Glancing at the Mirrorist, he saw her cease her dance and stand transfixed, staring at the mirror. The remaining Wütend, flailing his sword like a club, rushed after Zukunft.
Bedeckt had an instant to react and Zukunft stood between himself and the Wütend. If she died, his plan died.
He hurled his axe through the mirror.
Glass shattered and Zukunft blinked. The Wütend landed on her, crushing her slight frame to the floor under his greater weight.
Cursing, Bedeckt dove over the table, toppling it and landing atop the two. The air rushed from Zukunft’s lungs as his added weight crashed down upon her. She made a noise like that frog he stomped as a child, her mouth wide and gaping, incapable of drawing breath. The Wütend ignored Bedeckt like only someone manically fixated on murdering another can and head-butted her, his forehead crashing into her cheek and bouncing her skull off the floor. Rearing back, the man bared his teeth in a mad snarl. Bedeckt wrapped an arm around the Wütend’s neck and fought to keep him from leaning close enough to bite out the stunned girl’s throat. Snapping teeth cracked so loud Bedeckt thought they might shatter under the impact.
The mad man, driven by psychosis-fuelled strength, leaned ever closer to the soft, exposed skin. Bedeckt couldn’t hold him back. Changing tactics, he threw his weight behind the Wütend, driving the man’s head down and redirecting it just enough to smash it into the floor beside Zukunft’s throat. Head met stone with a wet crunch. Lifting the man’s head, he heard the mad snapping of teeth. Damned Wütend never gave up. Fighting the man’s downward motion for a moment, he then once again added his weight to it. Half a dozen times Bedeckt smashed the man’s skull against the stone floor before the Wütend finally went limp. Dragging the corpse from Zukunft, he dropped it at her side. She stared at Bedeckt, numb with shock. Blood and bits of the Wütend’s shattered teeth spattered her face.
With the killing done, Bedeckt knelt over Zukunft, uncomfortably aware of her proximity. He sucked wheezing breaths, waiting for his heart to slow. Gone was the day he could kill four times as many without being winded. He turned his grizzled head, a mass of scars, the left ear a misshapen lump, listening. He heard nothing but the drip of blood, and his own shuddering breathing. Squinting, he dipped a blunt finger into the blood pooling on the floor. Raising the finger to his face he stared at the bright stain and grinned.
It was red. Real gutted-pig red. Not some faded grey red of the Afterdeath, but the deep red of sundered life.
“Hells yes,” he whispered with fierce joy. “We did it.”
Zukunft blinked up at him, eyes finally focussing. “By we you mean me,” she said. “I led you to Rückkehr, the one Mirrorist whose mirror joined the world of the living to the Afterdeath.”
“I convinced him to send us back.”
“You threatened to kill him,” she said, touching fingers to the bruise already appearing on her cheek.
“That’s what I said.”
Zukunft sat, straightening her shirt where it fell to expose the pale flesh of her shoulder. Her skirt, bunched around shapely hips, left her long legs bare.
Bedeckt grunted and looked elsewhere.
She laughed, soft breaths through her perfect little nose. “Been a while, old man?”
Stehlen, the hideous Kleptic. In an alley. Rutting like drunken teens. Well, the drunk part was accurate at least.
Bedeckt stood, nodding to the shattered mirror. “I saw a girl in there,” he said, as much to distract her as from real curiosity.
“Yes,” she said, looking away.
When she added nothing more he let it go. “Where are we?”
“Selbsthass.”
“Shite.” They were in Neidrig when they stepped into the mirror in the Afterdeath. He assumed they’d exit in Neidrig as well and sent Wichtig and Stehlen off to Selbsthass to give him a chance to escape. Why hadn’t Rückkehr mentioned this would happen? Had he not known? Damned Mirrorists. Another thought occurred to Bedeckt. “Why didn’t you warn me about the Wütend?”
“I didn’t know,” she said. “When we were in the Afterdeath, I could never see beyond the moment we crossed over.”
“And now?”
“She showed me a little of the future,” she said.
She? Mirrorists were an odd bunch. “And?”
“I only saw as far as the moment you threw your axe into the mirror.”
Zukunft stood in one lithe movement, unbending like a cat. Bedeckt looked everywhere but at her. No matter what her body said, she was a damned child. Though his definition of child seemed to change the older he got. Wouldn’t be long until everyone under thirty seemed like a kid.
“Were they waiting for us?” asked Bedeckt. “Does Morgen know?”
“I’m hardly the only Mirrorist who glimpses the future.” Zukunft shrugged. She didn’t look worried. “Maybe Morgen’s own Reflections told him. Maybe he can see into the future. He is a god.”
Bedeckt didn’t want to think about that. His whole plan relied on Zukunft’s admittedly limited ability to see into the future. Her delusion would keep him one step ahead of everyone else.