The Keeper Ch. 26-27

As Jeffery had said, ten men made up the crew. She placed each of their positions. They were typical of the beings that the Leprechaun had on his payroll: murderers, thieves, and rapists. Big on violence, short on brains.

An enormous fat man sat in a lawn chair directing the setup.

"Well, hello there Miss Niamh, so nice to see you in the flesh," he chuckled at his joke. The others laughed like it was the funniest thing they'd heard.

"Well hello to you, Nathan," Niamh replied." Sorry to see your arm healed so well after I went to all the trouble breaking it and I'm sorrier still to see you out of jail."

He snarled. "Unfortunately for you--lucky for me, I got connections. Imagine the joy I felt when The Leprechaun handed me your ass on a silver platter. My lucky day. Billy hand me that controller. Miss Niamh, I'm going to make you dance and soon you'll be begging me to give you to my men. Your day is going to go from bad to terrible, it's the least I can do to show how much I care."

The tall were-hyena tossed the torc control to the fat man who caught it, and with an anticipatory gleam in his eyes, he activated it.

Only to assume a comically puzzled expression when nothing happened.

Thank you, Goddess Opari.

The two were-hyenas were the first to die--their throats crushed by two lightning-fast back-fists.

Niamh snatched the tallest one's knife from his belt as he was falling, then leapfrogged the short one to the fat man who was still furiously pressing the controller.

"That won't work this close to the Opari. Guess they forgot to mention that. Goodbye Nathan," she whispered into his ear and slashed his throat to the spine.

She shifted, and the slaughter began.

When it was over, Niamh shifted back. The slave woman who had been cooking stood frozen in place amidst the torn bodies that once were her masters. She looked at Niamh, bowed her head.

Niamh ignored her. She walked over to the body of the short hyena and searched until she found the key and unlocked the cage where the children looked out fearfully.

"Come on out, kids. I won't hurt you."

She went over to the saddle bags laying to one side and rummaged through them to find something to wear. She was pleased to find her leathers and boots; Mother knew what infested the dead men's clothing.

"Woman, I will not hurt you," she called as she got dressed. "Come here and help me move this scum away from the camp. Next, those children need food and water. I will send some older kids to help."

After they had pulled the dead away from the camp, she called out, "Steven come here for a minute?"

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Steven, this is what we need to do. Your charges need to eat and drink. We've got a tough twenty-four hours coming up. Unfortunately, horses did not like my other form, so they bolted. I am going to try to catch them. We need them to get back to Oldtown. A horse can walk three to four miles an hour, so we're twenty to thirty miles from Oldtown--too far for us to walk before they catch us. If I can't get the horses rounded up, we're going to have to escape into the Opari."

"Seriously?" Steven's face paled. He'd heard the tales of the forest.

"Yes. No one would dare follow us in. The problem is we would get lost the minute we stepped in. So that is the last resort. We need to move fast; I figure we only have a day before somebody comes looking for these guys."

He nodded wordlessly, turned, and started organizing his charges.

Impressive kid, she thought. Most people would have wasted time dithering or arguing.

She looked at the tangle of forbidding-looking old growth cedars that marked Opari's boundary regretfully. If she were by herself, she would risk it. She'd had two summers learning it with Anna. But with the children in tow, it was too risky. She checked to see that the kids were being fed and started off on a ground-eating lope to find the stupid horses.