Book of Night(119)

Howling in pain, Salt dropped the gun. She kicked it with her foot, sending it skittering across the floor.

“You’re nothing,” he told her. “A smudge. A blotch on the universe. And no blotch is going to be my downfall.”

He punched her in the head with his other hand. She staggered dizzily back and he hit her again. He was an old man, but he was strong, and used to hurting people.

“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” he told her.

“Oh, absolutely,” Charlie said. “Because you’re not going to kill me now.”

He grabbed hold of a poker by the fireplace and swung it toward her. Charlie ducked and grabbed for another tool from the stand. This one was disappointingly tipped with a metal dustpan, but she brought it up anyway, knocking back another attack.

The metal clanged together and she felt it all the way up her arm.

Charlie’s sole experience in this kind of fighting was playing with Posey in the lot by their old apartment, swinging sticks at one another. Unfortunately, that was the level of sucking she was bringing to this fight now.

She needed to hit him hard enough that he’d go down and not get up.

She knew it, and yet part of her was horrified at the thought. She hated Salt. She would have been glad if he were dead. But actually making him dead was another thing.

He swung the poker at her leg. She jumped out of the way. He was an old man. Surely, he’d tire out fast, wouldn’t he?

But the wild-eyed glee in his face made her think otherwise. He wanted to see her sprawled on the rug. Wanted to crack her skull open. Would be delighted to see her bleed.

He whipped his poker toward her head as something grabbed for her hands. She threw herself to one side so that the poker skimmed over the side of her hip without really connecting.

She hit the rug.

His goddamn shadow, that’s what had grabbed for her. She wasn’t fighting just him, but his shadow as well.

On the ground, Charlie rolled over and scrabbled for the gun. She whipped it up toward him, finger on the trigger.

He stopped, his shadow drifting toward her like a cobra, moving back and forth on the wall above her.

Charlie got up, keeping the gun trained on him. “Stay where you are.”

“You’re not going to shoot me,” he scoffed.

With her free hand, Charlie pulled the onyx knife out of her bra. She removed the duct tape sheath by biting down on it and yanking.

Salt looked amused. “What are you planning on doing with that?”

“That shadow of yours—it’s not exactly yours, is it? It belonged to a gloamist before you. A good one, I bet. You wouldn’t want anything less than excellence.”

“So what?” he said.

She squatted down, keeping the gun on him. “So, I bet it hates you.” And with one long slash of the dagger, his shadow slipped free.

Salt backed up so quickly that he tripped. On the ground, the shadow had formed a puddle on the floor, like an oil slick, and from the center something was starting to rise.

“Guess you were right about me not shooting you,” she said, and left the library.

Charlie got to the great room in time to see Vince and the Hierophant clash, figures splashed on the wall, huge as titans. Someone had thrown open the doors to the garden, and cold air blew through the room, sending the curtains dancing.

“I have lived two hundred years,” the Hierophant howled in his voice that wasn’t a voice. “And I will live thousands more.”

Screams were all around Charlie. People were rushing from the room, bumping into her, or drawing weapons of onyx. One gloamist flew up on wings of shadow, holding out a glistening black blade. The Hierophant tore the shadow from her back, sending her spiraling down onto a coffee table.

A flurry of onyx arrows flew toward the Blights. The shafts sunk into both figures. Vince contorted in pain and surprise, before the shafts fell from both, scattering on the floor. One archer ran to retrieve them, while others cocked back more arrows.

I didn’t come here planning on leaving.

Vince wasn’t going to survive this fight. She’d seen the way those teeth and claws and arrows sank into his body. The way his movements slowed and took on a staggering, drunken quality.

The Hierophant reached out his hands, and the nails of his fingers tore long lines into the wall along both sides of the room.

“Stop fighting me, Red. Together, we can become more powerful than any Blights since the Massacre. We will be like the Blights of old, and devour the very edges of the world.”

Vicereine used long black daggers to guide gloamists out onto the lawn.

Malik stood in the gallery on the second story, some glittering cloth in his hands. Two other gloamists were with him.

Adeline stepped into the mouth of the hall, near where Charlie stood. Her fingers were flecked with blood.

Vince was fighting to a purpose, Charlie realized. Steering the Hierophant backward. He might get in a hard, staggering blow, might slice Vince’s chest with those nails, but Vince kept pushing. Kept making the Hierophant give ground.

Too late, she realized what he was about to do.

With unsteady hands, Charlie stripped off her triple onyx ring, the one that looked like fancy brass knuckles. She put it back on, the onyx facing the inside of her palm. Then she ran for the fireplace.

Because that’s what Vince had been backing the Hierophant toward. Vince, who maintained his position, even when it meant absorbing hits instead of dodging them. Charlie felt the brush of electric air as the shadows moved above her.