Cat looked back to the woman she held. Sticky darkness seeped between her teeth, and sharp glass gleamed within, swelling as if it approached down a tunnel much longer than the woman’s throat. Reflective tendrils skittered against enamel, caught and cut her lips, tensed—
Cat threw herself to one side as a mirror shard shot from the woman’s mouth. Raz hit the deck too—shards burst from all the open mouths, a storm of crystal darts unfolding wings and legs, and unfolding again, like those creased-paper birds kids from the Shining Empire made, that when you undid them formed a bird larger than the one they had been. The people from whom the crystals flew all fell like string-cut marionettes.
The glass that missed Cat struck the bulkhead arrow-deep and quivered there as claws tore gouges in the wood. Sawdust and wood chips and scraps of cloth filled the air, and all around the hold there were these things, huge winged bugs, reflective carapaced and slick and growing. Their mouths held fangs and twitching blade lips. They were hungry.
Blood seeped from the corner of Cat’s ear, from a cut she hadn’t felt.
“Demons.”
Cat raised the truncheon from her belt, just in time. The nearest demon-bug flew toward her; she batted the glass insect into a bulkhead. It bounced off a tarp, reversed its legs, shook itself, and launched at her again. The second’s relief gave Cat’s hand time to reach the Justice medallion at her neck, and the cold perfection of service carried her away.
This time, when she swung the club, the creature shattered to smoking shards. One down, forty-something to go.
She looked up. Raz had pulled the tarp from the fallen woman and thrown it to snare a clutch of demons. Legs and mandibles pierced fabric, but before they could fight free he smashed the tarp against the deck. Glass spines cracked. A bug landed on Raz’s scalp and clawed bloody strips away. He screamed. Cat leapt, clubbed the thing off him, and it burst into a shower of sharp dust. Blood streamed down his forehead.
They stood ringed by unconscious former demon-hosts, and twenty-five glass insects, now the size of toddlers and still growing. Spindly limbs merged and thickened. Plates of mirrored chitin sprouted between joints. Ruby eyes grew further facets. Claws lengthened and serrated.
Too many to fight.
Raz bared his fangs.
She didn’t know how strong he was. But he could bleed. And they could cut him.
They could cut her, too, even through the Suit. This many, they could tear off her arms like children plucking daisy petals. But she could kill—not all of them, the distributed tactical mind of Justice told her. Skill, speed, and strength went only so far against sheer numbers. But she could take many with her.
She spread her arms in front of Raz. In one hand she held her truncheon. Her other hand’s fingers lengthened into claws.
Come on, she told them in the Suit’s silver-coated nightmare voice. Maybe demons had bad dreams too. Show me what you’ve got.
They stared at her, opened mandibles, wriggled razor mouthparts.
She tightened her grip on the truncheon.
The demons’ wings snapped wide, and as one they flew.
They boiled toward the opening of the hold, still growing. Claws scrabbled against timber, and they were out. She ran after them. With a leap she caught the slowest demon’s trailing leg; if she’d touched it barehanded its edges would have laid open her palm, but the Suit let her hold it, let her catch its wing too, both of them spinning above the deck of the Dream. The demon’s head rotated on its neck; fangs snapped, but she was too close for them to bite deep. Its claws, though, could. They tightened like a diamond-tipped vise. One talon tore a line in her Suit. The fluid flowed free of its claw to mend the gap, but not before its talon plunged beneath, exploring her flesh.
She wrapped her arms around the demon’s belly and squeezed. Glass squealed, popped, shattered. The Suit closed her wound. She fell, turning, turning, and slammed into the deck. Glass shards rained onto her, melting as they fell. Above, unfolded demons flew. Their wings rainbowed streetlamp light and beat dragonfly fast, gaining altitude, flying inland.
“Ma’am?”
The skeleton-sailor bent over her, head cocked to one side. Concern. How interesting that she could read the man’s, no, woman’s, expressions. Maybe you had to learn, once you became a skeleton, how to act so people could tell what you were thinking. Like guiding a puppet.
She remembered this feeling from back before Seril’s return, when the Blacksuit was still Black. The fog of assurance, the Suit guiding her reeling mind to detached logic.
She stood. The Suit blunted the pain in her side, kept pressure on the wound, guided blood to proper vessels.
Across the city, Justice called her children. Under attack. All units. Suits patrolling backstreets paused midstep and turned skyward, preparing to run. But they couldn’t fly.