The Russian sees me coming when I’m five yards away. I’m closer than I thought I’d get.
Lightning flares.
Two yards away. I leap. A full body tackle.
The lightning doesn’t stop. It hits me as I hit the Russian. There is a crack like the world ending in my face. Everything is white and weightless.
Then I come down, crack against the stones. My head rings. Pain floods me. I can see the tall Russian lying on the ground twenty yards away. His jacket is smoking.
And what the hell was that? Some transmutation spell to turn all my muscles into spaghetti? I flop over onto my belly. Rain stops running into my nose. God, I knew I was going to get electrocuted again.
Footsteps. I try to twist, see who’s coming to finish me off.
It’s Clyde, crouched low.
“Arthur? Arthur?”
I grunt at him.
“I think you may have attracted some undue attention.” Clyde suddenly looks over my shoulder, flings out his arms. I watch as the tall man flies ten feet back through the air, lands in a haze of rain spray.
And that seems to take care of that problem.
Except…
The first lion comes out of the rain to my right. Clyde hauls me to my feet, stoops to let me put an arm over his shoulder. We turn. And there’s another. We turn. The third.
They circle us. Metal tails stretched out behind them, whipping back and forth. Heads down low.
I remove my arm from Clyde’s shoulder. It turns out my knees still work. I rest my hands on them, doubled over, still breathing hard. Everything hurts. How can everything hurt all at once?
Clyde circles me.
“You think a gun would work?” I say, glancing down at the pistol.
“Not really.”
“You know,” I say, “sometimes a little false optimism wouldn’t go astray.”
God, I hate these Russians. I mean, yes, we saved the world the other day, but these guys look like they’re operating in a whole different league. All of them are magicians. We have Clyde. And Clyde… well, as much as I like him, the Russians animate stone lions, he animates Winston…
“I think I’m going to try that wall spell.” Clyde has his back to me, looking at a street leading away from the square.
“You remember the words to it now?”
“Not really.”
“What happens if you get it wrong?”
“Depends how wrong I get it.”
“Best-case scenario?” Though in my experience there is rarely a best-case scenario with magic involved.
“The lions eat us.”
That may be a worse best-case scenario than usual.
Clyde slips another AA under his mask. A lion roars. The circle tightens.
“They don’t like that, Clyde.” I’m surprised to find I can still sink deeper into fear.
“Then they really won’t like this.” He lowers his head, collapses in on his chest, knees bending, body sagging. “Fellum mahrat mel cthok,” he mutters.
The lions stop pacing. Slowly they start to turn.
“Messum ex locinun.”
The lions are done circling. This is it. I aim my gun futilely. One bunches its back legs.
“Clyyyyyde!” My voice rises in volume and pitch.
“Tellat al reium.” Clyde straightens, stiffening his body violently, flinging his arms out. “Masrat!”
A line of spray races out from Clyde’s body, billowing up from the ground. There is the sound of rain drumming against something invisible and massive.
But then the time to ponder what Clyde’s done is over. A lion roars. Leaps. Another leaps.
Bronze jaws. Bronze claws. Closer. Closer.
Three feet from my face it slams into something. Stops dead in the air, arse tumbling over shoulders. The second one collides with it. Metal sparks and squeals.
Clyde reels back as the lions slump to the ground.
“Nice!” I’m still staggering, legs struggling to bear my weight, but I clap Clyde weakly on the shoulder.
“Still got the third one behind us.”
“Oh shiii…” I turn. It smiles at us. And grandma, what big teeth you have.
“Run!” Clyde yells. “Run!”
It’s very good advice. I ignore it.
I open fire. Bullets whine off the thing’s muzzle. One chips a tooth. It keeps on grinning.
“RUN!” Clyde bellows.
But the thing is, I can’t hurt this lion. I brought a pistol to a metal lion fight. I am seriously out of my weight class. The only person here that can make the lion take notice, I think, is Clyde. Which means it’s important Clyde doesn’t get turned into someone’s dinner. Which means that I have to distract the bloody thing. Which unfortunately means upping the chances that I’m today’s appetizer of choice.
The lion roars. The force of it blows back my hair, blows rain drops off my face. And when it comes to shock and awe, well that is how one does it.
I glance over at Felicity still trading potshots with the other Russians.
“Clyde,” I say, “you better not screw this up.”
In defiance of every urge in my body, I step toward the lion.