He let the shears slip from his finger.
The shears went straight up, like an arrow loosed from a bow.
His head turned toward me.
Then he disappeared. Into the shears. An indeterminate distance in the air. Maybe even not in the Abyss anymore.
I couldn’t speak while I held the rune.
The rune was a tool. Something I could use. If he came back-
No. No guarantees. Even if I knew exactly where he was going to run, no guarantees.
I let the paper drop. Evan caught it.
“Take cover!” I roared the words.
The shears dropped. The Barber had already emerged.
The members of the group had backed to the corners, were gripping shelves and stairs and railings. All at the edges. I stabbed the floor with the Hyena, and I gripped that.
The Barber arrived, smack-dab in the center. Cutting through one section of the great worm of human flesh. The forward section and the rear section flew apart with such force that nearby structures and pillars were destroyed.
The impact brought with it a ringing that might have deafened. A gong, a crash of a bell being broken.
Our pillar flew apart, cracked down the middle, all down the sides. In places, the stairs held it together. In others, it was shattered at the bottom but intact at the top, or vice versa. A split log.
Gaps separated individual chunks and sections of roof.
The ringing continued, and it didn’t abate.
Looking over the edge, I could see the movement.
Every Other in the library now came toward us.
Creaking, cracking, a section of shelves broke away, and crashed into a nearby structure. Others used it as a bridge, crossing to us.
Speaking was impossible, with the noise of the bell.
My own head was filling with noise, worse than before. The split in my skull from the Barber’s grasp ached, making itself acutely known.
Even fighting back was impossible, like this. I could make out Tiff touching the silence charm to her ear. She grabbed Alexis’ wrist and forced Alexis’ hand up to make Alexis do the same.
Johannes, I noted, was helping one of the Behaims. Where they’d been on the stairs before, they now dangled, the stairs themselves at a forty-five degree angle. Too many surfaces without handholds. He offered a hand, supporting them so they didn’t have to rely on the individual rails.
The Barber tossed the shears forward, entered them, exited them, as if he were passing through a door, a trick of the dark.
Did it again. Crossing the roof toward all of the others.
Alister was talking, trying to shout instructions. He and Rose were perched on an edge, with the High Priest nearby.
I saw Rose point skyward, talking to the High Priest. To Jeremy.
Looking over my shoulder, I saw the timeless suit of armor. The section of roof, ironically, had moved at a tilt, putting more secure ground under the armor. I turned to Alister, but he was too preoccupied to notice, and the noise of the bell was deafening, making it impossible for me to communicate the fact to him.
I moved, skipping over the fractured roof, over gaps that allowed glimpses of those things that stirred within.
Nearly invisible in the shadow, an eye larger than I was peered through one gap, watching me as I crossed. Iris swelling, then abruptly narrowing. By the dimensions of it, whatever it belonged to had to be so large that it nearly filled the entire pillar. A body in a narrow coffin.
The first of the Others were reaching us. Among them, perhaps the most vicious of them, were the ones the Barber had made. A bird without flesh, human beings broken until they resembled spiders, crawling and skittering forward on shattered limbs, no doubt howling, but impossible to hear in the chaos.
The Barber still moved toward the others. A halting progress, zig-zagging, from one bit of secure ground to the next.
I saw Alister’s eyes go wide as the Barber approached them.
A Behaim threw up a ward, a protective shroud of some sort. The Barber simply swept the shears sideways through it, dashing it to pieces. Too little, the wrong element.
The shears closed on Alister, and there as nothing he could do about it.
I followed, four steps behind the Barber. I lunged, and the ground crumbled under my feet, very nearly costing me the leverage and distance I needed.
I wasn’t close enough to put the Hyena between the blades, nor was I strong enough to do anything to the Barber.
I was close enough to put the Hyena between the handles of the shears. The only thing that matched the jarring of the handles stopping, blades on either side of Alister’s throat, was the pounding, impossibly loud noise of the bell.
It was a momentary interruption.
I opened my mouth, shouted a message. The words were dashed to every realm of the Abyss by the noise around me.
I reached out with my wing instead. I touched Alister’s hand.
He lowered it.
With the very tip of my wing, I touched the ring on his hand. The Behaim family ring.
I moved my wing to the side, pointing at the armor with the tip.
The suit of armor moved in that same instant.
Rose clutched Alister, and she pulled him down and away. They slipped backward, and they dropped five feet before landing on their backs on a section of stairs, almost out of sight. The High Priest was right behind them.
The Barber kicked me, and the shears snapped closed. The sound of the shears cut through all the rest of the noise, clear and sharp.
He stepped down, landing on the stairs, and wood creaked, threatening to give way.
If only we were so lucky.
I started to follow, but a hand reached through the crack below. An iron grip held me in place.
I bent down to slash at it, and something tackled me from behind. Other hands reached up to seize me.
The timeless armor marched past. Giving chase where I couldn’t.
My progress was halting, struggling. There wasn’t one person we’d brought with us, Ellie and Christoff excepted, who weren’t now dealing with three or four serious Others and maybe two lost souls. The Barber’s creations were tearing through the rest, and very quickly closing the distance. We were on the stairs that spiraled up the exterior of the building, with most of the group at one corner, the southern face of the building to their right, with the Barber’s monsters ascending the stairs, clawing through all the rest, and the Barber at the western face to the left, cutting off their ascent. The timeless knight followed the demon, but I doubted its ability to achieve anything. It was more an immovable, indestructible object than a demon slayer.
And here I was, standing over it all, helpless, damaged and broken.
For most of the group, there was no way up, no way down except falling.
Chaos.
What followed was an impact that nearly matched Barbatorem’s fall. One I’d experienced myself.
Not so long ago, at Hillsglade House.
A smiting, perhaps. Something on that scale.
An act of god.
The High Priest had made a move, clutching a horn in one hand.
The impact hit every Other excepting me and Evan. Many were sent flying from the exterior of the building, joining a practical torrent of books.
Their screams and howls cut through silence. The ringing had ceased.
The Barber was left attempting to catch its balance.
The timeless knight appeared behind it. I could see the strain on Alister’s face, the focus.
He controlled the knight. The knight stabbed with the lance, driving the Barber back and over the railing.
The demon fell. Disappearing into the shadows below.
“Come on!” I shouted. My voice was so quiet in the stillness, the ringing it provoked so mild.
If I brought Others to me, then so be it. Better me than the group.