ASHTORETH GRUNTS AS I drive her to the gravel with my body. My ears close from the thunder of the shotgun blast and heat runs across my back. I push off her and roll, coming up with the help of the coat even as it cries out in my brain. I have Oathbreaker in my hand before I’m fully standing. Its hunger surges inside me and I lunge toward the closest enemy.
I’m face-to-face with Ephraim.
I swing Oathbreaker up, aiming to shear through his waist and spill his entrails on the gravel below. Oathbreaker wants to see what his intestines look like dipped and battered in tiny pieces of granite. Ephraim jumps away, swinging the shotgun like a bat, and the edge of the sword kerrangs off the steel barrel. Oathbreaker howls and I feel it inside my chest. Ephraim swings the shotgun toward me. I step inside his guard and twist, driving my left arm under his, knocking the gun up as he pulls the trigger.
A gout of blue fire spews into the night air.
What the fuck was that?
Heavy yellow smoke falls like soot and all I can smell is rotten eggs. Sulfur.
Did that shotgun just shoot hellfire and brimstone?
These thoughts roll together as I pivot and swing Oathbreaker, aiming to take his leg off below the knee.
I feel the sledgehammer punch of the bullets hitting the coat before I hear the chatter of Malice’s gun.
The hit skews me sideways, spoiling my strike, and I go to one knee. The chatter keeps going and I keep getting punched in the back. The coat screams as it absorbs the bullets, saving my life, but it feels like someone is taking a baseball bat to my spine. All the air drives from my lungs and my diaphragm convulses, hitching my lungs up into my throat.
Oathbreaker falls from my hand and I can’t even try to hold on to it.
It only lasts a few seconds, but it is a few seconds that leaves me with no breath and with shards of agony lancing into my whole body.
The coat weeps around me and I suck in air, trying to get enough to get back up, and I wait for the killing blow to fall on me while I am helpless.
I look up and see the Man in Black has become a thing of teeth and tentacles and barbed quills. He’s a shapeshifter. I’ve seen him in a form like this, his true form through my magick, and as an arachnidesque creature. I know he can do it, but the transformation is so horror-movie-special-effects that it still makes everything in me jump. He flows across the gravel and wraps around Caleb, the son/brother/nephew, lifting him off his feet and squeezing him. Caleb’s eyes bulge and his face goes dark as he beats at the chaos god who has him like a python has a rabbit.
What once was the Man in Black’s face rears back, jaw slewing sideways to reveal many rows of jagged enamel that gleam wetly.
Ephraim steps up and fires a blast of hellfire into that mouth.
The Man in Black rolls backward, carrying Caleb with him.
Ephraim shouts something in a language that sparks turquoise from his mouth, and moves the shotgun in a pattern that feels like some kind of spell.
I push myself up to move toward him, pain pulling tight across my kidneys, when Ashtoreth screams my name.
I turn and find Malice putting another clip into her rifle.
The coat drags around me, hurt. I spin on my heel and move to close the distance to the immediate threat. Malice seats the clip and racks the slide before I can take a second step. Her lovely face is a snarl as she points the rifle at me. The coat tries to wrap around me, pulling across my chest, but it’s struggling and I don’t think it will be able to save me.
My eyes squeeze tight, waiting for the gut-tearing punch of bullets.
Ashtoreth is there behind Malice, hands slipped around the girl’s torso, cupping her breasts as she bites Malice just over her jugular. Malice’s eyes roll back and her hands drop, gun falling from loose fingers to clatter on the ground. Ashtoreth pulls back as I step up. Teeth marks stand out on Malice’s skin, pulsing with the blood flow beneath them. Her eyes blink rapidly as she comes out of her swoon.
“Wha—” is all she gets out before I clip her hard on her little chin with an uppercut that would make my boxing coach grin from ear to ear.
She drops like someone teleported all the bones out of her body.
The collar tightens around my throat and I push that thought away before my treacherous magick makes it happen.
Ashtoreth’s eyes are wide. “That blow was … impressive.”
The way she says the word makes me feel things deep in my stomach. Things warm and fluttery and uncomfortable in their pleasure.
I turn away to help the Man in Black.
I catch a small glimpse of him, back in his man form and wrapped in black bands of etheric energy on the ground, before the butt of Ephraim’s shotgun puts out my lights.