Words became a chant, and, the chant became song. A hymn.
The hymn made for a pattern, structure, the religion it evoked made for years of tradition and symbolism, reinforced by the collective of man.
To ward off what she hoped was an imp, designed or born to work against mankind on an intrinsic level.
The imp stirred in reaction.
Discomfort?
Gunshots rang out, and people at the edges of Rose’s group dropped.
Her words faltered.
The sphinx and the imp both lunged at the same time. The sphinx reaching for Fell, way off to the right, the imp going for Rose.
Ty did what he could to erect a barrier, throwing papers into the air, drawing an image, but the imp bypassed it. Wrong kind of defense for this threat.
The Astrologer glowed, a different collection of points of light, and a great ram appeared in the air.
The imp moved away.
“Brute force works!” the Astrologer shouted.
Rose nodded, raising her voice as she resumed the hymn.
But even though the imp was held at by, shadows all around them grew deeper by the second.
More?
And, worse, Alister and Ainsley were at the house, with no backup.
Another gunshot. Ty fell backwards, and the movement seemed oddly fake, it was so slow, out of sync with the noise.
The blood was real, however.
“Fuck!” Ty shouted. “Ah, god!”
Rose only managed to glimpse Fell for an instant before he was gone.
She managed to keep track of the words. It was hard, because a number of letters were pronounced differently from how they were written, and the words weren’t quite words that came naturally, though they were vaguely familiar. It mandated focus.
The imp was up there, almost posing in the air, legs crossed, arms and wings spread, fragments of bone and feathers radiating around it, staring through its mask of bone.
Fell stepped out of shadows, gun pointed at Rose’s head.
She already knew moving would, barring magical aid, do nothing. One couldn’t dodge bullets. Unless, maybe, they were Blake, or a certain small sparrow.
Instead, she met his eyes with her own.
She pushed Conquest into her gaze. The glare of a tyrant, a condescending, arrogant, unflinching stare.
It was, as it happened, a connection of sorts. Conquest had dominated Fell’s life, controlled the man’s destiny. For this effigy of Fell, well, it was one more connection to use.
With her own gaze, she could see the connection snap into being, the taint dancing along it, reaching out to attack Rose by another angle.
She’d maybe made him hesitate in pulling the trigger for a second, maybe two. But she’d opened herself up to ruin. Look away, and he’d shoot. Stare, and he’d use the connection between eyes, windows to the soul, to consume her.
She kept up the hymn, because to do otherwise would doom all the others, and she stared Fell down, as he brought about her end.
The connection was broken. Rose blinked.
A mermaid’s tail slapped left, then right, as she tore into Fell.
Rose blinked.
Bloody strings and tatters hanging from between narrow, fishlike teeth, Green Eyes looked at Rose with one intact eye glowing in the gloom.
Green Eyes spat out a gobbet of flesh, then dove into deeper snow, disappearing beneath.
She hadn’t been with the group. Rose had barely even thought about her.
Blake hadn’t given Rose a connection to the mermaid. No fondness.
That momentary look that she’d been given, it left her feeling uneasy.
She’d seen horrible things, but the mermaid was somehow one that Rose felt would linger more in her mind while she tossed and turned at night. Perhaps it was due to Green Eyes’ connection to Rose, or the very human loathing that emanated from a very inhuman form.
Growing up, Rose had been well educated in just how close to home and heart that particular kind of loathing could get.
Alister was at the door, and Laird was standing on the opposite side. Alister couldn’t approach, but Laird couldn’t back away.
Laird’s head turned.
Rose felt something change. A shift in pressure, like a door to the outside opening. Ainsley had broken down the barrier.
“Run!” Isadora called out. “They’re here!”
One small advantage gained, another major move by enemy forces.
The lawyers were here. At the far end of the street. Ms. Lewis and Mr. Levin. Johannes and Faysal were absent.
The house wouldn’t work as a hiding place. They couldn’t get to Laird and defeat him in time, especially within his own demesne.
They couldn’t leave him there unmolested, either.
“Burn it!” Rose shouted, abandoning her hymn. Tiff was quick to throw out another temporary barrier to block the imp as the barrier of words ceased to have an effect. “Tear down the house! Get the family out! Everyone else run!”
Isadora pounced on the edge of the roof, where a window jutted out. She clawed at it with a great leonine paw, but did no damage.
Laird’s wife and children were just past the glass.
The glass shattered from within. The sphinx worked to help them out, pulling the two boys against her chest.
The Eye had reached the ground floor. He passed within the doors, and the walls on either side of him lit up, as if they’d been doused in gasoline and touched with a match.
The rest, Rose included, ran as a mob, and it wasn’t pretty, nor was it organized. They didn’t have a destination.
Still, they put distance between themselves and the lawyers.
“Hurry!” Isadora cried out.
Isadora’s focus was on the house’s interior. The bottom floor was already blazing, and the upper floor was joining it.
If Laird was capable of putting the fire out, he would have already.
“Don’t hesitate!” Isadora shouted, louder, an order.
One of the boys reached, shouted something Rose couldn’t hear over the fracas, over her own voice singing the hymn loud enough to maybe keep the imp away.
There was a scream. The same sort of scream that had come from the Shepherd. One that went beyond simple sound, reverberated to the soul, and not in a good way.
Isadora twisted her head and body away, not looking, she spread her wings, and she leaped from the roof.
With the boys, but not Laird’s wife.
She couldn’t fly with a burden, so she landed close to the group instead. She dropped the boys near Paige, then ran alongside the group, wings folded.
Alister and Ainsley were following, catching up, and the Eye followed behind, neither catching up nor falling behind.
Rose looked at the house, and she saw the fires taking it. Less than a minute had elapsed in total.
She looked for and spotted the connection between the boys and Laird. She saw it break, dissolving.
The construct was gone.
Her eye turned to look at the pursuers.
They were falling behind, but that was no guarantee that they’d stay behind. They did what they did for a reason, and if a diabolist like them was reckless, the diabolist would lead a short, unfortunate existence.
If they’d wanted to attack, back at the edge of the Library, they could have been a lot more aggressive than they had.
A desire to avoid recklessness was part of it. Another part of it was that they did have the tools to utterly destroy their enemy. They could act in a measured, deliberate fashion, and each action would be meaningful. Claiming Johannes had been one such action. Claiming Faysal through Johannes had been another. Even sending Laird here, to deny the group one kind of sanctuary, it had probably been decided with care and strategy.