Conquest nodded. “This is a start. Keep talking.”
Fell took his leave.
6.01
I was still lying in the snow when the Knights found me. I’d called them, they’d answered.
Headlights shone through the wire fence. They didn’t want to get closer. I heard the truck’s doors slam, followed by the murmur of conversation. Men and at least one woman.
I dug in my pocket with my free hand to get a mirror.
“Rose?”
“I’m here, Blake.”
“You got out in one piece?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” I said. “You maybe want to say hi to the Knights, then?”
“You can’t?”
“Give me a minute and I’ll see if I can stand,” I said. “But we need to make the most of the time we have, so maybe if you could get us started?”
“Sure. Be right back.”
I made myself move, and it was harder because I was cold, harder still because I’d spent just about everything I had. My first course of action was to cover the demon’s arm, which had joined the rest of me in sinking into the snow. Harder to do than it should have been, because I wasn’t willing to look directly at it.
The Barber was evidence that demons could be tricky.
I managed to get my jacket off and wrapped it around the arm. It was only then that I felt confident enough to try to stand.
Movements happened in fits and starts, every part of my body either numb with exhaustion or tight with pain. I turned over, then got on my hands and knees, then rose to a kneeling position. From there, it was a matter of getting from a kneeling position to a standing position. I’d maybe taken a solid minute to get this far in the process.
“Need help?” Evan asked.
I nodded. I wasn’t quite sure how useful he would be, but I wasn’t about to turn down help.
One foot under me, good. Another under me, using the demon’s severed arm as a cane, and I still lost my balance. Evan tried to catch me and failed.
I landed face first in the snow, arms to my sides. Every single one of my injuries felt like they’d just inflicted on me a second time. I felt Evan land between my shoulderblades. He said something, but I couldn’t hear with the snow muffling the sound.
I lay there, trying to sum up the strength for a hands-and-knee crawl through foot-deep snow, my exhausted brain somewhere else entirely, trying to piece together a plan using the tools I had.
I heard footsteps shuffling through the snow. I raised myself up a fraction.
A woman. Someone I didn’t recognize. Not old, but not young either. She looked like the sort who would have been the really cute girl next door, but some lines had reached her eyes.
She bent down, offering me a hand. I took it, grabbing her upper arm while she grabbed mine. More leverage and help than I’d get simply by holding her hand.
She straightened, offering me the strength of her legs and arm both. She caught me when I stumbled into her, one hand on my shoulder.
I stiffened at the physical contact, but I didn’t have the ability to do anything about it. We settled into a position where she held one of my arms with both of hers, steadying me while still holding me up a little.
Her expression throughout was grim, a little sad.
“They said you failed?” she finally asked.
“They?”
“I’m the Knight’s blackguard. Priss. A lot of groups have a member like me in them.”
“A blackguard?”
“The designated liar,” she said. “Sometimes you need someone with the protections ordinary people have, or you need a person who can bend the truth or lie, when questions start getting asked.”
Ah. I’d read about witch hunters and the like. Priss would be the same thing, minus the witch hunting part.
“It was you in the police station?” I asked.
“Hm?”
“Time got turned back, and in a previous timeline, a member of the Knights stopped by the police station to give me an alibi.”
“Oh. That would have been me.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“I didn’t do anything in this timeline.”
“Thank you all the same. The only reason you didn’t was because a police officer intervened the second time around.”
“Someone stopped us.”
“What did he say?”
“That there were wards and runes in place for a specific purpose, and if we entered, it would be as good as a declaration of war against him and his people.”
“I take it you guys weren’t willing to fight that war,” I said.
“It’s not just that. We asked if he was on the local Lord’s side, and he said no. We briefly talked it over, and we thought we’d play it safe.”
“I get it,” I said.
“We didn’t want to interfere if you were doing something convoluted, and no, we didn’t want to pick a fight without knowing what we were getting into.”