Voodootown

Chapter 21 part 2

Blink turned away from the man.  "We have to go.  We have to run."

Ju Ju wondered where they could run to.  The human had hundreds of dolls with him that could track them to any exit.  Last night they had been right next to an exit and had barely escaped.  This time they were a dozen blocks away from their way out.

She turned her attention back to the human, saw that he wasn't looking at her or her friends, but was fixated on the portal behind them.  "I can go anywhere with that."  He stared at it, quiet for a long moment, then smiled.  "My night just keeps getting better." 

His thralls parted as he stepped forward, and Ju Ju looked around at her own group.  She was glad that Twister wasn't stupid enough to make some useless, defiant comment.  Maybe if the man was only interested in the portal, they could get away.

"I'll give you a better night," Squat said.  Ju Ju rolled her eyes and saw Twister do the same.

The man stopped, looked them over again.  "Yes.  You little things."  He looked back to his thralls.  "Fighters."  From out of the growing crowd, individual dolls began to step forward, surround his feet.  Ju Ju recognized most of them from the challenge arena.

"Wonderful," Twister said.  But Ju Ju didn't know what to think.  So far, the thralls they had faced had only fought with bare hands.  She hadn't seen them use any special powers or abilities.  Vapor, the Kapo, had, but he hadn't been wearing a collar like these dolls were.

One of them, a doll Ju Ju recognized as Blitz, stepped forward.  He pointed his hand at Squat and a blaze of red lightning shot out of it.  Ju Ju saw Squat start to flinch, but Twister disappeared from her side.  Before the lightning could reach its target, Squat and Twister tumbled out of its path onto the pavement.

Ju Ju looked up, saw the human was twisting the ring on his right hand.  "Tear them up," he said.  The fighting thralls, fifteen of them, moved forward.  She sighted one that was moving toward Twister and Squat, yanked it sideways with her little doll and it slid into three others, taking them all down in a pile.

She saw Sticks hurl a pin, impale a thrall and catch her pin when it returned.  The thrall slowed a moment, but came at her again.  "Leave the pins in," Blink said as he tossed her his.  "Flow?  Set her up?"

A glow began to form into a charm between Flow's hands as Ju Ju took her same target, spun him and knocked him into the thralls again.  Twister pulled Squat up and they charged into the line of fighters. 

Another bolt of lightning shot from Blitz and Ju Ju picked him, flattened him on the ground.  Squat saw the opportunity.  He grabbed Blitz, spun and hurled him through the front wall of a nearby building.

Another fighter, one she didn't recognize, sprouted claws from its hands and feet and jumped onto Bloodhound.  He fell backward, cuts open on both his shoulders, but rolled, ended up on top of the clawed doll.  He pivoted above it, planted his feet on its chest and pulled its arm off.  It swung at him with a foot and he grabbed that leg.

Twister blurred through the group that Ju Ju had tripped, and in an instant the thralls all had pins sticking out of their bodies.

As Ju Ju scanned for a new target, she saw that Sticks had a pin cushion under one arm.  She threw pin after pin into the oncoming fighters, three into each one's body. 

Only four of the fighters remained standing when the human spoke again.  "You are useful little things."  He adjusted one of the button lenses on his glasses and picked a doll out of the crowd.  "You, keep them safe for me."  He tossed the doll toward them.

Ju Ju looked at the doll as it fell.  Along with the collar, it wore dusty brown coveralls.  Sticks threw a pin at it, and a wall of what looked like Plexiglas grew out of the ground between them.