Chapter 1.25 - In which Percy gets by on bravado

Percy

Month 11, Day 28, Saturday 4:50 a.m.

Percy ducked down and tucked his body forward without even thinking about it, a reflex as instantaneous as jerking his hand away when it brushed against the hot copper of their teapot.

He had lost count of the times he’d pummeled himself by stepping on rakes, hoes, and one time a wheelbarrow. As a child, he had grown to fear the see-saw in a wealthy neighborhood child’s backyard, and at one point, he had even tipped a small boat over onto himself.

Percy knew what it felt like for a lever to tilt under his feet. As he peered through the darkness under his left arm in the split second as the thing he had stepped on swung up, he made out the silhouette of a hand trolley with a missing wheel. It had been tilted over, half-buried under a haphazard pile of boxes.

Much of the old debris rained down around Percy, but a twisted length of metal caught on the hand trolley’s handle and shot forward as if thrown from a trebuchet. It flew well over Percy’s head and straight for the Morrow.

The man flinched away, raising his arms protectively. Instead of braining him right between the eyebrows, the twisted rod clipped his battle wand and ripped it out of his hand. Both went clattering to the floor behind him, hidden somewhere in the dark.

The man lowered his arms slowly and turned to the side to monitor Percy while also looking for his wand. He apparently didn’t see it, because he turned back to Percy, his puffy red eyes narrowing. “You’re more impressive than I thought. But why don’t you quit playing around and get serious?” He raised his fists in a sporting stance.

Percy blinked at him in bewilderment, lowering his arms from around his head as he fumbled for something he might be able to fight with among the random mix of junk that had fallen.

Percy wasn’t crazy. There was no way he would get into a fisticuffs competition with a hardened man twice his age and over twice his size. As he scrambled to his feet, his hand closed around a metal handle—a rusted wrench—and as the Morrow took a single step closer, Percy heaved the tool up and hurled it at him.

Only, Percy’s fingers were stiff with cold, and the adrenaline made him clumsy. His grip slipped. The wrench went flying off into the pile of crates to the side, at least a forty-five degree angle off from hitting the man, who didn’t even glance in the direction of the badly missed throw. Some panicked squeaking and a few shuffling sounds came from within the pile.

Maybe, if Percy could get out the back door, he could lead the man away from the warehouse and Viv altogether. But as Percy tried to sidle away again, he stumbled over the fallen debris.

The Morrow’s smirk was back, and he advanced another step toward Percy.

But that step was the last straw for the rats hiding within the pile of just-disturbed crates, apparently. Squeaking in panic, several dark, long-tailed forms raced away in multiple directions. One burst out of the pile, flying directly through the air toward the man’s face.

Percy watched as the man’s eyes widened, too slow to react.

The rat impacted his cheek with an audible thudand began to scratch and scramble in its panic.

The Morrow flinched away so hard that he almost fell over, and the rat screamed, a horrible piercing shriek that the man echoed at a much louder volume. One of the claws in its hind leg seemed to be stuck in the fuzzy fabric of the man’s scarf, and as it attempted to escape, the fabric tugged tighter around his neck.

He screamed again, flailing at it but never quite managing to get a grip on its body to tear it away. One leg caught behind the other in his panic, and he fell to the floor, the scratch marks on his face weeping blood.

The rat sank its teeth into the meat of his hand between his thumb and forefinger. Jerking violently, the man flung his arm away, and the force finally managed to dislodge the rat’s caught claw as it was sent flying into the darkness near Viv.

The man cradled one hand to his chest, the other running spasmodically over his face and neck. All the while, low gasping moans of panic slipped out between his clenched teeth. Percy, recognizing the signs of a phobia, took a step back and to the side, putting a little more distance between him and the increasingly deranged-looking Morrow.

The man looked toward Percy as he climbed back to his feet, his injured hand tucked close to his chest. “You knew it was there?” he rasped. “Was that…on purpose? You didn’t miss. You were trying to startle them. Distract me.” He blinked as blood from a scratch over his forehead ran into his eye.

“Of course,” Percy agreed, though his voice broke. He swallowed and grimaced, hoping the man bought it. There was no way Percy would admit that something so effective had been a complete coincidence. Bravado and desperation were the only things keeping him going at the moment.

Percy’s foot knocked into a wooden pole with a bent hook on the end of it. Before it could fall, he snatched it up and swung it toward the man. The blow missed, the weight of the pole dragging Percy slightly off balance. On Percy’s second attempt, the man caught the end.

Rather than try to wrestle for control, a game Percy didn’t need to play to know he would lose, he slammed the pole forward with all his might. The hooked tip struck the man’s chest, hard enough to bruise and maybe even dislodge or fracture a rib, if not in the perfect spot to knock the air from his lungs.

Then, as if this were some kind of play where Percy and the Morrow were both Titans in battle, Percy’s attack was accompanied by a rumble in the earth itself. The windows shook, and the ground trembled. Dust fell from the loft and the rafters, and the insects and animals that had made their homes here scattered and fluttered about in surprise.

Percy released the pole and hurried to put one of the structural beams between himself and the Morrow, in case he tried to retaliate.

But the man was looking toward the west, where the fighting had been. “They did it,” he murmured.

His grip around the pole tightened, and he turned to search for Percy. His abdomen was bleeding where Percy had shoved the hooked pole into him. Perhaps the metal had a sharp edge that Percy hadn’t noticed? The man looked exceedingly grim, any traces of his initial smirk washed away.

Percy shuffled backward until he ran into one of the many industrial artifacts too heavy to move from the factory floor. His hands fluttered anxiously as he tried to feel his way around it. If only he had a battle wand that he could use to attack from a distance!

His hand fell on a lever to the side of the huge artifact. Remembering what had happened the last time, he was very careful not to press down.

The Morrow froze, looking from Percy to the artifact.

Percy looked up, following his gaze to the huge circular cutting saw held in an arm atop the hulking mass, as tall as Percy from end to end. Percy looked down at the lever handle in his grip.

The man took a careful step backward, shaking his head. “Stop, stop. Time out,” he said, as if they were children playing some sort of game. He dropped the wooden pole and pressed his uninjured hand to the wound on his abdomen.

The man took another slow step away and lifted the rat-bitten hand toward Percy in a calming motion. “I know what you’re about to do. It’ll be all ‘oops,’ and that saw blade will shoot forward or drop on me or something. Or you’ll slice through the support beams and drop the roof on me, just like the building down the street.”

Percy blinked at him.

“I think you’ve made your point,” the man said. “You may look like a helpless kid, but you’re obviously not.” He swallowed, and enunciated clearly, “I am not prepared to die to get your instant-painting artifact. Okay?”

“Okay?” Percy echoed.

“And it’s not like I even hurt you at all. So you can just let me go. I’m not even—not gonna talk about what happened tonight. Unless you want me to send a message?”

Percy shook his head slowly, feeling somewhat dizzy as he tried to understand what was happening.

The man took another step backward and then, with one last terrified look at the giant saw blade, turned around and sprinted through the front door he had kicked in earlier.

Percy watched him go, speechless. He turned to the industrial artifact and slowly took his hand away from the activation lever. It was almost certainly out of power. The magic imbued by whatever artificer had charged it last would have either been used up when the factory was still operational or seeped away over the time since.

But just in case some magic remained, it would be very bad if he made the roof collapse atop himself and Viv.