Page 33 of Shamrocked
He shrugged. “Tried it, each of us. We’ve all touched him at the same time. But nothing works.”
“Give me the smaller statue, but this time I want to hold it.”
He turned around and Warwick helped me lift the heavy statue out of the backpack. I sat down on the ground in front of the real-life statue, with the miniature copy on my lap. I closed my eyes and laid both hands on the smaller statue.
Chills raced down my arms. “I can see myself. He’s there, looking at me. I can feel him.”
“Then why the fuck can’t he tell us what we need to do?” Aidan muttered.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on the statue in my lap. I sank into him. Willing myself to become stone, so I could feel what he felt. Maybe hear some stray thought or clue. But the rustling sound was annoying. It kept distracting me. It sounded bigger than a mouse. Ugh. If it was a rat…
I opened my eyes and searched the corner where I heard the noise. Two beady, red eyes flashed back at me. “I think there’s a rat over there.”
The sound of drawn steel made my teeth ache. “That’s no rat.”
Ivarr and Warwick both blazed brighter, driving back the darkness to reveal a hairy hunched shape. It looked like a big rat, or maybe an opossum, a light gray with a nasty pink tail. But it had big ears and shiny teeth, more like a badger or beaver. It was gross, but I wasn’t immediately alarmed.
“How many?” Aidan asked in a low voice, sliding closer to me.
“Ten over here,” Ivarr whispered on my right.
“The same,” Keane said on the other side of Doran.
Warwick backed up against me from behind. “Same here.”
“Fuck.” Aidan growled. “Warwick—”
“Aye.”
“What are they?” I asked, still not sure why they were so worried.
“Imps,” Aidan replied. “If there’s anything you can think of to try and break the curse, you’d best do so now. And fast.”
I gulped and looked up at his grim face. “What’s wrong? Why are imps so bad?”
Keane flipped a switch on his flame thrower and it roared to life, dripping liquid fire from the muzzle. “Imps like to eat people. But they won’t touch you,mo stór.”
17
Eat people? Fuck.
I scooted closer to the gargoyle, with the smaller one on my lap, wracking my brain to think of a way to break the curse. I set the smaller statue beneath the larger and looked at them both together. They were exactly the same. But why did I feel Doran so much better—and see through the larger one’s eyes—when I touched the replica? Was it because of Warwick’s magic that had created it? I couldn’t think why that’d make a difference. My hands trembled and I caught myself nibbling on the skin on the inside of my thumb nail, a bad nervous habit I’d broken long ago.
I brought up each painting in my mind, flashing through them again. I couldn’t think of anything that would help. I had the treasures. I had found Doran’s hiding place. No other clues were there.
I came back to the small statue. The connection I felt when handling it.
A sudden flash of heat blasted through the small room and something screeched. The stink of burning hair filled my nose. Aidan lunged and scuffed behind me, his breathing loud. The sound of his blades sinking into flesh made my stomach heave. Or maybe that was the smell of blood mixing with the charred hair.
“Ow! You little slimy motherfucker,” Ivarr growled. “My sword isn’t much use against something so fucking small. They’re too damned fast.”
“Keep the light as bright as possible,” Aidan said, his voice tense. “It’ll slow them down a bit. Keane, you’re really going to have to burn as many as you can.”
“Right, I’m on it.” Keane managed to sound cheerful, even as he roasted a bunch of little hairy monsters with a flame thrower. “At least as long as the fuel holds.”
“How long?” Aidan asked.
“Twenty, maybe thirty minutes.”
