"Can't hear them," Byrnes said, his head turning to-and-fro. "Ingrid will know the way."
"What is Balfour thinking?" Charlie demanded, leaning on the edge of the bannister and peering down the hollow core of the tower. "How are we going to get out of here?"
Malloryn joined him, squinting through the smoke. The entire ground floor of the tower must be on fire.
"Gemma?" he demanded, pressing the tuning button on his auditory device.
A long, staticky silence dwelled.
"Little... busy... right now," she finally gasped. "Rising Sons overrunning... Thorne Tower. Obsidian's helping me... take out the cannons, just in case they get... hands on another one. Kincaid and Herbert with us."
"Right." He depressed the button, turning to the other two men. "Gemma's team is handling the crisis at Thorne Tower. Ava said something about explosives being packed inside every household automaton in the entire building." Of which, there were hundreds, always sweeping unobtrusively or removing household waste. You barely even noticed the damned things anymore. "We've got to find Balfour and get out of here before this entire bloody place goes up."
The queen was going to kill him.
She'd deliberately stressed that he not get her tower destroyed.
"Come and find me, Malloryn."
The words ghosted down the stairs, almost on the edge of hearing.
He paused. "Did you hear that?"
Byrnes looked up grimly. "Sounds like a dead man to me."
There was one more level to the tower: the atrium, where blue blood duels were fought and won, and rogue blue bloods had been executed in the past.
"Malloryn?" Charlie asked.
His body moved as if some invisible puppet master tugged on his strings. "He's here," he whispered, looking up. "Balfour's here."
Ingrid shoved Adele through a pair of double doors into what looked like a sitting room as a knife buried itself in the frame.
Behind them, Lark was ducking and weaving, using every inch of her speed to avoid Dido's deadly swords.
"Keep out of this," Ingrid snarled, her eyes lighting with fierce bronze as she turned toward Dido and drew her own knife.
The dhampir woman was a whirlwind of steel as she kicked Lark firmly in the chest. Lark staggered back into Ingrid, and then Dido was turning on Adele, her eyes alight with maniacal glee.
"I'd like to extend an invitation, Your Grace," the assassin purred. "Lord Balfour would very much like to meet the woman who's captured Malloryn's heart."
It wasn't the sort of encounter she'd survive.
Adele turned, yanked a vase off a pedestal, and threw it at the woman as she advanced. Dido deflected it with an arm, but it didn't slow her.
"As for me," Dido murmured, fingers caressing the hilt of both swords. "You killed my sister-at-arms. So I thought I'd just bring Balfour your head. We can put it in a pretty box for your husband and tie a bow on it."
Adele scrambled over the daybed, the sword slashing through her skirts.
"Adele!" Lark screamed.
And then Ingrid threw herself at Dido, driving both of them to the ground. The tall Amazonian woman drove a pair of staggering punches into Dido's ribs, and the pair rolled as they wrestled for supremacy.
"Adele!" Lark tossed something toward her.
Adele snatched it out of the air.
A Doeppler Orb.
"I can't use it," Lark cried, "but Malloryn made sure we all had one."
Hope flared.
"Cover your mouth!" Adele yelled, cupping both hands around the Doeppler Orb.
Lark fell back as Ingrid took a blow to the ribs, jerking the filtration mask up over her mouth and nose. Every blue blood in the Company of Rogues had one tucked about their person somewhere, what with the dangers of Black Vein.
Adele twisted both halves of the orb as Ava had shown her, and then threw it toward where Ingrid and Dido were grappling. Diffused steam hissed out from it as the orb clicked apart, tendrils of fine mist curling around Ingrid and Dido, where they fought.
It wouldn't affect Ingrid, but Dido was another matter.
Ingrid lashed out with both knives and Dido leapt up on the daybed to avoid them. She'd lost one of her swords somewhere.
Adele kicked the daybed.
Hard.
The dhampir shot her a murderous look as it jerked beneath her feet, and Ingrid managed to bury one of her knives in the woman's side. Dido hissed through her teeth and slammed an elbow into Ingrid's head, sending her staggering.
The mist from the Doeppler Orb started to stutter. Black capillaries bled through Dido's face, but perhaps the room was too large? It didn't seem to be having the same effect as it had on Jelena.
"Get her out of here!" Ingrid yelled, her eyes flashing a fierce bronze.
Lark hauled her toward the door.
"Not without Ingrid!" she insisted.
"Malloryn's orders," Lark replied grimly.
"Bugger Malloryn and his orders," she insisted. "No Rogue left behind. Isn't that the COR creed?"
Lark hesitated, and Adele cursed herself for being so spectacularly useless in the face of violence.
As if to taunt them, Dido drove her knife between Ingrid's ribs.
"Ingrid!" Lark cried, moving forward and then hesitating.
"Go!" Adele told her. "I'll manage."
Arms locked around Dido, Ingrid staggered back as Dido knifed her again.
It was all happening so fast. Adele didn't know what to do.
Lark reentered the fray as Ingrid staggered back a step, one hand slapped to the bleeding wound at her side.
Adele could see what was going to happen.
With Ingrid injured, Lark was no match for the vicious assassin.
Turning around, she grabbed an enormous Chinese urn off a nearby pedestal and lifted it over her head.
She slammed the urn down on the back of Dido's shoulders. A hand lashed out, knuckles filling the center of Adele's vision, and then she was staggering backward, dropping the urn on the marble tiles. Heat spread across her face, her eyes watering. Good God, was her nose broken?
Ingrid's eyes flashed bronze as she shot both Lark and Adele an anguished look. "Tell Byrnes I love him."