I edged closer, the same halting progress I’d been managing for the last several minutes.
Rose was crumpled up on the ground, a claw mark on her already savaged upper body. She looked up and glared. “You’re staying, for as long as I can get the Abyss to keep you.”
“That won’t be long at all,” Ms. Lewis said. “You know, this all could have been so much tidier.”
“We’re not the sorts to do tidy.”
“Things are the way they are for a reason. What have you really gained, Rose? At the end of all this?”
“You’re assuming it’s over,” Rose said. She grunted with pain, and the look on her face suggested she hated that it had happened.
Close. I was so close.
Not that there was much I could do, even if I got there. I was a hand.
“Barbatorem,” Ms. Lewis said. “Could you convince Ms. Thorburn that things are resolved? I’d like to accomplish that much, at the very least.”
“I can,” Barbatorem said, his voice low. He’d already healed the damage that Bristles had done. He spoke, and he sounded a hell of a lot more like Johannes as he did, “I’m terribly sorry, Rose. I agree with Ms. Lewis. I wanted to do this better. I never harbored an abundance of ill will for you.”
“Stop,” Rose said. Bleeding, wounded, worn out, perhaps a bit touched by the Abyss, she looked like she had more of me in her than ever. Sheer savage stubbornness. Warrior grit. “Don’t use his voice. There’s no point in faking it anymore.”
There was a long pause.
“Ah. Yes,” the Barber said, and the words were guttural, hollow. There was nothing of Johannes in the sounds that passed through he mouth of his black-worm face.
“Lewis,” the possessed practitioner said.
Heads turned.
Peter. Earlier he’d fallen. Now he was up, active. One arm was useless, the other held a chunk of stone from the broken edge of the rooftop.
He was at the wall of blades that had been erected around Faysal, prying.
“Peter!” Paige called out.
He noticed that we, our enemies included, had realized what he’d done. He redoubled his efforts, no longer trying to be subtle or quiet.
He smashed. “Bullshit! Bullshit shitty assed bullshit fakery!”
Two blades broke in one swing.
“Christopher,” Ms. Lewis ordered, only to see that the hellhound wasn’t yet free. “Barbatorem!”
Barbatorem threw the sickle.
“Get down!” Paige screamed.
Peter didn’t. Call it Thorburn stubbornness, or just his natural inclinations, he wasn’t one to follow orders. He turned to look at the source of the cry, saw the projectile, and threw himself to one side.
The weapon sank into the wall above where Bristles had fallen. A foot to the right, and it might have continued on through the hole in the wall, disappearing into whatever lay beyond, or falling to the street.
Barbatorem gestured, and what he did had to be a kind of enchantment, drawing on his connection to the blade. He moved, and he covered the distance with remarkable speed, closing on Peter.
He stopped and went still as his hand settled on the handle of the weapon.
He pulled it free, then kicked Bristles’ body over the edge.
Peter was still sitting on his ass, hands behind him to prop up his upper body, not yet on his feet.
A demon against a normal human.
“Fuck you!” Peter shouted.
Resistance was admirable, but even with everything we’d established and accomplished, it wasn’t enough to decide that particular conflict.
I’d already gone still, lurking at the base of the wall, ready in case Ms. Lewis tried anything. I watched, and would have been holding my breath if I’d had lungs. Or a mouth.
A shadow moved behind Barbatorem.
Green Eyes?
She’d been too hurt. Barely able to keep out of the way.
Not Evan, nor one of the vestige kids.
Rose had called out to anyone willing or able to help. She’d called one Bogeyman we knew.
The creepy man in the ill-fitting suit from the Tenements stepped out from the other side of the wall. I’d bound him and sent him out to pursue our enemies, and here he was.
The Barber saw him. Too late to react. The man in the ill-fitting suit stepped to one side, then pushed.
A simple, stupid one-trick bogeyman pulling out his trick. Defenestration.
The Barber toppled over the same brink it had just kicked Bristles over.
A long pause lingered.
Peter summoned his strength and threw himself at the cage again, stone in hand.
The cage shattered, and in the midst of that breakage, the diagram that sealed Faysal’s form broke.
Light flared, spreading, and where the wings that Faysal had drawn had been obscured by the wall that rose around us, they now rose up and around us, spreading over the sky.
The light was bright enough that it helped to obscure the darkness behind.
The wings folded, and in the sweep, the orbs and expanse that had decorated the firmament of this place were wiped clean. There was only darkness. Not a nether sort of darkness, or anything of the sort, but comfortable, absence-of-ordinary-light darkness.
The figure disappeared, spearing out and through that darkness.
The movement seemed to prompt another rumble. This time, it didn’t stop.
One more anchor point gone. Johannes’ lack of claim was undeniable.
“Man, Angels are assholes,” Paige said. “He couldn’t stick around long enough to contribute?”
Ms. Lewis turned to leave, gesturing to Christopher. Heading for the broken section of roof. Maybe where they could have hopped down and away.
I seized her by the ankle.
It created a delay, prompting a stumble. Time for others to notice.
Mags and Paige were on their feet in a moment. They threw themselves at her, pinning her against the wall with their weight. Christopher disappeared, down and away.
The struggle was brief, but it was human strength against human strength, and by virtue of numbers more than anything else, it soon came to a halt. The grip of the two girls secured on the woman’s wrists, Ms. Lewis pulled down to her her knees. She momentarily struggled again, almost to test that she really was caught. A long pause followed, quiet but for the steady rumble, still in the midst of an entire domain that was steadily going to pieces, fragments breaking away from every wall, every ceiling and object.
The sky above was gone, the ground was disintegrating, and everything between was breaking down.
Rose stared up at Ms. Lewis from her position on the ground. Rose smiled.
“I didn’t want to do this, you know, given the consequences. I was so close to being free of my debt, being free,” Ms. Lewis said. “Orn-”
Mags struck her in the teeth with the pipe-shotgun.
“So don’t,” Mags answered.