—
Hannah’s thoughts screamed with discord as she helped Amanda into the elevator. She didn’t need her eyesight to identify their brutal savior. The woman spoke with the same alien accent as Azral, and carried a mincing mischief in her voice that no sane person could muster at a time like this.
Esis propped the door from the lobby and pressed the button for the twelfth floor. She dressed like she was headed for Aspen in her sleek gray ski jacket and black thermal leggings. Her winter boots left glistening blood prints on the carpet. She hadn’t bothered to walk around her victims.
“Stay high and out of sight,” she told the sisters. “This is no longer your battle.”
Hannah hadn’t encountered Esis since she was five years old, and was grateful she could barely see her now. Ioni’s harsh warning about the Pelletiers still rang heavily in her thoughts. They destroy worlds, Hannah. They destroyed yours twice.
“Is . . . Azral here too?” she asked Esis.
“My wealth addresses another concern. He entrusts his mother to end this mayhem.”
“W-what about the others?” Hannah asked. “What are you going to do?”
“To which others do you refer, child? Your enemies or your kin?”
“I mean my friends. Will they be okay?”
Esis threw Amanda a canny smirk, as if they were in on a chummy secret joke.
“Your friends, as you call them, are alive and in much better condition than the friend you currently hold. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have matters to discuss with the unfriendly others.”
Unlike Hannah, Amanda had a full view of Esis’s first “discussion,” one that left two young Gothams disemboweled on the floor. Now as agony and heat exhaustion pushed her to the edge of collapse, the widow scrambled to process this shark-eyed horror in front of her, a woman who slaughtered her enemies and employees without distinction.
“What do you want with us?” she asked Esis, in a parched rasp.
“A little gratitude, to start. I did save your life, and not for the first time.”
“What do you want with us?”
Esis slitted her eyes in a peevish squint before releasing the door.
“I want you to grow, my stubborn flower. I want you to live. If you wish the same, you’ll heed my advice.”
Her expression turned frigid. “And my warning.”
The elevator closed on her pointed last words, which struck Amanda like arrows. She envisioned a large tempic spike bursting through Zack’s chest, throwing him to the floor in a bloody heap.
Hannah held Amanda close as she continued to keep the weight off her broken ankle.
“It’ll be okay,” she insisted. “The others are all right. You heard her.”
The words did little to comfort Amanda. She stared ahead in a morbid daze, too distracted to notice the fifth-floor button lighting up on its own.
“What did she mean by ‘kin’?” Hannah asked her.
Amanda fixed her dark green stare on the doors.
“Nothing. She’s insane.”
—
The Gothams knew of Esis Pelletier. A week after Rebel’s ill-fated mission in Terra Vista, the clan’s best ghosters had traveled to Sterling Quint’s lobby and watched her slaughter four kinsmen in retrospect. Her tempic savagery was described in harrowing detail at the next elder council, enough to give nightmares to half the tribe.
Mercy Lee had missed that meeting. She’d been off sharing opiates and oral favors with a long-haired delinquent from Nyack.
Now she was all caught up on the matter of Esis.
Mercy hid behind a planter, struggling to hold back her screams as she listened to Nick McNoel’s gurgling last breaths. Esis had found the broken boy on the stairwell and wasted no time finishing him with a tempic sword through the neck. Three of Mercy’s teammates were dead now. Her comm-link was dead. Her solic charge was still drained from her attack on the Givens. I’m next. I’m dead. Oh God.
She parted the hydrangeas with trembling fingers, peeking down at the lobby through leaves and iron rods. No one was there. Maybe . . . maybe she . . . maybe she just . . .
A cold hand grabbed her ankle from behind. Mercy shrieked as she dangled upside down from a long white arm. The lip of her T-shirt tumbled down to her chin. Esis curiously studied her small breasts and flat olive stomach. A flowery vine tattoo spiraled around Mercy’s navel.
“Look at you. As lovely and filthy as an outdoor cat. Tell me, cat, why do you stain yourself with so many inks and oils?”
Thick black tears dribbled down Mercy’s temples. “Please! Please don’t kill me!”
“You slaughter my Golds and threaten my Silvers, and now you ask for mercy, Mercy?”
“Please! I’m sorry! I never wanted to hurt anyone! I just got scared! My brother—”
“Your brother lives,” Esis informed her. “He resides in our care, as healthy and pampered as an indoor cat. Does this news quell your bloodlust? Or must I find a stronger remedy?”