Behind the automaton, another group of Others gathered. The small toothy motherfuckers were heading upstairs, climbing up the railing to head for Ellie, Andy, and Evan.
Fuck.
“Those tiny fuckers!” I shouted.
Eva spoke without taking her eyes off the mountain man. “Homonculi from Sandra’s extended circle. Anyone who loses a fight to one deserves to die.”
Homonculi. Right.
“They’re going upstairs.”
“Stop them!”
“I can’t.”
“The moment my brother dies, I’m coming after you,” she said. “Every one of you, and I break-”
She grunted as the mountain man swung at her.
“-your arms and legs and I’ll take bids on which other can do the most horrible thing to each-”
I tuned her out. I had other things to focus on.
The male twin drew a knife and handed it to his sister. She didn’t even look as she accepted it.
One organism. Operating in perfect sync.
“I wanted to do better,” Green Eyes said, panting.
“You’re doing fine,” I said. I eyed the spot of exposed rib at her side, the knife wound in her stomach, and the bit of her skull that I could see beside her eye. The skin had split like stretched saran wrap, and the edges of the wounds were oozing. “Except those cuts, they look ugly.”
She made a face, like she was genuinely hurt on an emotional level.
“You know what I mean,” I said.
She managed to smile a bit, her white teeth flashing whiter without the veiny translucent skin covering them. “I know.”
The automaton behind me was advancing. I had very little space to work with between it and the twins.
I saw some Others make use of the room to head upstairs.
Third floor lost. I could only pray that Evan and Ellie were doing okay.
Going down the hall, we had my friends and Peter at one end of the hall, then Eva, the mountain man, Green Eyes, the twins, me, and then the crowd of Others ascending the stairs, in that order. Off to the left of the twins was the bedroom with the rest of the Thorburns.
If the twins stopped focusing on Green Eyes and me, they could easily head right into the bedroom with the gathered Thorburns.
We were alternating enemy and ally, here. One-on-one, we were losing.
Meaning someone had to take the fall.
“Take the big guy!” I shouted.
She didn’t hesitate, going after the mountain man’s exposed back. She leaped, the fingertips on one hand finding purchase on his back, the other hand on the wall for leverage. Her scaled tail wrapped around one side of his body, and the individual scales were barbed. When she moved her tail around to the other side of his body for more leverage, she took strips of skin with it.
Her fins flared, the spines standing out, two or three scraping through the flesh like so many knives, and she sank her needle-teeth into the base of his neck, where his spine met his shoulders.
But while she was busy with him, I was left to deal with the twins.
One organism. Not joined by any physical connection, but something else altogether. Four arms, four legs, two heads and two bodies. Four knives, now that they’d fully armed themselves. They were quick, and they were brutal. Every time I saw an opening, I’d attempt to exploit it and achieve nothing, except opening myself up for an attack to one flank.
Recovering, changing to the nearest reflection, closer to Green Eyes, I decided to change tacks. Not going for the opening, but attacking straight on. Attack the attacker, not the vulnerable one. The old plan was turning out so badly, this had to be better.
One knife pierced right through my right hand, arresting the forward movement and causing me to drop the broken machete. Her other knife found the left side of my throat.
My free hand reached out, trying to grab her, to stop her.
Her brother impaled my left hand. His knife found the right side of my throat.
New plan, worse than the old plan.
Their arms limbs crossed one another like it was the most natural thing in the world.
The two of them smiled in unison. Their heads both tilted as they met each other’s eyes, two siblings that shared a secret.
I couldn’t stay.
I tore free, not giving a damn about the damage to my hand or my throat.
I thought about Eva’s fight with the revenant. Just so long as I didn’t behead myself.
Recoiling, front of my throat torn out, mending slower than my hands, I stumbled back, and found myself in the mirror that Alexis wore.
Oh man, I felt weaker than I had before. Only so much energy to spare on mending myself. I was drawing from a reserve with a limit.
“Blake?” she asked.
I couldn’t respond.
Ty leaned forward, peering into the mirror. “Yeah, that’s Blake.”
“Doing okay, Blake?”
I didn’t, couldn’t respond.
“No, I think,” Ty said.
Ahead of us, Green Eyes was crawling out of the way of the mountain man’s reaching hands, slithering this way and that, dragging barbed scales through his skin as she went. Tracks of sliced and flayed skin marked his back, shoulders and arms. She bit into his shoulder.
He turned, reaching for her, and in the doing, he put weight on the one leg I’d wounded earlier. His leg buckled a little. Green Eyes swept her tail across his arm, cutting him.
Eva kicked him, full-strength, three times in the side. He lost a little more ground.
But the twins were advancing, going for Green Eyes.
The whole plan with ganging up went both ways.
Back to the fray, because my friends wouldn’t recover like I could. My throat and hands had partially healed, and that would have to do.
I’d reveled in frenzy earlier, now the shoe was on the other foot. From the moment I appeared, I was back on the defensive. The twins were acting in concert, cutting at me, brother slashing, then sister, then brother, each cut or thrust coming within a tenth of a second of the last. It was all I could do to deflect the lightest blows with my arms and keep stepping back out of the way of the rest.
I retreated, moving to a new reflection.
Which meant I hadn’t accomplished a thing. They were still advancing on Green Eyes.
Think like a practitioner, I thought.
What were they? Damned if I knew. I wasn’t a hundred percent willing to slap the bogeyman label on them, but I wasn’t ruling it out either.
Simpler line of thinking, then.
One word, to sum it up.
Coordination.
Connection, finesse. They were bound to one another.
Opposite technique.
I moved to the fallen, shattered dresser, and reached through the water’s surface for the one drawer that stuck out the most. There was hardly anything in it.
With a two-handed grip, spinning, I hurled the thing at the twin’s backs with all the strength my body could manage.
They’d heard something, because they both turned, then flung themselves to either side of the hallway.
But the drawer hadn’t sailed down the middle of the hallway. The brother moved to the left, the sister to the right, but the hurled drawer struck the brother in the shoulder.
I didn’t get to see all of the aftermath. I was forced to move back.
I saw the clockwork automaton move, and dodged to one side.
Its fist punched through the floor.
I heard an audible click, a k-chunk, as if the thing was changing gears, and it straightened. Water flowed into the hole in the floorboards as it took a step forward.
Papers flew through the air, around the mountain man, past the twins.
The automaton retreated, arms raised, as if it was something more than paper.