a8eb54fe2a7e7ca192cef2761fb9d6c0

“It looks like the barricade at the stairs is intact,” Diana told her, yanking a bulging belt pouch out from under the half a dozen cans of cat food in her pack. “They must have come through another way.”

“The access corridors?”

“No. Arthur said they’re guarded. Someone would’ve given the alarm.”

A pair of charging meat-minds crashed to the floor for no apparent reason. A pepper grinder in one hand, Claire glared at Diana.

“Totally subconscious, I swear; they just lookreally clumsy!” Here and now, she wasn’t going to risk feedback. It was one thing to break a Rule with only her own life hanging in the balance, it was another entirely to risk Claire and Sam and a group of teenagers she’d only just met. With a powerful enemy on site, any power she released would, at the very least, be sucked up and used against them. Definitely embarrassing. Probably fatal.

One of the meat-minds stepped on its own hand as the two she’d dropped scrambled to their feet. It bellowed in pain and swung what looked like a plastic tote bag at its companion, knocking it down again. One of the mall elves darted in, wielding an aluminum baseball bat, and it stayed down.

“You’ve got to like the kid’s enthusiasm.”

“I don’t have to like anything about this,” Claire snapped. “I’m going to try and take a few of those things out. You find out where they’re coming from and close the door!” Waving the pepper shaker, she plunged into the fight.

“How is seasoning going to help?” Sam demanded as Diana buckled the belt pouch around her waist.

“Peppercorns are seeds.” She stuffed the wand into a pocket, just in case. “Seeds carry certain distinct possibilities.” A running dive took her past a meat-mind’s outstretched arms. “Claire has hers rigged for sleep,” she grunted, sliding into one of the plastic wood planters.

“But why pepper?” Sam jumped up onto the planter’s edge.

“Except for the Minute Rice, it was the only seed Dean had in the kitchen and Minute Rice comes with that unfortunate time restriction.” Scrambling to her feet, she joined the cat and took a moment to study the battle. The clash of blade against blade and the distinctly less musical clash of aluminum against meat, echoed under the twenty-foot ceilings. From her vantage point, she could see that the meat-minds in the main concourse were fighting in a random pattern, but by the entrance to the short hall—the one leading to the entrance where Claire’d left Dean way back when—they all faced one way. Into the concourse. Even the bulky body stretched flat at Kris’ feet and being efficiently bludgeoned pointed in the same direction.

Then, between one swing and the next, a meaty hand snaked out and closed around a slender ankle.

Kris’ next swing went wide.

Then the meat-mind was on its feet and Kris was swinging, dreadlocks sweeping back and forth across the floor.

*

Darting into the melee, Claire pounded one of the meat-minds on the shoulder—given the location, it was probably a shoulder. When it turned, she ground fresh pepper into its face. It looked affronted, then blinked onyx eyes, scrunched up its nose, and sneezed, covering Claire in a dripping patina of snot before falling backward to the floor.

Teemo, his orange-and-yellow Hawaiian shirt clutched in bratwurst-sized fingers, went down with it.“Is it dead?” he panted, bracing red hightops against the meat-mind’s stained sweat suit and yanking himself free.

“No,” Claire spat, scrubbing at her face with the hem of her skirt. “Asleep.”

“Bummer.” Switching to a two-handed grip, he set about changing that.

Given her sudden, desperate need for a shower, Claire wasn’t at all surprised when the sprinklers went off.

*

“Geez, these guys are clumsy,” Diana muttered, as she ran. “Clumsy, clumsy, clumsy.” But it was hard to hold the thought when the only thing she could see was Kris dangling by one foot. Her mouth might be saying clumsy, but her brain kept insisting,don’t stop her.

Closely followed by:Would you stop whaling on it! You’re just pissing it off!

Closely followed by:I guess that answers the‘do they or don’t they’ genitalia question. as Kris’ flailing bat impacted between the creature’s legs with no effect.

Its knees were significantly more sensitive.

Howling in pain, it whipped Kris twice around its head then threw her toward the concourse.

Diana rocked to a halt, spun around as Kris sailed by, yanked open her pouch, and broke a lime-green feather in half.

The mall elf floated gently to the floor as the sprinklers came on.

A tote bag whistled past Diana’s head fast enough to part her hair, the letters on the bag a red-on-white blur. Heart pounding, she raced past the furious meat-mind while it struggled to recover its balance, the force of the swing having nearly tipped it over.

“Diana! Over here!” Sam paced in front of the optical shop, tail lashing marmalade lines in the air. “Something’s happening!”

Inside the store, a multicolored fog had begun to swirl.

A familiar multicolored fog.