Tales of the Unquiet Gods by David Pascoe Page A

knew, practically everyone she met: every one of them asking why someone else didn't fix things. Why won't the president make it better? Or if not the president, the mayor, the governor or someone else in power. The implication was that if someone else takes care of the problems, then I don't have to, and can get on to more important issues.
    For a moment, Anne's guard slipped.
    And in that moment, the will moving the unman struck.
    Smokey shadow wreathed the thing, and it blurred in Anne's vision. There was a flash of golden light in the midst of a suddenly Stygian darkness. Anne felt a thud, and somehow found herself flying through the air. She had a confused image of Chelle floating over the top of her, starshine limning her short, spiky hair and a rictus grin fixed on her unseeing face, and Anne felt the impact of her shoulders on the obsidian.
    She slid across the ice-slick stone, coming to a rest hanging just over the ledge. For one endless instant, the moonstone shimmer of what passed for a ceiling spun over her head. Anne's lizard brain jabbed her in the metaphorical backside, and her spasming diaphragm contracted, dragging an implosion of air into her lungs.
    A darkening shadow overhead sent Anne rolling back across the volcanic glass. A smoky figure dropped out of the gloom, an echoing crack resounding from the hard surface where Anne's head had just lay.
    Anne rolled to her feet, and it was only instinct that had her sway to her right. The unman flew past her, clawed hands outstretched to rend and tear. The breeze from the last thing's passage ruffled her hair. Streaming shadowy vapor, it rolled and came to its feet.
    "The hide from your flesh," the unman shrieked. "The flesh from your bones!"
    The thing charged, its horrific visage drawing closer with unnaturally smooth grace. Wicked claws reached out of the inky mist it wore as a cloak, grasping for not just her flesh, but her soul as well.
    Anne should have been terrified. Indeed, her fear sent galvanizing threads weaving through her chest, but they twined together with furious, incandescent anger, driving Anne forward to meet her hellish adversary.
    Anne was glad she'd chosen to wear her flat-soled boots to this vile pit of a club: though she loved the inches heels gave her, she'd never have been able to fight in them, let alone run on the slick stone.
    Chelle spun between them as the howling anathema bore down on her, and Anne's heart skipped a beat. Her sister leapt into the air, spinning to leave a bare hair's breadth as the the creature roared past, and Anne had time only to move.
    At the last instant, Anne threw herself to her knees in front of the monstrous thing howling for her blood. The insensate rage on its perverted face betrayed a surprising lack of control. She must have irritated the will that drove it.
    Anne leaned back nearly prone as she slid across the mirror-polished stone. She took a sketchy kick on one hip, but she could tell she'd surprised her enemy, as the wild blow had no force. She snaked out her trailing hand and caught the thing by one bony ankle. Anne used the thing's momentum against it, pulling hard on its leg, simultaneously spinning her around and whipping the unman face first into the obsidian with all the strength of its wild charge. Anne quashed any sympathy she felt at the hollow crack as skull bounced off stone.
    Anne sprang to her feet, and Chelle leapt over the prone unman, inverted, unsupported, her body turning in the air. Her sister's shining form hung suspended over the collapsed monster, and a flash of insight nearly blinded Anne. Her sister still danced, the crowd still gyrated, the musicians still played at the same fever pitch.
    Whatever the will was, it didn't control anything but her opponents. It inspired, it drove them, but it was only as powerful as they allowed. Anne hadn't given it an opening. Her mind was too disciplined; her character too honed toward protection. Sudden confidence burned like an ember at