This is going to be close, I thought, wincing as Lenore, still oblivious, came at me.
“Rigor!” the closest guard shouted, and with a whoosh of power that lifted my hair, a wave of magic rose straight up from the previously spelled cement, latching onto the tips of the raised wands and then condensing into a bright hot light that arced out and struck every inmate whose knees were not on the ground.
Lenore jerked in a widemouthed, silent scream and fell.
The scent of ozone and dead fish rolled over me as if carried by the groans and sobs. I stood as the guards approached, and Pike rose as well, stiff and uneasy. “I’m Rachel Morgan!” I exclaimed, hands in the air and spinning in a slow circle as they screamed at us to get back down. Our street clothes were obvious, and I flushed, wondering if they thought we were here to break someone out. Which was stupid. Who tries to break someone out of prison in the middle of the day wearing black tights and a short skirt stained blue from copper sulfate?
The ring of inmates slowly thinned as the wary guards moved past them and they retreated, hunched and afraid. “I’m Rachel Morgan!” I said again, and Pike grimaced, clearly not having fun anymore. “I’m here by accident. I just want to make a call and get out of here!”
“On your knees!” the nearest one said, that wand aimed right at my heart. “Now!”
But I couldn’t do it. I could not kneel down and submit. I’d been that person before, and I wasn’t going to do it again. And as I stood there, knowing it was only my street clothes and attitude that kept me from being shot with a spell, Pike moved closer, his eyes dark and his expression hard as he put his back to mine.
He didn’t owe me anything, especially his trust, and his presence there hit me hard.
We didn’t move as the guards wove through the downed inmates, closing in. One shoved Mary and Ralph toward the yard’s door. It was hard to tell who was helping whom as Mary clung to Ralph, crying as the simple man gave me a thumbs-up. The ball that had been in his hands rolled away, forgotten. Lenore lay there and drooled, eyes unfocused.
“On your knees!” the largest guard shouted again, his aimed wand dramatically propped up on his crooked arm. I could see the Möbius strip glinting silver on his insignia. They were the coven of moral and ethical standards’ personal guard, caretakers of their private prison for witches so the rest of the world wouldn’t know how dangerous we could be when cornered, and as I stared at him, unwanted memories flooded up, memories of being hurt, bullied, and threatened to be magically neutered. I’d been helpless to stop them.
Fear swamped me, and I heard Pike take a ragged breath. My emotion had hit him hard, but his soft groan gave me something to anchor myself with, and I shoved the fear down deep.
“We didn’t mean to come here,” I said, but there were twelve of them now, two coming forward with silver-spelled cuffs.
“Get the vamp first,” one said, and Pike made a warning growl.
“Let them cuff you,” I said, and then someone tried to touch him, and he was no longer at my back. “Pike, knock it off!” I shouted, torn between watching him and not dropping the eyes of the grinning woman facing me, cuffs in hand. Sighing, I held out my hands, feeling my headache worsen as they snicked over my wrists. Behind me, the scuffle grew louder as four witches fell on Pike, forcing him facedown onto the cold cement and aggressively cuffing his hands behind him. A small sound of surprise rose when they realized he was bleeding, but that didn’t get him any consideration as they held him there and searched him.
I jumped, startled when a guard began to roughly pat me down. My attention flicked from her to the head guard still holding that wand pointing at my eye, and I did nothing as she took my phone, Dali’s finding amulet, and finally, my ring. The white pearl turned black as it left me, and I frowned. Trent, it’s okay. Don’t freak.
Pike was still down, making half-hearted kicks at the guards searching him to find a second knife, a pistol I didn’t even know he had, his cracked phone, and his wallet. Finished, they rolled him over and backed off so he could get up. If he hadn’t been half-dead, they never would have downed him, and I saw his frustration, maybe even anger, that I’d done nothing to stop them.
But they were Alcatraz guards. They answered to no one, and I knew what happened in the medical wing.
Only now did the lead guard lower his wand. The yard had been emptied, which made me even more uneasy. “Who are you?” he asked, suspicion hard in his eyes.
“None of your damn business,” Pike said. “Take off the cuffs, and tomorrow you might still have a job cleaning toilets.”