Free Book 10 - Angry Lead Skies by Glen Cook

warfare days,
straight up the middle indeed. Something that we did not actually
do very often, as I recall. Us and the Venageti both very much
preferred sneaking around, stabbing in the back, to any
straightforward and personally risky charging.
    That wall was more than just an illusion. It resisted me.
Hitting it felt a little like belly flopping, though with more
stretch and give to the surface. Which popped after a moment. And
which felt as cold as a god’s heart until it did.
    My efforts evidently weakened the wall considerably because the
big army types followed me through as though there wasn’t any
resistance at all. And the civilian followed them. But I
wasn’t really keeping track.
    We’d overtaken our quarry where they’d holed up
temporarily, either so they could interrogate Kip or so their
injured buddies could recuperate. There was another imaginary wall
beyond them. That one had a bricklike look even though it was
semitransparent. From my point of view.
    My heart jumped. Our approach had to have been noticed.
    In that instant I sensed movement. The corner of the eye kind of
movement you get when your imagination is running wild. Only what I
wasn’t imagining was happening right in front of me and I
couldn’t get a solid look at it. Then, for a moment, I saw
silver elves and Kip with something clamped over his mouth and I
realized that Singe’s sharp ears must’ve caught his
cries for help back when she’d kept talking and nobody had
bothered to listen.
    A shimmering silver elf extended a hand toward me.
    I dodged.
    I didn’t move soon enough.
    Once again I didn’t feel the darkness arrive.
     
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13
    Morley Dotes was right there in my face again when I woke up.
“Some kind of party you must throw, Garrett. Blitzed into
extinction again. And the sun still hasn’t gone down.”
He looked around as I tried to sit up. My head pounded worse than
before. “But in an alley? Even if it is a pretty clean one
for this burg?”
    “Gods! My head! I don’t know what they did to me but
it’s enough to make me consider giving up liquor.”
    “You give up your beer? Don’t try to kid a kidder,
kid.”
    “I said liquor, nimrod. Beer is a holy elixir. One shuns
beer only at the risk of one’s immortal soul. I see
you’re all freshly prettied up. How’d you find
us?”
    Two of Morley’s henchmen had accompanied him. I
didn’t know them. They were clad in the outfits waiters at
The Palms usually wear but they were much younger than Sarge and
Puddle and Morley’s other traditional associates. Maybe the
old guys were getting too old.
    “Your girlfriend left us a trail to follow. Standard rat
chalk symbols. You didn’t notice? A trained detective like
you?”
    Pride made me consider fibbing. “No. I didn’t. Not
really.” Ten years ago I couldn’t have admitted any
failing. Which, at times, had left me looking just a whole lot
stupider than a simple confession would’ve done.
    People are strange. And sometimes I think I might be the
strangest people I know.
    Morley’s boys didn’t lift a finger to help anybody.
Dotes himself didn’t do anything but talk. Which told me he
thought none of us had been hurt badly. “What happened to the
illusion?”
    “What illusion?”
    I explained. Morley wanted to disbelieve but dared not in the
face of Saucerhead’s confirmation. Tharpe doesn’t have
the imagination to dress himself up with excuses as complex as
this.
    “So you scared them into running when they’re not
really up to it. They have two casualties and a prisoner to
manage.”
    “We don’t know that any of them were
hurt.”
    “Yes, we do, Garrett. Use that brain the Dead Man thinks
you have. If they don’t have someone injured they don’t
have any reason not to just drag the kid straight off to wherever
it is they want to take him. Let’s get back on the trail.
They can’t have gone far.”
    Maybe he was right. Maybe the villains were just around the
corner. But I didn’t have