The explosion was a visual thing as much as a tactile experience, the barrel shoving back in my hands, leaving a small space between the barrel and the Devil’s neck. A puff of hot gray smoke appeared, burning her skin, a low roar that grew in volume. Pellets emerged in a tight, narrow pattern.
My hands fought the kick, which was slow and heavy, trying to shove my arms up. The pellets and something plastic-like began to depress the skin of her neck, pierce the flesh. Disappear inside her. Spread out, the pattern widening. Her cervical spine snapped. I held my position as the barrel emptied.
As soon as the barrel of the gun was empty, I ducked and backed away. And my belly began to cramp. It started faster this time, and harder. Deeper. I grunted with pain and doubled over. I stumbled and dropped to one knee, gripping my belly with one hand, while the other still held the Judge. I managed a partial breath and tilted my head to see my handiwork.
Nothing had happened. The smoke from the shot still filled the air. I breathed it in, smelling blood, barely tingeing the air. Human blood, smelling a lot like Onorio blood. The Devil’s blood.
I had just killed a human with malice aforethought, with malevolence and planning. An assassination. I had killed a human while I was in no danger of my own life. I had just committed murder. I blew out a breath, forced myself up into a crouch, my guts on fire. Lurching, I reversed my path through the fighting until my back touched the wall. The brick was cold and wet and slick. The Devil’s swords faltered. A faint hesitation in movement. I watched as shotgun pellets burst from her throat. Out the far side of her neck. Her head tilted. Her eyes started going wide. Her knees went weak. Time sped in juddering, shuddering motions, like stop-and-go photography.
Bruiser was landing within the path of the Devil’s swords, his arms beginning to fling outward to deflect the Devil’s strikes. He would have survived the landing. He might even have survived the Devil’s assault. I could have disabled her. I could have done any number of nonlethal things to assure Bruiser’s life. Instead I killed her.
No one would thank me. Not the cops she had killed. Not their families. Not Reach, whom she had tortured.
I am a murderer. An arm of vengeance. The words were bitter in my thoughts.
Beast huffed in grim delight. Beast is best hunter.
In for a dollar, in for a death. I forced myself upright and walked to the vamp, approaching Peregrinus from behind. He had dropped his short sword and was lifting a hand, his fingers nearly touching the crystal quartz prison on his chest. He was getting ready to use it, to force the hatchling to work for him, to twist time. He was going to ride the arcenciel. At his side, Bethany also reached, her black eyes glittering, her gold earrings and beads halted in flight, her face fully vamped out. Desire and avarice wrenched her expression into something feral and fierce. If she got the crystal, things might go from pan to fire.
I pushed my body past the pain and reached around. Slid my fingers between Peregrinus’ hand and the necklace. Took the crystal quartz that hung around his neck, gripped it in one hand, and yanked. The thong holding it in place snapped and flew free, suspended in the air. Wrapping around my wrist with a quick bite of pain as the leather ends linked with my speed, my bubble in time. The crystal was cold in my hand, like holding dry ice, a burning frost. I curled my fist tighter and turned away from the fighting.
Nausea flooded up my throat and I gagged. My abdomen coiled and spiraled and knotted. I vomited and the splash that hit the wall was pure blood. That can’t be good.
I fell and felt a sword pass slowly over me, the roar of battle like a far-off jet engine, battering my eardrums. I cradled the crystal against my body as I heaved, and heaved. More and more blood erupted from me. The world spun drunkenly. I had lost too much blood. Something inside me had ruptured and it wasn’t healing over, not while I was in the bubble of time.
Price, Beast thought at me. Price is high. Must stop now.
I left Peregrinus fighting the two vamps, knowing that Bethany had been thwarted in whatever her goals might have been. Bruiser and the other Onorios would protect Leo, Katie, and Grégoire, no matter what Bethany might have wanted or planned. And without the crystal, without riding the arcenciel, and without the Devil, Peregrinus was done.
I looked at the thing hanging on the wall of Leo’s dungeon, believing in my gut that it needed to be beheaded. Beast’s fear response might be the only proof, but I trusted it more than I trusted logic or evidence. Of all the things in the dungeon, in the sub-five basement, that psycho thing needed killing. I couldn’t get there, do the deed, and get the arcenciel up, outside, and free before I died, however, not without blood in my veins, so that was a moral decision I didn’t have to make.
I took the crystal to the elevator shaft and looked up. I could see part of Eli’s face, a few floors up, leaning over the edge and trying to get a view. He had probably heard the Judge fire by now.
Still in the gray place of the change, the energies moved around me like black fireflies, but slower, jerky, not fluid and smooth. I bent and set the crystal on the clay floor. I snapped open the pocket on the thigh holster Bruiser had given me and pulled out the hatchling’s scale and set it beside the crystal.
I shouted, “Soul! I’ve got the hatchling!”
From behind, I heard a sound, a single ringing bell, as sword blade impacted sword blade. The note rang out for what felt like seconds, low and deep and sonorous. Above me, a ray of light appeared and illuminated the shaft. A flashlight had been turned on and was shining down.
From the dungeon came the low, deep clang of swords and the first boom of the Judge reverberating. Time was catching up with me.
I knelt, pulled a vamp-killer, and reversed it. I brought the hilt down on the smoky crystal. It shattered slowly with tiny cracks and splits and a near-metallic clang. A black metallic claw emerged, followed by a shoulder and wing, all metal, and covered by spines. It occurred to me that, for the moment, the dungeon might be the best place for me. I backed away, back into the scion lair, as time in the Gray Between, and the bubble of time around the previously imprisoned arcenciel, synchronized into its own version of slo-mo.
The imprisoned arcenciel leaped from the crystal quartz into the air. In midflight, her wings beginning to spread, she changed from metallic to a rainbow of lights. Landed on the floor of the elevator shaft several floors above, next to Eli’s head, still looking down. Lights like a dozen rainbows shifted from her like pixie dust. She called, a ringing, silver tone, like the sound of a thousand bells and the warmth of sunlight. She looked back once and met my eyes. She called again, the sound like carillons ringing. With a leap, she flew out of sight, toward the outer door, which Eli had left open and unguarded for just this moment. I fell to my butt, the pain wrenching as if I were being cut in two. I had committed murder tonight, killed without combat, with sneak attack. An assassination. The death roiled in my stomach and burned there like acid. The Devil had needed to die, but her life and death sat on my soul like weights.