Working for Bigfoot Read Online Free PDF Page B

idea of mercy only embraced killing you quickly as opposed to killing you slowly. If I started up with this svartalf, it wouldn’t be over until one of us was dead. Probably me. I was afraid.
    The sound of the rubber hose hitting Irwin’s stomach and the harsh breathing of the struggling children echoed in the large room.
    I took a deep breath, grabbed my staff in two hands, and began drawing in my will once more.
    And then Bigfoot Irwin roared, “I said no!”
    The kid twisted his shoulders in an abrupt motion and tossed one of the brothers away as if he weighed no more than a soccer ball. The bully flew ten feet before his butt hit the ground. The second brother was still staring in shock when Bigfoot Irwin sat up, grabbed him by the front of his shirt, and rose. He lifted the second brother’s feet off the floor and simply held him there, scowling furiously up at him.
    The Bully Brothers had inherited their predatory instinct from their supernatural parent.
    Bigfoot Irwin had gotten something else.
    The second brother stared down at the younger boy and struggled to wriggle free, his face pale and frantic. Irwin didn’t let him go.
    “Hey, look at me,” Irwin snarled. “This is not okay. You were mean to me. You kept hurting me. For no reason. That’s over. Now. I’m not going to let you do it anymore. Okay?”
    The first brother sat up shakily from the floor and stared agog at his former victim, now holding his brother effortlessly off the floor.
    “Did you hear me?” Irwin asked, giving the kid a little shake. I heard his teeth clack together.
    “Y-yeah,” stammered the dangling brother, nodding emphatically. “I hear you. I hear you. We hear you.”
    Irwin scowled for a moment. Then he gave the second brother a push before releasing him. The bully fell to the floor three feet away and scrambled quickly back from Irwin. The pair of them started a slow retreat.
    “I mean it,” Irwin said. “What you’ve been doing isn’t cool. We’ll figure out something else for you to do for fun. Okay?”
    The Bully Brothers mumbled something vaguely affirmative and then hurried out of the cafeteria.
    Bigfoot Irwin watched them go. Then he looked down at his hands, turning them over and back as if he’d never seen them before.
    I kept my grip on my staff and looked down the length of the cafeteria at Coach Pete. I arched an eyebrow at him. “It seems like the boys sorted this out on their own.”
    Coach Pete lowered his magazine slowly. The air was thick with tension, and the silence was its hard surface.
    Then the svartalf said, “Your sentences, Mr. Pounder.”
    “Yessir, Coach Pete,” Irwin said. He turned back to the table and sat down, and his pencil started scratching at the paper again.
    Coach Pete nodded at him, then came over to me. He stood facing me for a moment, his expression blank.
    “I didn’t intervene,” I said. “I didn’t try to dissuade your boys from following their natures. Irwin did that.”
    The svartalf pursed his lips thoughtfully and then nodded slowly. “Technically accurate. And yet you still had a hand in what just happened. Why should I not exact retribution for your interference?”
    “Because I just helped your boys.”
    “In what way?”
    “Irwin and I taught them caution—that some prey is too much for them to handle. And we didn’t even hurt them to make it happen.”
    Coach Pete considered that for a moment and then gave me a faint smile. “A lesson best learned early rather than late.” He turned and started to walk away.
    “Hey,” I said in a sharp, firm voice.
    He paused.
    “You took the kid’s book today,” I said. “Please return it.”
    Irwin’s pencil scratched along the page, suddenly loud.
    Coach Pete turned. Then he pulled the paperback in question out of his pocket and flicked it through the air. I caught it in one hand, which probably made me look a lot more cool and collected than I felt at the time.
    Coach Pete inclined his head to me, a