He fired.
Shots clipped bone and branch. They made holes the size of softballs on their way out.
“Your father’s weapons?” I asked.
Confidence. I knew this much.
“Some,” he said.
“You know where they came from?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
I set my jaw.
Theatrics. I had to appeal to the spirits, and the spirits liked a show.
When it all came down to it, I was an preternaturally tough Other with a broken sword. I had to close the distance. Be a little reckless.
I swatted with the Hyena, as I drew close enough. Sure enough, his sword parried automatically. It left him open.
Maybe he expected me to try and cut him, or hit him. But I didn’t. I embraced him, hugging his sword arm to his side, gripping his gun arm, forcing it down.
Gripping the tail end of the barbed-wire encrusted chain, I caught the back of his throat, pulling him even closer.
“For your brothers and sisters,” I said, loud enough for nearby Duchamps to hear. I saw them stop, turning to see, if not fast enough to act.
A bit more, in the way of theatrics.
Maybe, I hoped, if the universe had any justice at all, a bit of karma. A bit more strength.
He pulled the trigger, and a bit of the wood at my back blew away. Sections of ribs.
But people were scared.
That, at least, was enough to keep me going. To balance it out.
Even with a bad angle, I was close enough to be able to use the sword to cut him near the spine. Nothing vital. I shifted angle, then gripped the handle with both hands, and pulled it close.
He collapsed.
That had been vital.
I pulled myself free.
I saw the tension. Felt the fear.
I saw Green Eyes slip under the railing. Intact enough.
“No quarrel with you,” I said, turning my back on them. “I killed the ones I was asked to kill.”
The inevitable question came. “Rose?”
“Duchamps,” I said.
I passed the Other who had chased me. I saw it watch me.
I only heard a chuckle.
A part of me felt like it was mocking me.
Taking advantage of the very same thing that had plagued me from the beginning of all this. In a sense, killing a son for the crimes of the father.
Onward.
13.06
I’d perched on the edge of a rooftop, and I watched through curtains of falling snow as the Duchamps shifted positions. The tolling of the bell in the background had returned to normal, or as normal as a ghostly knell could get.
Green Eyes slithered away from me, her tail scraping against my wounded lower back and the back pockets of my jeans, as she approached the roof’s edge. She gripped the edge, and leaned over, elbows bent at right angles, watching.
Evan, sitting on my shoulder, was a little less dramatic. But he watched all the same.
Some of the Duchamps saw me, I knew. They could see the fact that I was looking, and trace it back to me.
But even with the bell going quiet, they were focused on their immediate safety. They maintained a fighting retreat, abandoning their position by the beach as they headed Northwest. Given how the beach here sat at the east end of downtown, their direction was toward the city proper. They were moving quickly, getting protections back in order, and communicating with the others around them.
I saw how the group moved as they came around the edge of the park. There were groups that had broken into threes – the pyromancer was part of one group, and there were two more groups that were composed entirely of Duchamp women and girls. As an Other approached, it was set on fire, left to scream and roll around in the snow. Another approached from a different direction, only to get rooted in place by a trio of Duchamps. Binding it to the ground. They gave it a wide berth, casting glances over their shoulders to make sure that the rear group was holding off pursuers.
A portion of the crowd passed them, giving a similar berth to the immobilized Other. But it only took moments. They moved on at a quick walk, and the Other fell in step just behind them.
“We’ll have to watch out for that,” I said. “They’re operating in threes. That group seems to be more offensive, given how the pyromancer is there. That’s one of the guys we’re after.”
“I see him,” Evan said.
“The other group is binding and capturing. That’s almost scarier. Once we’re bound, we’re relying on Evan to break it. Being hurt is… almost temporary.”
I saw it happen again, and I pointed. “There. Can you see what they’re doing to pull that off?”
Green Eyes tilted her head, her temple resting on my forearm, to better follow the line of my arm and finger.
“No. They’re holding up their tools and saying something,” she said. She raised her head.
The Duchamp woman nearest the group turned her head. More than one other Duchamp did the same, until most of the women who weren’t actively retreating were looking in our direction.
“I think they see us,” Evan said.
“Yeah,” I replied.
“They could do something to us, couldn’t they?”