Alice had a reputation in certain circles: she was, after all, an apparently ageless, extremely violent woman who traveled from dimension to dimension with a large supply of knives, grenades, and chocolate chip cookies. Clint had only ever seen me as Valerie. He’d have no reason to think Alice had a granddaughter, much less suspect the granddaughter was me. If Alice was here, and keeping company with me—something Jessica and Anders would both have reported to him by now—I must have hired her. If I was hiring muscle with dimension-traveling capabilities, I must be trying to cheat.
The fact that a snake cultist was passing judgment on my ethics would have been funny, if not for the part where he was holding a gun to my head. “You know, if you have a problem with my hiring decisions, you should also have a problem with murder and summoning giant snakes through the stage floor.”
“It’s the cost of doing business, sweetie,” said Clint. He adjusted his aim, keeping the muzzle trained on my heart.
Costuming is going to be pissed, I thought nonsensically. Aloud, I said, “Now would be nice.”
Clint blinked. “I thought you’d beg for your life, not for a bullet.”
I smiled. “Who said I was talking to you?”
There was a scream from behind me, high, shrill, and feminine. Clint’s eyes darted in that direction. It was a natural response: anyone human would have had trouble not looking in the direction of that scream, which was filled with pain and terror.
Well. Anyone human who didn’t know that it was caused by an Ukupani biting off the hand that threatened him. Knowing Pax wasn’t human and seeing him suddenly twist and distort into an eight-foot-tall bipedal shark-beast was probably pretty damn surprising.
Judging by the look on Clint’s face half a heartbeat later, it wasn’t as surprising as my kicking the gun out of his hand. It flew across the stage, landing out of reach of either one of us.
“I’m a tango dancer, you asshole,” I snarled, and kicked him in the face. I was wearing four-inch heels. Blood spurted from his nose in a hot red gush that reminded me too clearly of the flood from Lyra’s slit throat, so I kicked him again, harder. We generally make it a rule not to kill humans, but if a few bone slivers found their way into this dick’s brain, I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it.
Jessica was still screaming. I started to turn, to order Pax to shut her up—through whatever means necessary, which sure, could mean decapitation, but I was out of fucks to give—when I saw the snake moving out of the corner of my eye, drawing back to strike.
There was only a second for me to make my decision, and I chose the path most likely to end with my survival. “Pax! Move!” I shouted, diving to the side. The snake slammed down on the stage a second later, striking unerringly for the sound of screaming and the smell of blood.
Jessica stopped screaming. That was a mercy. My shout had given Clint time to move out of the way; when the snake pulled back again, he was still standing, glaring at me with blood on his face and shirtfront and hatred in his eyes.
“Catch!” Malena’s voice came from above. I stuck my hand out, and the gun dropped into it. The weight was a great comfort. The feeling of the safety clicking off was an even greater comfort.
“Thanks!” I called. “Any eyes on Dominic?”
“Other side of the stage,” said Malena.
The snake was rising back into position, head moving back and forth with increasing speed as it took in the situation. It was recovering from whatever disorientation accompanied its passage through the wall between worlds; soon, it would be back to whatever served as normal for a massive fucking snake, and then we were going to have to deal with it.
I was fast. The striking snake was faster. Once I started moving, I was going to have to keep on going. “Pax, I need you,” I called.
The Ukupani’s footsteps sounded like flippers slapping against the wood. I turned to the massive shark/human hybrid as soon as he was close enough, and said, “I need you to throw me at the snake.”
Pax no longer had eyebrows, or the sort of face that transmitted human emotions well, but he didn’t need them for his dismay to show. I found myself grateful that he couldn’t talk, either. If I had to explain myself to him, he might try to stop me, and I didn’t see another way through this—not without risking a hell of a lot of people who hadn’t had any idea this was going on. It had only been a few minutes since the snake broke through the stage, and two people were dead. Sure, Jessica may have deserved it, but not Lindy. I had to move. I had to act. And as soon as I did, I trusted my family to have my back.
“Seriously,” I said. “Throw me.”
Pax shook his head in pantomime disbelief. Then he knelt, forming a basket with his hands. I shoved the gun into the back of my dress, anchoring it as best I could, before running at him, my heels like gunshots on the polished stage floor.
My foot hit his hand and I was in the air, launched by all the force an eight-foot, four-hundred-pound Ukupani could generate.
Please realize what I’m doing, I thought. Please follow this lead.