Iron Night (19 page)

I pushed off the floor, managing to get only as high as my knees, but that was enough, and I threw one arm around Soli's neck and the other around her torso and used my weight to yank her bodily off of Suzume. As I pulled her away Soli scratched violently at Suze, and I realized that there was something very wrong with her hands—a long black claw, curved like a heavy bird of prey's talon, was punching through the tip of each of Soli's fingers, jutting out beneath and sometimes even through the beds of her perfectly human-looking and French-manicured nails. There were long, deep slices in Suzume's shirt at her upper chest, with swiftly darkening edges that spoke of deep cuts in the skin beneath that were bleeding freely.

Soli's elbow slammed into the side of my head as I concentrated on trying to pull her farther away from Suze and I fell backward, losing my grip on her as she hopped up with eerie dexterity. On my back, I managed to kick her as hard as I could in the back of her right knee, making her wobble and struggle to keep her balance. She did, and the brief opening gave Suzume the chance she needed to get back up, and now that long, deadly knife was in the kitsune's hands. Suze struck, the long knife whipping so quickly that I would've had no chance to avoid it, but Soli was too fast, pulling to one side and letting Suze cut only air.

Suze had thrown too much weight into the strike, and for a second she was off-balance and unable to pull back, and Soli took the chance to rake a hand of those black claws across Suze's side, hard enough that Suze made a loud exclamation of pain and surprise. She pulled back sharply, barely getting out of the way before Soli's other hand swatted down on a similar path.

We were outclassed, I realized as I pulled myself up again. Getting close to Soli wasn't an option again with those claws, and I looked desperately for something heavy to throw, and finally spotted my heavy Maglite sitting on the counter. I yanked hard at the edge of my sweatshirt that it was resting on, pulling it into my reach but at the same time giving a hard knock to the glass bottle of ink that Soli had set down. It fell loudly to its side at my pull and then was swept off the counter completely as I grabbed the long flashlight, and hit the floor with an unmistakable shattering sound.

Soli's head whipped around at the sound, and her face finally lost its taunting expression, replaced by hot anger. I didn't pause, but took my opportunity and threw the Maglite straight at her head with as much force as I could put into it. She saw it coming and ducked a split second before it would've smashed into her, and it continued on its path, right into the large front window of the Iron Needle, creating a storm of flying glass.

Soli stayed in a duck, and I crouched automatically, throwing an arm over my head, but Suzume ignored the window completely and focused on taking advantage of her moment. The long knife sliced down—again, Soli was aware of the danger and moved with unnatural speed, but this time it wasn't quite fast enough. Cutting in a downward, right-to-left motion, Suzume had been aiming for Soli's neck, but instead caught her at the shoulder, digging in and slicing across her chest and arm.

The knife penetrated, but there was no blood at all. Instead her perfect skin tore like paper and a thick, white, viscous fluid welled out and dribbled slowly out of the wound site. The sliced skin suddenly slumped, handing open like an old, ripped shirt, revealing something beneath it that was hard, shiny, and black and looked like a beetle's carapace.

There was a momentary pause as we all stared at what had been revealed; then the room was abruptly filled with a dense reek of decay, forcing my brain to dig up a comparable sensory memory of when I was eight and on a Boy Scout hike that, due to the scout leader's misreading of a map, took us through a mile of boggy marshland. At one point I'd stepped on something more solid than the rest of the marsh, and when I'd foolishly kicked it, I discovered that it was the rotting, half-eaten corpse of a raccoon.

That had smelled almost as bad as this did.

Soli pressed one long finger into the cut, tracing the damage and scraping her talon across the black surface to produce a sound that was reminiscent of nails across a chalkboard. She looked up, not at Suze but at me, and I realized that she was now very well and truly pissed off.

“I liked this skin,” she said, rage dripping from the words even as white glops of fluid hit the floor. “I wasn't ready to replace it.” Her finger moved up, the claw dragging almost reflectively over what were, even at this juncture, some of the most spectacular breasts I'd ever seen. “You'll be paying for my new suit,” she said, and even though I had no idea what she meant, I felt a deep chill of foreboding.

If that had meant nothing to me, it had meant a lot to Suze, because comprehension suddenly filled her face, followed almost immediately by horror.

“Skinwalker,” Suzume growled, and Soli looked away from me to focus on her. “Your kind aren't allowed in this territory.”

The word scraped against a memory of a half-listened-to lecture from Chivalry about the state of the territory, but before I could retrieve it, or Soli could respond to what Suze had said, the door of the shop slammed open and Matt stood solidly in the doorway, his old .38 service pistol in his hands and pointing at the room in general.

“None of you move a goddamn inch,” he said, looking around, trying to figure out what was going on. His eyes went first to me, then, at the sight of Suze's extremely long knife, he refocused both his attention and the sighting of his pistol to her. Then he registered Soli, and the horrible moment where I saw his gun waver as his brain struggled against the incomprehensibility of what he was seeing seemed to stretch on forever.

Then Soli apparently decided that the situation had gone far enough, and went for the door. As she came toward him, Matt automatically swiveled the gun toward her but couldn't decide in time whether to squeeze the trigger. Thinking of those claws and just how vulnerable Matt was, I started for them as well, but Soli was already at him. Grabbing him with both hands, she threw him bodily across the room, and he slammed into me, knocking both of us backward and into the heavy counter. I lost sight of Soli and everything else as my head smacked against the floor, hard enough to disorient me.

Everything in my brain swam around for a moment, and from a long distance I could hear Suzume yell my name. I tried to push myself up and into a sitting position, but something heavy was lying across me. I blinked, trying to figure out what it was; then the smell of blood filled me, and everything that was me seemed to wink out like a blown candle, leaving just a raging hunger.

I sat up fast, and what had covered me fell to my lap. It was heavy, and as I panted in a breath I knew that it was a human that was bleeding. The smell wasn't just in my nose; it was in my mouth and covering my tongue and my throat, and I breathed it in, and all of the aches and pains that had been filling my body a moment ago were gone, and the only thing in my mind was that this was
so good
, but it could still be even
better
, and I wrapped my hands against the human and pulled it, unresisting, closer to me, even as I dropped my head down, down toward the blood that was dripping so beautifully.

It was less than an inch away when something grabbed my hair and pulled my head back sharply, and I snarled at the thing that had done it not just because of the pain that had erupted in my scalp but because it wanted the blood that was
mine
—

Then I was hit squarely across the face, right in the spot that even in my haze had still been throbbing dully from where something had hit me before, and something screamed, “Fortitude!” right in my face. When I blinked, that something was a woman with tilted, richly black eyes, and I blinked again and knew that it was Suzume, and that she was about to backhand me across the face again.

“It's okay—it's okay,” I said, flinching backward as far as I could, given that she still had a death grip on my hair with her left hand. She eyed me, hard and suspicious.

“Is that you?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“How do I know?” Her hand never wavered, and she seemed to be seriously contemplating backhanding me again for certainty.

“You could ask me my favorite color,” I said weakly. “Or what the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow is.”

She didn't smile, but her grip on my hair relaxed, along with the look on her face. “Good,” she said, shortly. “Now let me grab your buddy.”

“What?” I looked down, and Matt was lying across my lap, unconscious. His head had hit the counter, and blood was still pumping merrily from a cut on his scalp. Horror bubbled up in me. “Oh, shit, Matt,” I said. The memories hit me, and I rolled over and puked on the floor.

“
Timing
, Fort, timing!” Suze said, pulling Matt away from me as I continued to heave. My eyes were closed when I heard her yell, “Lilah! You can stop the courageous huddling you're doing and come give me a fucking hand!”

“Don't yell at her for doing the smart thing and what you told her to do,” I muttered, keeping my head down. I felt a soft hand pressed against my forehead, and a handful of tissues stuffed into my hand. Cracking my eyes, my first impression was of just how frizzy Lilah's hair had gotten while she hid in the closet. It was like a copper chia pet—adorable.

“She's right, you know,” Lilah said, guilt filling her too-bright eyes. “That's what I did. Even when you two were getting ripped up.”

I wasn't sure what to tell her. I doubted her presence would've made any difference in the fight, but tactful phrasing was beyond me right now, and I focused on wiping saliva and the remnants of dinner off my face. As for the floor, it wasn't as if my puke made much of a difference in the sanitation level.

“We don't have time for this crap,” Suze snapped. “With the noise we made, someone would've called the cops. Grab anything that's yours and let's get out.” She jerked her chin at me. “Fort, Matt's yours. Get him.”

“Suze, he's
sick
,” Lilah broke in.

“And he's still the only one of us that can carry that much deadweight.” She'd grabbed some paper towels and was winding them around Matt's head to stanch the blood. I wondered whether it was for Matt's benefit or to prevent a blood trail from forming. Probably both.

But she was right, as in many other things, and I pulled myself up and gritted my teeth. After what had just happened, I would've preferred to hide under my bed for a week before coming within ten feet of Matt, let alone having to not just touch him, but come so close to his bleeding head again. I reached for him, then flinched back, unable to do it.

Suzume jabbed me sharply in the side. “Suck it up, buttercup,” she said. “We don't have time for you to have the vapors.”

That pissed me off, and it was anger that let me pull Matt onto my shoulders in a fireman's carry and stand up. It was a good thing I'd been doing a lot of lifting lately—the beginning of my transition had made me stronger than I should've been, but Matt was solidly built with muscle, and as soon as his weight was on my shoulders I was immediately reminded of every bump and bruise from the fight.

I headed for the back door. Suzume was moving quickly around me, checking the floor and counters for anything that was ours. We were almost at the door when I remembered, and I turned to Suze and said, “Matt's gun—”

“Lilah, grab it. It fell by the door.”

I looked back. Lilah hurried over to it, but when she reached down to take it she paused, eyeing it like a poisonous snake. The hesitation was brief; then she set her jaw and grabbed it firmly. With quick motions she swaddled the gun in my hoodie to conceal it from any curious eyes and stuffed the bundle under her arm.

It tugged at something inside me that wanted to protect her. But at the same time another part of me felt annoyed by it, by the understanding that Lilah would have to be protected, and there wasn't a choice to it.

For a horrible moment I wondered whether Suzume had felt those same conflicting feelings toward me when we'd first met, which had been while I was being mugged by Bruins fans.

We were halfway to the car when we heard the sirens. We'd been lucky that the area was mainly filled with businesses and it had taken that long. All of us stepped up our pace anyway, Lilah falling in beside me and doing her best to try to take some of Matt's weight by lifting his legs. It didn't exactly help, but I appreciated the thought. I also made a mental note to suggest that Matt cut back on his carbs.

In the interest of circumspection, my Fiesta had been parked three blocks down the street in the lot of an abandoned gas station. When we reached it we discovered that it had made a new friend—Matt's Buick was parked right beside it.

“Ever get the feeling we're being followed, Fort?” Suze asked. I didn't answer, instead focusing on doing my best to gently sit Matt on the ground. “We can't ignore this,” she continued. “I know this isn't easy for you, but he was following you. He just came running into a fight and got a full look at something he definitely shouldn't have.” She looked at me. “You know what your mother would tell you to do.”

“He might've saved our lives by coming in when he did.” Matt's face was far too pale, white even against his impromptu paper-towel turban. Blood was drying on his forehead and down his cheeks, making it uncomfortable for me to be so close to him because I could still smell it, and it still smelled good.

Lilah crouched down next to me, leaning in to look at him closely. “He should've been waking up by now,” she said quietly. “If . . . we would need to take him to the hospital.” I could hear what she was saying between the lines: if I wanted him to live, he needed medical attention. If I didn't, then I should probably do nothing.

The rules in my mother's territory were clear: if a human became a threat and endangered the secrecy that protected everyone, that threat needed to be neutralized. Sometimes it meant a bribe, sometimes intimidation, and other times it meant killing. Most felt that killing was the safest option. Lilah knew that as well as I did.