20. Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

Y ou weren’t supposed to bring a firearm into an amusement park. The rules might be different in a place like Texas, but in Missouri the prohibition stood. More than that, I wasn’t comfortable carrying and possibly firing a gun in a place where a lot of children were going to be running around. There was disregarding my own safety, then there was being okay with copious collateral damage, and I wasn’t that.

So fine, no gun. It didn’t matter. I just needed to find S?ren and get out of here. Hopefully I could snag him as he came off a roller coaster and get him out before his brothers got close.

Yeah. And how often did things work out for me like that?

I moved the Electra closer to the entrance, keeping my eyes open for any sign of a black SUV. Ha , this was the land of Sport Utility Vehicles―the only things there were more of in this parking lot were trucks. There were way too many cars to mark, so instead I kept a weather eye out for enormous Icelandic bastards in suits as I made my way to the front of the line.

“Hi there!” the lady behind the counter said as I stepped up. “One for the day?”

“Half day,” I corrected absently as I pulled out my money.

“Right! That’s twenty-five dollars. Are you interested in any of our special rides? The water park is open, and we have an exciting paintball course.”

I wasn’t, actually, but I knew someone who was. “Sure. I’ll play some paintball.”

“That’s an extra forty dollars, then.”

That was fucking extortion, but I didn’t care enough to rail at unforgiving corporate gods. I forked over the money and got a stamp on my hand and a special ticket for my troubles. “Our paintball field is straight back through the rides, on the right-hand side,” she told me. “Just give one of our team members the ticket, and they’ll get you the equipment you need.”

“Thank you—” I glanced at her nametag. “—Alta.” I looked into Alta’s smiling face and past the warm brown glimmer of her eyes and saw her mild concern when, in about fifteen minutes, a bunch of cop cars suddenly pulled up at the front gate. Okay then―that was my timeline. “Have a nice day,” I said, heading off into the park.

There were two kinds of crowds—well, no, there were a million different types of crowds, every situation was slightly different, but for me, the distinction was simple. There were crowds in which you could hide, blending in like one of the herd. Then there were crowds in which you stood out no matter what you did.

This particular crowd? I stood out like a streak of blood on a plain white canvas. With no kid accompanying me, tattooed and pierced and in a hurry—folks stared as I walked by. I was tempted to stare back, but I didn’t have time for them. I had to find S?ren as soon as possible. I was hedging my bets, going after him at the paintball course first. If he was on a roller coaster and I had to backtrack, we could be in trouble, but my gut said he was in the mood to shoot things today. Fuck, I knew I was feeling that way. First Charlotte, and now the Family Egilsson. How had they found us so fast?

That was a question for S?ren. I had to keep reminding myself he wasn’t on my side, no matter what he’d already done for me―or to me. He wasn’t on anybody’s side. He was the prize, and we were the fools fighting over him, like goddesses battling it out over a golden apple meant for the fairest. Only in our cases, it was a matter of life, death, and sanity. There was still so much I had to work out, so many things that had to come together for me to end up victorious...for a given value of victorious, of course. My S?ren was bound to the landv?ttir, and before I could think about separating them, I had to win them both.

Those were issues for tomorrow. Right now I needed to solve my immediate problem, which was finding S?ren and getting the fuck out of here.

Apparently a paintball match had just begun, because there was no line when I got to the entrance to that part of the park. Behind the shed that held all the equipment was an open field scattered with bits and pieces of old rides, the sort of thing that would look incredibly creepy if it was dark out. Beyond that was a heavily wooded area where I saw people running around and heard the quiet pop-pop of their guns.

“Hey,” the guy manning the booth said disinterestedly. “Gotta ticket?”

“Here.” I handed it to him, and he grunted before adding another stamp to my hand. “You wearing that out into the field?” he asked, gesturing at my suit jacket. “It’s gonna get messy.”

My suit was destined for the trash at this point anyway. “I’m fine with that.”

“Yeah, okay.” He passed me a muggy face protector and goggle set and then handed over the paintball gun. “There are preloaded hoppers back here if you need more ammo, which you shouldn’t ,” he emphasized. “Just gotta wait until some of these games are played out, then you can go in.”

I leaned in a little. “Actually, I’m looking for a friend of mine. Really pasty guy, tall, not the most patient person ever…”

“Oh, him .” I saw the memory play out in the guy’s head. “Yeah, he’s part of the King of the Hill game over that way. Gotta wait to get in on that so we can reset the field.”

“Are you sure?”

“That’s the rules, man. Haven’t you played paintball before?”

“Of course,” I lied, “but it’s kind of important I go in after him now. He’s got a medical condition, and I need to get him his inhaler.”

The guy scowled at me. “What are you, his dad?”

“Just a concerned friend who doesn’t want to have to explain to your boss why my buddy is getting hospitalized on your watch.”

You didn’t have to be psychic to read this guy’s mind. After silently calling me every name in the book, he grunted and vaguely pointed. “Over there. But you have to wear the protective gear, and you have to play by the rules!”

“I’d never dream of doing anything else.” I headed out into the field toward the woods.

“Ha!” A kid who couldn’t be more than twelve suddenly jumped out from behind an abandoned Moon Car and sprayed my right side with paintballs. It stung a bit where they hit me―I’d probably have some lovely bruises tomorrow. “I got you!”

“Nice job.” I kept going.

“You’ve got to be dead now!” she—I think it was a she, it was hard to tell with the mask and heavy camo clothing on—yelled at me.

“I’m the walking dead.”

“Zombie!” I got another spray of paintballs to the back as I walked away. Kids, holy fuck , what little menaces.

I quickly found out there was no way I could just walk over to where S?ren was hiding, which was naturally at the top of the damn hill, shooting down on everyone else. If you weren’t wearing camouflage, didn’t run from tree to tree in an effort to avoid getting shot, and didn’t look like you were part of the team? Then you got shot by everybody . I wouldn’t have minded so much, but some people took the rules really damn seriously. Even the people on the team trying to take the hill looked askance at me after a little while, as covered in paint as I was.

“Fine,” I muttered to myself. I needed to get up that hill and I needed to do it fast, so I’d break a different rule. I took my jacket off and turned it inside out to hide most of the paint, fastened it in the front, and then positioned myself at the back of a wedge of players who seemed to be mustering the nerve to rush the hill.

When one of them glanced at me, I hoisted my gun. “Oo-rah!”

“Oo-rah!” he shouted. “All right, let’s do this, motherfuckers!” With copious yelling and screaming, they started up the hill.

Of course it didn’t work. Everyone got mowed down in a hail of paintballs, but instead of letting the man in front of me fall, I held onto the back of his shirt and used him as a human shield until I got to the very top of the hill, where the bunker that S?ren defended was located.

Instead of getting mad, the guy just gave me two thumbs up and said, “Awesome!” Then he fell down in a heap, and I hopped into the bunker.

S?ren didn’t instantly shoot me, which was nice. He wasn’t wearing his face mask, and I took my own off, throwing the sweat-saturated accessory aside. “You came to play!” S?ren sounded pleased. “Are you defecting to my side?”

“If anyone’s defecting today, it’s you,” I said grimly. “We’ve got to go, now.”

“But I haven’t won the game yet.”

“There isn’t time for the game! Your brothers are here.”

S?ren blinked quizzically. “How many of them?”

“At least one, probably more.” How much time had passed since I first entered the park? Were we coming up on fifteen minutes? “Look, cops are going to be showing up soon. We need to be gone before they get here.”

S?ren looked on the verge of pouting. “But I want to win the game. I’ve hardly had a chance to do anything fun yet!”

Aaand there was the youthful rebellion. I should be playing this more cautiously, given that S?ren was probably strong enough to rip my head off, but I was at the tail end of my patience.

“You want to do something fun? Here.” I grabbed him by the back of the neck, drew him close, and kissed him.

It wasn’t like I remembered kissing S?ren to be. He’d been a good kisser, his lips soft and firm by turns as we played with who was going to be on top. This S?ren was mostly still, and when he finally did move, it was with teeth, not lips. He gripped the sleeve of my jacket and bit into my lower lip and then released me only to do it again. It hurt, but it felt strangely good too. I had to stop now that I had S?ren’s attention. Doing so was harder than it should have been.

I pulled back. “Please.” My lower lip felt raw, but I didn’t touch it. I let S?ren look at it, and me, and come to his own conclusion that yes, I really was this desperate.

“Very well.” He reached over and picked my face protection up off the ground. “Put this back on.”

I did. “What about yours?” I asked.

“I can heal any damage, and I dislike limiting my peripheral vision. Come.” He jumped over the edge of the bunker and headed casually down the hill.

“Hey!” The guy I’d used as my human shield looked at me, anger in every line of his recumbent body. “You were supposed to shoot him!”

“Was I? Huh.”

I kept going and didn’t even mind when he yelled out “Prick!” and shot me in the back.

I did mind when someone else screamed. It wasn’t a fun, playful “Omigosh run!” kind of scream; it was a genuinely terrified scream. “He’s got a gun!” someone else yelled, and I groaned.

“Fucking perfect.”

“Ah.” S?ren had stopped, his eyes clouding over with purple mist. “It’s my brother Art?r.”

Yeah, I remembered Art?r. Some of these guys might have been coerced into obeying their father, but if anyone was helping of his own accord, it was Art?r. He’d been the one to dunk me over and over again into the bathtub filled with ice water. He’d been the one to pull out two of my fingernails when threatening to drown me didn’t work.

Art?r wasn’t the cleverest of the brothers, but he was the biggest, the meanest, and the one least likely to give a fuck about his risk-to-reward ratio, as evidenced by the fact that he’d pulled a fucking gun in the middle of a theme park. I could see him now, coming at us like a black-suited behemoth through the trees. And all I had was a paintball gun.

Well, I’d better make it count.

My hopper was mostly full, thanks to my stinginess with my shots. As soon as Art?r rounded the last tree, I dropped to one knee and fired my gun as fast as I could, right at his groin. The paintballs actually had a pretty slow muzzle velocity, just enough to burst on impact, but level enough of them at someone’s crotch and they were going to feel it. Art?r didn’t disappoint. He groaned and jackknifed onto both knees, one hand clutching his bespattered manhood, the other shakily raising his real, live gun in my direction.

I pushed to my feet and darted to the side just as the first bullet flew. More people screamed, and the guy I’d left “dead” on the hill quickly rolled over the top into the bunker for shelter.

I turned and faced S?ren, who stared at me with a little smile on his face. “We have to go, now!”

“All right.” He let me lead him away from his bellowing sibling, even though a cry of, “Tú getur ekki bjargae honum! Hann mun deyja!” made him pause for a moment.

I led the way out of the field of battle at a run. S?ren could explain later, if we survived.