Not until the pain set in did she realize that no, in fact, it was the sort of thing that might be used to kill her.
CHAPTER 26
Someone screamed. Margrit was certain it wasn’t herself, because she was trying, and could only produce a bubbling gurgle. The two djinn whipped into dervishes and, released from their hold, she lifted both hands to her throat, clutching the wound, then staring without comprehension at the blood coloring her fingers.
The pain was becoming extraordinary. Salt in the wound, she thought; salt from her hands, both at her throat again. She began to blink, counting each one and wondering if anyone watched to see how long she survived. Someone ought to be paying attention. Dying without even being noticed seemed worse than just dying. Somehow outraged by the thought, she looked up, searching for anyone who might care that she had fallen.
The screaming came from Cara. Too little, too late, Margrit thought, and wished she could voice the accusation. She supposed she should be pleased someone was paying attention, but the selkie girl wasn’t the one she’d hoped for. Twenty seconds, she thought, and couldn’t remember how many times she’d blinked. It didn’t seem to matter as much as she thought it would. She was falling now, toppling over sideways with her hands still wrapped around the gaping wound in her throat.
Flame gouted over her. Dizzy with exhaustion—that was the blood loss, she thought clinically—she kept her eyes wide even when the world blurred. She would at least watch what happened around her as she died. No one would know, but she would.
The docking area was on fire. That was appropriate: Malik had died amidst flame, and so would she. Everything seemed terribly slow, even her thoughts, each of them drawn out with crystalline clarity. She’d thought dying would be more frightening, but instead it was simply…interesting. The last moments should be. She was glad she felt no fear, and then gladder that she’d visited her parents the previous weekend and gone to church with them. She wished she could reach out to them, to promise they would see each other again; to tell them she knew it would be such a long and hard time for them, but that for her only a moment or two would pass, and then they would be together.
They would never understand how she came to die in a back-lot loading zone near the docks, assuming that was where her body was found. Assuming her body was found. No, it would be: Tony would never allow her to disappear. Even after all their troubles, he would never let that happen. Perhaps Alban would break the Old Races covenant of secrecy and tell him what had really happened.
Alban. Regret too large to hold in overwhelmed her, pulling her toward darkness. Words and thoughts were too small to encompass the loss of a chance of a life with the gentle gargoyle. She wondered, briefly, if his people believed in an afterlife, or if the memories the gargoyles held so close ensured they would always be remembered, and negated a need for a world beyond their own in which they might meet again.
Fire scored the air above her again, sending djinn tornadoes spinning across the room. Determined not to miss the last seconds of her life, Margrit turned her attention outward, and watched the world come apart.
The Old Races had two forms: the elemental, alien shape and the humanoid form they used to interact with the mortal world.
Kate Hopkins held her ground in the middle of both of those, jaw unhinged to spout flame across the room in huge bursts. Traces of humanity remained in her face: a woman’s hazel eyes over too-flared nostrils, more like Janx’s dragonly ones than a human’s. Her chest was broken open, too large for a person, too small for a dragon, and she dragged in enormous gusts to power her flame with. Her arms and hands were nearly normal, perhaps more strongly muscled than usual, and she had somehow captured a djinn, throttling him with enthusiasm as she hung in the air. Wings had erupted from her back to whip her fire into frenzies, and a tail lashed, taking out selkies who came too close. Legs, half human in nature, kicked and clawed, deadly weapons even if they weren’t fully dragon.
The djinn she held was smeared in blood and hung on to her wrists with all his strength, trying to break her grip. She dropped her jaw farther, serpentine tongue flickering out, and then white flame spurted again. The djinn’s screams, and then his life, were lost beneath its roar, and Kate dropped a melted, stinking pile of flesh onto the floor.
Tariq blurred with rage, scimitar glinting red with fire. He couldn’t fly, but he materialized in the air behind Kate, dropping down with the blade preceding him.
It looked like a puppet being yanked offstage: one instant he was falling, and the next he slammed against the wall, Ursula Hopkins’s hand crushing his throat, both of them yards in the air. They slid toward the floor, Kate’s body blocking them from Margrit’s view, though she heard Ursula’s hiss of fury through the chaos.
Then, appallingly, Cara moved. Not swiftly, not as the vampires could do; not as Janx or Kate could do. Not swiftly, but with grim intent. One of her followers knocked her away, shouting a protest over the roar of sound in the loading dock. Fresh blood seeped from the gunshot wound above Cara’s kidney as her protector spun around to lay hands on Kate. Half-formed scales glittered across her body and he dug his fingers deep into one, as Alban had once done to Janx. It began to peel back, tearing skin and scale alike, flaying her. Margrit reached for a scream and found it blocked by blood, still nothing more than a hideous gurgle.
Ursula appeared again, grabbing the selkie who attacked her sister. She dragged him close and he made no protest. Then she lashed forward too fast for Margrit to comprehend, her jaw dropped open in attack.
He was not fast, perhaps, but he was certain. Ursula’s blur of speed met a downward smash of the selkie’s head, and when she staggered back, her nose was crushed out of shape. Djinn swooped down on her, spinning a vortex that lifted her from the ground and forbade her the purchase that might allow her to escape.
Distant and clinical as the rest of her thoughts, Margrit realized she was far from the only one to die tonight, and wondered if selkie and djinn bodies were sufficiently unusual to betray them to humanity. She didn’t believe Ursula or Kate would be captured or killed, though as Ursula spun in the djinn maelstrom, it began to seem less likely that she would survive.
It was happening so fast. Margrit knew it was fast, though she could see too clearly, as if the brief seconds were clarified and elongated for her so she might not miss anything. That was the reward, perhaps, for the blood draining out of her body; the last moments of her life would seem to last forever.
Kate exploded, air concussing with such force it drove the djinn out of their whirlwind. Ursula fell to the ground and landed astonishingly catlike, her weight spread on all four limbs and her body low and tight. Her skin rippled, a black flow of oil, and she leapt out of her crouch with the grace and accuracy of a panther, bearing down on one of the djinn.
He dissipated and she fell through where he had been to flatten a selkie whose reflexes weren’t as fast. Kate dropped to the floor, massive dragon bulk blocking Ursula and her victim from Margrit’s sight.
The selkie who’d tried flaying Kate had been flung away by the force of her transformation. Now she prowled toward him, gorgeously sinuous. Like Janx, her scales were burnished red, but unlike his silver lining, she was graced with black. She was perhaps a quarter of his size, though still significantly larger than a selkie or even a gargoyle. She lifted a heavily clawed foot to pin her tormentor against the wall, and the dancing whiskers along her face pulled back in a grin as she opened her mouth to breathe flame.