Karmash hesitated, unsure.
“The Mar family says hello,” Gaston growled.
The giant roared and charged. Gaston leaped, catching Karmash head-on. They collided and rolled down the aisle.
The orange woman slipped out of her cloak. Chain mail covered her body from neck to mid thigh. She dashed toward them, leaping over the overturned broken benches.
“I believe this is my dance.” Kaldar flicked his sword and lunged forward, blue magic flaring about him in a flash shield. They collided. Steel rang against steel, and Kaldar and the woman danced across the ruined church like two whirlwinds.
The beast man stared at Karmash and Gaston, locked in battle, then looked at Kaldar and the orange woman. His gaze fastened on her and the kids. A predatory focus claimed his face.
Oh shit.
“Run!” Audrey tried to get up, but her legs were still numb. “Run!”
“No.” George shook his head. He was bleeding from his nose and his mouth.
Jack just stood there. He looked so young and lost. In shock, Audrey realized.
The beast man charged toward them.
“Run! Save your brother, you idiot!”
George thrust his hands out. Magic pulsed from him. The nearest corpse in the aisle jumped to its feet and clamped onto the beast man, trying to rip him apart. Another corpse joined the first. The third and fourth followed. They clawed at him, gouging the skin, ripping at his hair.
He ripped one dead guard off and hurled him aside. The body flew across the church and crashed against the wall.
“George, I order you to go! Do you hear me! Go!”
George’s hands shook with strain.
The second corpse fell into the aisle, torn to pieces. The beast man kept coming.
Twenty yards.
The third corpse fell apart under the savage blows of the massive claws.
Fifteen.
The last body flew, knocked aside. George pulled a dagger from his belt.
The beast man tensed, gathering himself for the final leap.
An inhuman howl ripped from Jack’s lips, a terrible mix of anguish, pain, mourning, sorrow, and rage. The scream built on itself, pounding at her, growing louder and louder. The horrible sound clawed at her ears, pierced her chest, and crushed her heart, squeezing pure panic from it. At the far end, Gaston and Karmash paused. Kaldar and the orange woman lowered their blades, their faces shocked.
Magic burst out of Jack. Audrey couldn’t see it, but she felt its touch. It burned her for the briefest of moments, but in that instant she stared straight into its wild, savage face, as if the primordial forest full of man-eaters yawned and swallowed her into its black maw studded with cruel fangs. Fear gripped her, and she cried out.
Jack’s scream vanished, cut off in mid-note. The thing that used to be Jack, the terrible wild thing, grinned, its fangs bared in maniacal glee. It pulled two daggers from its waist and sliced the beast man. The Hand’s agent moved to counter, but he was too slow. The Jack thing carved a chunk of flesh off his side and laughed.
George landed next to her. “It will be okay,” he whispered.
“What’s happening?”
“Jack is rending. Changelings do this sometimes so they don’t become unhinged. It will be okay.”
Blood sprayed from the beast man. The thing that was Jack laughed and laughed.
“Just don’t move. He won’t kill you if you don’t move,” George said.
In the aisle, Gaston and Karmash ripped into each other, throwing pews around with superhuman strength. Three minutes later, Kaldar sliced the orange woman in half. The top of her slid one way and the bottom the other, but Audrey no longer had any emotion left to spare. Kaldar walked over to them and sat next to her. His arms closed around her. He held her, and together they watched Jack stab the lifeless stump of the beast man’s body. He carved it again and again, hurling the bloody chunks of muscle like it was play sand.
The feeling slowly returned to her legs. Kaldar said something about a temporary paralytic agent, but she couldn’t concentrate enough to pay attention.
At some point, Gaston joined them. He was bloody and bruised, and his arm stuck out at an odd angle, but the fingers of his left hand had a death grip on the pale hair of Karmash’s head. He sat next to them, cradling it like a watermelon. They watched Jack together.
The fire had died down to nothing. The coals turned cold. Ed Yonker had long since gone.
Jack swayed and sat down, his gore-covered arms limp. George stood up, walked over to him on shaking legs, and hugged him. Jack looked at his brother’s face, looked back at the ruin of the corpse in front of him, and began to cry.
THEY found a Chevy van in the deserted camp. Kaldar drove. Gaston sat next to him in the passenger seat. Kaldar had forced Gaston’s dislocated shoulder back into its socket, and now the boy held Karmash’s head with both hands. Audrey cradled Jack. He had stopped crying, but he still looked like death.
They were bloody, bruised, battered. Everyone hurt.
“This is what it’s like to fight the Hand,” Kaldar said. His voice held no mirth.
The boys didn’t say anything.
“Tomorrow, I will buy two tickets,” Kaldar said. “We’ll put you on a plane in the Broken. You will land in a large airport, then another plane will take you to a smaller airport not too far from where you grew up. You will enter the Edge there, find your grandmother, and wait with her until Declan comes to get you.”
“No,” George said. His voice creaked like an unoiled door. “We’ll finish it.”
“Jack?” Kaldar asked.
“We’ll finish it,” Jack said with quiet savagery.
“Okay,” Kaldar said.
“Okay?” Audrey asked. “Okay? Help me out, Kaldar, which part of this is okay? Are we in the same car? Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
“We’re all alive and mostly uninjured,” Kaldar said.
“We are putting them on that goddamned plane tomorrow.”
“We won’t go,” George said.
Jack reached over and patted her hand.
“Yes, you will. This is no place for children. This is not a kid’s fight. We survived today by the skin of our teeth.”
“You don’t have to be here, either,” George said softly.
“Yes, I do. I helped make this mess. I have to fix it.”
“We do, too,” Jack said. “We help.”
“They fought like adults,” Kaldar said. “I’m treating them as adults. Adults understand the price and make their own decisions.”
Audrey closed her eyes. “You are all insane.”
“They are,” Gaston said. “I’m good.”
“You are holding a decapitated head in your lap!”
“What are you going to do with it?” Kaldar asked.
Gaston shrugged and winced, rubbing his shoulder. “I thought I’d pack it into some preservatives and take it with us.”
“Why?” Audrey asked.
Dear Jesus, why would he want to keep the head?
“I’m going to send it to my parents as a present. It won’t make my mom’s leg grow back, but it might make them feel better.” Gaston patted Karmash’s hair. “He isn’t Spider, but he was his top dog.”
Kaldar raised his hand, and Gaston high-fived him.
“Thank you for the flash, George,” Kaldar said. “That was a hell of a shield.”
George smiled through the grime on his face.
“That’s right,” Gaston said. “That flash was killer. And Jack, you totally kicked ass. Saved all of us, probably.”
Jack sat up straighter.
“Yes. Sorry you had to go through that, but the timing couldn’t have been better,” Kaldar said. “You guys took out two of the Hand’s operatives and helped to kill another two, including a veteran underofficer. There are Mirror agents, trained fighting personnel, who’d give their right arms to be you right now. I think there is a price on that head, actually, Gaston.”
“That’s fine, but I think Dad and Mom would rather have the head.”
Audrey covered her face. They were just making things worse now. She had seen more violence tonight than she had ever witnessed in her entire life. Then the rusty scent hit her nostrils, and she realized her hands were bloody and she had just smeared the gore all over her face. She should feel something more. She should be sick and throwing up on the side of the road. Or be in shock and turn into a catatonic vegetable. Instead, she felt nothing. Just dullness and fear. She was so scared. It was over, and she was still scared.
“You will feel better soon, love,” Kaldar said, as if reading her thoughts. “I’m so sorry. And I meant to tell you: that was a one-in-a-thousand shot.”
She raised her hand. “Don’t.”
“It was awesome,” George confirmed.
“It really was,” Jack said. “His head exploded.”
Something inside her broke. Tears swelled in her eyes and fell onto her bloody, tattered skirt. She breathed a little easier, as if some of the pressure inside had leaked out of her soul through the tears.
“Chocolate helps,” Jack said. “We should get some chocolate for Audrey. And for me.”
“We can do that,” Kaldar said.
“What was that back there, seven men, Uncle?” Gaston asked.
“Six. The last was a woman.”
“How did you do it?” George asked. “Swords don’t sever people in half.”
“I stretch my flash across my blade,” Kaldar said. “Makes the edge magically sharp. You’ve never seen Cerise do it?”
“No.”
“Ask her to show you sometime. She flashes white. She can slice through two-inch steel with one cut.”
“We should wash up somewhere,” Gaston said. “If we get pulled over, this will be difficult to explain.”
“First, we have to visit Magdalene,” Kaldar said. “She landed us in this mess.”
Yes. Magdalene. That fucking snake.
If it weren’t for her, they would’ve walked out of that church, and none of this horror would’ve happened. “Yes,” Audrey squeezed through her teeth. “Let’s visit Magdalene.”
“We could clean up first,” George murmured.
“Oh no. No, we’re going just like this,” Audrey said. The dullness inside her broke apart and melted into anger. “I want her to see what a double cross really looks like.”
WHEN Audrey was angry, doors didn’t just unlock, Kaldar discovered. They flew open, and, sometimes, when the blast was hard enough, they fell off their hinges. The effect of a heavy door crashing down like thunder on the marble tile would’ve startled anyone.
Magdalene jerked. She didn’t cringe; she just jerked toward them, like an alarmed cobra, with her hood flaring open.
Gaston hurled Adam at her. They’d found him hiding in one of the side rooms under a desk. The receptionist flew a few feet, slid across the marble, hit the couch, and lay still, pretending to be unconscious.
The air in the room suddenly grew heavy. Magdalene’s face seemed to glow, as if shimmering ribbons of light slid under her skin.
“You don’t want to do this,” she said, her voice quiet but somehow reaching deeply into his mind. Her eyes, luminescent with crystalline aquamarine, peered into him. “Let’s all calm down.”
Fascinating eyes, Kaldar decided. She was screwing with his mind. He really ought to kill her.
Somewhere far away, Audrey said, “Gaston, give me Adam’s gun.”
Gunshots barked in unison, one after another, marble shattered, and suddenly the room returned to normal, and Magdalene clutched at her leg. Her hand came away red.
“Next one will go in your stomach,” Audrey said.
“You stupid piece of shit,” Magdalene spat.
Audrey raised the gun. “One more word, and I will shoot you again, then pistol-whip your face until it looks like hamburger.”
“Go ahead! Shoot me, you stupid bitch.” Magdalene fell into the nearest chair. “Shoot me!”
Kaldar reached into his jacket and pulled out the Eyes of Karuman. Magdalene’s gaze fastened on it.
“George.”
The boy walked over to him.
“How do I use this?” Hopefully George would catch on to his bluff, and the next thing out of his mouth wouldn’t be, “I already told you that you can’t use them because you don’t have the right magic.”
“It shouldn’t be too hard,” George said. “Of course, we could accidentally fry her mind.”
Magdalene went pale.
Smart kid.
“We’ll just have to take that risk. Most women, when faced with five angry, blood-smeared people who forced their way into their rooms, would take a moment to consider their position. Obviously, this one is too foolish.” Kaldar raised the emitter. “Look into the light, Magdalene.”
“Fine.” Magdalene slouched in her chair. “What do you want?”
“We had the emitter. Why expose us?”
She sighed. “Because I want Yonker dead. Those merchant pig fuckers actually forbade—forbade!—us to settle it. I can’t even put a price on his head because it would be ‘bad for business.’ I’ve been wanting to kill him for three years now. And then you morons came along. If you took Yonker’s gadget, and he found out, one of two things would happen. Either you killed him or he killed you, in which case the Mirror would come knocking on his door, looking for revenge. Either way, he’d stop breathing in the end, and I’d win. But now you fucked it all up.”
“You’re an evil woman,” George said.
“What do you know of evil, you stupid puppy?” Magdalene turned her gaze on him. “You think this is evil? Give me two weeks with Yonker’s toy, and I could make you rape your own mother, and you’d enjoy it.”
“Kaldar, if you kill her, please don’t shoot her in the head,” George said, his face cold, as if carved from a glacier. “Raising a body with a shattered brain requires more magic, and I think we can use her corpse to make sure her relatives will get run out of town.”
Now that’s interesting.
Kaldar studied George. He had had no idea the kid had that kind of calculated cruelty in him. He was willing to bet it wasn’t genuine, but it was hellishly convincing.