“By the shitting gods, how are you still alive?” Akuma asked, peeling himself off the wall. “You are a fucking idiot, Carl. I called you here because you need me. But if you can’t follow simple instructions, maybe...Urk!”
Donut castMuteon Akuma, and at the same time Elle cast an ice bolt right at the war mage’s crotch.
Akuma cried out and fell over, his purple milkshake splattering all over the place.
TheMutepart had been planned. Elle’s bolt had not.
“Uh, Elle?” I said. I turned and saw the look on Elle’s face, and I held up my hands. I took a step back.
“Just don’t kill him,” I said.
Elle pushed past me and moved up to the crying mage, who was trying to say something but couldn’t.
“Hey, remember me, you barely sapient magical fart?” Elle said, getting close to Akuma, whose sneering expression had turned to a look of extreme, gasping pain. “You and your little asshole friends tried to kill me. You stole the gate from me when I wasn’t done with it yet. When I was a kid, do you know what we used to do to people who stole? We would hit them with sticks, and we would throw their shoes into the sound. But that was only because we couldn’t get away with more.”
She punched down with her fist, and there was a glass-breaking noise.
“And also because I didn’t yet have the ability to freeze their balls and shatter them like dollar-store Christmas ornaments.”
“Holy Christ,” Florin muttered next to me.
“That was just your left nut. If you want to keep your right one, you are going to answer everything Carl asks of you. If Ieven suspect you’re lying,cajonenumberdosgets converted to crushed ice.” She tapped her finger against his crotch. It clinked. “And then on to the main event. AndthenImani over there is going to tell her little friend Jacobus to do some of his special dental surgery on you. Trust me. You don’t want that.”
“Ja, ja, ja,”said the reverse tooth fairy.
“Holy ouch,” Louis said from the other side. “Remind me to never piss Elle off.”
Akuma gasped in pain. He had tears rolling down the side of his face.
“I was wondering why Elle asked Samantha if war mages had genitals,” Donut said.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Elle continued. “Imani is going to cast an anti-magic shield around you, and Donut is going to remove theMutespell. I know the magic shield is going to cause your health to start to slowly lower. We aren’t going to remove it until Carl has all his answers, so answer quickly. If you attempt any sort of countermeasure to the shield, you will be killed. But we’ll kill you special-like. You get me? Nod if you understand.”
Akuma started to slowly nod.
“Okay, good. Imani, cast your spell. But let’s leaveMuteon him for a bit longer so he can think about what he’s done.”
“I’ve seen her mad before, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen this side of her,” Louis said, spewing water from his gills.
“The woman knows how to hold a grudge,” Florin replied.
“One time,” Imani said, “Ingrid Schmidt, who was the resident in the room next to hers, tried to cheat at bingo, and Elle found out. She wheeled up to Ingrid and whispered something, and Ingrid started crying and refused to come out of her room for a week. The woman never played bingo again. I still don’t know what Elle said to her. I asked the other day, and she just laughed.”
“Can I crush his other nut?” Samantha asked. She’d bounced up to the counter and was sitting atop the dead imp, spinning in a circle, causing blood to fleck everywhere.
The three mercenaries had moved to the very back of the room and were all cowering.
“Quintuple,” Olga said. “We should’ve asked for quintuple.”
[ 38 ]
“I will fucking kill you all,”Akuma cried, gasping as I leaned down next to him.
I patted him on the knee. “Don’t be like that,” I said. “Youdidtry to kill her. One of you blasted her against a tree, and she was pretty pissed about you guys stealing the gate. She doesn’t like that sort of thing.”
“If we were trying to kill her, she would’ve been dead.”
“And ifIwas trying to killyou, none of your pieces would so much as fit in an ice tray right now,” Elle said.