Hell's Gates (Urban Fantasy) by Celia Kyle, Lauren Creed Page B

Dick—but I supposed there was a first time for everything.
    He kept shouting at the taps, ignoring me, and I wondered if he even saw me.
    If anyone saw me. Because Dick wasn’t the only one.
    An elf in the corner was having a super serious discussion about quantum physics… with a wooden pillar. A couple of goblins couldn’t decide who’d fathered the bowl of peanuts sitting between them. I stared at a troll near the front door while he shoved his table back and got into a fistfight with the framed and autographed Miami Dolphins jersey hanging on the wall.
    (There was a certain Man Darino who was actually a sprightly pixie-demon and played for them for a while.)
    A few other patrons jumped to their feet and then it was all punches all the time. At each other, at empty air, a chair here and there, and one even dropped to the floor and punched the polished concrete. I was confused, but doing okay with the weird turn the day had taken, until they started throwing things.
    Particularly, a chair that sailed past my head and smashed into the liquor racks at my back.
    “Not cool, man.” I reached beneath the bar and wrapped my fingers around my new bat. “Really not cool.”
    “Caith,” Jezze tried to sound all warning-y. “They’re not in their right heads.” A beer bottle zipped through the air and Jezze deflected it with a small gesture and a flash of light.
    “Well, they might not have heads much longer, so it doesn’t matter.” I hefted the bat over my shoulder. “I can’t deal with this shit in my bar. Especially not today.”
    I placed one hand on the counter and vaulted over the high bar, thumping back to the ground between two stools. The fights kept going, no one noticing me as I moved through the raucous crowd. I deflected a chair and dodged a punch, waiting to unleash myself for now.
    Truck kicked out at me and I blocked it with my bat, the wood crumbling beneath the strength of the troll’s strike. I glared at him, but it was like he didn’t recognize me. Dammit. Now I was starting to feel bad. These were my regulars, sun up to sun down kind of guys. Most of the time, I wouldn’t hesitate to hand out a beat down, but when Charlie asked me if I was Jesus, I knew they weren’t in control of themselves. It had to be the same shit that infected Bry. I didn’t know if they’d drunk the same tainted water or if my liquor supply had somehow been affected. Either way, my customers were out of their heads on crazy demon juice.
    And I needed to put on my “don’t kill them” pants and take it easy on ‘em, only focusing on subduing the worst of the tweeners. I might not have much of a conscience, but that little bit of unicorn blood combined with my love of all living things from Papa Eron made me feel guilty about hurting innocents.
    So, instead of burning Truck to a crisp, I balled up my fist and clipped his jaw, knocking him out cold. One violent tween down, a good dozen-plus to go. I ignored the elf bitching that he was the one behind Niels Bohr’s research and taught him all there was to know about atoms… using donuts.
    I didn’t…
    Unfortunately, to the right of him were two dryads, tree sprites, fighting over who was going to claim the pretty oak with it’s perfectly square design. The Treeson twins—Flora and Fiona—weren’t the strongest branches in the brain department on the best of days.
    The support beams in my bar weren’t oak and not all of them were actual wood. The one they glared at was actually just wood paneling secured to a concrete post.
    I forced a smile to my lips, frantically trying to remember where else I’d placed weapons in the bar. Dryads were the ultimate chick fighters with pointy fingernails made of the strongest woods in the tween. Woods. Plural. They took on the characteristics of every tree they’d ever inhabited and began traveling from tree to tree the moment they poofed into existence. (Yeah, there’s all this magicalness that goes with conception and