War-N-Wit, Inc. – MeanStreet, LLC (14 page)

Hsssss! Meeoooowww!

“
Xanthall narparzx!?
” I didn’t speak their language, but I was pretty sure that’d translate out to “
What the hell?!
” Now, where was Mia? Ah! She leapt up on another of the big boulders.

Hssssss!
Meeooowww!

I didn’t speak ca
t either, but the meaning couldn’t be clearer.
Come and get me
. The guards started toward them, tentacles waving.

Hsssssssss!

Micah took one, Mia the other. Claws dug directly into faces—such as they were—scratching and clawing. Slimy green goo flew into the air as claws met eyes. The targets shrieked and dropped the lasers as the other guards ran toward them.

“Mom! Now! Grab those two!”

In the flurry, nobody noticed the lasers rising into the air and zooming toward us. Two of the guards raised their own laser guns and aimed them at the black furies.

“
Pranthaz!!
” Cooler-headed guards lashed out their own tentacles and knocked the raised lasers back down. Didn’t matter though. We had two of our own now.

“Now?” Stacy asked.

“Now.”

“The walls or the
octopus boys?”

“
The walls. Through a few of the octopus boys, why don’t we?”

We stood and fired.

* * *

“So let me make sure I’ve got this straight,” Chad said, increasing the pressure on Damien’s mangled appendages. Damien groaned. Slime oozed out of the make-shift bandages and dripped on the floor. “This
prazaxhal
stuff is very powerful when refined and very volatile in raw state. So you can’t use any high-tech equipment to mine it. You use human brute strength?’

“Yes!”

“Something wrong with your own slimy tentacles? They don’t wrap around a pick-ax?”

“That’
s manual labor! You can’t
pay
anybody to do that!”

“And it’s so volatile you can’t even have any high-tech power around it, so you tap into human brain waves and use that? You actually put
wires
into human brains?”

“Only the ones with the strongest brains! I mean, why would we use
weak
brains? They’d run out of power sooner, it’s a waste of labor, the dumber ones’ll last longer doing the mining.”

“You
son-of-a-bitch!
” Bob started toward him, and Spike reached out a restraining arm.

“Bob. Don’t get in the line of fire. Chad’s got this.”

“Very efficient. Thanks for the intel. And now if you’ll excuse us, we have to go try and collect our ladies.”

Pfffffttt.
This
pfffftt
was quite loud. So much for the silencers.

“Man, what a mess.” Spike shook his head. “You know, that hostess saw us come in here.”

“
Squawk!
No problemo, mate. Hold me out a cell phone with the keypad pulled out, there’s a good boy.”

Spike held out his phone. Harold pecked at the keypad with his beak.

“
Squawk!
Housekeeping? Harold here. Need a demon clean-up on aisle five
squawk!
Pretty pronto.”

Chapter Eighteen

Lucifer’s receptionist was having a bad day.

“You can’t go in there! He’s in
conference
!” Jerahmeel brushed past her without stopping and crashed the door open.

“Oh, what the hell?” The receptionist sat back down at her desk.
“Nobody else paid any attention either.”

“Jezebel, you’re
fired!
” Lucifer shouted.

“Shit, I ain’t that lucky,” Jezebel called back
. She opened her middle drawer and reached for her nail file. “Besides, you won’t
fire
me, you hate unemployment claims.”

Jerahmeel’s eyes widened as he glanced around the room. His face blanched
. Then he did an abrupt about-face and headed back out the door.

“Un-huh-huh, little brother!” Raphael grabbed his arm and pushed the door closed. “Come on in and sit a spell. Don’t be shy.”

“What the fuck is this? My office is Grand Central Station today?!”

S
hrill ringing sounded from Kaxchotx’s pocket. He reached in and pulled out a small box. He threw it up to his ear. “
Tchatachan
?”

“Always wondered what Razkalaan cell phones looked like,” Gabriel said.

“
Ranchantzal?!
”

“Uh-oh! Looks like somebody’s getting some bad news,” Michael said.

“
Xazdhantal pkanthazn swhanthanx!!
” Kaxchotx jammed his phone back into his pocket and glared at Lucifer.

“
Get them out!
”

“Get who out?”

“That last shipment you sent through! They’re loose in the mines with laser guns! They’re blasting the hell out of the walls! It’s an
inferno
in there! They’re about to implode the whole damn dimension!”

Gabriel clasped a hand over his heart and looked upward. “Oh, how I
love
my beautiful girls! I
knew
they’d do me proud but this is even better than I expected!”

Loud buzzing sounded
, this time from Gabriel’s pocket.

“I think that’s yours, bro,” said
Michael.

“
This is my office!
It’s not Ma Bell Central! Doesn’t
anybody
turn off their cell phones anymore?”

“
Manners ain’t what they used to be, no doubt about it,” Michael commiserated.

“Sorry, gotta take this,” Gabriel said. “Yo, whut up?”
The phone wasn’t on speaker but it didn’t need to be. Chad wasn’t happy. Nor was he particularly soft-spoken when infuriated.

“
G, you son-of-a-bitch! Did you
know
what they do to the humans they bring through?’

“Chad, they’re
fine
! Trust me, they’ll be home in no time! I’m on it!”

“
Trust
you?! You’re shittin’ me, right? And you’re damn straight they’ll be home in no time, we’re trying again, maybe the damn doors are closed by now!”

“
No!
Do not go through!
We’re about to get them out of there, I don’t need to be worrying about you and your crowd getting stuck! Give me half an hour!”

“In half an hour the girls could have
wires
stuck through their brains!”

“Not hardly. They’re over there with hijacked laser guns tearing the hell out of the place!
The Razkaals want ‘em out even worse than you do! Half an hour. Or you might wreck everything! Get the hell out of that club and away from those demon bodies I know you’re leaving behind and wait to hear from us. ”

Long pause. “Half an hour.”
Click
.

* * *

Our first blasts punched through the rock walls. Craters bloomed, threaded with veins of white that heated to brilliant red and burst into flame. Within seconds, the mine walls themselves were on fire. Flames spouted out and sheets of rock tumbled down onto the mine floor. As I watched I could see beyond the visible damage to the interior damage. I knew those flames were running inward along those white lines, ready to explode.

Tentacles waved wildly
. Octopi rushed madly around shrieking, thoughts of the human slaves the furthest thing from their minds.

I yelled, trying to make myself heard above the roar of flames and explosions.

“Micah! The humans! We need to get them out of here!”

Mom clutched my arm. “Let me try, dear.” She closed her eyes and concentrated. I could
feel
the power reaching out. It gathered the humans in, held them close in protective clasp, and pulled them away from the fiery hell and back towards us, depositing them gently on the ground over behind us and to the left. Except for the ones harnessed to those damn carts.

“Micah! The harnesses!”

Stacy put her hand on my arm. “Wait. I think maybe—”

She narrowed her eyes and
stared at the leather-like bindings of the harnesses. They began to fray and with a loud
pop
disintegrated into nothingness. Mom gathered the freed humans up in her protective gloves and floated them out to the others

“Some
damn
, Antsypants! That work on the octopuses?”

“Let’s see.”

She turned her stare toward the few remaining guards. Tentacles began to waver and fade into transparency. Laser guns dropped to the ground.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
Empty space where seconds before octopi had stood.

“Why couldn’t you figure that out sooner? We wouldn’t have even
needed
the lasers!”

“Bitch, bitch, bitch. Just can’t please some people.”

Stacy’s new-found power finished off the remaining octopi in seconds. We stepped into the clearing as Micah and Mia resumed human form.

“What about those  poor people floating in those horrible boxes?” Mom pointed toward the wall. Or rather, what used to be the wall. Everything kind of ran together now. “Oh, dear! Oh, girls, the rocks must have crushed them when the walls fell down in all the shooting!”

Stacy and I
both put an arm around her. “Mom, I’m pretty sure that was for the best. I can’t believe we’d have been able to save them if we’d gotten them out. I mean—they were on like—artificial life support.” I shuddered.

Micah nodded. “Very true. Harsh as it sounds, Grace, even avenging angels and kick-ass witches can’t save everyone every
time.”

“I just can’t believe it was all so easy,” Mia said.

A droning noise crept into the edge of my hearing, moving closer. Like—planes? Everyone’s heads raised. Not my imagination then. A group of aircraft like the small fighter spaceships in science fiction shows zoomed in on us over the tops of the rocky hills.

“Mia,
you just had to say that, didn’t you?” I sighed. Lasers shot out of the noses of the ships like lightning bolts. Heading straight at us.

* * *

Kaxchotx’s phone rang again. “
Tchatachan
?” he barked. Then he smiled. “Xntalchan!” He turned back to the brothers.

“False alarm. That shipment’s contained and terminated. Goodbye, boys. Lucifer, you and I need to discuss this when your office isn’t so—crowded. Because
you owe me a hell of a lot of money in damages. It’ll take a mint to get the mines back in shape from all the damage they did before our fighter pilots could mount an airstrike.”

“Now wait a damn minute! I don’t owe you a damn thing!”

“Except every bit of the damages!”

“Gabriel?” Raphael put his hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “You okay? Those were your operatives.”

Gabriel turned to his brother, face white and set, mouth compressed in a hard line. “Those
are
my operatives. Don’t write ‘em off just yet.”

* * *

I turned to Stacy. “Well, girl, that new power of yours couldn’t have triggered at a better time. ‘Cause I don’t know how long a range these laser guns have. I’m guessing not that far. So go get ‘em. Mom, think you could throw those little space junkies around a little bit up here? Better yet, down. Like straight into the ground. Micah, Mia, can you throw angel power but not full force enough to incinerate us, you think?”

Stacy smiled. “I can do that. Mom can do that. And I’m pretty sure Micah and Mia can do their thing, too. But you aren’t off the hook.”

“I don’t have an active power, Stacy.”

“You don’t call mind control an active power? You can’
t turn those fighters against each other?”

“I—Stacy,
you heard ‘em talk. They’re demons. I don’t speak demon, they don’t speak English, I don’t know how—”

“Mind control needs words, you think? You sure about that?”

“I—” No, I wasn’t sure about that. I’d never thought about it before. I felt the Tear of Isis swing against my neck. I remembered. Remembered the extra gift the Tear brought to its Seer. Remembered that it intensified the Seer’s powers.

“Okay, all together now. Angel strikes, Mom’s fastballs, Stacy’s new
pop
power. Let’s see if y’all can hit with all that while I’m makin’ ‘em fire on each other. I hope.” I turned to the sky. And concentrated.