Widdershins's rapier was gleaming lightning, striking from one direction almost before she had completed her thrust from the last. It whistled as it cut through the air, and the ring of metal on metal was so rapid it became a single prolonged screech.
But through it all, Claude's blade intercepted even the swiftest strike. His heavy sword was more than enough to turn her weapon away, yet quick enough to slice through the gaps opened by his overwhelming parries. Widdershins bled from half a dozen wounds, tiny scrapes that sapped away her swiftly fading strength, yet she delivered none in return. Sweat poured down her face and his, gleaming in the light reflecting off the flashing blades.
Claude was good, but he wasn't that good; not as skilled as Lisette had been. But in that earlier struggle-gods, had it been so recent? — Widdershins hadn't been weighed down so terribly, by grief, by exhaustion, by the pain of her vicious wound.
She hadn't faced a foe who, just perhaps, had his own god guiding his hand, even as she did.
And she knew, she knew, that this was a fight she could not win.
Widdershins spun, wincing at the pain of her injury even as she ducked under a slash that would have opened her scalp had it connected. Dropping almost into a crouch, she reached out with her empty hand and-struggling not to think about what she was doing-scooped up a handful of the semiliquid remains spread across the floor and hurled it at her foe. Claude saw it coming, turned his face away to avoid getting the horrible stuff in his eyes and mouth-but it was enough to halt him in his tracks, if only for the briefest instant.
Widdershins was off at a limping sprint, standing at the door before the Apostle had taken a single step. With desperate speed she hauled it open, sliding it into its stone moorings, and came face to startled face with the guard Claude had left outside.
For a heartbeat they stared, she having utterly forgotten he was there, he having heard nothing of the conflict within, thanks to the heavy walls and door. And then he was yanking his flintlock from his belt, bringing it up and around with expert speed, finger already tightening on the trigger…
Widdershins hissed Olgun's name, and the deity reached out to caress the weapon-not to stop it, not to blow it to splinters, but to ignite it early. The flint slammed down without the trigger's urging; black powder flashed and sparked. The thug's eyes had only begun to widen as the lead ball hurtled harmlessly past Widdershins's shoulder-and sank, with a dull tearing sound and a horrified grunt, into the chest of the man charging up behind her.
The soldier stared in growing horror, Widdershins in shock, Claude down at his chest in bewildered disbelief.
“I don't understand,” the Apostle whispered, tears forming in his eyes. “Cevora…”
And then he fell, first to his knees, then facedown in the putrid carpet.
Widdershins stepped forward, kneed the remaining guard in the groin as he stood stunned, and cracked him over the head with the pommel of the rapier for good measure.
“Nice shot, Olgun!” she crowed, laughing through her pain. She felt the god within beaming with pride.
“Don't let it go to your head, though,” she added. “I don't want to still be hearing about this a month from now.”
She swore she could feel him stick his tongue out at her.
Widdershins wanted nothing more than to leave. She hurt all over, she'd begun to feel slightly faint from exertion (and probably blood loss), and she knew it was only a matter of time before the thieves regained their courage and came hunting for whatever had invaded their home. But she'd come here for a reason, and that purpose remained undone.
Leaning over the unconscious thug, she carefully removed the powder horn at his waist and made her way back into the reeking chamber of horrors that had lately been a shrine.
It wasn't dead. The inhuman form had survived a three-story plunge back at the tenement, waded through a barrage of bolts and bullets, refused to be slain by the curse of a god not its own. But it lay, grunting and twitching, struggling to regain the strength that had been ripped from it. Some hideous viscous sludge of a color that Widdershins had never before seen-she could describe it only as some hideous combination of blue and death-oozed across the floor where the demon had puked it up, slowly bubbling and eating away at the carpet.
Moving as rapidly as her aching body would allow, keeping half an eye on the demon at all times, Widdershins skittered about the room, packing the horn with all the black powder carried by every one of Claude's thugs. Then and only then did she lean down beside the demon.
“Go back to hell,” she whispered.
Widdershins shoved the horn unceremoniously into the beast's upturned mouth, as far down its throat as it would go, and fled the room. She paused once in the doorway, just long enough to yank one of the torches from the wall and hurl at the writhing, choking form, before slamming the door.
The thunderous blast made her ears ring even through the normally soundproof portal. Carefully she cracked it open once more, peered into the chapel just to be certain, and smiled.
And twenty-six souls, hovering in the ether around Adrienne Satti for two long years, drifted away to their long-sought rest.
“Now,” she told Olgun exhaustedly, “would be a good time to go home.”
Even as she spoke, she realized that she knew exactly where “home,” from now on, had to be.
It was the very last respect she could pay.
EPILOGUE
Several days from now:
“Well,” the girl began hesitantly, voice husky with suppressed grief, with tears long since cried, “I guess that's the end of it.” Robin looked around her, gripping the haft of the broom as though she sought to prevent the tool, and all it represented, from disappearing.
The common room looked good, better than it had in months. The employees, and Robin in particular, had done a marvelous job of cleaning up. The floor was free of dust and debris, and scrubbed so that all but the most stubborn stains had given up in despair. For the first time in years, the twin scents of alcohol and sawdust were stronger than the lingering aura of stale sweat. The tables, too, were cleaned and polished to within an inch of their lives…. All the tables but one. That one was gone, Widdershins having fed it piece by piece into the blazing hearth.
The serving girl still didn't know, really, what had happened. Part of her wanted to push, to demand an explanation, but she'd never do that to her friend. Shins would tell her the entire story if and when she was ready, and not a moment before.
“It looks good, Robin,” Widdershins said softly from behind her. The girl felt a comforting hand close over her shoulder. “She'd have been proud of what you've done with the place.”
With a piteous wail, Robin dropped the broom and fell against the newcomer's chest, sobbing miserably. Widdershins clasped her arms around the girl and let the spell subside.
Even once it had, she kept a worried eye on Robin, watching for a relapse of the near madness that had gripped her the night Genevieve died. She'd suffered no similar attacks since, but Widdershins walked on eggshells around her, terrified that she might set off another episode.
But it was more than the memory of her lost friend that had Robin so distraught. As the sobbing wound down, Widdershins distinctly heard a muffled, “What am I going to do?” from the tousled black mop of hair against her breast.
“What else would you do, Robin? You'll pull yourself together, organize the others when they get here, and get this place ready to reopen. You've got no idea the amount of business we've lost already.”
Robin jerked back from her friend's embrace as though she'd been shoved, her red-rimmed eyes wide. “Shins,” Robin began, trying to keep her voice steady, “there's not going to be any reopening. You know what Gen's father thought of this place! He'll probably just close it down, or maybe sell it, and in either case-”