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.
I understood why Joses had worn an arcenciel. I understood why vamps wanted them. Riding one let them do, in a limited way, what the arcenciels and Beast could do naturally—enter the Gray Between and move outside of time. But without the pain of the price placed on me/us by an angel.
For now, Joses was a prisoner, and the arcenciel was free. It might not be perfect, but it was good enough.
Now no one had access to folded time, to time bubbles, but me—if I was willing to nearly die—and my Beast. And the arcenciels.
And maybe the Anzû.
Crap. I sheathed my blade. Oh well. Nothing was perfect. Nothing.
I vomited blood one last time, falling forward onto the clay floor beside the scale left behind by the arcenciel and the shattered crystal prison. I bounced, my head turned to see into the battleground. My hand landed beside me, still holding the Judge. My skin was white-white-white, bluish, nearly purple, empty of blood and low on oxygen. And still my guts pulled and tore and the sick taste of blood and stomach acid coated my mouth.
Change, Beast thought at me. Now.
Reaching into the Gray Between, I sought her form. Time began to slide forward in blocks of action, quaking, trembling motions still too slow for reality. The explosion of the Judge still echoed. The screams of battle ripped across my eardrums, faster now. And again, faster still, as time began to unfold.