Some of the people who’d been near the back had started rushing towards the stairway door, which hung open behind them. That ended when Shadow appeared in the doorway with a Ninjatō in each hand, blades angled slightly outward, blocking their escape.

  I heard the clatter of dropped weapons and the dull thuds of knees hitting the floor. A glance upward showed several of them already down, kneeling and hands laced over their heads.

  Then came an agonizing scream.

  I saw Shadow wrench both swords free from a red armband’s body. I left the fate of the rest of them to her for now.

  “Surrender or die!” I heard Bhaarrt roar.

  A gunshot cracked. The round slammed into Bhaarrt’s shield with a sharp metallic ring and ricocheted away. Another shot followed. Then came the wet, crushing sound of Bhaarrt’s maul meeting flesh and bone. A body hit the floor a heartbeat later.

  I looked up.

  One man still stood. He had backed against a window, his left arm locked around a woman’s neck. In his right hand, a pistol pressed hard against her temple.

  She wore a light blue dress and a mostly white apron, stained with old food splatters like something a restaurant waitress would wear. One of the red armbands was strapped around her arm.

  “Stay back!” he screamed. “I’ll kill her. I will! Come closer and I’ll kill her first!”

  My voice came out soft, unsteady, catching as the words went tripping over themselves. “You won’t be killing anyone else today.”

  I wrapped her in bright blue MANA ARMOR. The Cherenkov-blue glow shimmered around her head and shoulders.

  He flinched, half jerking away, and fired.

  The bullet struck her head at an angle, deflecting upward with a sharp crack and punching a hole into the ceiling tiles above. She tore free of his grip as he staggered from shock.

  I didn’t care what happened next.

  I shoved nearly all my remaining MANA into a spell and hit him with a MANA BOLT. The spell punched straight through him, trailing blue sparks that vanished almost instantly. His body slammed into the window behind him, glass spiderwebbing outward as he slumped, half-caught by the frame.

  The woman collapsed to her knees, then folded forward onto the floor, sobbing.

  I barely noticed.

  Blaze was dead. And I’d killed her…just like I’d known I would need to. Somewhere deep down, back at the farm, I’d felt it coming. Not how. Just that it would happen.

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  Tears blurred my vision.

  White-clad arms wrapped around me from behind. I felt a female body at my back. In front of me, a deep, raspy voice said, “Stand down, soldier. It’s over.”

  Large gray arms closed around both of us…all three of us, really…as I still held Blaze’s body in my arms.

  “It’s over?” My question barely carried.

  “It is. For here,” Bhaarrt’s voice answered.

  “I’ll take it from here,” Ingrid said softly behind me.

  Her white-clad arm reached past my shoulder. Ingrid’s hand rested gently in Blaze’s hair, darkened with blood.

  “RESURRECT.”

  Her voice was soft, but full of authority and command.

  White light bloomed outward from her hand, clean and steady. It wrapped its way around Blaze’s body.

  I felt the MANA flow through her hand and into Blaze’s body. It wasn’t blue…not bright Cherenkov blue…but I felt it all the same as it moved, filled, repaired. Closing the wound.

  Blaze’s body spasmed as she sucked in a breath.

  Then another.

  The third came easier.

  Ingrid’s healing light surrounded Blaze’s head and shoulders, bathing her in white. The wound vanished. Pale skin returned to its natural color, lightly tanned like the rest of her neck.

  I looked down at her clothes. The blood on the leather jacket could be cleaned. It had been…years ago…after my wife had worn the coat out in the woods, sometimes in the mud. I thought the dry cleaner up the street was still open the last time I’d driven past.

  Strange, the thoughts that came with it.

  That coat had been draped over the passenger seat behind us when the accident happened. When my wife died next to me.

  Now it had been wrapped around Blaze when I killed her.

  Her eyes fluttered open. She looked up at Ingrid, then around the room, and finally locked onto me.

  I glanced at Ingrid. She smiled and nodded.

  I gathered Blaze up, lifting her upper body and pulling her tight against my chest. Crushing her into me.

  One arm wrapped around me. Then the other.

  Her hug wasn’t was half as hard as mine. It didn’t matter. I felt it.

  “I almost beat him,” she murmured. “I hoped you’d come for me even while he controlled me. I kept a part of me from him.”

  “Shhhh…” I whispered. “It’s over. He’s dead.”

  “You killed him?”

  I nodded. “I would have anyway.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ingrid slip away, giving us space. Then farther still, heading to help others.

  “We’ll get you out of here,” I said quietly. “They’ve stopped shooting.”

  Shouts echoed from outside the building, muffled by limestone blocks, bricks, and broken glass.

  She nodded, her face inches from mine. Then she closed the distance and wrapped her arms around my body and kissed me. A kiss that said more than words ever could.

  “How’s Viviane? Is she safe?” Blaze whispered in my ear.

  I glanced around the room and spotted her near the back, helping another woman to her feet. “She’s fine. Helping others.”

  Blaze nodded slowly. She didn’t look away. Her eyes stayed on mine.

  “This is the second time you’ve drawn my blood,” she said, then her mouth twisted into an impish grin. “What’s the forfeit for losing this fight?”

  I laughed and helped her to her feet. “I’ll tell you when we get home tonight.”

  She was steady enough now. We shifted gears and started helping others.

  I skimmed the chat messages that had piled up during the fight and recovery. We’d taken a few casualties…people too far from our two high-level Healers to be revived in time. Almost all other wounds had been healed, on both sides.

  When we finally went downstairs using the exterior stairway, I learned that the dead and wounded on both sides were fewer than we’d feared.

  We avoided the interior stairwell. It was booby-trapped.

  That could wait for people trained to deal with bombs and traps. They’d deal with it.

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