by Tess Adair
Slowly but surely, it brought one hand to its waist, where Logan realized two swords were slung, side by side. It lifted the first sword and held it out to her, hilt first. Though its face remained wooden and immobile, its eye-holes seemed to implore her.
The Wolf wanted to fight—with her, and with swords, apparently. She glanced down at Phillips, but his eyes were glazed over and blank. Without further hesitation, she got to her feet.
“Logan,” Alexei hissed at her, his voice stricken, “what do you think you’re doing?”
She met his eyes momentarily and gave a small wave of her hand, hoping he would take the hint not to interfere. He gritted his teeth in response, but nevertheless, he nodded.
In a few short steps, she had reached the Wolf. She took the sword he handed her, and he took the one still hanging from his belt. As she gripped her hilt, he swept his sword theatrically out to the side, then inclined his head toward her in a bow. She got the curious sensation that on some level, he was preparing to dance.
Too bad I have no idea how to fight a normal fucking human, if that’s what you are. She’d fought with swords before, of course, but for the most part she’d only fought demons. Demons weren’t particularly known for their impressive swordsmanship, and unlike some of the other rich kids she’d known in her life, she’d never taken real fencing lessons as a child. True swordplay was one of the few fighting methods she had almost no training in. Without the faintest idea of what a proper stance might be, she placed one foot in front of the other, turning her body to the side in an attempt to make herself a smaller target.
“En garde,” she muttered, smiling sheepishly at her masked opponent.
The moment her grip tightened and her wrist grew taut, her opponent’s sword clanged against hers, and the fight commenced. Her first few swings were a little clumsy and wild: she put too much force into them, as if she were hacking at a monster. But after they parried a few times, she modified her style to match the Wolf’s, opting for lighter, shorter thrusts while she pranced swiftly across the floor to escape his blows.
Though she kept up her side of the dance well enough, within a few minutes, she could tell that he was better at this than she was. Whoever the Wolf was, he’d had training.
At last, she spun away a little too slowly, and the side of his blade made contact with her arm, slicing into the skin near her bicep. She took a step back, biting down against the unexpected sting.
Across from her, she heard a funny clicking noise—the Wolf was clucking his tongue, as if he were reprimanding her. She raised her eyebrows at him.
“Sorry to disappoint,” she said gruffly. “To be honest, I’m more of a hand-to-hand kind of girl. But, you know—dealer’s choice.”
With that, she sprang forward and sent a quick jab his way—hitting him in the arm in nearly exactly the same place he’d hit her. His head snapped up, his empty eye sockets locking on her eyes. Was that an expression of shock?
If it was, it didn’t last long. Almost immediately, they were at it again, the Wolf springing into action as Logan rushed to defend herself. He swung at her this way and that, while she met his blows, or simply spun to escape them. After a moment, she realized that he’d been holding back before. He struck her again, this time on her leg, and it was all she could do to dance out of his way and make sure it wasn’t a deeper cut. As she circled around him, keeping just out of his range, a sudden noise at the other end of the room caught her attention.
Todd Phillips, as it turned out, hadn’t been knocked entirely out of commission after all. In fact, he was back on his feet, his hulking form stalking over to Alexei, who crouched in the corner, holding a now-bloodied rag to Alana Huntsman’s face.
“Alexei!” Logan called out, for a moment entirely heedless of her own peril.
She watched as Alexei whipped around just in time, barreling himself headfirst into Phillips’ waist to push him back, away from Alana.
Whatever happened after that, she didn’t know. The Wolf was on her again, forcing her concentration back to their fight. He swung at her with renewed intensity, every slice and jab coming close to home. Despite her accelerated healing, pain still pulsed from the wound in her leg, and she could feel the damp blood staining her right sleeve.
Still, she circled him. She could tell he was trying to drain her energy, but fortunately for her, she had excessive energy to drain. Of course, he was fast and smooth, and as one of her swings went wide, he jabbed at her, the edge of his sword glancing off her torso, spraying blood everywhere.
She staggered away, one hand automatically cupping the wound while the other kept her sword high. She allowed herself only a moment to recover. Pushing away any thought of pain, she redoubled her efforts. She swung back at him with swift, repeated blows, forcing him backward for once.
For a few moments, they danced around each other, caught in an equilibrium. Her frustration with the fight was growing; she wanted to break away, to find some way to finish it, but she didn’t see how she could force an ending in her favor while he still had his sword. She needed to disarm him somehow.
As that thought crystalized in her mind, she lunged forward again, attacking him aggressively. Her sword glanced off his shoulder, tearing straight through his high-collared black shirt and slicing the flesh underneath. A chunk of fabric came away in a spray of blood; the sight of it sent a surge of adrenaline through her body.
Maybe I can win this way after all, she thought, fighting to keep a smirk off her face. While he still reeled from her success, she came at him again, the loud metal clang of their swords reverberating through the warehouse. The Wolf stumbled backwards, nearly tripping over a random piece of debris on the ground. She was so absorbed in the thought of her victory, so close at hand, that she barely registered the sounds of the fight commencing behind her.
With one quick flick and twist, Logan met with success. The Wolf’s sword slipped from his hand and landed with a clatter on the floor.
For a moment, he stood still, staring in what might have been shock at his useless weapon, laying just out of reach. Logan advanced, her heart pumping at a million miles a minute.
Then the Wolf did something she didn’t expect: he tilted his head back and let out a high-pitched, hyena-like sound. It was more a bark than a laugh, but she caught the intent.
He was laughing at her.
Logan’s blood surged in her ears, anger mixing with confusion. In one slow, theatrical movement, the Wolf pointed his hand straight up, fingers forming the shape of a pistol, and brought it down in an arc until it pointed…directly behind her.
Logan spun around and watched her vision from the Choronzon Key come to life right before her eyes.
Alexei took a hard hit and stumbled backward, his own fists held limply before him in an ever-weakening defensive stance. He shook the hair out of his eyes and stepped back again, running out of room to move as he smacked into the metal table behind him. Todd Phillips barreled down, his massive fists reaching around Alexei’s neck and squeezing hard. Alexei scrabbled to remove him, desperately clawing at his hands, but it was clear he didn’t have the strength left—
“NO!” cried Logan, though already her body was reacting, moving without any conscious direction from her. Without dropping the sword in her left hand, her right drifted upward while her eyes began to close. Instantly, she remembered her connection to the air, both within her and without—throughout the whole chamber, in fact. She called to it, asked it to join her, drew it to her from the most unlikely of places—
Within seconds, Todd Phillips stopped moving. His grip on Alexei slackened and dropped away, his eyes bulging in fear. He clawed at his own neck, gasping wildly for air—but there was none left for him.
Logan stood transfixed, unable to move or look away. She could feel the air around her as if it were her own body, and though she stood still, her body rushed and twisted and danced.
Todd Phillips fell to his knees, his gasping turning quickly into choking. On
some level, Logan knew she should relent…but she couldn’t. She had let go of the reins, and she wasn’t sure how to get them back.
“H.C., stop!”
She heard Alexei’s voice as if it came from far away. She blinked and looked at him, and all at once, she came back to herself.
At long last, she let go of the eira summon. Todd Phillips dropped forward, falling flat onto his face with a sickening crunch. Logan heard her sword clatter to the floor beside her.
For a moment, she stood rooted to the spot. She watched as Alexei, one hand still resting at his own bruised neck, pushed off the metal table to squat down near Todd Phillips’ massive, prone form. He tugged at the other’s shoulder, trying to flip him onto his back, but to no avail. His monstrous body was too big, too heavy.
Logan forced herself to put one foot in front of the other, again and again, until finally she squatted by Alexei’s side and, with his help, rolled Todd Phillips onto his back. Alexei reached out his hand, hovering it above his mouth.
“He’s not breathing,” he muttered. His voice sounded rough and raw.
As Alexei bent over to try his hand at CPR, Logan looked back behind them—but the Wolf had vanished from sight.
In his place stood Jude, staring silently at them. How long had she been there? How much did she see?
Of course, Logan didn’t have the luxury of wondering long. They had work to do.
“Jude,” she said authoritatively, watching Jude’s gaze click back into focus as her head snapped over to look at her, “I need you to bring the car around. Can you do that?”
Jude nodded absently, her face still a little slack. “Yeah…yeah, I’ll be right back.”
Not wasting a second, she turned and left.
Logan turned back to the remaining inhabitants of the room. She felt strangely hollow; her adrenaline was bleeding away, leaving an empty space in the middle of her chest. Reluctantly, she let her eyes return to Alexei and Todd Phillips.
Alexei had given up his CPR attempts and now sat back on his heels. He met her gaze.
“He’s dead,” he said simply. Logan nodded.
I killed him.
Her eyes dropped down to his body, lying between Alexei and herself, unmoving. His torso remained swelled to disproportionate size, his face still covered in spidery black veins. Dried blood discolored his mouth and chin from when she’d broken his nose.
He was a perfect showcase of her brutality.
She tilted her head to the side, looking for Alana. She was fifteen feet away, peeking out from behind a shelf, her eyes wide and unblinking, taking in the scene. Logan turned back to Alexei.
“Are you okay?”
“I’ll live,” he said, putting his hand back to his own neck with delicate care. Along with the angry red marks there, he had a bruise forming under his right eye, and his jacket was ruined. But she figured he didn’t need to hear that from her, so she kept her mouth shut about it. “I’ve got a few turtlenecks that should get me through the worst of the healing process.”
She gave a sigh and gently waved her hand at the scene around them.
“I think we need to call a cleaning crew,” she said.
Alexei sighed, too.
“I knew the Order would end up involved in this somehow. Hell, maybe they can explain all this shit to Mrs. Phillips, too.” He shook his head, then indicated Alana with a quick nod. “I’ve got the number. You actually spoke to the girl before, right?”
“Right, yes. I’ll go talk to her. You make the call.”
With another nod, he went his way, and she went hers.
As she approached Alana, the girl stepped tentatively out from her partial hiding spot, straightening her back and crossing her arms over her chest at the same time.
“Is he really dead?” Her affect was flat. Logan derived nothing from it.
“Looks like it.”
Alana gazed at Logan; Logan honestly couldn’t tell if she wore a look of admiration or disgust. Perhaps it was both.
“You really did it. I don’t understand how, but…you said you’d get him, and you did it.” She turned her gaze from Logan onto Phillips’ unmoving body. “He’s done.”
“He is.” Logan stood quiet, giving Alana a moment. “Will you be all right? Do you need medical attention?”
Never moving her eyes from Phillips, Alana shook her head.
“He hadn’t hurt me yet. I’m fine.”
You’re probably not fine, Logan thought but didn’t say. She had no idea how to help Alana now; it was outside of her skill range.
By the time Jude came back, Alexei was off the phone, the Order of Shadows already headed their way to clear the scene. Together, he and Jude helped guide Alana out of the warehouse, toward the car outside.
Logan lingered behind them, creating some distance. As they passed beyond earshot, she pulled out her own phone.
After a moment, Knatt’s voice came over the line.
“Is everything all right?”
“No, not really. I think you should come and meet us at Alexei’s apartment. We need to talk.”
“I’ll be there within the hour.”
When she finally heard little hints of sound coming in over the walkie-talkie, Jude felt like she’d been waiting in that car forever. At first, it was just static; she couldn’t even tell if it was anything more than interference. Then she heard a muffled voice saying words she couldn’t quite make out.
Someone’s probably hitting the speaker by accident, she thought.
For about thirty seconds longer, she sat frozen, uncertain of whether or not to move. Then she heard the voice again and sprang into action.
She’d always been a fast runner, so it didn’t take her long to cover the distance they had. She found them inside the second warehouse she tried. As soon as she walked in the door, she could hear them—the sounds of fighting, the sounds of metal clanging. She made her way toward them by stalking along the wall, staying hidden in the shadows even as she approached the scene.
And then she stood transfixed, watching the action unfold before her. She watched silently as, somehow, Logan sucked the life out of the monstrous man they’d been chasing.
The thought came to her unbidden: Is that how Kurt Redmond died, too?
But then Logan was talking to her, and she found herself pulled out of her reverie. After that, she dissolved into a blur of action: getting the car, helping Alexei with the victim, sitting with her while Alexei drove them back.
Logan was silent on the car ride. They were all on the quiet side, but Logan didn’t say a thing. She barely even looked at anyone else.
They dropped Alana off at home first, and Jude watched her tearful reunion with her mother from the car window. Logan exchanged some words with both of them, then came back down the steps.
After that, they headed back to Alexei’s apartment. Jude was more than a little taken aback to see Hugh Knatt waiting for them outside his door when they exited the elevator, and from the look on his face, she figured that Alexei was just as shocked.
As soon as they all entered the apartment, Logan and Knatt disappeared behind the door of the guest bedroom, leaving Jude with only Alexei for company.
Unsure of what to do with herself, Jude crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against a nearby counter. Alexei stood off to the side, arms also crossed, playing at the still-forming bruises on his neck and scowling in the direction of the closed door. Finally, he sighed.
“Are you hungry? I’m thinking about making a sandwich.”
Jude turned to face him, her mouth dropping open in surprise. No snide remark or backhanded compliment? He must be tired.
“Starving, actually.”
“Good. You can slice the tomatoes.”
With that, they both got to work creating and consuming a late-night snack. Jude’s eyes flicked back to the closed bedroom door every few minutes, but it remained unmoved. Neither she nor Alexei said much to each other as they worked, and the silence continued
as they ate. Finally, Jude couldn’t take it any longer.
“What do you think they’re talking about in there?” she asked.
“No idea,” said Alexei with a shrug. “But if I had to guess, I’d say it might have something to do with that guy in the mask back at the warehouse.”
That guy in the mask. He meant the man Logan had been fighting when Jude first came in. Jude had seen him. He had watched as Logan turned her sights on the monster that was Todd Phillips, but only for a moment. Then he had run, and Jude had come out of the shadows.
“Do you think she knew him?” asked Jude.
“I don’t know,” said Alexei. He sighed heavily, his gaze lingering on the door that separated them from whatever conversation Logan and Knatt were now having. “I couldn’t say for sure, but…she didn’t seem surprised that he was there, exactly. I’m not sure I can explain it any better than that. I’m not sure I understand it any better than that.”
Jude nodded, hesitant to push the topic further. Frankly, this was the friendliest Alexei had been toward her since she arrived, and though it felt awkward and uneasy, it was still nicer than his snide comments. What more could she possibly ask?
It was Alexei who broke the silence after that.
“I think she’s keeping something from me.” He glanced her way and nodded. “From both of us, I suppose.”
“You do?”
Alexei nodded. “I don’t know what it is. But I can feel that something is off. She knows something she’s not telling me. Us.”
Jude considered this. A part of her wanted to defend Logan, to insist that Logan was the most heroic person she’d ever met. After all, she’d saved Jude’s town from a monster and had then taken it upon herself to change Jude’s life for the better, forever.
Of course, Alexei wasn’t saying that she wasn’t heroic, was he? He was only saying he believed she knew something that they didn’t know.
And if she thought about that, didn’t she feel exactly the same way?
