The sensations of the animals crawling over me, the presence, invading my space, it flashed through my mind.
I gagged, coughed to try and clear my throat.
I was bleeding from a hundred small wounds, and maybe a dozen bigger ones.
My head nodded, a bow, a dip. A sudden and unexpected exhaustion, trying its hand at getting a hold on me.
My head still bent, eyes on the ground between me and the animals, I felt a single tear roll down my cheek, stinging as it ran across scratches and bites.
I was, I realized, standing about three feet away from where Dowght had been sitting, at the head of the table.
This was it. There was nobody coming to my rescue. Even Rose, if she happened to show, could do nothing.
Pauz had made his play, and it had been a clever one. Short sighted, but clever. Distracting me at pivotal moments, keeping my eyes off his prize.
I had no idea how the property transfer worked. If Rose would disappear when I did, if Pauz could get the property through her, or if the next Thorburn would inherit the debt, as I’d inherited Molly’s, and Molly had inherited Grandmother’s.
Or, perhaps, if Pauz was simply content to have me here, a ghost he could manipulate and use, infect, so a piece of me could relive this end for a few decades or centuries.
I looked at the animals. The dogs had their heads low, ears down, the cats were slinking away, avoiding eye contact.
I almost smiled, as I turned my eyes back to the ground.
As ends went, I supposed, being torn apart, piece by tiny piece, by various wild animals, it wasn’t the worst possible end I could face, given the way my life was going. Kind of funny really.
Except for the part where there was anything remotely humorous about this.
All I had to do was relax. Let my guard down. Stop fighting.
There would be pain. Or more pain, and then… whatever end I had in store.
I sank, my legs relaxing, my back sliding down the wall. Half-inch by half-inch.
Easing myself down gently. Feeling every hole and scrape on my body send its insistent, signal to my brain, a signal that peaked, vying with the others for the whole of my attention.
Halfway down, I stopped.
Forearms had come to rest on knees as I lowered the weapon, lowered myself.
The hatchet still sat in my hand.
June.
I blinked, slowly.
June had gone out like this.
Hurting.
Hopeless.
Letting herself relax and accept oblivion.
As if I were moving in slow motion, my eyes moved to the ice, the blood that had frozen in place on the window.
Then I looked at the animals.
Heads down, ears down, afraid. Subdued. Not even attacking as I let down my guard.
Ahh.
So ice and cold hadn’t been the only thing I’d been dashing all over the place as I’d fought.
There was the emotion that June carried with her, too.
Double-edged sword, that.
I didn’t raise myself, but I did brace my feet against the floor so I wouldn’t sink any further.
Whatever state the animals were in, I didn’t believe they’d let me walk out. I didn’t believe they’d let me take one step out of my corner before they resumed tearing me to shreds.
Fuck, the pain wasn’t letting up. I could imagine sensations as the wet spread of blood, but when I looked at my legs, I saw there was blood in places I hadn’t felt it, and places that had felt wet were dry.
I was able to push through the encroaching despair, now that I recognized it for what it was.
I dug for the things that drove me. Rose. Promises. Molly. My friends. Even the rest of the world, as abstract as that seemed. Or my fucked up extended family, which was very not abstract but simultaneously hard to justify on a rational level.
God damn it, I’d been lower than this before, and I’d fought my way back. I was not going to diminish my past triumphs before by giving up now.
Maybe that was a lie. Low in a different way, maybe.
Yeah. Low in a different way.
Right.
Which brought me back to the question of what the hell I was supposed to do.
Call the lawyers?
No.
Maybe I would have, if I’d thought about it before, while in the throes of despair, but right now it felt too much like admitting defeat. Giving up.
I could reach out to Briar Girl, knowing she was watching me, but for what? She couldn’t really help.
I could call Ornias, but… that would only worsen the situation overall.
I had small options, and I had the disastrously strong options, but very little in between.
Getting from here to Conquest seemed insurmountable. Stepping outside meant facing down all the animals out there. Crows. Bigger things. I was working with a time limit, and I still had to get there. Knowing my luck, I’d get refused access to the subway for looking like a murder scene.
Too much. Too hard to form a plan. Too much to do, too many obstacles to overcome.
Discouragement loomed, despair, and this time it wasn’t June.
How? Any one of these things was doable, but knowing the obstacle that came after, it was hard to figure out a direction, a way to connect ideas into a plan.
I could see the animals building their courage.
“June,” I said. “I need your help. Come forth.”
No luck. That was Rose’s power, not mine.
But… right there, I felt like I was on the brink of something.
Ideas. I raised my head some.
First of all, I was thinking in the wrong direction. I needed to work backwards. I realized it as soon as I worked out the second point: that there were names I could call.
Technically, I could call any name to forge a tenuous connection. I could use those connections.
Third of all, a completely unrelated idea… I had the means to cheat.
“Fell, servant of Conquest, servant of the Lord of Toronto. I summon you,” I said.
I shifted my weight, planting my feet to raise myself up some.
“Fell, you creepy-ass gun-toting bitch of Conquest, I summon you,” I said.
A mongrel growled at me.
“Fuck you too, dog,” I said. My heart was pounding. It hadn’t really calmed down, but I was acutely aware of my fear. I could see a way out. I just needed to not die right now.
“Fell, I call you again, errand boy, connection manipulator, the practitioner with no name. Get the fuck over here.”
I reached into my pocket. With two fingers, so I didn’t need to bend down and dig deeper, I drew the jar free.
I couldn’t unscrew it without dropping the hatchet, and I couldn’t drop the hatchet without opening myself up to attack.
The animals were feral, acting well outside their normal rules, but they weren’t stupid, and I had a bit of an edge as long as June’s presence affected them.
Paint jar still held between my index and middle fingers, held there more by the traction of my gloves and the shape of the fingers than the strength of my hand, I held it out against the cabinet, lid facing forward.
I swung the hatchet.
Jar shattered.
The animals were moving. I moved too, lunging forward.
Kicking, hard enough to send one of the larger dogs sliding into other animals, making each injury on and in my leg sing with hot agony.
Not using the hatchet. Not June. With my injured left hand, I touched fingertips to the mingled ink and blood on the blade. It hadn’t all frozen.
I drew a line of the liquid across my throat, as if I were slitting it.
There was no room for doubt or hesitation.
“June!” I cried out. Not in my voice. Not in Rose’s either. The Thorburn voice. “Come!”