Myth 13 - Myth Alliances by Asprin, Robert (ebook reader online free .txt) 📕

as she changed from a Klahd to a Wuhs in the middle of the transaction. Not an everyday occurrence for either one of them, but my assistant handled it with aplomb.

She put her hands to her cheeks and felt them. “Oh, my! My illusion spell wore off! I've got to go now.”

She hurried to our table and handed me her purchases. “Shall we go now?” she urged pointedly.

Zol and I were already standing. The Wuhses who were still “assembling” tea towels that weren't tea towels paid no attention, but the keen-​eyed old female watched us with in?terest. We started edging toward the door.

When my hand touched the knob, a klaxon began to blare out. “Intruder alert! Intruder alert! No one is to leave the building. Repeat: no one is to leave the building.”

I heard a rumbling noise, and felt a drain on the energy

line below my feet. One of the Perverts must be in the factory.

“How do we get out of here?” Bunny asked.

“Not easily,” Tananda asserted. “This place seals up tighter than a drum.”

I glanced around. “Just start walking toward the exit.”

As I said that, sheets of metal slid down and sealed off the doors and windows of the cafeteria. I reached for the D-​hopper. “Where shall we meet? If there's any possibility they can zero in on where we've gone I don't want them following me home. K ÑI mean, my dimension can't han?dle it.”

“Kobol,” Zol suggested promptly. “Meet you there.”

The little gray man vanished. The Wuhses broke into shrieks and cries of alarm. They immediately stampeded toward the metal-​covered door and started pounding on it.

“So much for an unobtrusive departure,” I mourned, and started to dial the D-​hopper. At that moment the wall be?hind the sales kiosk opened up, and a stocky Pervert female in a coverall stamped through. She made straight for us.

“You!” she shouted, pointing at us. “Come here! I want to talk to you!”

Without hesitation, I grabbed Tananda's and Bunny's hands and yanked them into the mob of bleating, milling Wuhses. Where was that line of power? I summoned up as much energy as I could and stored it inside me.

I felt a touch of power on the back of my neck like a clamp attached to a derrick. The Pervert was trying to pull me towards her! Knowing how much her species hated fire, I flung a ball of crackling heat over my shoulder at her. She ducked, swearing, as a hundred tea cozies shaped like sun?flowers burst into flames. Her spell let go.

As soon as I was free I burrowed deeply into the crowd. I noted as many of the faces as I could then, in my mind, I erased the Wuhs features we had just assumed, and ex?changed them for new ones. The Pervert could not easily

identify us now. She would have to grab everyone, and by then, I intended to be long gone.

“Skeeve!” Tananda hissed, looking about her for me.

When I put a disguise spell on others, they see them?selves with their new faces, but I still see them as they re?ally are. I set the D-​hopper for Kobol, threw one arm around Bunny, and grabbed Tananda's wrist with my other hand. As the Wuhses whimpered in terror about the angry Pervect and the burning display, I pushed the button.

Niki grabbed a can hanging from a string on the wall and shouted into it.

“We've had a security breach! Spies! Two Klahds, a Trollop and an I don't know what it was! I think we've found our magician.”

In a moment a voice crackled in her ear. “Did you catch them?”

“No, they boogied out of here. Someone or something must have tipped them off.” She glared around the room at the Wuhses, now all plastered against the far wall in terror. “I'm going to find out who.”

“We're already working on it,” Caitlin replied. “Over and out.”

“Who were they?” Loorna roared at the Wuhs.

After they had hung up with Niki, the Ten had opened the snow globe prison on their table and restored the Wuhs inside it to full size. The rabblerouser who had actually in?vaded the castle and led a thousand of his countrymen into the Pervect Ten's very own headquarters didn't look like such a hero now. His vest and trousers were torn, his pale hair and face dirty, and his white shirt showed the effects of having been lived in for a week straight.

Vergetta's keen nose wrinkled at the smell he emitted. She snaked up a cluster of power and threw it at him. There. Dry-​cleaned, no charge. Loorna tossed her a grouchy look, but Vergetta ignored it. Why should they all suffer for the length of time it took to wring information out of the Wuhs?

“W-​w-​who, dear lady?” he panted. “I d-​d-​don't know who you're talking about.”

Vergetta, in her seat next to Caitlin's computer, groaned. That was all they had managed to get out of him: evasions and bad grammar. Apart from his name, of course, which was Wensley. “That's whom, bubalah. I don't know about whom.”

“Shut up,” Loorna snarled at her senior. She turned back to the prisoner. “Answer the question!” She grabbed the chattering male by his shirt front and shook him. “Where do they come from? What do they want?”

“They've got some kind of chutzpah, walking right into our place without a by-​your-​leave,” Vergetta declared. “Must be pretty confident, or pretty dumb. I'll take votes either way.”

“So?” Loorna demanded, as designated interrogator, “Who are they? Industrial spies? What's your connection with them?”

“What makes you think