When these things died, they did something similar to what changelings did. They turned into gray humanoid forms. These shapes were strangely thin and armless, though they had multiple tentacle-like protuberances. It was like a mix between an armless soother alien and that Unwashed thing Juice Box had turned into before.
Florin’s shotgun blasted as the crawlers all around us quickly went to work. Imani’s wings went rigid as she cast a stupefying blast across the room.
Lucia was suddenly in her skull-faced hag form, and she had a new weapon I’d never seen. A lasso. The rope was gold, Wonder Woman–style, but in the circle of the loop, the air shimmered. My trap sense tingled. It was a doorway-style portal. She looped an amorphic blob that had been one of the gamblers at the other table, and when the lasso went over the creature’s head, the part of him that passed through the loop disappeared. She yanked on the rope, and the portal snapped off, cutting the creature in half. The lower half, which was still in the room, flopped over, dead, spilling strange, globular entrails.
A crawler I didn’t know got viciously chomped on the chest, and blood sprayed. Goblin Elle flew through the air, then landed atop a slot machine skittering forward on millipede legs, its slathering mouth chomping at her. She shot an ice bolt right down its mouth, and it dropped over, dead. It shriveled and turned to the blank form, this one smaller, the size of a child.
Mongo, roaring, tore through a group of chair mimics as they scattered back. A few of them writhed and screeched with aCruel Sepsisdebuff hanging over them. They withered and died in screaming pain, all turning to small gray forms.
The guards had mostly recovered. Some fled back into the casino, but a group of them was fighting.
Mimics, even powerful ones, were ambush predators. Once they lost the element of surprise, they were easy targets.
In moments, the only mimic left was Mitch himself, who started to back against the blood-splattered mural of the Bopcas. He grew a pair of arms and hands. “Look, look,” he said, his voice completely different now. “We can talk about this.”
Donut shot a magic missile that took out his leg. He cried and stumbled, but he formed another one before he fell. She shot that leg, too, and he did fall, forming into a gelatin-like blob on the ground.
“Wait,” he said again. “Let me live, and we can deal.”
“What was your plan?” I asked. “And what sort of deal?”
Donut stalked forward, low to the ground, Mongo on the other side of the injured mimic. I, too, moved forward, trying to imitate her, but I realized I was just dragging my long belly on the ground, and it had to look ridiculous.
Up until that moment, I realized I’d forgotten about the Eye of the Bedlam Bride, which had been tattooed on my chest. It wasn’t on my chest anymore, but on the center of my dog forehead, completely hidden. I was suddenly hyperaware as it tried to wrench itself open.
Let me, Carl. Let me take over.
I growled.No. You stay where you are. You are trapped, and you will stay trapped.Iam in control.
If you say so, Carl. Remember. I am here when you need me.
“We needed some of you. We needed you for the Cabaret,” Mitch said, desperately trying to reshape himself. Every time he turned into a cohesive form, Donut shot him with another missile. “The war mages, the ogres, and Cock-A-Doodle-Doo. They all vie for control of the dungeon back door. With some of you, we could control it all. Stop shooting me. It hurts!”
“Cock-A-Doodle-Doo?” Donut asked, incredulous. “What kind of name is that?”
“What about Li Na?” I demanded. “We have a lot of friends there now at the Cabaret.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Mitch said. An eye formed on his body and turned to regard me. It was the eye of a lizard. “I have been here in the casino for a while now as we worked on assimilating...” He suddenly lurched forward, mouth huge, ready to consume me.
He stopped dead in his tracks.
I’d reflexively opened the eye in the center of my forehead, and he froze in place.
“No,” Mitch said. His entire form started to sparkle like someone had poured glitter into him. “No. Don’t do this. It’s too cold.” Several mouths started to form on his body, all screaming. “It’s too cold!”
Donut castMagic Missileagain, this time at full strength, and killed him. At the same moment, Mongo flew through the air, claws out, to attempt to kill the thing, but it was dead before he got there. Mitch turned to the blank form. This one fully human-sized. Mongo landed directly on the thing’s head, his crotch smushing it into the ground. Mongo screeched indignantly, waving his wings as he bounced up and down on the corpse.
We all stood there in silence for several moments.
“That’stea-bagging,” Louis finally said.
“Ohhhhhh,” Samantha said. “In the Nothing, we called that flap-jacking.”
[ 87 ]
“Okay,”Imani said, voice tense. The room was covered in blood. Two crawlers had been severely injured during the fight with the mimics, including one who’d almost been chomped in half, but thanks to Imani’s quick reactions, they were both alive. We hadn’t lost anyone. “I hope this works. Everyone, step back.”
“Magic is still flowing to it,” Donut said. She pointed to an object on the ground that had broken off the table. “That, too. It’s the button. You press it, and it makes the wheel spin, but if you hold the wheel in the right place, forcing it to stop on that one tiny sliver, it should open the portal. Do you think we can take the whole wheel with us?”