The look of absolute terror on my mother’s face reminds me of our phone conversation. Not bulletproof. I hold the woman mercenary in front of myself as a shield. One, two shots slam into her. I feel their concussive force like I would a fly bouncing off me. I toss her to the side and launch myself at the man. He doesn’t have time for another shot before I hit him, knocking him into the door so hard it swings wildly off one hinge.
He’s on the ground. I lift a fist—
“Nina!”
I freeze. He’s unconscious. I don’t need to hit him anymore.
But, gods, I want to.
“Nina, the woman.” My mother’s voice is sharp. Chiding.
Right. The woman. The one I used to shield myself. The one I let get shot. I was so angry, so focused. It felt right at the time. My stomach twists. I’m sick at what I’ve done. And, inexplicably, I’m angrier than ever. How can my mom get mad at me? It was the mercenary’s own partner who shot her. And she was ready to shoot my mother! Or the werewolves, who are still cowering, the children crying as the mother tries to comfort them and the father stares at me.
No one gets to shoot my mother. I let go of the unconscious man, then walk as calmly as I can back to the woman. She’s moaning in pain. Her leg is obviously broken from where I hit it with the crowbar. It’s too dark to see whether she’s bleeding. “My ribs,” she gasps.
I reach down and pick her up, hating that I have to be gentle when she deserves anything but. I bring her into the light next to her partner and set her down. No blood. The bullets both hit her in the vest.
“Your ribs are probably broken,” I say. “Leg, too.” I know what I could do to set it, or to check that her lungs haven’t been punctured. I’ve studied and learned everything I can about the human body and how it breaks, so that I could help heal it. Not so I could do the breaking.
Instead of checking her lungs, I check her for weapons. I find another pistol and snap it in half. Then I gather their rifles and other weapons and make a pile on the ground next to them.
I pull out my phone. “Call the police,” I tell Cillian. “Say you heard gunshots by the old fish warehouse.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Fine.” I hang up. We have—had—procedures for dealing with demons. But these two are humans. Which means they’re subject to human laws, and Irish law doesn’t look kindly on illegal guns.
“Who sent you?” I ask.
The woman’s face is drenched in sweat. She grits her teeth and glares at me. From the sound of her breathing, neither of her lungs is punctured. But her ribs are definitely broken. I need this information; my mother doesn’t think it’s Sean, but it could be. Thinking of Sean makes me think of Honora, which makes me think of Artemis. What would she do if getting the truth meant keeping her family safe? I put one hand gently on the mercenary’s vest. And then I push down ever so slightly.
She screams. “No one! No one sent us! There’s a bloke, rich as sin. Pays extra for exotics. He does a big werewolf hunt for the first full moon of the new year. We’ll cut you in! Introduce you!”
“Give me his name.” I increase pressure.
“Ian! Ian Von Alston! Just outside London!”
I remove my hand. “If I ever see either of you again, it won’t end this well for you.”
I stand and turn around. It’s taking everything in me to leave them there. My mother is safe, and so is the family. The mercenaries are unarmed, injured, no longer threats. But they had my mother in their gun sights. All so they could sell a family to be hunted. My fist clenches, twitching.
The werewolf mother, a plain woman in mom jeans and a bulky sweater, stares at me with wide, watery eyes. “Thank you. We’ll make our own way.”
“You’ll be safe with us. They can’t hurt you.” I smile reassuringly. But the look of horror on her face isn’t directed at them. She’s scared … of me.
“We’ll take our chances elsewhere.” The father gathers two children in his arms, and the mother takes the smallest. They hurry away into the darkness of the warehouse toward the back door.
“Nina.” My mother’s voice is so even and careful, it chills me more than the building.
I didn’t do anything wrong! I did what my instincts told me to. Less than they told me to, even. I acted like a Slayer. If I can’t use my Slayer abilities to protect the people I love, what the bloody hellmouths are they for?
“Nina?” Rhys steps around the two mercenaries with a puzzled look. “We should find Cillian, yeah? Don’t want to be here when the police arrive.”
“You go ahead.” I don’t meet my mother’s eyes. “I’m gonna run home. Got some energy to get rid of.”
“But it’s thirty miles!”
Thirty miles I’d have to spend with the weight of unanswered and unasked questions. I’d rather run. I sprint out of the building and into the winter afternoon, burning so hot I wonder that nothing catches fire in my wake.
ARTEMIS
HONORA IS LYING ON THE edge of the bed, head hanging over, her long dark hair draping down like shiny curtains, obscuring the light of her face. She’s paging idly through a selection of brochures spread out on the floor.
“… kind of a creep, but aren’t they all? He pays well. We could make enough in a couple months for tuition for at least a year. Ooh, this is a proper campus—just look at that ivy. I know it’s not practical, but I always kind of wanted to go into communications. PR. Isn’t that daft?” She turns her head to look at Artemis, making a face to hide her vulnerability.
Artemis smiles so Honora knows she’s not teasing. “I don’t think that’s daft. You’d kick ass at a PR firm. And if things didn’t go your way, you’d also kick ass, just literally.”
Honora laughs and goes back to the brochures. The plan is to do some demon-hunting jobs—Honora still has plenty of connections, even though she doesn’t work with Sean anymore—and earn enough to put themselves through college. Artemis isn’t old enough, technically, but Honora also knows someone who can fake documents to give Artemis all the A levels and identity requirements she needs to apply. Artemis didn’t exactly take time to grab her birth certificate before running out on the castle, the Watchers, her mother, her sister, and everything she’d ever known and worked toward.
“Hey, Moon, what’s wrong?”
Artemis forces a smile. She stands, stretching. “Just tired.” The flat they’re crashing in belonged to a vampire, and the décor is like someone spent way too much time studying vampire films of the eighties. The walls are painted black and plastered with neon posters. The headboard is black leather, and Artemis tries very hard not to think about what might have gone down in this room. They vacuumed the carpet very thoroughly after dusting the vampire, but she still insisted on new bedding before she’d sleep here. And even after that, she doesn’t sleep well. She constantly wakes in a panic, heart racing with the knowledge that she’s supposed to be doing something.
She can never figure out what, though.
Honora’s excited about their plans, and Artemis wants to be. But trying to imagine a life where she goes to college and majors in, what, accounting? And then gets a job in an office and wears low heels and goes to work every day like a normal person? She’s not a normal person, she’s never been a normal person, she doesn’t want to be a normal person. The whole thing would feel too absurd, knowing the evil that’s out there, lurking.