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A gunshot split the air from close by. I flinched and ducked, then twisted toward a strangled cry of pain and lifted my weapon. Jerry Steiner stood in the street in front of the café. Blood spilled over the hand he pressed to his belly. I didn’t have time to wonder who shot him, not when his other hand held a gun that he lifted toward me. Fuck this piece of shit.
I squeezed my trigger. Click.
My stomach dropped. Misfire. I knew the drill for this, right? Slap, rack, ready. A drill I hadn’t practiced since the Academy. I slapped the magazine to seat it, racked the slide to eject the misfired cartridge. Not fast enough to get a shot off before he took his. No place to take cover. He took a staggering step closer. His eyes met mine over his gun. From this vantage the barrel looked big enough to climb into.
I threw myself down and to the side, bit back a yelp at the gunshot. Steiner’s knee exploded in blood and bone. He let out a hoarse scream and dropped like a felled tree, gun tumbling from his grasp.
Not me. I’m not hit. I scrambled up and put my back against the rear fender of a car. Bryce climbed over a tilted slab of sidewalk and shoved through branches of a fallen oak, face like stone and eyes locked onto Steiner. My hands shook from the excess adrenaline, but I finished clearing my weapon and chambered a fresh round.
Katashi tensed, gaze arrowing toward the valve, though cars blocked his view. Rage suffused his face. I shifted position in case it was a ploy, then risked a tactical peek over the trunk of the car—long enough to see Idris and Pellini on their feet and wearing matching expressions of relief.
A laugh bubbled up. “They dismantled your charges. You lose, you dried up turd.”
Katashi glared up at me in fury and hissed a phrase in Japanese. I had no clue what he’d just called me, but doubted it was a compliment. Erring on the side of caution, I went ahead and kneed him in his old shriveled balls. He purpled and curled in on himself. Asshole.
Steiner screamed as Bryce dragged him by one arm into the shadow of a car not far from me. Bryce shoved the dropped gun into his waistband, then pulled a wallet from Steiner’s back pocket and tucked it into his own. Steiner breathed in shallow rapid breaths and scream-gasped, “God, please, please,” over and over, a cry lost in the midst of other screams and riotous background noise.
“Thanks for the save,” I said to Bryce with a crooked smile.
His face relaxed, no longer the stone mask. “Anytime.” He dropped his gaze to Steiner, sighed. “I’m going to get Idris,” he said.
I wasn’t sure if he was speaking to me or Steiner, but I nodded anyway. He retraced his steps through debris to the parking lot. Pellini emerged from a gap between cars and helped me hustle Katashi into the shadow of fallen oak branches, sitting him behind a car crushed down the middle by an iron lamp post. Despite his grey pallor and shallow panting, Katashi’s eyes were as keen as ever, missing nothing, assessing, calculating.
Fuck him. He could scheme all he wanted. As soon as we got home we were sending the piece of shit to the demon realm for a cozy stay with Mzatal.
Pellini tugged on his mustache. “We need to vacate before his people come looking for him.”
“Not until Idris has dealt with Steiner,” I said, resolved. “He deserves whatever measure of justice he can get out of this.” I understood the indecision in Pellini’s eyes. Serve and protect. Even the scum. I touched his arm, lifted my chin toward Steiner. “He’ll die before a medical team can get to him,” I said quietly. “They’re swamped, and we can’t help him.” I paused. “Remember Amber Palatino.”
Pellini gave a stiff nod, jaw tight.
Idris strode to Steiner with Bryce right behind him. He crouched and spoke to the wounded man, though I couldn’t hear the words. Bryce retreated a few steps. This was Idris’s moment.
Steiner turned his head toward Idris. His agonized words cut through the other noise. “Help me. Oh god. I’m sorry. Please.” His whole body spasmed. Panic contorted his face. “Pleeeeease.”
Idris drew his knife from his belt, flicked it open. My heart dropped. Steiner deserved whatever Idris gave him, but I’d hoped the mortal wounds would keep Idris from a darker path of vengeance.
Steiner eyed the knife with terror that melted into desperate hope. “Mercy. Please . . . yes, please. End it. Please.”
Idris trailed the flat of the blade over Steiner’s throat and down his chest. “No,” he said, face set in icy hatred. With his free hand he gripped Steiner’s ruined knee, twisted. Steiner’s scream speared through my essence. This was worse than killing him.
Idris watched his face with eerie intensity as Steiner begged for mercy between weak, labored breaths. I retrieved Katashi’s arm from the street, then Pellini and I kept a watchful guard and tried to block out screams and moans and sobs—and didn’t intervene.
We both sighed in deep relief when Steiner took his last rattling breath. Idris stood, knife in hand, and turned his back on the corpse. He strode toward us and, for an instant, I saw the stamp of Rhyzkahl in his bearing and intensity. At least the blade in his hand wasn’t an essence blade.
Pellini hauled Katashi to his feet and leaned him up against the car. “Stay right there,” he ordered and left the unspoken “or else” hanging. But Katashi’s attention was solely on Idris.
“Idris, we have to go,” I said.
I might as well have been a mosquito a mile away for all the effect my words had. Idris squared off in front of Katashi. “It’s over. You’re done.” His voice carried quiet promise.
Katashi met his eyes, unflinching. “You enjoyed watching a man die and adding to his pain.”
“He deserved more,” Idris said through clenched teeth.
“It is a shame you were robbed of time to go further,” Katashi said, voice low but rich. “Blood rituals are in your essence.” He smiled. “There is nothing as sweet as building potency through the parting of flesh beneath your blade. And the screams.” His eyes half-closed in rapture, and a shiver of pleasure went through him. “Your sister’s were like celestial music.”
Idris spat a curse in demon and stepped toward him, face contorted in fury.
