The last body flew, knocked aside. George pulled a dagger from his belt.
The beast man tensed, gathering himself for the final leap.
An inhuman howl ripped from Jack’s lips, a terrible mix of anguish, pain, mourning, sorrow, and rage. The scream built on itself, pounding at her, growing louder and louder. The horrible sound clawed at her ears, pierced her chest, and crushed her heart, squeezing pure panic from it. At the far end, Gaston and Karmash paused. Kaldar and the orange woman lowered their blades, their faces shocked.
Magic burst out of Jack. Audrey couldn’t see it, but she felt its touch. It burned her for the briefest of moments, but in that instant she stared straight into its wild, savage face, as if the primordial forest full of man-eaters yawned and swallowed her into its black maw studded with cruel fangs. Fear gripped her, and she cried out.
Jack’s scream vanished, cut off in mid-note. The thing that used to be Jack, the terrible wild thing, grinned, its fangs bared in maniacal glee. It pulled two daggers from its waist and sliced the beast man. The Hand’s agent moved to counter, but he was too slow. The Jack thing carved a chunk of flesh off his side and laughed.
George landed next to her. “It will be okay,” he whispered.
“What’s happening?”
“Jack is rending. Changelings do this sometimes so they don’t become unhinged. It will be okay.”
Blood sprayed from the beast man. The thing that was Jack laughed and laughed.
“Just don’t move. He won’t kill you if you don’t move,” George said.
In the aisle, Gaston and Karmash ripped into each other, throwing pews around with superhuman strength. Three minutes later, Kaldar sliced the orange woman in half. The top of her slid one way and the bottom the other, but Audrey no longer had any emotion left to spare. Kaldar walked over to them and sat next to her. His arms closed around her. He held her, and together they watched Jack stab the lifeless stump of the beast man’s body. He carved it again and again, hurling the bloody chunks of muscle like it was play sand.
The feeling slowly returned to her legs. Kaldar said something about a temporary paralytic agent, but she couldn’t concentrate enough to pay attention.
At some point, Gaston joined them. He was bloody and bruised, and his arm stuck out at an odd angle, but the fingers of his left hand had a death grip on the pale hair of Karmash’s head. He sat next to them, cradling it like a watermelon. They watched Jack together.
The fire had died down to nothing. The coals turned cold. Ed Yonker had long since gone.
Jack swayed and sat down, his gore-covered arms limp. George stood up, walked over to him on shaking legs, and hugged him. Jack looked at his brother’s face, looked back at the ruin of the corpse in front of him, and began to cry.
THEY found a Chevy van in the deserted camp. Kaldar drove. Gaston sat next to him in the passenger seat. Kaldar had forced Gaston’s dislocated shoulder back into its socket, and now the boy held Karmash’s head with both hands. Audrey cradled Jack. He had stopped crying, but he still looked like death.
They were bloody, bruised, battered. Everyone hurt.
“This is what it’s like to fight the Hand,” Kaldar said. His voice held no mirth.
The boys didn’t say anything.
“Tomorrow, I will buy two tickets,” Kaldar said. “We’ll put you on a plane in the Broken. You will land in a large airport, then another plane will take you to a smaller airport not too far from where you grew up. You will enter the Edge there, find your grandmother, and wait with her until Declan comes to get you.”
“No,” George said. His voice creaked like an unoiled door. “We’ll finish it.”
“Jack?” Kaldar asked.
“We’ll finish it,” Jack said with quiet savagery.
“Okay,” Kaldar said.
“Okay?” Audrey asked. “Okay? Help me out, Kaldar, which part of this is okay? Are we in the same car? Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
“We’re all alive and mostly uninjured,” Kaldar said.
“We are putting them on that goddamned plane tomorrow.”
“We won’t go,” George said.
Jack reached over and patted her hand.
“Yes, you will. This is no place for children. This is not a kid’s fight. We survived today by the skin of our teeth.”
“You don’t have to be here, either,” George said softly.
“Yes, I do. I helped make this mess. I have to fix it.”
“We do, too,” Jack said. “We help.”
“They fought like adults,” Kaldar said. “I’m treating them as adults. Adults understand the price and make their own decisions.”
Audrey closed her eyes. “You are all insane.”
“They are,” Gaston said. “I’m good.”
“You are holding a decapitated head in your lap!”
“What are you going to do with it?” Kaldar asked.
Gaston shrugged and winced, rubbing his shoulder. “I thought I’d pack it into some preservatives and take it with us.”
“Why?” Audrey asked. Dear Jesus, why would he want to keep the head?
“I’m going to send it to my parents as a present. It won’t make my mom’s leg grow back, but it might make them feel better.” Gaston patted Karmash’s hair. “He isn’t Spider, but he was his top dog.”
Kaldar raised his hand, and Gaston high-fived him.
“Thank you for the flash, George,” Kaldar said. “That was a hell of a shield.”
George smiled through the grime on his face.
“That’s right,” Gaston said. “That flash was killer. And Jack, you totally kicked ass. Saved all of us, probably.”
Jack sat up straighter.
“Yes. Sorry you had to go through that, but the timing couldn’t have been better,” Kaldar said. “You guys took out two of the Hand’s operatives and helped to kill another two, including a veteran underofficer. There are Mirror agents, trained fighting personnel, who’d give their right arms to be you right now. I think there is a price on that head, actually, Gaston.”