"I'm only sorry I couldn't do that to him while he was alive," she said, and hacked at it again.
I laid my hand on top of hers, "Enough, Alex. That's enough."
"It's never enough!" she shouted, her voice cracking. "Don't tell me it's enough!"
"He's dead, Alex. He can't feel anything."
"No," she said. "But I can." She let out a scream and hacked down again, and this time the head split, leaking gore on to the table, the two halves wobbling crazily, one eye staring askew out of each half.
I waited while the heavy blade swung from her hand, watching her breathe, waiting for the focus to come back into her eyes. Kneeling gently beside the rest of Watkins's body, I ripped the tail from his lab-coat. I stood and offered the blood-spattered rag to Alex.
"Wipe your hands."
She dropped the blade with a heavy clatter on the metal table and opened her palms and looked at them, smeared with gore. She did not take the rag.
"Alex, you've done what you meant to do. Wipe your hands."
She looked up, horror on her face, whether at what she had done or at what she remembered, I didn't know. Edging forward, I moved the sword out of her reach, then did my best to gently wipe what was left of Doctor Watkins off her hands. She stood there while I cleaned one hand and then the other, eyes screwed shut, tears leaking from them down her cheeks.
The sound of automatic gunfire brought her back to me. Her head jerked around at the sound.
"We have to go," I told her, picking up my sword and wiping the hilt with the remains of the rag.
She let me take her hand and lead her through the debris and bodies and out into the corridor. The big cat had gone, along with whatever it had been eating. I opened the well of power within me and wrapped us in glamour, turning eyes away and avoiding notice, extending it as far as I could to include both of us.
The corridors were strewn with slashed and broken uniformed bodies. Many of them appeared burned, with blistered faces and blackened hands. It looked as if a group of soldiers had tried to ambush Raffmir. It had clearly not gone as planned, though there was none of the finesse that Raffmir had shown before. He had simply hacked his way through them and left them to die.
Beyond them the iron gate was wide open, the lock blown where they had broken in to reach the labs.
It was only when we pushed past the shattered doors into the office area, the glass scraping and crunching under our feet, that I heard the 'chink-chunk' sound of a shotgun reload. I shoved Alex backwards, dodging away from the noise.
A boom sounded far too loud echoing inside my head. I spun around as if I had been sideswiped by a truck. My shoulder went numb, my arm slapping uselessly against the wall, the sword flailing from my hand. I collided with the wall and rolled to the floor, scattering shattered glass. In slow motion I heard the chink-chunk of the shotgun reloading.
Alex shrieked, "Dad!'
At the sound, the figure in the darkness twisted towards Alex as I got my feet under me and kicked off, launching myself at the shooter. As the shotgun swept around, my wounded shoulder collided with his torso in a jolt of searing pain. He careened backwards and there was a bright flash and another boom as the shotgun erupted in a hail of broken glass, falling plaster and smoke.
The man went down beneath me, landing heavily on his side. He tried to roll away as I crawled up him onehanded. He shouted and screamed, trying to beat me back with the butt of the shotgun. Flickering moonlight washed out into the room as the well of power opened up within me, sending out prickling sparkles of refracted moonlight from glass fragments. With a hand as black as empty night, I wrenched the gun from him and tossed it away. He beat at my head with gloved fists but my fingers found his throat.
Power surged in me, making the nerves in my shoulder sing in agony from the iron embedded in it. Black tendrils sank into him while he thrashed and bucked beneath me; they sucked the life from him until he kicked and struggled no more. I straddled him, draining the last dregs of life from him while his corpse withered beneath me. Under my shirt there was heat in the wound and a sense of wriggling, squelching life as the shoulder knit back together. As I watched, little black specks of shot were squeezed to the surface and popped out of the wound, smarting where they touched my skin and falling like patters of rain. Some fell inside the ripped shirt, and I had to wriggle out of the jacket and shirt to get rid of them, shaking the tattered remnants of the shirt to free them.
I looked up. My daughter stood among the debris, watching me, her face intent, her eyes bright, an expression of curiosity and horror on her face. As she watched, the red gore on my shoulder rippled into smooth lightless black while the ribcage beneath me crumbled, no longer able to support my weight.
I staggered to my feet.
Alex shook her head. "I don't understand. Where does the light go?" She stepped forward and reached out a hand to touch.
"Don't!"
She snapped her hand back.
"Don't touch me. I don't know what will happen."
"Nothing will happen."
She sounded certain, reaching out again and placing her hand gently where the wound had been. "Does it hurt?" she asked.
I shook my head, quelling the gallowfyre, calling the power back within me. The moonlight faded and the emergency lights paled back into dim illumination. My skin paled to normal under her hand. When she removed it, there was not even a scar.
"I'm sorry you had to see that," I said, looking down at the corpse where it lay like a desiccated mummy in uniform.
"I'm not."
I looked at her.
She hugged her arms around herself. "It means you're like me."
I thought about that for a moment. "I guess it does. A daddy's girl after all." I stepped forward and hugged her to me. She unwrapped her arms and clung for a moment, her hands cold against my bare skin. She stepped back, disengaging herself so that I could slip back into the ragged shirt and pull on my jacket. I reached into the inside pocket, reassuring myself that the vial of serum had not been broken in the fight. It crossed my mind that I should have destroyed it, but it was the only evidence remaining of what had been done here.
Alex collected the discarded shotgun from the floor, the weight of it clearly more than she was expecting.
"Do you know how to use that?"
She shook her head. "I've seen it done," she said, "and I can learn." She pumped the reload, chambering a round and resting the butt against her thigh, pointing it at the ceiling.
I pressed the barrel aside, gently. "Leave it. It will only weigh you down."
She appeared to consider for a moment and then dropped it on the corpse. "Didn't do him any good," she said.
I bent down and retrieved my sword.
"Do you know how to use that?" she asked.
It was a cheeky question, one that would have drawn a rebuke from me only a short while ago. I looked at my daughter and for the first time I realised that whatever had happened to her in this place, it had changed her. She had been on her own, beyond rescue or reprieve, and she had endured. The little girl I lost could not have done that. She had been forced to become something else.
Garvin said that the person I got back might not be the person I knew and maybe he was right. It didn't mean she was mad, though the incident with Watkins's severed head left me wondering, but it did mean that things would never be as they were. My little girl had gone, and I was going to have to find out what had replaced her. There would be time for that later. Her challenge remained, though.
"I'm told that I am competent with it," I said. "Though probably no more than that."
She must have heard the truth in my words, because she raised one eyebrow very slightly.