Andre instinctively reached out to grab Cyan and pull him back, but Cyan shed Andre’s old coat as he pounced and had no clothes to clutch. His strange, feathery hair danced out of Andre’s grasp as his fluid steps brought him upon the attacker. Andre couldn’t stop Cyan as he lunged at the approaching man, claws out, aimed for his throat.
Andre had never thought of himself as squeamish – he had seen Angel perform interrogations or “teach lessons” to clients in debt to Grey, which was far from a sanitized experience – but he looked away as shimmering claws shredded through cracked human flesh, exposing bright muscle and blood beneath. The man dropped limp on the floor, and a flicker of mercy left Andre hoping that he was already dead.
Frisk’s concerns about her girlfriend vanished long enough for her to let out a low whistle. “Ash and embers, Swarz, your birdman is a piece of work.”
He ignored her commentary. “Do we know how many are here?”
“Angel’s the one who sounded the alarm – you’d have to ask her.” As Cyan returned to lurk protectively beside Andre, the two Stripes peered into the chaos at the center of the room.
In the fading smoke, Andre could see Jonas wrestling barehanded against one of the taller mercenaries, and there was a smaller shape flitting around him, though Andre couldn’t tell if that was Amelia or another of Wei’s people. Angel’s magnificent white getup shimmered through the haze as she knelt on the ground, and there were several unidentified, unmoving masses strewn about her. There were more bodies within the cloud than Andre remembered seeing entering the dance hall – which stood to reason, considering multiple diversions, but it made him tense. They had no way to tell how many people Wei might have brought along, no way to track them or count heads.
Andre glanced over his shoulder to find Regina hovering close behind them. “Check the kitchens, make sure no one snuck in there behind us. Frisk, can you help me reach Angel? I need to make sure she’s not hurt – and Amelia, too, of course.” Frisk nodded, and Andre reached out to grab Cyan by the forearm, staring him dead in the eye. “Stay close. No fighting. Control yourself.” Cyan’s jaw fringe fluffed out as creased lines formed around his enormous eyes. Tone, again. Andre hated to upset his ethereal friend, but Cyan was still unfamiliar with much of anyone except him and Daisy, and Andre did not want him accidentally hurting any of the Stripes in his frenzy. Especially not if his frenzies resulted in the bloody mess that lay just before them.
Frisk knelt to grab Andre’s cane before she helped him hobble to the center of the chaos. Closer, and with the smoke fading, Andre could see Angel squatting next to Vicks, who was bleeding from an injury in his side. Four strangers lay in heaps around them, dead or too wounded to move, Andre wasn’t sure. Angel looked up at Andre and Frisk as they approached, her eyes cold. Frisk didn’t appear as grim about Vicks’ injury.
“Get off your ass, layabout.”
Vicks winced and writhed with a hand clamped over the wound, but he managed a lopsided smirk. “Like you got room to talk. Weren’t you out cold the last time there was a skirmish here?”
Neither Andre nor Angel addressed their familial teasing. “Daisy?” Angel asked.
“I told her to flee.”
Angel nodded curtly. “There’s another reverb cannon. Jonas and Amelia are struggling to contain him, but…” Frisk released Andre’s arm and ran over to help them before Angel finished, darting off with Andre’s cane in hand. When Andre wobbled without any support on his right, Cyan slipped to his other side and allowed Andre to lean upon him.
“Do we have any idea how many are left?”
“No. I killed one in the foyer and the one with the gun–” She nodded toward a slightly older woman lying in a gunpowder-smudged heap, and it was then that Andre noticed Angel’s own pale face and clothes were coated with dark dust and blood already dried and blackened. Her chest heaved unevenly as she breathed – she was hurt, shaken by the reverberation, and needed mana. “Amelia took out the first reverb cannon, and Vinnie sniped two other gunners.”
“Are there any alive, except for the second reverb cannon?”
Angel nodded and pointed to a man with a knife struggling to his feet and trying to charge Jonas while the ogre attempted to wrest the reverb cannon from a tall, lanky man. The tall fellow’s hat had been knocked off in the scuffle, and Andre recognized his rugged features from the attack on Cyan’s faerie ring. When Jonas swatted the man with the knife away with a careless backswing – like shooing a fly – Andre returned his gaze to the crumpled bodies surrounding Angel. He had seen three people at the farmhouse that night, and he suspected one of them was Ming Wei herself. There had been that short, square-shouldered woman with a knife who had gone after him in that attack, but he saw no one here matching that body type.
“Any sign of Wei?”
“I don’t know,” Angel answered. Vicks winced again and coughed, and Angel glanced at him before lifting her head with ice in the gleam of her eyes. “Wait… Where is Rudolph?” She tried to push herself up but wavered on her heels and slumped back down beside Vicks. “Andre, you have to help take out that second reverb cannon. I need Jonas free to help Vicks so I can…” She clutched a hand over her heart and winced, her eyes not quite opening fully again when the moment passed. The reverb had to have still been affecting her, too, on top of everything else. Andre wondered how well Jonas was faring, struggling with the same condition while wrestling with Wei’s minions.
He hobbled with Cyan’s help closer to the struggle with Jonas and the tall man. If the ogre could keep him from firing the reverb cannon again, Andre might be able to recover enough to contribute to the fight. Amelia and Frisk had likely been hounding the mercenary as well, but something in the scuffle had tossed Amelia to the ground. Frisk crouched uncertainly next to her, one hand holding Andre’s cane and the other checking Amelia’s ankle. Frisk kept glancing rapidly between Amelia prone on the floor and Jonas struggling to catch the mercenary in a bear-hug to disarm or disable him. As Andre neared, though, the mercenary swung his weight hard enough to ram an elbow into Jonas’ gut, sending him staggering back and giving the mercenary an opening to ready the cannon.
Andre would not be able to reach him before he fired it.
Frisk jumped to her feet and unscrewed the head of Andre’s cane. She had seen him use it before in skirmishes not unlike this one, and Andre realized that she had walked off with it on purpose. Sliding around to the cannon-bearer’s backside and pulling the blade from its deceptive sheath, Frisk slashed across the back of his neck.
He cried out and released the cannon with one hand to clutch at the wound. The cannon was too heavy for him to hold upright without both hands, and his aim drooped to point at Jonas’ feet. It didn’t matter, Andre supposed – Frisk readied the blade straight and horizontal before her, throwing her weight into a lunge toward the man. The steel slid between two back ribs, impaling him right in the kidney. Andre couldn’t see from the angle he was at, but judging from how far the blade sank into the man and Jonas’ wide-eyed stare, he guessed that the tip of the blade poked out from the front of the man’s torso.
Frisk jerked the sword out, splattering her dress and snarling, bone-white face with splotches of blood. The reverb cannon fell and clattered as the man toppled over in a motionless heap. Jonas was still just staring at the man – he was a decent bouncer, but the boy was used to tossing out rambunctious drunks on their own territory, not the messier sort of violence to which others in their gang had to attend more regularly.
The man with the knife who had been inching toward Jonas and the cannon-bearer a moment ago now hung back, clearly questioning the wisdom in trying to pounce Jonas again, so Andre ignored him and tugged Cyan over to where Amelia was pushing herself up.
“Ah, dammit!” She sat, but one of her legs writhed when she tried to clamber to her feet, sending her back down on her butt again. She scowled at her own foot. “I passed on heels tonight to avoid this very thing! Landed all wrong, anyway…”
>
The ache in Andre’s head was beginning to fade to nothing but a weak throb, and although his old injuries were still stiff from the stress, he could move well enough to offer his good hand to Amelia and pull her up. She was able to stand steadily if she put all her weight on her uninjured ankle.
Frisk spun on them, eyes like a wild animal and face masked by blood. “Babe, you OK?”
“Fine enough, thanks to my hero swooping in to save the day.” Andre was almost flattered until he realized she was referring to Frisk’s actions, not his own. He tried to brush aside his embarrassment by turning to Jonas.
“Angel needs you to see to Vicks. Take Amelia with you and tend to her ankle. Frisk, go find Regina, and the three us of can begin digging around to see if there are any more of Wei’s people tucked away in here.” The man with the knife had already taken off toward the foyer. Andre let him go, figuring that either he would leave for good or, if he tried to sneak up on any of them, Vinnie would shoot him down. He was more concerned about Ming Wei’s whereabouts, at the moment.
“We got them scattered, now,” Frisk said. “I’ll beat down anyone else I find, but I’m gonna keep my eyes peeled first and foremost for Gina and Rudolph and get them to safety. Anything else you need afore I get to that?”
Andre held out his hand. “Yes. Please give me my cane back.”
Daisy reached the second floor disoriented from the acrid taste left by all the smoke and gunpowder in the air, from the commotion below and the adrenaline that felt like lead in her veins. She tried to shake this all off and focus on getting to safety, even as a voice in her head said it wasn’t right, that this whole mess was her fault and the others shouldn’t be left to answer for it alone. Instead, she tried to remember the layout of the second floor from the last time she was here.
The entrances to the balconies were along the hall to her left. To her right was a narrower hallway that connected perpendicular to her current one and contained three doors: one to the right, one to the left, and the last at the end of the hall, likely leading out to the fire escape she was supposed to take. She dreaded the thought of climbing down such a thing in heels – the stairs had been hard enough. In her weariness, or perhaps worry for the others, she glanced to her left to the nearest half-circle balcony. As before, plush chairs were set up around it, creating a cozy but open alcove where patrons could drink and chat in peace while admiring the dance and music from above. Devoid of patrons, it was almost unfamiliar to her.
Daisy deactivated her headband’s magic and crept out onto the balcony at a crouch, peering between the railings to get one last look at her allies before she took off.
Through the dissipating smoke, Daisy could see Angel and Vicks huddled together on the floor near several toppled forms, Jonas and Amelia wrestling with two of Wei’s people, and Frisk and Cyan carrying Andre over to the scene. Regina and Rudolph were nowhere in sight, and when she looked to the furthest balcony on the perpendicular wall, neither was Vinnie.
She didn’t think to be startled by his absence until she heard his deep voice call out from behind her. “Daisy!”
She spun just in time to see a woman in a long coat appear in the opening to the balcony, but this stranger ducked as gunfire cracked through the hallway. She wasn’t hit, but someone behind her cried out, and there was another gunshot. Daisy didn’t understand what was happening in the hallway as the other woman hurried to join her on the balcony, knife in hand.
Daisy stood as the woman charged, and she held out her hand bearing the onyx ring.
Fire erupted from the black stone and spiraled toward her attacker in a whip of flame. Her assailant leaned away from the heat, tilting her upper body so far back that she lost balance, collapsing on the floor as another gunshot rang out in the hall. Daisy heard Vinnie grunt, although she couldn’t see him past the brightness of her trinket’s flame.
“Roxana!” A low voice shouted the name, and the woman on the ground half-turned her head toward it in response. Her hat had toppled off during her tumble, revealing jaw-length black hair and a round, golden face. Daisy thought she looked familiar, although perhaps it was just the name that gave her that impression.
Ming Wei – the hitwoman known on the streets as Roxana. If Angel and Rudolph’s intel was correct, the woman responsible for all the disasters that had befallen Daisy since that first night there at the Gin Fountain, weeks ago.
Daisy released her hold on the trinket’s magic, and the flame disappeared. Through the opening into the hallway, she could see Vinnie grappling on the floor with another man about his same height and breadth, both of their guns apparently knocked away or abandoned. Vinnie’s eyes still glowed from his aura-detection – he must have seen through the smoke as Wei and the other man followed Daisy upstairs.
She was distracted long enough to allow Wei a chance to get to her feet, readying her knife again. There was a gleam to her eyes that Daisy didn’t recognize, but it frightened her. Maybe Frisk was right – she had never been in a life-or-death fight before. She didn’t know what it felt like to kill, or to have someone try to kill her face to face.
Considering the snarl on Wei’s lips and the wild flicker in her eyes, Daisy suspected she was going to gain the experience that night.
Wei rushed in, and Daisy was ready with the onyx ring again.
A pillar about three feet long shot out this time, but Wei ducked low and slashed just below Daisy’s knees, right at the bottom hem of her dress. Daisy couldn’t dodge in her heels, and a burning line seared across the fronts of her legs. Acting on instinct, she shifted her hand to redirect the fire pillar into Wei, but the other woman rolled aside, and the flame collided with the plush chair behind where she had just been crouched. Fire licked its velour upholstery, and before Daisy could deactivate the ring’s power, a small patch of flame caught on the fabric.
“Daisy!” There was a flash and another thunderous gunshot. Daisy tried to swerve aside, unsure of where the bullet was firing from or if it was aimed anywhere near her, and she lunged back into the balcony railing, nearly tipping backward over it. Clutching the top of the railing, gripping until it hurt the bones of her fingertips, she managed to keep herself up on the balcony.
She heard someone shout her name again – not Vinnie, but someone below.
Her position left Wei with another advantage, and she charged in again, knife held up and pointed down.
Daisy’s instincts failed her, or rather, went a more primitive route. Instead of activating the onyx ring again, she reached out to grab Wei’s knife-wielding wrist before she could bring the weapon down. With her other hand, Daisy shoved into Wei’s face, trying to push her back. When Wei tried to wriggle her head away, Daisy clutched down on the woman’s jaw, but Wei thrashed and bit down on the base of her thumb. Drawing her hand back, Daisy yelped and kicked out, striking Wei on the outside of her upper thigh. It appeared to do no damage. Daisy was doing about as well as she had in that one bar fight during her college days. But her opponent then hadn’t had a knife.
Wei ripped her blade-wielding hand away, spinning the knife in her grip to hold it as if to slash at Daisy’s throat, and Daisy imitated Wei’s roll from earlier to escape it. Her dodge spun her along the curve of the balcony’s edge, ending with her nearly crashing into the chair she had set ablaze.
Her head whipped toward the opening to the hallway when she heard another loud grunt. Vinnie collapsed on the floor under the force of his opponent’s fist, and the other man scrambled to retrieve his fallen gun. Daisy was trapped between him and Wei.
She was back on her feet and had her fingers to the bronze pendant as the man aimed his barrel at her. She didn’t need to touch the trinkets to activate them, but she just felt like she needed something to hold on to. Just as the man was about to fire, she channeled the trinket’s magic into the gun in his hands, tilting it up and aiming its trajectory harmlessly over her head as he pulled the trigger.
How many bullets were even left in that thing?
/>
“Daisy!” Whoever called out to her again from below was too late – Daisy heard her name just as Wei grabbed her by the back of the neck and flung her against the railing again.
“This is more effort than it’s worth,” Wei said, her voice wheezing with exhaustion as she brandished the knife.
“Then leave me alone, if it’s such a damn hassle!”
Wei scowled at the response, but Daisy’s attention was pulled by a cry from below.
“Daisy! Jump! Just jump – I’ll catch you!” She didn’t dare pull her eyes away from Wei to look down at Angel, shouting at her from below. Instead, she held Wei’s gaze. The hitwoman was hesitating, just standing there with the knife as the man behind her held back in uncertainty. Apparently, Wei really was debating whether there was any point to putting forth any more effort in attacking Daisy and the Stripes.
But Daisy wasn’t going to wait for her to make a decision.
Slipping her cumbersome shoes off, Daisy gripped the top of the railing and climbed backward up it, indifferent to how far up her skirt Wei or anyone below could see, settling her bare feet to perch between her hands.
“You’re going to do it?” Wei asked. She arched an eyebrow – impressed or incredulous. Daisy sort of felt the same about her own actions right about then. “You’re going to jump?”
“It’s two dozen feet at most. It won’t kill me.” Daisy’s eyes flickered toward the knife, and Wei actually grinned in response to her banter.
“True enough. Jump, then.”
“Daisy!”
She released the railing and pushed her feet against it, launching herself back into the open. Gut dropping as she felt abrupt weightlessness, her fingers instinctively clutched at the bronze pendant again. Its power was not enough to levitate something of her body’s weight, though, and she winced in preparation for impact. The awkward looseness in her stomach tightened back up when something got ahold of her.
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