C.E. Mutphy - Hands of Flame

“Business?” Kate glanced up with flawless ingenuity, eyes widened to see a hand tangled in Margrit’s hair and a blade at her throat. “Oh,” she said, as if in genuine surprise, and then smiled. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“Half-breed.” Tariq spat the word. “You would shy from spilling the blood of your mothers. Even the selkies aren’t so weak as that.” The blade’s curve remained steady a few centimeters from Margrit’s throat. She thought her pulse must be reflected in the bright metal, panic and sour relief giving it wing.

Kate minced forward, managing to put on the air of a prissy schoolgirl despite wearing heavy boots, cargo pants and a leather jacket thrown over a torn white tank top. Like Janx, she was exquisite in her portrayal of otherness; what the eye saw was not at all what was really there. Everything Margrit could see screamed of innocent curiosity, and it was all a gorgeous falsehood. This was not the woman Margrit had met that morning, though whether this Kate or the other had been closer to her true self, Margrit had no idea.

“Oh,” Kate said in the same sweet trill, “oh, is that what you see? You think our heritage makes us more constrained, not less? Such a pity.” Her voice changed with the last words, gaining a depth far too profound for an ordinary human woman to achieve. “Release Margrit Knight or reap the whirlwind.”

Margrit, afraid to move more than her eyes, jerked her gaze to Tariq and saw avarice light his features before a smile slid into place. “We are the whirlwind.”

Like Janx, like Alban, Tariq was not so fast as Daisani. In the end, it seemed he didn’t need to be.

It was an easy movement, really. Margrit saw it with full clarity, the way he straightened his arm the last half inch and drew it across in one short stroke. It looked brutal and efficient, the sort of thing that might be used to kill a goat or a cow.

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.

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.