I ducked and backed up. Scrap was still curving and sharpening.

The elf lunged with a circle down.

No polite chitchat while I got ready to fight. No salute or referee. No confines of a fencing strip set to tournament regulations.

No rules or honor either.

I retreated to the corridor, twirling Scrap to help him finish transforming. We were alone.

Another cut and stab.

This guy was good. He handled his weapon like he’d studied with the best Italian masters.

He probably had.

“Phonetia, get your brother and sister to Gollum or Lady Lucia. Now.” I didn’t want them to have to watch one of us die.

“You stole us?” Phonetia screamed. “You stole us from our mothers? Then you raped me from the time I started bleeding. You freaking pervert! We could have been raised with love, gone to school, seen movies. We could be normal. Not your fucking slaves and brood mares.”

“Such language, Blackberry. You never learned those words from me. A sure sign I should be the one to raise you,” the elf said, almost congenially. He used his bland demeanor to cover his next vicious attack.

I blocked his thrust with the shaft, twisted and set the outer tines to scrape his torso.

Scrap tasted blood and chortled.

“Phonetia, get out. Protect Doug and E.T. That’s an order,” I said with more calm than I felt.

Tree Daddy slashed again. I backed up, not sure where I was going.

I heard my kids scramble toward a sliding glass door that led to the domed pool area. From there they could easily get to the Green Room.

The tip of one half moon blade scraped the corridor wall on my next slash, throwing off my timing and my aim. Not a lot of room. Better than the water slick floor of the pool deck.

I continued backing up, searching for an opening.

The dark elf only stood four feet tall but he had extraordinarily long arms that seemed to stretch and withdraw with each movement.

I shifted my grip to one end of the Celestial Blade, grabbing the shaft two-handed, like a broadsword.

Duck and lunge. Parry and riposte. My long hours in the fencing salle came back to me, thought became instinct.

The Nörglein twisted his blade in a neat circular parry and riposte. I caught the tip on my left arm. Barely a pinprick of pain as adrenaline countered the nerve reaction. Then a hot trickle of blood. My arm felt as if he’d stabbed deep and long. The muscle spasmed.

Damn, this elf knew his business.

I cut over and jabbed at his lower left. He yelped and skipped back. But not for long.

Before I recovered to en garde he was on me, fast and furious.

I kept backing up, chancing quick looks over my shoulder to make sure I didn’t trip.

A roar of applause and the squeal of microphone feedback erupted behind me. Close. We were too close to the lobby. Innocents could get drawn in.

But then so could my backup. I couldn’t count on them. A rogue Warrior of the Celestial Blade worked alone.

Not anymore. I had family and backup.

The noise invigorated the elf’s smile. He showed a lot of pointed teeth, black around the edges.

“Forget to floss?” What can I say? I get sarcastic when I’m scared.

Come to think on it, his toes and fingertips looked like they were crumbling back to dirt. This guy was old and rotting.

And therefore, more desperate than I thought. Well-armed, trained, and still strong. I had to come up with a plan. I had to become more devious than he.

He forced me back. One step. Then two more. I lunged under his blade. He retreated just enough to evade. Then pressed me harder.

My breath caught in my lungs, sharp and short. My legs grew heavy with fatigue. Scrap looked a little dull. We flagged, in serious danger of getting hurt from carelessness.

Don’t say his name. We can still take him. Scrap sounded breathless and far away.

My muscles grew heavy. His name rose to my lips.

I clamped them shut.

I had one chance and one only. The lights behind me grew brighter as we cleared the forest murk the Nörglein had raised. He blinked rapidly.

I skipped back into the light.

Three people hopped out of my way. “Ooh, a new demo,” a large woman swathed in Gypsy red and purple silk scarves with lots of dangling jewelry crooned. She smelled strongly of roses. Artificial roses.

The Nörglein sneezed and lost his attack posture.

“Clear the way!” I shouted, dashing for the open arena around the stage.

Tree Daddy followed me, eyes and nose clearing.

“Fight, fight, fight,” the crowd chanted.

I spotted Squishy physically holding people away from my path. Cameras flashed and thumbs sped over cell phone keypads.

We danced around the arena twice, blades flashing in the bright lights before I could catch my breath.

“What have you done with Sean?” I demanded as I pressed my foe closer to the stage. Gollum leaped up onto the raised platform from the other side. He grabbed a length of sound cable ready to loop into a noose.

“You will never find your boyfriend,” the dark elf chortled. I have destroyed the paths.”

“He’s an innocent in this. He deserves to be rescued.”

“But not by you. I will set him free when I am done with you. As I have honorably done to all the men who loaned me their wives.”

“That’s rape. None of them were willing participants in your scheme to repopulate this world with your get.”

“You know nothing. I have the right to protect my race from extinction. Now, where is the crystal ball?” He slashed again.

I parried half a heartbeat too late. Blood poured down my left arm, making my grip on the staff slick and uneven.

I could say his name.

Desperate to end this, I lunged again. Scrap sharpened enough to slice Pete’s old-fashioned shirt from left shoulder to right hip. Somewhere in there we got a piece of skin. Green-black blood stained the creamy linen.

The lights, the noise, fatigue, and blood loss took their toll. My lunge skewed my balance. I tilted too far forward. My right knee gave up trying to support my weight, followed by the collapse of my left.

My left shoulder hit the floor first sending long lances of pain down my back and up into my skull.

I lost my grip on my blade.

The Nörglein didn’t wait to gloat. He raised his sword in both hands, ready to plunge it into my heart.

“Purz . . .”

I rolled, expecting the fatal blow in my back. The end of his name got garbled in the tangle of plants that caught me.

Nothing.

I rolled farther away.

“Drop the weapon,” Donovan said very slowly and precisely.

No sign of Gollum on the stage.

A quick glance over my shoulder showed my rescuer holding a plastic ray gun to the Nörglein’s neck.

“Mundane weapons cannot hurt me.” The troll raised his blade another fraction, shifting his aim.

“Who said this is an ordinary weapon?” Donovan asked. Still no emotion in his voice.

Then Gollum was at my side, wrapping his handkerchief around the slice on my arm, reaching to help me up, handing me my blade. My girls clung to his belt behind him.

The Nörglein hesitated, weighing possibilities.

Donovan eased the pressure on the Nörglein’s neck.

Pete shifted his feet and his grip, engaging my blade once more.

I tangled his sword in the tines. We stared at each other, frozen in impasse.

Phonetia’s arm morphed into blackberry vines, shooting out from her sweatshirt sleeve faster than Spiderman’s web. Vicious thorns bit into the elf’s woody hide at ankle and calf. The plant fiber looped and doubled back on itself. She tightened the vine around the elf’s feet and yanked.

He fell forward onto his ugly nose, yowling in pain and outrage. “How dare you defy me!”

Gollum, the eternal Eagle Scout produced plastic zip strips from his pocket and snapped them in place around thick troll ankles and wrists.

The Nörglein fought his mundane restraints.

“Artificial. He can’t manipulate the fibers,” Gollum said, pushing his glasses higher on his nose. He looked ready to lecture the audience.

“You can’t do this to me!” The Nörglein wiggled.

Donovan placed his heavy foot in the middle of his chest.

Phonetia withdrew her vines.

I lifted my blade for the coup de grace.

“Before you send this heap of garbage off to hell, I need to know something,” Doreen demanded. She stayed my blow with a brief touch of her hand. “Which of the boys is my son?”

“How am I supposed to remember that?” the Nörglein replied. “They’re all alike.”

“But you stole my baby from me! Surely you remember that.”

“Why should I?”

Anger at the elf’s total lack of care for his children sent waves of fire through my blood. I raised the blade.

Loud applause stopped me. The con populace really didn’t need to see the execution of this guy. We weren’t play acting. My girls didn’t need to watch me murder the being who had raised them, even if he had abused them.

“We’ll do this.” Oak appeared at the edge of the crowd, Cedar close beside him.

“No. I will. This has been a long time coming.” Donovan hauled the bound Nörglein to his feet and slung him over his shoulder.

“Allow me.” Lady Lucia bared her fangs. “I thought I killed you once, you disgrace to decent timber. This time I will make sure. This time we dump the body in the river so you cannot regenerate in the soil. Tess, watch the baby.”

Before they could take two steps toward the rapidly clearing corridor to the gaming rooms, the Nörglein shuddered and spasmed.

Donovan dropped him unceremoniously. He landed with only a light wisp of sound. Smoke streamed upward from where the plastic strips bound his wrists and ankles. It smelled sweet, like burning pine, but with a bitterness of old and rotten wood beneath it.

The dark elf screamed, high and piercing.

“God, I’m sorry. I had no idea the plastic would do that to him.” Gollum bent to remove the lethal restraints.

Cedar beat him to it. The boy bit his lip and tears moistened his eyes.

“No.” Oak stayed his brother with a firm grip on his arm. “What will be, will be. We agreed. He’s no longer fit to maintain the forest. He needs to be culled.”

“If my forest dies, let it be on your head, Tess Noncoiré. You are responsible for the death of all the trees and the living things that depend upon them!” The dark elf fixed an angry, defiant gaze upon me. Smoke poured from his mouth.

His eyes remained open, accusing me as his body convulsed once more and lay still.

My girls fell on me, hugging me tightly, crying and shaking.

I wasn’t too steady myself. Gollum joined the family with Doug close on his heels. He pulled another handkerchief and a wet wipe from somewhere, taking care of my wounds even as he joined the family embrace.

Through the shimmering veil of my own tears of relief, I noted Doreen approaching Cedar and Oak with a tentative offer of her own embrace. As tall as she, the boys clung to her, silently burying their faces in her shoulders.

Donovan and Lucia made off with the smoldering body. “The river,” Lucia said quietly. “It’s the only way. Too bad he’s already dead. I looked forward to a long, slow, tortuous feed.”

Scrap dissolved and crept off to recover. I knew he’d find ample mold in the basement levels. But I’d make sure I provided him with beer and OJ in the café.

“Pretty good skit. The smoke was a nice touch. But the blood was too dark, not green enough,” Malcolm Levi laughed over the noise of the clapping crowd.