A gun spat bullets to the right, wood snapping—someone firing blindly in panic. I waited four seconds until he emptied his clip, and then I ran across the room, stepped behind him, and sliced: one cut left to right, the second straight across the spine, just under the bulletproof vest. He went down.
Something moved behind me.
I spun, slicing, the man behind me a mere shadow in the gloom. Slayer crashed against a thicker blade. The man snapped an angle kick to my left side. His shin hammered my ribs in a burst of pain. A Muay Thai fighter. Fine. I spun with the impact, whipped around, and kicked him, heel to solar plexus, putting all of the power of my spin and my thigh into it.
The impact knocked him back. My knee crunched. Ow.
I chased him, leaping over boxes. The fallen man rolled to his feet in time for me to split his stomach open. I tugged Slayer free, sank the blade between the lower ribs of his right side, for good measure, and withdrew.
The screaming stopped.
“Cleearr,” Derek’s mangled voice said.
“Saiman! Flip the fuse.”
A long moment passed. The electric light came on, sudden and harsh, like a sucker punch. Five bodies lay broken and twisted in the living room, their blood ridiculously vivid against the monochromatic backdrop of black floor and white furniture. The massive shaggy beast that was Derek straightened, scarlet dripping from his claws, and dropped a mangled body to the floor. He raised his muzzle. A long wolf howl rolled through the apartment, a song of hunt and blood and murdered prey.
Saiman emerged from the lab, stooping to fold his frame through the doorway. A thing dangled from his hand. It might have been a man at some point, but now it hung, limp and boneless, like a sack of human meat pierced here and there by shards of its bones.
“It’s over.” I kept my voice soothing. “Put it down.”
Saiman shook his victim.
“Put it down. You can do it. Just let go.”
Saiman released his victim. The body fell with a sickening wet thud. The ice giant slumped against the wall and slid down to sit on the floor.
I walked past the overturned couch to the man whose stomach I’d cut. He was still breathing, clutching at his wounds, his heavy tactical sword lying next to him. Thick blood wet his fingers in a dark, almost tar-like stain. Yep, hit the liver. A ski mask hid his face. I pulled it off. A familiar brutish face stared at me with pale eyes.
Blaine “The Blade” Simmons. Blaine used to work for the Guild. About four years ago he decided the Guild wasn’t hardcore enough for him and struck out on his own. Word on the street was, Blaine hired killers and liked wet work. The nastier, the better. Any gig, any target, as long as the money was right.
That must’ve been his crew.
I crouched by him, my sword still bloody.
Blaine’s breath was coming in quick ragged gasps.
“Who hired you?”
He wheezed, his fingers shaking.
“Who hired you?”
“Go to hell!”
Blaine’s eyes rolled back into his skull. He went rigid and sagged down. His hands stopped shaking.
“I have a laaive one.” Derek picked up a body off the floor. The man shuddered in his grasp. His right leg hung at an unnatural angle—broken femur. A huge cut gaped across his back, where Derek’s claws ripped through his flesh. Derek turned him, so I could see his face. Pale, terrified eyes looked at me.
“If you stay as is, you’ll live. Tell me what I want to know, and I won’t make it worse,” I said.
The man swallowed. “I don’t know! Blaine made the contracts!”
“What were your orders?”
“We had to sit on this apartment. If law or any PIs showed up, we had to hit it fast.”
“Did you have specific orders to attack if you saw me or Derek?”
The man nodded. “You—yeah. But not him. Blaine had pictures of you and the blonde.”
They knew who Andrea and I were, which meant they knew where the office was. If they’d hit us here, they’d target the office. I would.
“Why did you use a concussion grenade instead of shrapnel?”
The man gulped. “Blaine said the freak had money. He said nobody would care when or how he got dead, as long as he got dead in the end. We’d just hold him for a bit, get him to give us the money, and then terminate him. Blaine said it would be a bonus.”
Nice. “Did you kill some people in Sibley?”
“Us and some other guys. We knew exactly when and where they would be coming from. We wiped them out. Shot them all to hell. It was easy.”
Mystery solved. “Drop him.”
Derek opened his fingers and the man crashed to the floor.
I walked to the phone and dialed Cutting Edge. Julie’s voice popped on the phone. “Good afternoon, Cutting Edge. How may I help you?”
“Hey, it’s me. Put Andrea on the phone.”
“She isn’t here.”
Damn it. “Where is she?”
“Some boudas came to talk to her. She said she would be right back and left.”
Aunt B. Just couldn’t wait, could she, old bitch, had to speak to Andrea right that minute.
“Joey is staying with us.”
I struggled to put the name to a face. Joey, Joey . . . My mind served up a man in his early twenties, his hair dark, nearly black. “Put Joey on the phone.”
A young male voice said, “Why hello there, Consort. And how are you?”
“We’re under attack. Bar the door, do not open it to anyone you don’t know. Make sure the kids understand. I’ll be there in half an hour. Stay put, do you understand?”
All mirth vanished from his voice. “Yes, Consort.”
I hung up and punched in the number for the Keep’s Guard Station. “I need access to Jim. Now.”
“He’s out in the city,” a female voice began.
I sank enough menace into my voice to terrify a small army. “Find him.”
The phone went silent. I waited. The Lighthouse Keepers had hired a crew of killers. Made sense; their own people were embedded and too valuable to risk. We had to assume they already knew that the attack on the apartment had failed and what little cover they had was blown wide open. They would be coming for Saiman.
The phone clicked and Jim’s voice came on the line. “Kate, I’m a little busy here.”
“There is an anti-magic secret society in the city. They have a bomb. When activated, it kills anything that uses magic in a radius of several miles.”
Jim didn’t miss a beat. “What do you need?”
“I’m at Saiman’s apartment. We’ve been attacked; there are seven bodies, one survivor. I need to know where the attackers came from, who hired them, anything you can get. I’m sending Derek with Saiman to the western safe house. Saiman has the documentation describing the device, and he is now their primary target. I’m going back to my office. Julie and Ascanio are in the office and I need to get them out to the Keep.”
“We’re on the Southside, near Palmetto,” Jim said.
Across the city. Great.
“I’m sending an escort now. It will be there in an hour.”
“Is Curran there with you?”
“He’s out in the field, but I’ll get hold of him.”
“Tell him . . .” Tell him I love him. “Tell him I’m sorry we didn’t see each other last night.”
“Will do.”
I hung up and looked at Derek. “Take Saiman and the documents to the western safe house. Keep him protected; we need the knowledge in his head.”
Derek’s muzzle gaped, like a bear trap swinging open. “Yeshh, Conshort.”