Pears and Perils (22 page)

“Fine,” Lawrence said, walking over and grabbing the satchel. He quickly checked inside, but Thunder was telling the truth. It held nothing more than eight cheap beers, now hot after their lengthy trek. He tossed the bag over and turned back to the altar.

“Thanks, bro. Mind letting us have an arm each as to funkcilitate the drinkage?”

Lawrence smiled inwardly. He’d wondered if more than their mouths had gotten free, but if Thunder was resisting beer then he must still be bound. Knowing that, there was no more reason to play along, but then again, Thunder could be rather annoying when he wanted to be.

“One arm each, and if anyone gets any ideas, I’d like to remind you that you are still surrounded by men with spears.”

“Totes,” Thunder agreed. After a pause he moved his right arm and grabbed the backpack, unzipping it with his teeth and pulling out a beer. He handed them out, though it involved tossing in some cases where the recipient was too far away. Everyone looked at him with uncertainty; they’d noticed the growing freedom in their appendages as well. He gave them a smile and cracked his beer, then carefully mouthed the words “Not yet.”

The others nodded then opened their own beverages. Thunder plucked one more beer from the bag and put in his lap. He wasn’t sure what everyone else was going to do when shit got real, but he’s already figured out what his best move was.

April found it strange that she was taking her cue from someone like Thunder; then again, he was the only one who’d actually taken any action when he noticed their freedom. Admittedly, it was just getting them beer, but she supposed if she had to witness their demise, it might as well be with a buzz. She didn’t believe for a second Lawrence intended to spare them. The man was too rational and that was April’s wheelhouse. That and studying. She’d done a lot of reading about Kenowai after learning about their trip. Legends, stories, local agriculture, everything she’d been able to find had been consumed by her brain. Lawrence had likely done the same; he was the type of man to go so far as to learn a new language just to know what the baggage carrier was saying about him. Maybe something he’d found was letting him do all this, which meant if April had read it too then she might be able to stop him. She took another sip of beer and focused the razor-sharp mind that had left her alienated, strange, and academically unstoppable for the majority of her life. This was what she did.

Mano, for his part, was just enjoying the beer. He wondered how his shark friend would be after this crazy white man killed them all. It was too bad; he would have bought the shark a whole case of good dark beer and poured it into the ocean as thanks for his help today. He mentally added a bottle of smooth rum to the list of things to pour. It would end up in the shark’s belly, but he could probably still count it as thanks to a god, if he survived. Which god didn’t matter so much at the moment; it just seemed unlikely they were getting out of here without someone’s help.

Falcon Rainwater had taken a momentary leave of absence; in her place, Valerie Quinn was employing the deductive skills that had made her a terror of a litigator before moving into the world of CEOs. Lawrence wasn’t a madman; that would have been a much more preferable scenario. He was simply working off the facts as they were presented before him. Whatever he was doing with the pear would be based on something with the gods, a prospect that would have ruled in lunacy if not for the fact that they were all working under similar beliefs. His movements were graceful and deliberate; the man had received training in his youth and had applied it through his years. Still, there were little giveaways here and there that his age was slowing him: the way he ever so slightly favored his left hip, the one-inch difference in his left shoe that indicated an orthopedic insole, the well-hidden wince when he gripped tightly. He was still a powerful man and could likely have killed them all even without thugs or magic, but he had weaknesses. Valerie had found a few; she kept right on staring, though. She was going to find every last one.

Kaia chugged her beer like an alcoholic coming off a stint at rehab. Everything had gone to hell, nothing was turning out right, and she didn’t even know what was real and what was made-up anymore. All she knew was that she was tired of this bullshit: tired of running, tired of being uncertain, tired of not knowing what to do. She’d taken two years of self-defense courses back in New York, and the rule with dealing with male attackers was to go for the balls and the eyes. As soon as the group moved, that was exactly what she intended to do. Kick Lawrence in the balls, get her damn pear, go find Clint, and then see if her friend, Kelokin, back on the island still made his pear moonshine. It wasn’t much, but it was a plan, damn it.

“I beleive,” Lawrence announced. “That it is time to begin.”

* * *

There is a point in the human mind where all logic, fear, and self-preservation are driven away like demons of failure. It is the place people enter when they do things we consider heroic, things like charging through a hail of bullets to recover a wounded friend, or fighting off a stronger attacker in order to protect people they love. It is one of the few great redeeming qualities of the creature called man. Unfortunately, its use rarely ends well. We prize those examples of success because they are the exception, not the rule.

Most people who decide to win or die almost universally end up doing the latter.

Most people were not currently playing taxi cab to a stranded god.

Clint wasn’t sure what had happened, not really. All he knew was that one minute he was bucking against his invisible enclosure with all his might, tormented by the thoughts of his friends being killed, and the next he was free and standing atop the pit. The two guards who had been assigned to watch him were slumped over against the wall, their snores echoing off the stone walls.

“Kodi? I feel kind of strange.”

That is probably the least surprising thing anyone has said to me all day.

“It seems like things are sort of… glowing.” He glanced down at his skin and realized his mistake. “Oh, never mind. It’s just reflecting my glow.” That should seem strange, shouldn’t it? Why didn’t that seem strange?

Focus, kid. We’ve gone all in on this gamble, so let’s make the most of it. We need to find our friends.

“Right.” Clint’s voice sounded heavy; he ignored it for now. His friends. His friends needed to be free. They needed to be safe. He was going to find them.

He might have said may the gods help Lawrence if they were hurt when he got there, but the gods had already chosen their side. So instead he just hoped it was enough.

* * *

“Nature, Constant, I summon you!” Lawrence’s voice bounded through the room, the pear in his right hand glowing more intensely with each passing second. His left hand he kept dug into his pocket, a fact that only Falcon/Valerie and April noticed. “I call you here to fulfill your bargain. In the name of Kodiwandae, I summon you!”

“
It’s considered rude to steal other people’s mail.”

Lawrence turned to find Clint standing at the entranceway, eyes burning with a golden light that looked suspiciously like the one pouring out of the fruit in Lawrence’s hand. His skin rippled with illumination as well, swirling about like candles reflected off a pond. Well… this was unexpected.

There was a clatter of tools crashing to the ground as the guards passed out, collapsing on the spot. Lawrence tried to rouse them, but found a power pushing back from the one coming out of his pearl. So Kodi had found a way to block him. This suspicion was confirmed as the rest of the idiot brigade scrambled to their feet, clearly freed from his binding.

“Get him, Kodi!” Thunder yelled, finishing off his beer in celebration.

“I’m… trying,” Clint spat, his words forced out under a weight of stress. For the first time the others noticed how furiously he was sweating and how his legs were beginning to tremble. “He’s… strong.”

Lawrence smiled. So it seemed this little rally of theirs could only last for so long. That made it easier to deal with. Absentmindedly, he set the pear onto the altar and faced his unchained captives. It was just in time: the tall native woman made a beeline for him, rearing back and delivering a kick that would have put a football through a field goal post from the fifty yard line. He side-stepped easily, resisting the urge to smile as he heard the painful smack of her foot connecting with the stone altar. The island boy was next, flying at him with a clothesline that Lawrence blocked, then replied to with a series of quick punches to the kidney, the pearl still clutched safely in his fist. Mano began coughing and dropped to the ground in pain.

“The left,” the old woman screamed. “He’s weaker on his left side!”

Had he not been in mid-battle, Lawrence would have been intrigued by her cool-headed assessment. Instead, he was merely impressed. The next one to come at him was Thunder, of all people, charging across the stone floor in a dead sprint.

“Thundeeeeer PUNCH!” The boy dropped the half-empty can in his right hand and pulled it back into a fist. The only way the move could have been more telegraphed was if it had been thrown by Thomas Edison. Lawrence easily dodged the blow and swept Thunder’s legs from under him, a subtle cracking sound confirmed he’d taken out one of the attacker’s knees. He glanced over to see the remaining risks, two women and a slowly-wilting man under the guidance of a god. Far from the worst odds he’d faced over the years.

“If we’re all quite done with this, maybe we can-”

“Thundeeeeer BOMB!” Lawrence whipped back around, expecting Thunder to have crawled back into some kind of attack position. Instead, the young man was still lying prone on the ground, his only movement a rapid shaking of his left hand.

Lawrence figured it out about a second after the pressurized stream of beer struck him in the face. He gagged and coughed as he tried to clear his eyes and breathe past the yeasty concoction. This wasn’t helped when he was struck by two soft forms a few seconds later.

The three of them tumbled to the ground, where Thunder and Mano were able to help by grabbing Lawrence and pulling him down. The whole thing dissolved into chaos for a few moments until Lawrence’s superior practice and training prevailed. He struck unthinkingly, hitting weak points and causing concussions in rapid succession. It wasn’t pretty, but it got him enough time to scramble to his feet away from the crowd.

“That’s enough!” Lawrence yelled as he wiped the last of the foam from his face. “I have had my fill of you idiots and your pointless struggling. It is over, you’ve lost; now face your demise with some sense of propriety and just lay the fuck down!”

“Hey asshole,” April said from the ground, her sneer still visible despite the bloody lip she’d gotten in the fray. “Want to know something interesting?”

“No!”

“Too bad.” She lifted her hand and held up a small pink sphere. Lawrence knew it in a heartbeat, which was a good thing since his heart skipped the next few that were due.

“You’re not the only one with a good memory for details.” April reared back and slammed the pearl against the stone floor, obliterating it into dust.

Most pearls do not break quite that easily.

Most pearls do not have a very pissed off god inside.

Lawrence felt an iron grip on his shoulder as he was yanked upward, his feet quickly losing touch with the floor. He twisted around to see Felbren’s psychotic grin.

“
I think we need to have a talk.
”

Clint and Kodi smiled together as the god appeared, the weight of their task finally lifted. Clint went to blink his dry eyes and discovered they refused to re-open. He fell to the ground heavily, not even registering the sting of pain at impact as he drifted into unconsciousness.

20.

The rest of the recently-freed pear hunters barely had a chance to register Clint’s collapse before his eyes popped open and he jumped back to his feet. There was something different about him, though: his skin seemed darker than before, and though his eyes still glowed, it was like molten gold more than beaming light.

“
We have to hurry,
” Kodi said through Clint’s mouth.

“Wait, what just happened to Clint?” Kaia asked, slowly picking herself up and ignoring the toes she was certain were broken.

“
He used his own prayers to power my divine abilities, then channeled them through himself. Mortal souls aren’t built to handle that kind of energy.
”

“So… is he okay?” The fact that Thunder asked such a question in normal words drove home the seriousness of the situation to the others even more than Kodi’s own explanation had.

“
I have no idea, but I know the sooner I’m out of him, the better his chances.”
Kodi strode across the room, pausing only briefly to speak with Felbren. “
I trust we’re past the point of petty interference?
”

“
The boy helped to free me and kept this one from joining our divine ranks. My debt to him outweighs any of our squabbles.
”

“
Good.”
He finished crossing the room and grabbed the pear from the altar. There was a tingle that surged up Clint’s fingers as they grasped the glowing fruit, a sensation akin to completing a circuit. Kodi hoped it wasn’t doing more damage, but at this point, he was pretty much out of options.

“
Nature! Hurry your ass up and get down here! My name is Kodiwandae, god of Kenowai, former prisoner of your own stupid machinations, and currently passenger in this mor- my friend, Clint. Now uphold our bargain and come set me FREE!”

“
No need to yell. I’ve been here since the scheming old man called
.
”

Everyone turned to the back of the room where a new figure had appeared. No, that wasn’t quite right. It hadn’t simply appeared. It was telling the truth; now that they thought back, it had been there since Lawrence set down the pear. Somehow their brains had simply been unable to grasp what their eyes tried to tell them.