I slammed their heads together, somersaulted over top of them, and then did it again from behind. They had thick skulls; they did not go down, and one even spun and swung at me. But I twisted away and pulled back out of reach, taking a second to think.
Why did we need a shield inside a portal, which was already a shielded pathway through a line? That was the reason people made such things: to provide safe passage from one point to another. Why bother with a second layer of protection?
Unless they were more interested in keeping something in than keeping something out, I realized.
This wasn’t an assassination; it was a kidnapping.
Fear and panic swept through me at the idea of being caged, so much so that I lost myself for a moment. I lashed out, beating my fists and feet against the sides of my prison, and then against the jailors who had stupidly locked themselves in here with me. The shield, which had already been spinning wildly from the tumult inside began rocking alarmingly, sliding and sloshing us around.
The rocking motion became so violent that it brought me out of my fit. It was just in time to see us burst through, not the gate on the other end of the portal, but the side of the portal itself. And go spinning off into the fury of the ley line.
Suddenly, everything changed. It was like the difference between riding down some white-water rapids and surfing the crashing ferocity of an ocean in a major gale. We plummeted down what felt like a fifty-foot wave, then rode another back up, only to be spit out the top and do it all again. And again.
I was overwhelmed for a moment, and I suppose the fey felt the same, because the attacks had stopped. Or perhaps there was another reason for that. A vortex of orbiting body parts beat on me as we spun about, as their owners could no longer do. But some bruises were less of a problem than the reason for the fleshly storm: we were tumbling out of control, and I did not know enough about shields to stop us.
But someone else did.
“Goddamnit!” The vampire yelled, his body, or what was left of it, thumping about the shielded circle. “Hold me up. Let me see!”
“Let you see what?”
“That!” He nodded vigorously at something. “The control!”
“This?” I touched something about the size of a crystal ball. It was on a stick, protruding waist high from what was probably supposed to be the stationary middle of the shield, but which was now slinging all over the place.
“Yes, hold me up, damn you!”
I held him up.
“Fuck,” was his verdict.
“Is that bad?”
“No. It’s peachy fucking keen, what the hell do you think?”
He gave me a rapid-fire stream of directions that involved turning the ball this way and that, which did not appear to have any effect on the spinning. But the wild, leaping color around us slowly became softer and hazier, like veils across the horizon. Until we burst out of the line, into bright blue skies filled with puffy white clouds and startled birds.
Who were less startled than us when we abruptly plummeted for the ground.
“Augggggghhhhhhhh!” the vampire screamed. “Augggggghhhhhhhh!”
The shield remained in place as we fell, which surprised me. I was under the impression that they did not work outside the lines. But then, this was a fey shield. Perhaps they were different.
“Augggggghhhhhhhh!” the vampire screamed some more. “Augggggghhhhhhhh!”
We hit the ground and bounced, what must have been fifty feet into the air. And then did it again and again, while also rolling down a steep incline. It was covered in flowers, predominately purple with a few yellow and white ones mixed in.
Beautiful.
“Augggggghhhhhhhh!” the vampire yelled. “Augg—bump—auggggh—bump—aughhhhhhh!”
We finally rolled to a stop.
I found myself slightly dizzy, but mostly unharmed.
The same could not be said for the vampire, who continued to scream, albeit weakly. I shook my head to clear it, which did not work as well as I would have liked. I still felt as if I was surfing the biggest storm in history, with my stomach doing flips inside my body. It was not a wholly unpleasant sensation, but it did make it hard to move about.
I did so anyway, crawling across the gory floor to gather up the body parts that belonged to my companion. It was easy to tell them apart, as his were smaller than those of the fey. I finished and looked up.