“Some coincidence that you’re here now…” I grabbed another staunch pad, breathed deeply, and lifted the back of my upper-garment to get a look at the entry wound. Crackling sensations danced through me, alternating between pain and numbness.
He saw me wince. “You should have a doc check you out.”
“Yeah, I should.” I gave him a look that dared him to ask why I wasn’t getting medical attention, but the marshal glared back, not taking the bait. All he had to do was look around to know I was in serious trouble.
I shrugged one arm out of my coat and tried again to get the back pad in place, but twisting made me want to throw up my breakfast bar. It didn’t help that the marshal wasn’t leaving, and I really did not want him or anyone to see the marks on my skin. He probably wouldn’t know what they were, but it wasn’t worth the risk.
“Will you let me help?” He came forward.
“No.” My bloody fingers slid across the pad, leaving tacky trails. This wasn’t going well. “Stay there. Don’t come near me.”
He stopped, my pain mirrored in his eyes. “At least tell me what happened.”
“Why?”
“So when you pass out, I’ll know what to write in my report.”
I snorted a laugh, ditched the wrinkled pad and used my teeth to tear open a fresh pack. Help get me arrested, more like. “Like I said, everything is fine, Marshal. I don’t need or want your help.” This time, I pressed the pad in the right place. It latched onto the good skin and plastered itself into and over the wound, sealing it tight. Pain throbbed deep and low and hot, saliva filled my mouth and my vision blurred, but it passed. It always passed. The fix would have to do until I found somewhere safe to hole up.
The marshal had fallen silent, stewing on me, my words, and the situation. I figured he didn’t much like being told no. He scanned the mess, reluctant to dismiss everything his instincts were telling him.
“Do you have a license for that whip?” he asked for a second time, nodding at the whip I’d placed on the counter.
I touched the whip. “What whip?”
He pushed his coat aside and tucked a thumb into his pants pocket, revealing the pistol hitched at his hip. “Because if you don’t, I’ll need to take you in. You know the law regarding illegal possession.” His eyes had turned shrewd while that tightness to his lips had widened into the beginnings of a smile. I wondered if he smiled at all the criminals he was about to apprehend. Maybe he thought his looks might steal their hearts as well as their freedom?
“You do not want to mess with me right now, Marshal,” I drawled from the corner of my mouth, hiding a sneer.
“A crime has been reported. It’s my duty to do everything in my power to see that any wrongdoer is brought before the law.”
“Wow.” Wasn’t his world so wonderfully black and white. His duty wasn’t about helping me; it was about upholding the law, even if that law screwed me over. “You going to arrest me?” I pushed upright, dragging the whip with me.
“Do I have to?”
I took one last look at my home. There wasn’t much here. In truth, it had never really felt like a home, just a halfway post between points A and B. And now Sota was gone and there was nothing left here for me.
A glance past the marshal revealed the section of counter where Sota’s dock had waited was empty. The dock was missing. Why would the intruder take the dock if the warfae had dismantled Sota? He wouldn’t. Sota was alive.
The marshal still waited for my reply, his hand resting easily on his hip, so close to his pistol. “Go back to upholding your laws and forget what you saw here.” I turned my back on him. “At least one of us can…” A blur of cloaked movement shot through the open door. Something small, bright and buzzing sailed over my shoulder and landed at the back of my container.
The crackling ball hissed and spat, arcing out veins of electricity. Grenade!
The marshal’s outline blurred—too fast to be human. He swooped in, snatched up the fizzing ball, whirled, his coat fanning out, and smashed his elbow into my projector screen and through the window. The grenade sailed through the hole. The blast hit a second later. A wave of noise and heat slammed through the window and exploded through my container. I recoiled, throwing my coat around me, and staggered against the assault on my senses. Alarms shrilled, inside my head or in the building, I wasn’t sure.
Fingers dug into my arms, and the marshal was in front of me, mouthing something I couldn’t hear through the ringing in my ears. I blinked, seeing something unusual in his mouth. Then he shoved me toward the shattered window, leaving me with no choice. I clambered through and hissed at the sting of jagged metal cutting into my hands. Alarms still wailed, drowning out everything but the thudding of my heart. I twisted to look back through the window for the marshal. A figure cloaked in a shimmering exo-suit had joined us. The intruder fired a two-pronged device, designed to deliver a shock into the marshal’s body. The barbed teeth sank into the marshal’s arm. Electricity danced down the connecting lines. But the marshal did the impossible. He clamped a hand around the lines and tugged, pulling the intruder toward him. The marshal’s fist met the intruder’s face and crumpled the metal mask inward. Blood spurted from the mouth grill, and the intruder dropped. But another dashed in, and behind him, another, both wrapped in exo-suits that enhanced their strength and agility. The second stepped over his fallen companion and swung for the marshal. He jerked to the side and threw the intruder back with an uppercut that almost took the guy’s head off.
I knew I should have been climbing down to the street below, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the marshal’s terrible lethality. Was he fae? But he didn’t move with the same liquid grace they did. He fought brutally, no holding back, no fancy shit. The third intruder revealed a pistol, but he never got to use it. The marshal moved in a blink, impossibly appearing behind the last assailant. He hooked his arm around the suited figure’s throat and twisted. I didn’t hear the neck break, not over the shrieking alarms. The last intruder collapsed.
The marshal looked up, and I saw again what I thought I’d seen earlier. Sharp teeth. Our glares locked. He’d killed, and we both knew it. Not very lawman-like. His eyes asked, What are you going to do with that knowledge?
I started down the mangled fire escape, avoiding the sharpest pieces of twisted metal. The street below had borne the brunt of the explosion and buckled under its weight, but the containers, although dented, had survived intact. People were emerging from their homes. Witnesses. The first responder bots would be here soon, and after that, it would be difficult to escape unseen.
The marshal landed in a crouch beside me on the street and drew up to his full height. My container was too high to safely leap from the window. Yet more evidence he wasn’t anything like what he appeared to be. But what was he? He tugged his coat straighter and eyed the swelling crowd. A lawman would take control, probably arrest me, take me in for questioning and expose me to the kind of people who had already tried to kill me. But exactly what kind of lawman was he?
I watched him closely, waiting for him to reach for his weapon or his cuffs. That would be the right thing to do, but something told me he followed his own set of laws. If he battled with his morals, none of it showed on his stoic face. All the smiles and all the humor had vanished. He looked down at me for answers I had no intention of giving him. So where did that leave us?
“Go,” he said. “You were never here.”
I wouldn’t hang around and question his attack of generosity, even if it was suspiciously nice of him. Collar up, chin down, I walked away from the crowd and the marshal, and slipped deeper into the gulley. It wouldn’t matter soon anyway. After I got myself patched up, I would leave Calicto. Larsen—if that was his real name—had sent those intruders. The fae knew too much. He saw too much. I needed space to regroup and plan. And then I would return. The truth hiding in my past demanded it.
Chapter 5