“Let’s see how many places we can stick this before you bleed out,” he said with a nasty smile. “Twenty-four, get her up.”
I’m going to die. This is it.
Well . . . fuck if I’m going to make it easy for them.
As two of the guards bent to seize her arms, she summoned all of her strength and threw herself as hard as she could into his legs. He made a mew of surprise and flew backward, hitting the ground hard.
She rolled onto her hands and knees again but this time didn’t wait for them to reach her; she jumped up to her feet, pushing as much energy as she could spare into the wound in her back. They were going to kill her—there were six of them and one of her and she had no weapons—but she would die as a warrior.
The first one was so shocked he didn’t even have time to counterattack; he went down with a crushed larynx, gasping and clawing. He’d be back, but not before she could get to her weapons. The next took a swing at her, and she blocked it, spun around, and kicked him in the side of the head so hard his neck broke. He’d be down for an hour or more.
The man she’d knocked over was back on his feet and had his blade drawn. The other three did the same, and she was surrounded again.
All she had to do was move the whole thing over ten feet and she could get her sword—
Olivia dove into the man she’d knocked over before; he was still a little dazed from the impact with the floor, and now he and the tiles met again, even more violently this time. She aimed low and ducked under the sword that sliced at her head, hit the ground in a roll, and came up only five feet from the table. They were on her already, and she lunged forward, hand outstretched toward her weapons—she was so close—
Something smacked into her hand, and her fingers closed around it.
The hilt of her sword.
There was no time to wonder. She spun around and met the next slash with the clang of metal on metal. They hadn’t been expecting her to reach the table, and she took advantage of their astonishment—not to kill them all, but to do the smart thing and run like hell.
* * *
Miranda pulled Shadowflame free of the guard’s torso in time to meet the swing of another sword. It was almost unfair, the way the Pair was decimating the Elite who kept arriving from other floors to save their employer; the Prime and Queen together were an unstoppable force.
She felt energy that seemed endless flowing into her—from where exactly she wasn’t sure—fueling her body and her reflexes, making her movements so fast she could barely see them herself. It was child’s play. She’d always been a good fighter, and she’d learned even more from Faith and David, but overnight her skills had heightened exponentially . . . and so had David’s.
She’d never seen anything like it.
They had the first wave of Elite down in about ninety seconds. When the second group arrived, they were confronted with the bodies of their comrades thrown all around the hall, most disconnected from their heads, some run through with stakes.
Through the din, as the next group attacked, Miranda heard the clang of a blade that sounded heavier than the Elite’s. She tried to see through the mob, but she was too short to get much of a vantage point.
There was no need. The unfamiliar warrior fought her way through the Elite until she reached where the Pair were slowly edging toward Hart’s door.
The woman was mocha-skinned, hazel-eyed, and dreadlocked. Her arms were tattooed all the way down to her fingers. She was bloody and had dark circles under her eyes—the kind they tended to get when fighting through a significant injury.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” the woman yelled. “You were supposed to wait at the rendezvous!”
“Olivia,” David called loudly to be heard over the fight. “Nice to see you again.”
“Likewise, my Lord.”
Miranda shoved a guard back into one of his comrades and looked at Olivia. “You’re hurt,” she said. “Move back—let us handle this.”
“Jeremy’s already in there,” Olivia returned. “He staked me—he was on to me the whole time.”
Miranda and David exchanged a look. “Let’s get moving,” David said.
“Come on!” Miranda told Olivia. “Stay next to me!”
They fought their way to the double doors at the end of the hall, adjacent to another door that Miranda knew had once been the harem room. Miranda grabbed the door handle and turned it, but of course it was locked, so she took a step back and kicked it in.
The doors flew back so hard they slammed into the interior walls.
Miranda charged into the room . . . and paused.
Sixteen Elite armed with crossbows pointed at her stood surrounding Hart, who was sitting casually behind a large oak desk.
Jeremy lay on the floor in front of him, bleeding, breath coming in harsh gasps. He had wounds from at least four stakes in his back—and that was just what Miranda could see.
David and Olivia took care of the last of the Elite that had come down the hallway, then they sought refuge in the room with Miranda, taking a moment to shut the doors before finally seeing what they were facing. Olivia stayed behind them, just as Faith would have done.
Hart was examining a stack of papers and didn’t even look up at first. “There you are,” he said. “What kept you?”
“Killing off half your Elite,” David said, stepping forward.
Hart made a noise of amusement. “Bodyguards are a dime a dozen. Getting Jeremy Hayes to walk back into my Haven, along with you two, well, that’s impressive.”
He pointed toward Jeremy, and one of the guards went over to the fallen Prime and pushed him down, grabbing a small black box from him. “Here it is, Sire,” the guard said, and set it on the desk.
“Let me guess,” Hart said to Jeremy. “You’re working with Morningstar.”
“You know about them?” Miranda asked.
A quiet snort. “I know a lot more than you think I do. I’m sure you’ve been told by now that Lydia wanted my help in getting her ridiculous Awakening under way, but I refused. The last thing in the world the Council needs is all of you banding together like some kind of deviant sports team. I knew, as does Morningstar, that if any one of you dies, Per-sephone’s little fan club can never exist.”
“That’s why they’ve been trying to kill me,” Miranda said. “And Cora last week.”
At the mention of Cora, Hart’s energy suddenly flared with poisonous black rage. “That little bitch,” he snarled, almost to himself. He turned hate-filled eyes on Miranda. “If you hadn’t given her the idea to run away, I could have kept her on a leash until she died, and that would have been the end of it—before it even began.”
“You knew Cora was one of us,” David said, nodding slowly. “You found out somehow what was going to happen, maybe even a long time ago, and tried to stop it by enslaving her—and then when you couldn’t, you tried to kill us.”
Hart’s anger faded, and he shrugged. “Oh well. A month’s delay in the grand scheme of things is nothing.”
“But
how
did you know?” Miranda demanded. “Who told you?”
He just stared at her. “Do you think Queens are the only people who have visions of the future? That’s a rather arrogant assumption, don’t you think? Prophets come in all forms.”
“So what form was yours in?” Miranda asked.
“No,” Hart said. “You don’t get to die knowing everything. That wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying for me.”
“You do realize that if you kill us, the Council will come down on you like a sledgehammer,” David pointed out.
“I’m not afraid of the Council,” Hart said. “In fact, the one really good thing about Morningstar’s holy war is that they plan to destroy the Council, down to the last Prime. I’m hoping to hold out till the end, just so I can see the others go.”
Olivia said softly, “I can distract them, draw their fire. You can run.”
David smiled grimly. “Don’t worry, Olivia. Just stay where you are.”
“All right, enough chatter,” Hart said. He glanced over at one of the Elite. “Fire at will.”
Miranda braced herself.
Almost in perfect unison, the crossbows fired, sixteen stakes whistling through the air at the Prime, Queen, and somewhat-Second in the center of the room.
Miranda and David each lifted a hand. Miranda grounded herself hard, pulled power from that deep and endless connection, and
pushed
. . .
. . . sixteen stakes froze in midair.
She saw the fear register on the faces of the Elite about a split second before the stakes spun and flew back the way they had come.
She held on to eight of them as David took the rest, and shoved them with her mind, burying each one in a guard’s chest as deep as it would go, the force breaking through the sternum, nearly passing through the back.
One by one, the guards fell to the ground.
Hart had the decency to look shocked.
Miranda smiled at him, letting her teeth slide out where he could see the new pair behind her canines.
All the color drained from Hart’s face. It wasn’t the fear, however, that surprised Miranda; it was the recognition.
“You,” he gasped, pushing his chair back as if trying to put as much room between himself and these strange creatures as he could. “It’s you . . . just like they said . . .”
Miranda clicked her mouth shut and frowned. He wasn’t staring at her, or at David.
He was staring at Olivia.
Miranda moved over so the woman was in plain view, and the minute he could see her, Hart practically came unglued. He was on his feet, one hand reaching beneath the desk for something. As he stood, the fear in his face became anger, loathing, losing all pretense of rationality and sophistication. He looked rabid.
Hart held up his hand: a throwing stake.
“Stay the hell away from me! I swore you would never set foot here!”
He threw the stake at Olivia, and it would have been an excellent shot, but before either Miranda or David could catch it, Olivia twisted to the side in a blur of motion and the stake hit only the wall behind them.
Hart opened his mouth to hurl more rage at them . . . but he never got the chance.
As soon as the stake hit the wall, Miranda reached into herself and Misted.
She re-formed not twenty feet from where she’d stood, and Shadowflame sang through the air, catching the light and turning it to silver fire.
A thin spray of blood erupted from Hart’s throat, and a heartbeat later, his head fell from his neck, his Signet falling on its own, his head striking the floor with a sickening sound as his body collapsed at Miranda’s feet.
She stood over the body, satisfaction burning through her, and lowered her sword.
“That was for Cora, you bastard,” Miranda said.
“And for you,” David added with a smile.
“And for Amelia Hayes,” said Olivia quietly.
It took a moment for anyone to notice that Jeremy was gone.
* * *
Bleeding, half-dead . . . no, more like two-thirds dead . . . he made his way down the stairs, leaving a smear of blood on the wall and bloody handprints on the rail.
On the last flight, Jeremy closed his eyes, breathing out slowly. Hart was dead. As soon as he had seen the Pair with Olivia, he had known Hart would die. As soon as he’d seen Miranda draw her sword, relief had washed over him . . . He hadn’t delivered the killing stroke himself, but it didn’t matter. Hart was dead.
It was over.
Right on cue, the ground began to shake, the walls pitching and heaving. He held on to the rail until it passed, listening to the shouts of the Elite still alive throughout the building.
He was so glad that Olivia hadn’t died . . . he wanted her to live . . . he had killed Faith, but Olivia should at least get to survive, even if she had betrayed him. He couldn’t blame her. Olivia had seen him for what he really was . . . and now so did he.
So much blood. He looked down at his hands. Such a waste. His life, Amelia’s, Melissa’s, Faith’s . . . and nothing he could do, no vengeance he could ever exact, would bring them back again. Olivia was right about that, too.
He wondered why they weren’t chasing him. Perhaps the deal Olivia had made with Solomon still held. He’d read all of her texts to the Prime, all of her fears, the plans they’d made—Miranda and David would wait outside for Olivia to bring them the artifact, and they would take her into protective custody. If Jeremy died, he died, and if not, he could slink off under a rock somewhere.
Jeremy nearly laughed. Solomon had well and truly outmaneuvered him this time.
He stumbled the rest of the way down the stairs, peering out into the hall, but as he’d expected, the guards who weren’t already dead had run for their lives after the earthquake. They all knew what it meant.
Jeremy forced himself to keep going until he reached the exterior door where they’d come in, turned the handle with slippery hands, and all but fell out into the night.
He knelt there panting for a few minutes. He needed blood. He could find it a few blocks from here, outside the Shadow District.
But then he heard footsteps, and his heart sank.
“Did you succeed?”
Jeremy lifted his head. He knew what he must look like, soaked in blood, but the uniformed human staring down at him didn’t seem to notice; nor did his ten friends.
Reaching down to his belt, Jeremy flipped open the pouch and took out what they wanted.
The human took it, pleased. “Well done. And Hart is dead, correct?”
He nodded.
“Excellent. There’s only one more thing we need, then.”
The humans surrounded Jeremy, closing in on him, looming over him, and suddenly he understood.
Jeremy shut his eyes, sighing, and a blow to the back of his head sent him into the dark.
* * *
“Son of a bitch,” David said.
Miranda looked over his shoulder. “What?”
He held up the black carved box. It was empty.
Miranda shook her head in disbelief. “So not only did Jeremy get away, he took the damn Widget with him. Well, this was a rousing success.”
David made an impatient noise. “Worth every minute just to be rid of Hart. It would have been nice to at least know what the hell that thing was, though.”