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He sighs. “I told you. I am something different than you. A hand is a peasant’s tool. A Gold’s tool is his mind. Were you of better breeding, you may have realized this sacrifice means so very little to me.”
Then he starts to cut. Tears stream down his face as the blood first wells. He’s sawing and Pax can’t even watch. The Jackal is halfway done when he looks up at me with a sane smile that convinces me of his complete insanity. His teeth chatter. He is laughing, at me, at this, at the pain. I’ve not met anyone like him. Now I know how Mickey felt when he met me. This is a monster in the flesh of a man.
The Jackal is about to break his own wrist to make the job easier when Pax curses and gives him an ionBlade. It will go through in a single stroke.
“Thank you, Pax,” the Jackal says.
I don’t know what to do. Everything inside me is screaming sense. I should kill him now. Put a blade through his throat. This is someone you do not let go. This is someone you do not piss on and then send back into the wild. He is so far beyond Cassius it makes me want to laugh. Yet I told him he could leave if he cut, and he’s cutting. Dear God.
“You’re gory mad,” Pax breathes.
The Jackal mutters something about fools. It’s just a hand, he says. My hands are my everything. To him, they are nothing.
When he has finished, he sits there with a mostly cauterized stump. His face is like snow, but his belt is fastened into a tourniquet. There’s a shared moment between us where he knows I am not going to let him leave.
Then I see a distortion move through an open window. The Proctors came as I hoped, but I am distracted, unprepared. And when I see a small sonic detonator clatter onto the table and the Jackal grab it with his one hand, I know I’ve made such a mistake. I gave the Proctors time to help him. Everything slows, yet I can only watch.
With the same hand that holds the tiny detonator, the Jackal lashes upward with Pax’s ionBlade. He sticks the blade into my big friend’s throat. I shout and lunge forward just as the Jackal presses the detonator’s button.
A sonic blast rips out from the device, throwing me across the room. The Howlers slam into the walls. Pax flips into the door. Cups, food, chairs, scatter like rice in the wind. I’m on the floor. I shake my head, trying to gain my bearings as the Jackal comes toward me. Pax staggers to his feet, blood dripping from his ears, from his throat. The Jackal says something to me, holds up the blade. Then Pax launches himself forward, not onto the Jackal, but onto me. His weight crushes me, and his body covers mine. I can barely breathe. I do not see what happens, but I feel it through Pax’s body. A shudder. A spasm. Ten impacts as the Jackal stabs at Pax trying furiously to get at me like some rabid animal digging in the dirt, digging through Pax to kill me while I’m down.
Then there is nothing.
Blood drips onto my face, warms my body. It is my friend’s.
I try to move Pax. I manage to squeeze out from under him. The Jackal has fled and Pax is bleeding to death. A banshee wails in my ears. The Proctors are gone as well. The Howlers stumble to their feet. When I look back to Pax, he is dead, his mouth pulled into a quiet smile. Blood slithers along the stone. My own chest tightens and I fall to a knee sobbing.
He had no last words. He had no goodbye.
He threw himself upon me. And was savaged.
Dead.
Loyal Pax. I clutch his huge head. It hurts to see my titan fallen. He was meant for more. Such a soft heart in such a hard form. He will never laugh again. Never stand on the bridge of a destroyer. Never wear the cape of a knight or carry the scepter of an Imperator. Dead. It shouldn’t have been this way. It is my fault. I should have just ended things quickly.
What a future he could have had.
Sevro stands behind me, face pale. The Howlers are up and seething. Four weep silent tears. Blood trickles from their ears. The world is soundless. We cannot hear, but a pack of wolves does not need words to know that it is time to hunt.
He killed Pax. Now we kill him.
The Jackal’s trail of blood leads to one of the keep’s short spires. From there, it disappears into the courtyard. Rain has washed it away. We jump in a pack of eleven from the spire to a lower wall, rolling as we hit. Then we’re down in the courtyard and Sevro, our tracker, leads the way through a postern gate into the rugged low mountains.
The night is hard. Rain and snow sweep sideways. Lighting flashes. Thunder rumbles, but I hear it as though in a dream. I run with the Howlers in a staggered line. We roll over dark crags, along precipitous drops in search of our quarry. My swaddled boots slow me, but they must be covered. My plan can still work, even after all this.
I do not know how Sevro guides us. I’m lost in the chaos. My mind is on Pax. He shouldn’t have died. I cornered a Jackal and let him chew his way out. I remember how Mustang looked at him. She knew who he was. She knew and she wanted to talk to me in private. Whatever their connection, her loyalty was mine. But how does she know him?
Sevro takes us into the high mountain passes where snow still stacks kneehigh. Tracks here. Snow flurries around us. I’m chilled. My cloak is soaked. The slingBlade bounces on my back. My shoes squish. And blood dots the snow. We sprint uphill through a snowy pass between two rugged peaks. I see the Jackal. He’s stumbling one hundred meters distant. He goes down in the snow, then he’s up again. He’s iron to have made it this far. We will catch him and we will kill him for what he did to Pax. He didn’t have to stab my titan. My pack begins to howl sorrowfully. The Jackal looks back and stumbles on. He will not escape.
We sprint up the snowy incline. Night and darkness. Wind sweeps sideways. I howl, but it is muffled after the sonic blast, like the sound has been swaddled in cotton. Then something strange distorts the flurries in front of us. A shape. An invisible, intangible shape outlined by the falling snow. A Proctor. A stone sinks down into my stomach. This is where they kill me. This is what Fitchner warned me about.
Apollo deactivates his cloak. He smiles at me through his helmet and calls something. I cannot hear what he says. Then he waves a pulseFist and Sevro and the Howlers scatter as a tiny sonic boom blows five of our pack back down the hill. My eardrums wail. They may never be the same. PulseFist again. I dive away. Pain lances my foot. Spins me. Then the pain is gone. I’m up and sprinting at Apollo. His fist flickers a distortion of force at me. I dodge three blasts. Spinning, turning like a top. I jump. My sword comes down on his head and stops cold. PulseShield, when activated, cannot be penetrated by anything but a razor. I knew this. But there has to be some showmanship.
Apollo watches me, impervious in his armor. My pack has been blasted back down the hill. I see the Jackal struggling on the mountainside. He seems stronger now. A distortion follows him. Some other Proctor giving him strength. Venus, I think.
I scream out the rage that’s been building in me since I went under Mickey’s knife.
Apollo says something I can’t hear. I curse him and swing my blade again. He catches it and tosses it into the snow. The invisible layer of pulseShield around his fist strikes my face—never touching, yet sending agony into the nerves. I scream and fall. Then he picks me up by my hair and we rise into the storm. He soars on gravBoots till we’re three hundred meters up; I dangle from his hand. The snow swirls around us. He speaks again, adjusting some frequency so my damaged ears can hear.
