“Funny,” a woman’s voice said from the top of the stairs. Callum’s blood ran cold. “I don’t think you are.”
Tess kept scratching her stone on the floor and didn’t look up. Callum didn’t have to. He knew instantly from her voice, and then the soft clicking of her heels confirmed it. Lena.
“I’ve got your little imp,” she said. “She won’t be biting anyone else.”
A pool of light surrounded her from a lantern in her hand, shedding illumination across the entire dungeon room. She held Tixi by the tail. There was a scarf in her mouth, serving as a gag, and the rest of her body was entirely cocooned in it. Lena’s arm was bleeding.
The light spilled up across the bottom of Lena’s face, illuminating her eyes. It was the least attractive Callum had ever seen her look.
“Callum?” Tess whispered.
“Hang in there, this won’t take long,” he mumbled back.
“No,” Tess said. “It won’t. I’m sorry.”
He started to turn, to ask Tess what was going on, but when he finally managed to look at her she was slamming her palm down onto the circle she’d scratched into the floor. His heart dropped. The blood touched the scratched in circle and glowing red flooded the cell around Tess.
There was a furious roar as the rakshasi—because she was female and very clearly so--appeared in the circle. She did a slow turn, eying the boundaries of the circle, looking for imperfections.
“That won’t help you,” Lena said.
The rhakshasi sniffed the air and turned to look at her.
“Afrite and concubus,” the rhakshasi said. “Witch.”
She looked back over her shoulder at Tess, who stood with perfect posture. To show weakness in front of this creature would be her death knell.
“She is who I called you to deal with,” Tess said. “A fitting challenge for one such as yourself, I believe.”
“I accept your offering,” the rhakshasi said. Tess visibly exhaled, her shoulders slackening only just. For just one moment, it seemed like everything was going to be fine, and then, “I do not accept your control.”
The silver in the bars had been enough to stop an imp but a full-blooded rhakshasi…she reached forward and practically blew the door to Tess’s cell off of its hinges as she rushed at Lena.
Lena threw the imp aside and side-stepped the rushing rhakshasi. She flexed her fingers and they cracked as the tips of them sharpened into claws. A cut opened along the rhakshasi’s flank.
A roar rattled the room. Lena took the creature by the back of the neck and her claws dug into it as she rammed the rhakshasi’s head face first into a rough stone wall.
Behind her, Tess stumbled out of the broken cell and stopped at Callum’s.
“Go,” he said.
“I’m not leaving you,” she said. She looked around, shoved forward by the force of one of the combatants for a moment against the bars. Callum closed the gap between them.
“Tess, I got myself into this mess,” he said. He wrapped his fingers around hers, the fire going out long before their touch. He could no longer make out her features, backlit as she was by Lena’s lantern and the angry glow of the rhakshasi. It didn’t matter. “I could have turned back at any point and I never did. I could have been more careful and I wasn’t. If you stay, you are going to get hurt. I’m fireproof. I’ll be fine.”
“Callum,” she said. He could feel the argument building on her tongue. He closed the small distance between them and kissed her through a gap in the bars.
“Go and get my father,” he said. “You aren’t leaving me. You’re getting help.”
She stared at him for a moment, before she turned her hand palm up and squeezed his.
“I’ll be back,” she said. Then she was gone. Her silhouette moved beyond Lena and the rhakshasi and up the staircase.
Good.
Whatever happened from here, he could be at peace with that. Tess would be fine. She would live. She would go to his father and maybe there would be help to be had.
If there wasn’t…well. He could handle that. He couldn’t have lived with Tess hanging back and getting killed on his account.
“We’ve got something to take care of Sammy,” Joey had said before they left the house. “Grab your coat, bring your gun. Let’s go.”
That had been an hour ago.
Joey threw open the double doors of the Falling Star pub, the only one that could be said to be in the dock district proper, and strode directly to the middle of the room. Sam followed Uncle Danny’s lead and took up a position on the left side of the door. Several patrons looked up from their drinks and watched Joey with mistrust.
“Alright, you know who you are. You’ve had your fun. Now get out,” Joey said.
“So Trezza shows up in person,” a voice said from the far end of the room. Rorik was a lean youth with dark eyes, a Verida by blood though he didn’t carry the name. “I’d be honored if it wasn’t such a mark of desperation. Get out, he says.”
Rorik moved up to him with casual loping steps until he was chest to chest with Joey, almost touching. Rorik was a couple of inches taller.
“How do you intend to make me?” Rorik asked.
Danny’s eyes skimmed the crowd and Sam followed his example, watching. Joey would have to keep his focus on Rorik. It wouldn’t do to have an opportunist in a moment like this think it was a good time to bring knives out.
“I’m not quite sure, but call it a gut feeling,” Joey said. He didn’t so much as bat an eyelid.
“You came here with two men,” Rorik said. “You’re surrounded and outgunned. Heh. That your son over there? The girly one?”
Sam felt his fist clench at his side, but said nothing.
“I have a girl. You should be glad I didn’t bring her,” Joey said. “If I did we wouldn’t still be having this conversation.”
“No? I bet we’d have had a lot more fun with her,” Rorik said. A cruel grin split his face and several men around them laughed. Danny touched Sam’s arm and extinguished a fire Sam hadn’t realized he’d lit around his hand.
“Hold fast,” Danny said. “Not yet.”
“Not so fast, Danny. If these boys want some fun, let’s give it to ‘em,” Joey said. He turned back to Rorik with catlike speed. Sam barely caught the glint of the switchblade in his hand before he buried it to the hilt in Rorik’s stomach. Eight times.
The patrons started to get up from their seats and there was a shattering sound as one of them broke his beer bottle on the table. Sam moved for the bar.
The pub went from strained silence to absolute chaos in the span of a moment. Sam reached around the bar and grabbed a bottle of liquor. The bartender made a grab for him but Sam stepped back out of his reach and into it again just as swiftly. His fist crunched into the man’s nose and while he was reeling, Sam took the rag he’d been polishing the bar with from his belt.
A sudden weight impacted at his back as someone jumped on him from behind and Samael manifested his wings with violent urgency, flinging his assailant back off. He poured half the contents of the bottle onto the rag to a chorus of harsh screaming before haphazardly stuffing it into the neck.
The floor was a mess of bodies. He didn’t know where his father or Danny were, but he knew one thing. They were fireproof.
Silver seraph’s flame erupted from his fingertips and the rag flared bright. With the flick of a wrist, he threw his makeshift explosive into the throng and used his wings to fan the flames.
Danny emerged from under a pile of eight men, throwing them in all directions. A couple of them stumbled into the fire and ran screaming. The fray was over as quickly as it had begun, some of the Gaters here just hadn’t realized that yet.
A screaming woman cloaked in silver flame passed between Samael and the chaos in front of him, out into the street, hitting herself all over and trying to put the fire out. Behind her, Danny hauled a man by his jacket and trousers out the window by the door.
In the midst of all
of this madness, Samael found serenity. He turned to look at the bartender, who was staring with wide terrified eyes now as he fumbled for a gun. With one flap of his wings, he cleared the bar and closed the distance between them.
Sam’s steady hands took the gun with ease and turned it on the bartender.
“Please don’t shoot,” the bartender begged, his voice cracking.
“Not yet,” Sam said. “We wait. You’ll face my father’s justice.”
He bent one wing as something came sailing at him out of his peripheral vision and a bottle shattered against it. With a twitch, he shed both broken glass and water from between his thick feathers.
Over time, more people ran. The flames went out. They were left standing in the calm after the fire storm, all battered and bruised and surrounded by bodies.
Joey straightened his suit. He stepped over a couple of bodies, walking over to the bar where he squatted down next to the bartender to look him in the eyes.
“If I ever see you hanging out with that lot again I’ll lock all of you in here and burn the place to the fucking ground,” he said.
The bartender nodded to him in mute terror.
“Take the gun, Sam, the night’s young,” Joey said, and moved for the door.
The Cassander girl was running up to the house as Ophelia opened the door. She hesitated and as the girl began to slow, she stepped aside. Tess. Helena’s daughter. She looked just like her mother, but Ophelia could not recall ever having seen her old friend so alarmed.
“Breathe,” Ophelia said. “Come inside, tell me what happened.”
“It’s Callum,” Tess said. She gripped Ophelia’s forearms. “My father has him locked in the basement and there’s a rhakshasi—”
As if on cue, there was a loud creaking sound. Ophelia looked back out the door and down the hill just in time to see one of the tram cables snap and come whipping down into a nearby building cracking the stone. The car dipped dangerously on its remaining cable. With her sharp seraph’s eyes, she could tell there were people inside even from here.
“I can see that,” Ophelia said. She looked to Tess. “Go inside. Find Elysia and tell her to get my armor ready. Find my husband and tell him what you told me about Callum.”
“But,” Tess started. The urgency must have showed on Ophelia’s face because instead of continuing, she simply nodded. Ophelia nodded back and stepped away from her, manifesting her quartet of wings and kicking off into the air as fast as she could for the tram car.
There was a man and a little girl inside. He was holding her tightly, his back to the door beneath him and looked like he was whispering something to her. It was clear he intended to break her fall, should anything happen. That more than anything made Ophelia’s heart clench.
The rhakshasi was standing on top of the tram station. One of her backwards hands clutched the throat of a conductor and she held him over the alley. Ophelia already had her target. The Hellwatch was starting to assemble below.
She caught the door of the tram car just as it began to fall. It took all of her strength to hold it there and clutch the other cable as the man looked up at her in terror.
“Come out,” she said, through clenched teeth. “I won’t let you fall but you’re going to have to trust me. I can’t hold this car for long.”
“Take her,” he said, holding the girl up. Ophelia didn’t have enough hands for this. She looked at the man, then the door to the cable car, and he seemed to understand because he did his best to climb after that.
He stood, precariously on the seat, fear written on his face. She let go of the door, and as the car began to fall, gripped his arm. Her wings beat, and she held onto him by the other shoulder, the girl nestled between them as she spiraled to the ground. She set them beside the twisted wreck of the tram car.
“Get to shelter,” she said, and didn’t wait to see if he would argue. She was off like a shot back to the estate again. Sure enough, Ely had brought her sword and armor to the front yard.
“What’s going on?” Ely asked. She had the sharp concern of someone who planned to get involved.
“Rhakshasi on the loose,” Ophelia said. “Help me into my armor, I have to go get this under control. You go with your father and get your brother out of whatever mess he’s gotten himself into now.”
“Okay,” Elysia said. Ophelia had expected her to argue. She was glad Ely hadn’t. Slipping on the breastplate and gauntlets were easier with a second pair of hands. “Except Dad isn’t here, he took Sam out to try and clear some of the Gaters out of the dock district. I’ve got this, though.”
Ophelia watched her for a moment. Her urge to tell Ely to wait died in her throat as she remembered her coming out of the smoke in the alley before. Ophelia nodded.
“Go, then,” she said. “Bring him home.”
It seemed like no time at all before Ophelia was back outside, strafing the field where some of the Hellwatch had assembled around the rhakshasi.
Seeing her next to Barghest drove the sheer size of her home to Ophelia. This was a big one. She was a full head taller than he was.
Ophelia arrived in the nick of time. The rhakshasi had just thrown his sword back and was going in to claw at him with her other talon. She aimed for the throat. There was no way he would get in to block. Ophelia interposed her sword between the rhakshasi and Barghest, planting her feet.
For a moment, she thought she had succeeded. Then, she was thrown into him and back into the building behind. The impact was harsh and as the air was driven from her lungs, she heard the collapsing of stone and mortared dust filled the air.
She and Barghest were both coughing as the dust settled. It was dark in here, only a shaft of light from above illuminating the alcove, and the sounds of the fight outside were muffled against the rocks.
“You shouldn’t still have that armor,” he said, his voice rough and scratchy from dust and coughing.
They locked eyes for a long moment, dust falling from the ceiling of the alcove between them. Outside, on the other side of the wall of rubble, the fight continued. They were trapped. They were safe. They weren’t going anywhere.
So she took a deep breath, and spoke.
“Aren’t you glad I do?” she asked.
“In this case?” he asked, sitting up. His massive frame seemed even bigger in the limited space of the alcove. “You should probably still turn it in, but I’ll admit I’m glad you had my back.”
“You’re never going to find another half-seraph to wear it,” Ophelia said. “What would be the point?”
“Never is a strong word,” he said.
“I’m the only one I know of in the city,” Ophelia said. “Maybe a daeva could handle it, but the Hellwatch isn’t exactly a priority for most summoner’s kids, is it?”
“Do you think that’s a good enough reason for me to make an exception for you?” he asked. She frowned.
“I think you’d be hard pressed to take it from me if you wanted to push the issue,” Ophelia said. “It’s been years, it’s hardly your decision at this point.”
“Maybe I just thought with your sense of honor you’d want to return it anyway,” he said. There was a mild bite in the statement.
“With my sense of honor,” she echoed. “So what, you would want me to turn it back over to you to collect dust when I can still use it and help this city? My sense of honor doesn’t involve dying in an alley, Barghest, especially when it isn’t costing anyone anything otherwise. A human couldn’t wear this plate and you know it.”
“Help this city when it’s convenient for you, you mean,” he said.
“Help the parts of this city the Hellwatch takes hours to get to,” she spat. “Help the parts of this city that fall through the cracks. Help where the Hellwatch’s hands are tied.”
“And only occasionally take advantage?” he asked.
“If stepping in to help terrorized civilians is taking advantage, yes,” she said. “I’ve taken on cambion in this plate. I’ve stood in the
way of Gate Street Players armed with guns and sorcery. I have been there to handle the problems the Hellwatch won’t. If taking advantage is what you want to call that, I won’t even bother to deny it.”
The words came out in a flood. She felt hot under the collar. One deep breath, then another; it wouldn’t do to lose control right now. It wouldn’t help anything.
“And that’s all you’ve been doing? It’s all been out of the kindness of your heart?” he asked. The edge of his voice took on a keener sharpness. There was a beat of silence.
“You know as well as I do that kindness isn’t the only thing a heart can feel,” she said. Her voice had turned cold. “Why is it so hard for you to believe that he’s a good man or that sometimes the law gets in the way of doing the right thing?”
“Because when you’re on the other side of the law as often as he is, I have to feel like most of the time he’s not doing the right thing,” Barghest said.
“We live in a city where everything is powered by summoning,” Ophelia said. “It’s regulated and licensed and the only people that can afford to be educated to do it are already obscenely wealthy. Half of the incidents the hellwatch has to clean up could have been resolved before they started if people had a basic idea of what they were doing, but if that information got out the aristocracy wouldn’t have as much of a choke hold on the market. But because they do, there are always demons, and because there are always demons, the Hellwatch doesn’t have the time or manpower to stop people like Vivi Verida from walking all over everyone. Do you have any idea, at all, what was going on in the Docks district before Joey started in there?”
“Less immolations, I can tell you that much,” Barghest said.
“Rapists,” she said. “Murderers. People who prey on innocent civilians. Those things happen less often because a few evil men burned for their crimes. I make no apologies for it.”
“I just don’t understand if you’re doing all this for the greater good, why you turned to a crime lord,” he said. His arms were folded. He spoke slowly but his eyes never left her.
“He turned to me,” she said, softly.
Torchlighters Page 32
