LITMIR.BIZ

      The blast threw Tamani to the floor and shattered the security chain with a metallic zing. As Laurel spun from the stinging spray of debris, she saw the back of the apartment burst apart. Window glass and drywall skittered across the floor as the most massive troll Laurel had ever seen came crashing through – a lower troll, like the one she’d seen chained in Barnes’s hideout. The misshapen, pale monstrosity thrashed about in an attempt to dislodge Aaron, who clung to the knives he’d embedded in its shoulders. The struggling pair rolled further into the kitchen, disappearing from sight.

      As she turned back to Tamani, Laurel was horrified to see a bouquet of roses arcing through the air from the front door, shedding crimson petals like drops of blood as it floated almost leisurely toward Yuki’s prison. The instant stretched to eternity as Laurel realised that in about half a second the roses were going to breach the salt circle, Yuki was going to be free, and if Shar was to be believed, there was a good chance she would kill them all.

      A diamond-bladed knife cut through the air, pinning the paper-wrapped bouquet to the wall not an arm’s length from the salt barrier that was keeping them all alive. Shar was already pulling another blade from a sheath at his waist as Yuki screamed in frustration and Laurel turned to the wrecked front door and the figure framed in it.

      “Callista!” Shar exclaimed as Klea raised her face into the light.

      A shadow of recognition passed over Klea’s face and she looked at Shar, though her guns were pointed squarely at Tamani and Laurel. “Captain! Serendipitous.”

      “I watched you die fifty years ago,” Shar said, disbelief heavy in his words. And then, “You’re Klea.”

      “Shar!” Aaron stumbled in from the kitchen, flecked with debris and covered in troll blood. His left arm hung limp at his side. “There’s more on the way; we tried to hold them back—”

      Horror froze his features as his eyes lit on Yuki’s rumpled blossom. “Goddess of Earth and Sky. Is that—?”

      But the troll lunged at him from behind, and the two went crashing through another wall.

      “I told you to cut that damn thing off,” Klea snapped at Yuki. The gun in Klea’s hand shook – almost certainly with anger rather than fear – but Laurel didn’t dare move. “Now look what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

      Klea raised a defensive hand as Shar whipped another knife through the air. The blade knocked away one of her guns with a clang, but she turned the other at Shar and fired. Its sharp retort echoed in Laurel’s ears and Shar staggered back, clutching his shoulder and slumping against the wall.

      Seizing the moment, Tamani sprang at Klea, but she sidestepped his lunge and caught his wrist in her free hand, flipping him in the air and slamming him to the floor.

      “Tam!” Shar’s voice was strained as he struggled to stand.

      But Tamani was already back on his feet, a long silver knife in his hand; Laurel hadn’t even seen him draw it. Klea lunged at him with liquid speed, her movements so graceful they might have been a dance. She wove through Tamani’s swipes untouched, then whipped the butt of her pistol across his face, leaving a ragged gash along his cheek. She landed another blow against his wrist and Tamani’s knife seemed to leap into her hand as if of its own volition.

      Tamani retreated two steps, evading most of Klea’s jabs, but with nothing to parry her blows his shirt was soon a mess of ribbons, wet with sap from the shallow cuts accumulating on his arms and chest.

      As Laurel looked for an opportunity to dive for Klea’s dropped gun, something at the corner of her vision fluttered on ruby wings. With a sick twisting in her core she realised a petal had fallen from the skewered bouquet – drifting like a – feather, its circuitous route was a ballet of twists and twirls in the breeze that wafted through the apartment. In moments it would enter the circle and then, under Yuki’s power, the soft, innocent bit of flower would become a deadly weapon.

      And Laurel was too far away – she’d never reach it in time.

      “Shar!” she called, but he was between Klea and Tamani, wielding a chair as an improvised shield.

      “Get her out of here!” Shar shouted, a kick from Klea twisting the chair from his grip. ’Now!”

      The world spun before Laurel’s eyes as Tamani’s arm clenched around her waist – rolling her straight to the destroyed wall – and then they were falling. A scream escaped her lips but was cut off as they hit the ground and the air was pushed out of her chest. They tumbled

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