From somewhere deep in the building I heard the chugging cough of a generator starting, and the tiny security lights I’d installed along both sides of the hallways began to glow. At my side, Eli swung the ocular away from his face to dangle around his neck and indicated the body. “L’arcenciel?” I nodded and he asked, “The hatchling Soul was talking about? Under coercion?”
“Maybe. Probably. But the arcenciel smells sick. Maybe dying.”
Eli didn’t comment on that. “He okay?” he asked, meaning Brute.
“Yeah,” I lied. “He’s just ducky.” I nudged the wolf with a knee and we moved on, the werewolf in the lead by a head, his shoulder in constant contact with my leg.
The muted lights showed me too much. Another body, mauled like the first one, farther down the corridor. A body part half in a doorway. Things I didn’t want to see, smells of people I knew mixed with the stench of bowels released in death. There was no one left alive in the foyer or the hallways that veered off. No one to rescue or save.
This had been only recently done. Peregrinus had folded time and killed the people in the house next to Katie’s, folded time again and gotten here, and then folded time again and started killing people. So much damage, so fast.
Gray place of change, Beast thought at me. Jane needs to be in gray place, place Soul calls Gray Between.
I remembered the pain from last time. Not if I can help it, I thought.
Gray place, Beast demanded. Time is changed now.
Which meant that Peregrinus was doing things outside of time, right now, things no one could defend against. “Holy crap,” I whispered. “Eli. We may have a problem.”
“Ya think?”
Laughter cracked through me like dry sticks breaking, sharp and shattering and painful. I pulled Eli and the wolf back through the foyer and into the weapons room. I used Beast’s strength to rip the metal door off the small locked closet there and started inspecting the weapons that had been kept there, waiting for their owners to leave. Owners that may be dead. Without speaking, Eli joined me, standing so he could see out, into the foyer.
“The arcenciel can affect time,” I said, strapping a short-sword sheath to my left thigh for an ambidextrous draw. “Like what happens in a fight when time slows down and you can move fast, while everything else is slow.”
“Yeah,” he said shortly. Clearly remembering combat. His scent changed, pungent and astringent.
“The arcenciels—all of the species and not just this one—can do that to some extent. Like they can exist outside of time, or maybe create a bubble of time and place.” I laid weapons on the nearby desk.
“So they can come here and take out a well-defended, well-armed location as fast as a platoon of Rangers.”
“Faster. Like magic, but not. Probably some arcane way of shifting through the physical laws, like what happens when I shape-change. And because they can bend time or bubble it or fold it like dough, no one saw them coming.”
“Someone saw them. Someone fired. They fought back.”
I considered that as I added three nine-millimeter semis to my gear and enough spare mags to weigh down a donkey. I was careful, taking only weapons that used interchangeable magazines, though I lusted at the sight of a lovely .45 and Wrassler’s Taurus Judge .45/.410. I picked it up and checked the load. 410 rounds. What the heck. It was five rounds of power I wouldn’t have otherwise, and my part-cat hands could manage a lot more weight right now. I holstered the nine-mil I had been carrying and readied the Judge. The rounds contained steel and arcenciels were steel-phobic. If worse came to worst, maybe Soul could heal an injured hatchling.
Yet, even with the steel allergy, the young arcenciel had managed to dent the iron gate. Which had to have hurt her. “The arcenciel is under compulsion,” I said, still putting it all together, “what Soul calls being ridden. Peregrinus can force her to do things, even painful things, things she might never do on her own.”
“So Bethany, the crazy priestess, knew that an arcenciel could be ridden but had no idea how or what that might mean,” Eli said.
I remembered Bethany trying to physically climb on the light-dragon. “Yeah. And because of all that, I might have no choice but to kill the arcenciel hatchling,”
“You. Not us. Because you can fold time too,” Eli said, his tone calm.
I nodded, knowing his eyes had adjusted to the dark. “They fought,” I agreed. “Fat lotta good it did them.”
“What are Satan’s Three after?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but I’m betting Leo has some magical items on the premises. If so, then maybe what and where were in Reach’s data bank.” Eli cursed and I didn’t respond. I felt the same way.
From the foyer, I heard something slide. We went silent. Eli pointed to the doorway and I handed off two weapons and four mags as I dashed to the far side of the door, taking in the foyer as I moved. A hulking form was pulling itself along the hallway and into the entrance. The smell of his blood told me who it was. I gave Eli the thumbs-up sign, and pointed to me, then to the foyer. “Wrassler,” I said, the word almost silent.
He pocketed the new guns and ammo, nodded, and leaned against the wall, part of his body exposed to anyone in the foyer, his weapon giving me cover. I set down the Judge and dashed out, shoving my hands under Wrassler’s armpits and pulling him, sliding him across the glass-strewn floor. At my side, Brute grabbed Wrassler’s shirt and pulled, his teeth buried in the cloth. He was pulling Wrassler’s left arm, which was practically disconnected from the rest of him.
Back in the cubicle-sized room, I covered the doorway as Eli went into medic mode, cutting off clothing and inspecting Wrassler’s makeshift tourniquets, pulling his own battlefield tourniquets and stretchy bandages from pockets of his gobag. I kept an eye and the Judge aimed on the foyer as I listened to Wrassler’s briefing, his voice a ragged breath of agony.
“They came in fast . . . Fastest . . . thing I ever saw. Dragon, Peregrinus . . . his Devil. Batildis carrying both Leo and Katie. Strong. They took out the gate. Then the air lock.” He stopped and Eli pulled a bottle of water out of a pocket, opened it, and held it up for Wrassler to see.
“Gut wounds?” Eli asked.
“No. I’m good.”
Eli held it to Wrassler’s mouth and the blood-servant drank. I glanced over my shoulder, taking him in fast. He was good? He was missing a right lower leg and his left arm had effectively been amputated, though it was still attached by strings of flesh below the tourniquet. Yeah. He was good. He was damn good. I batted away tears and untied the T-shirt and tossed it to Eli in the dark. “Here. Tie it on him. It’s my dragon tee, the one with a healing spell in the fibers.” Dragon tee. Ironic that a shirt with a dragon on it might save Wrassler from a dragon bite.
I went back to covering the foyer, Wrassler’s Judge steady in my hands, ready to fire.
Eli tied the T-shirt around Wrassler’s thigh, capped the water bottle, and went back to work.
“I was standing in security. Saw it all on-screen. Ordered lockdown. Ordered security to fire at the dragon only. With steel. Ordered our people to hold fire at the Mithrans and the human. And then the shooters rushed in through the gate. Ten shooters.” He swore a long line of fine and detailed curses as Eli tightened the tourniquet below his knee. Sweat was dripping off his jaw and he started shivering. Shock. Not a good sign.
Eli laid Wrassler’s body flat and lifted both thighs onto a chair, then pulled a military-style metallic blanket from his gobag, shook it out, and tucked it around the blood-servant. He pulled his cell phone, looked at the screen, and said, “We’re jammed.”