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My face was splattered with blood, and I didn’t know whose. My arm was getting tired, the exertion of making deep cuts gnawing at it. He couldn’t keep this up forever, but neither could we.
Buller charged Alessandro, throwing everything into his assault. Alessandro dodged. Our eyes met for a quarter of the second, and I knew this was my shot.
Alessandro let go of his falcata. The orange glow dropped a riot shield into his hand, and he jerked it up. Buller hammered at it. The sword cut through the reinforced polycarbonate like it was butter. Instead of shying back, Alessandro braced. Buller smelled blood in the water. In a strength vs strength clash, Alessandro would lose, and Buller knew it. He rained blows onto the shield, hacking off chunks of it, locked onto Alessandro with the instinct of a predator sensing wounded prey.
Alessandro stumbled.
Buller pounded on the remnants of the shield.
I slipped my knife through a narrow gap into his liver.
He didn’t notice.
I pulled the blade free and stabbed him again, fast, driving the blade into his flesh over and over like an icepick, flinging blood each time I pulled it out.
Buller jerked, arching his back.
Alessandro dropped the stub of the shield and leaped up. A ten-inch karambit knife shaped like a double-edged tiger claw flashed in his hand. He sliced at Buller’s throat.
The Crystal Knight fell to his knees. A muffled gurgle escaped his mouth, the sound of his last moments skittering away. He collapsed on his side. The crystal armor melted, leaving a dead man on our driveway. He was large, muscular, and pale, with sparse light brown hair cut short and a weak chin he’d tried to cover up with a goatee. His body was a patchwork of gaping wounds and missing skin.
I heaved a long breath. Konstantin was looking at me like he had seen some alien monster.
Alessandro’s right shoulder was bloody. I rushed to him. He met me halfway.
“Are you hurt?” I asked.
“It’s a scratch.”
A strange hissing noise came from the main house.
Runa.
I turned around.
The nightbloom flailed as if stabbed with a high-voltage wire. Its roots sagged. Its bloom drooped backward, toward us, its petals turning a dull brown and going limp. The flower shuddered. Green fuzz sprouted on the petals. The nightbloom swayed and collapsed, sagging into a liquefying mess of vegetation and rotting fluid, revealing Runa, her right hand extended, her fingers covered with plant gore.
She stared at her fingers in disgust, shook her hand, and said, “Twenty-three minutes since full bloom.”
We had seventeen minutes to administer the antidote. I turned around and sprinted to the infirmary.
The family was back in the conference room. Everyone was in the exact same seats they had taken twenty-four hours ago, but nobody looked the same. We looked like we had gotten caught in an air raid and hadn’t quite made it to shelter in time.
Alessandro sat on my right and Konstantin, back in his Berezin persona, on my left. The fight with the Crystal Knight had come at a cost. Both Alessandro and I were cut up. Once the adrenaline wore off, the pain set in. I must’ve taken a hit to my back, because everything from the left shoulder blade down to my waist felt like one giant bruise. Alessandro must’ve gotten hurt as well, but he showed no signs of it.
Bern had bags under his eyes, and they weren’t clutches, they were totes. He was chugging a Red Bull and staring at his laptop. Next to him, Runa nursed an iced coffee, her expression grim. Halle, her sister, slumped in the chair next to her, with her face on the table. Past Halle, Ragnar had the pinched look and wide eyes of someone who was trying his absolute best to stay awake.
Arkan had hit us with a two-prong attack. It started with three armored vehicles pulling up to the house. Buller got out of the first one and generated his armor. We had expected Buller to show up sooner or later, and the plan always was that Arabella would deal with him. No matter how indestructible he was, there was still a human being in all that armor and after my sister was done venting her frustration, he wouldn’t pose a threat. Predictably, once he popped up on the security feed, Arabella ran out of the main house heading to the front gate.
Unfortunately, Arkan’s Prime summoner, Maya Krause, had opened two portals, one right above the main house and the other at the north gate, and dropped two nightblooms. The sentries at the north gate went down instantly and so did my sister and her strike support team.
Runa happened to be in her siblings’ casita. She heard the siren, accessed the security feed, saw Arabella asleep and Buller strolling in, told her siblings to stay put until the fight was over, and ran out there to fight. Halle and Ragnar obeyed her precisely, meaning the moment she killed the nightbloom, they raced out of the house to help detoxify everyone.
