Maybe not.
Robert and Margaret must have heard the gunshot. I didn’t know where the door was, or whether it even had a lock, so I didn’t bother looking; I just turned and started half-running, half-limping toward the nearest window. I’d shoot it out if I had to. I’d do whatever it took to get out of this damn building. I’d die in the open air. If that was the closest I could get to a happy ending, then so be it. It was better than the alternative.
The door banged open when I was still only halfway there, accompanied by the sound of running footsteps. “Freeze!” snarled Robert.
I didn’t freeze. What was the worst thing he could do, shoot me? I was losing blood fast, and the room was starting to go dark around the edges. One more gunshot wouldn’t do anything but finish the job. As long as he couldn’t take me alive, I won.
“No,” said Margaret. Her tone was different, much more anxious . . . and her accent was gone. She sounded American. “You freeze.”
“Margaret?” Robert, on the other hand, sounded utterly puzzled. The footsteps stopped. Thank God. “What are you doing?”
“I’m holding a gun to your head,” said Margaret reasonably. No—not Margaret. It was Margaret’s voice, but it wasn’t Margaret speaking. The tones and accent were all wrong. “Verity? Stop running. I don’t know how long I can hold her.”
I stopped running. I was so tired I could barely breathe. I still managed to turn and smile wanly at the scene behind me: Margaret Healy, the woman who’d lost her anti-telepathy charm, holding a gun against the temple of Robert Bullard.
“Hello, Sarah,” I said.
Sarah contorted Margaret Healy’s lips into a wan smile. “You know, if you were bored, we could have gone to the ballet or something.” Servitors appeared from behind her, making their serpentine way into the room. Robert’s eyes tracked them, his expression never changing.
“I’ll keep that in mind for next time.” I raised the gun I’d reclaimed from Peter Brandt, aiming it squarely at Robert’s chest. My hand was shaking so badly that I was afraid I’d miss my target, something I hadn’t needed to worry about since elementary school. I removed my other hand from my stomach, using it to steady my elbow.
Margaret—Sarah—gasped. “Verity, you’re hurt.”
“Yeah, single gunshot wound to the abdomen. It hurts like a bitch and I’m losing a lot of blood here, so if you’re not the only member of the cavalry, this would be a great time to bring in reinforcements.” The servitors were good for looking intimidating, but without a dragon to give them orders, they weren’t going to be good for much beyond that. I didn’t know why she didn’t have a dragon with her, and I didn’t have time to worry about it. Spots were starting to appear around the edges of my vision.
“You’re going to die here,” said Robert. He sounded surprisingly calm, considering the situation he was in. “All of you. And you, witch, wherever you are, we’ll find you. You’ll pay for what you’ve done.”
It took me a moment to realize that he was talking to Sarah. I actually laughed a little, snorting indelicately through my nose. “Oh, dude. She’s not a witch. Witches are way less dangerous.”
“Cuckoo to you, too,” said Margaret/Sarah, digging the barrel of her gun a little deeper into Robert’s temple. “Verity, can you walk?”
“I don’t really know.” Honesty is sometimes the best policy. “I do know I wouldn’t get very far if I tried. So I’m sort of opposed to trying.”
“Verity!” She sounded genuinely upset. No real surprise there. “I can’t hold her for much longer. She’s fighting me!”
“I didn’t know you could hold someone like this at all. It’s a new trick for you.”
“It was Kitty’s idea.” Margaret/Sarah’s face contorted like she’d been punched. “She’s fighting me hard, Very. Come on. We have to get you out of here before I lose her. Please.”
“Yes, do run,” said Robert. “You’ve killed one of us already. You’ve shown us where our weaknesses are. We’ll find you. And when we do, you’ll wish to God that you’d let us take you here and now. Or you could surrender. Let us treat your wounds, tell us where to find your witch, and submit to the mercy of the Covenant.”
“I wasn’t aware that we were in the business of mercy,” said Margaret, all cold fury and hate. Her voice was her own again, all traces of Sarah gone as she pulled her gun away from Robert’s temple and swung it toward me. I widened my stance, trying to cover both of them at once. It wasn’t going to work, and I knew it. From the satisfied gleam in her eyes, so did she. “You’ve befouled my mind, you little bitch. Do you know what that means?”
“It means you lose,” said Uncle Mike, stepping through the doorway behind her and aiming his crossbow at the back of her head. Istas was only half a step behind him, deceptively sweet-looking in a little pink pinafore. Her hair was pulled into girlish pigtails and tied off with white bows. She was smiling. That’s never a good sign with Istas.
“You’re outnumbered,” I said, with as much bravado as I could muster. “Drop your weapons. I promise we’ll be more fair to you than you were going to be to me.”
“No,” said Margaret, and cocked back the hammer on her gun—
—only to freeze as Istas calmly reached forward and fastened one rapidly expanding hand (already better classed as “a paw”) over the gun, completely engulfing both it and Margaret’s hand. “You may fire,” said Istas, as if she were conferring some great favor. “I will remove your entire arm a moment later, but you may fire.”
“I’d really rather she didn’t,” I said. The black spots were spreading. I teetered, catching myself at the last minute, and kept aiming my gun at Robert. “We have to . . . we gotta . . . this has to end. They can’t walk away from this.”
“But we can’t kill them, either,” said Dominic. He appeared in the doorway behind Uncle Mike. His face was set in a blank, expressionless mask. It didn’t waver as he looked past the heads of the Covenant agents to me, filthy, naked, and bleeding all over the warehouse floor. “If we kill them, the Covenant sends more.”
“We win,” said Robert.
Istas squeezed Margaret’s hand. Margaret yelped, unable to help herself. “I am not so sure of that,” said Istas. “There is a difference between ‘living’ and ‘retaining all your limbs.’”
“They can’t leave,” said Uncle Mike. “They know who Verity is. It’s not safe to let them go.”
“So they can’t live and they can’t die.” It was taking everything I had just to keep myself upright. “Oh, and here’s one more for you: Dominic can’t stay here if we send them home. They’d never forgive another defection.” There was no way to win. There was no way to get out of this with everyone still standing.
“No. But they might be willing to bury a traitor.” Dominic stepped around his former colleagues and crossed to where I was standing. He took the gun from my hand, aiming it at Robert as he slid an arm around my waist, holding me up. I let myself sag into him.
Then I realized what he’d just said. “What? No! No. We’re not going to kill you.” I wanted to pull away and glare at him. I didn’t have the strength.
“I wasn’t going to ask you to,” said Dominic. “Sarah?”
“I’m here.” Sarah stepped up behind Uncle Mike, moving into the room on silent feet. “Istas, let go of Margaret’s hands. Robert’s anti-telepathy charm is attached to his medal of St. George. Take it off him.”