43. Poison Apple Gets Lit #2
Rap shouts his name, banana-blonde mohawk bright through the rising smoke. She’s beating back two others, just barely.
The side hall spits out a body I know.
Ryder, gun drawn and low, reading the room in one flat sweep. The muzzle finds Wrecking Ball, and Rap crosses straight through the line. He holsters it.
"I sent you home," she snarls at him, ducking a pipe.
"You did." He catches the pipe on its next swing and folds the man's wrist toward his own elbow until the guy squeals into the floorboards. "Bad feeling."
They fall in shoulder to shoulder without discussing it, and the two HAMs on her become two HAMs on them, and that math goes bad for the HAMs fast.
"We will be discussing," Rap grits out, swinging the Jolly Roger bottle, "your inability to follow instructions."
"Looking forward to it, boss."
Even through the smoke, I catch the color climbing her neck. She hits the next HAM harder.
I take a step toward Geanie and Lilah rushes me from the side. Her switchblade flashes toward my ribs.
I turn just as she reaches me. I catch her wrist. She catches mine.
For one breath, we’re locked together, both of us straining hard enough our arms shake.
She shoves in close, teeth bared. "Not much, are you, when you don’t have your dirty magic friends to help?"
My stomach twists.
Ariel. Cinder. Goldie. Kiki. Carolee. Red.
Four.
All gone.
My hand slips for half a second. Lilah’s blade slices across my upper arm.
Pain flashes white behind my eyes. Before she can draw back for another strike, I drive my knee into her stomach.
Lilah doubles over with a grunt.
I wrench her arm across my body, twist until her shoulder locks, then slam her face-first into the nearest table. Glass jumps. Her switchblade skitters from her fingers.
"Not much?" I hiss, grabbing her hair poof. "I’m more than you can handle."
I shove her down hard enough that the table legs scream against the floor and she drops to the ground unconscious.
Across the room, a bottle comes out of the smoke sideways and catches Ryder above the ear. He drops to a knee, and a bat across the shoulders lays him flat beside Geanie's overturned chair. Rap screams his name on the same raw note she screamed Geanie's.
Every hair on me lifts at once. My body turns to the front door the way a compass needle turns north.
The Seven walks through.
My heart cartwheels painfully. I’m relieved to see him. Excited. Angry. Hurt. Each conflicting emotion beats with a force so intense I feel it’ll break free of my ribcage.
White eyes.
It's One, and he’s still in that same damn hoodie.
The hood is down for once. His curls are crushed flat on one side, the way hair dries when a body sleeps where it falls.
The sweater looks like it’s been washed, but dark blood stains the fabric around the bullet hole.
The sleeve tattered from Brexley’s fangs has been shoved up over a duct-tape bandage wrapped around his forearm.
He steps over the broken threshold, his jaw flexed and set with determination. Smoke drifts across his face. Glass cracks under his shoes. He walks into the bar without hurrying, without looking left or right, while HAMs rush past him on both sides.
Everything else turns syrup slow. None of them touch him. None of them block him.
He moves straight toward me with dangerous intent. My fingers tighten around my dagger, as I watch him walk through the HAMs like he came with them.
Is he here to finish me off? Finish off this place and take the few friends I have, even though they are human? It’s too much to bear that I or they support magic-kind.
"Snow." Rap sees him too.
"I know," I say, but my voice is too thin.
Another woman rushes me. I turn, slash her jacket open, and drive my elbow into her nose. Blood flows hot over my wrist. A man swings a pipe. I duck, spin under it, and bury my dagger in his thigh.
The Seven keeps coming, slow and steady. A bottle flies past his head and shatters against the bar. Flame crawls up the polished wood. He doesn’t even glance at it.
His focus is still completely fixed on me, and it feels like the devil is coming for my soul.
My dagger lifts between us, but it feels useless, pathetic, even. The Seven already has my soul, and the realization claws through my chest, sharp and suffocating.
He disappears. A hot rush of air moves the hair at the back of my neck. And he reappears right in front of me along with a loud smacking sound. Panic punches through my chest.
One is so close the smoke breaks around his shoulders, so close I can see the bloodshot veins threaded through the white of his eyes.
For one suspended second, I can’t hear the fire. I can’t hear Rap. I can’t hear the glass breaking under anyone’s feet. His eyes flicker all the colors, except black...or red, before returning to white.
There's only him. Only them.
His breath against my face. The blank, terrible set of his mouth. His arm posed up over my shoulder. I follow its trajectory.
He's holding a pipe Wrecking Ball tried to bring down on my skull. It hovers inches away.
Oh.
One twists, dragging the pipe with him instead of trying to hold it.
Wrecking Ball’s momentum follows.
Before the big man can pull back, One is behind him.
A foot hooks Wrecking Ball’s ankle. A sharp strike hits the back of his knee. His leg folds under him, and all that weight goes down wrong.
His skull cracks against the edge of a table.
He drops.
One is already gone.
White flashes tear through the room. A wrist is redirected into a jaw. A crowbar swings wide and catches another HAM in the teeth. Someone charges, misses, and hits the brick wall face-first when One is suddenly somewhere else.
Bodies fall from their own speed, their own weapons, their own bad aim.
I see Rap laid out on the floor near the bar. Blood runs down her face from her hairline.
I rush to her, my knees hitting the floor. I check her body and find she’s still breathing, just knocked out.
Behind me, the fires go out in bursts. Ice buckets. Soda spray. Wet towels dragged over flame faster than I can track.
A familiar pair of worn sneakers stop in front of me. I look up at One, not sure what I expect to see, but his expression is grim and controlled.
Despite putting down every Human Against Magic supporter, protecting Rap and Geanie, there is no softness in his gaze. No emotion. This is all a mission to him.
"I am to bring you to Mother," he says, holding out a hand to me.
I have a feeling going to her means I might not come back. But that’s where my friends are. That’s where I’ll find my answers to The Seven. There’s no hesitation.
I take his hand and let him pull me up. "Take me to her."