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It is so easy to break a human. Especially a human woman. Claws buried in my chest, and the sound of my own screams as someone hurt me, invaded me, hurt me
I had thought nothing else inside me could break. But something deep-buried in my mind snapped and rose up like a shattered cable suddenly free of weight, a sheet of flame blinding me. My lips shaped one single word, the only thing I could say.
No.
The alpha and omega of my epitaph, what they would lasecarve on my urn when I finally was forced kicking and screaming into the dry land of Death.
But not yet. I wasn't finished yet. The hardest, most stubborn deep-buried core of me ignited even as my body betrayed me, already starting to shift its weight to obey him, to accept the inevitable and submit.
To give in.
No. The word boiled through me. I am not sure if I screamed, or if the roar was merely psychic, locked behind my rictus-grin of a face. The curtain between me and a black hole of something too terrible to be spoken or thought of pulled aside for a single heartstopping moment, and I remembered what had been done to me. Who had done it.
And how much it had hurt.
No. The single word filled me. I would not give in. I would not endure another rape of my body or my mind. I would not go gently into any dark night of submission. I would not be forced any further.
I would die first.
I tore myself free, and hurled my traitorous body out into empty space.
The roar of the wind cradled me as I fell, arms and legs pulled close. A streak painted the air — my rings, boiling with golden light, their gems and silver screaming in defiant rage as I narrowed my welling eyes against the stinging hurricane.
Looking for that pale head, the spot of brilliance I could aim for. What did I think I was going to do? I couldn't survive a fall like this, and Eve had vanished. Paradisse wheeled crazily under me, hovertraffic reaching up to swallow my falling body, the buildings turning to streaks of amber, silver, and anemic gold.
I couldn't see her anywhere. Eve was gone, disappeared.
A curious comfort spilled through me. I was going to die. None of it mattered anymore. I was done, and once in Death's arms the Devil couldn't harm me or involve me in any more games.
A swift, piercing pain lanced through my heart. Japhrimel.
He can't save you, Da
Finally, blessedly over. My left cheek burned as the emerald embedded atop my accreditation tat spat a glowing-green spark, a high sudden fracture-pain as if I'd been punched hard enough to crack my cheekbone. The flash of green dyed the entire world for a timeless second before it was swallowed by the rip of torn air.
Flying, a bubble of something hot behind my lips, my clothes fluttering and snapping as my body relaxed, tumbling through space and time, synth-perfume filling my nose — apples, musk, peaches, fresh-mown grass.
If you have to die, Paradisse is a good place to do it. Why is this taking so long?
Then, the impossible. Tumbling in freefall, completely free for the first time in my whole miserable existence -
Fingers closed around my wrist and a jolt of arrested motion popped my shoulder from its socket with a sickening crunch.
I screamed. Wings beat, filling the air with crazy mixtures of synth-perfume tainted with the dark musk of demon, familiar to me as breath. I hung pi
Impact. A crunching, hideous shock drove me out of myself, ribs snapping, the force of the fall broken just enough to keep me from dying on impact. Something in my other arm snapped too, and I was flung across the rooftop like a doll, rolling limp as a rag. Plasteel buckled and bent, an invisible layer of force closing around me, cushioning, a flexible shield stopping me just short of a climate-control housing shaped like a whipped confection of spun plasteel and plasglass.
Warm wetness dripped into my eyes. I lay against the housing, blinking, my breath stuttering out in an abused howl.
I saw him rolling too, shedding momentum as his wings gracefully bled the force away from his body, rising in a perfectly coordinated movement and whirling, a familiar curve of steel in his hands. He drove my sword into the rooftop with one economic movement, shaking his hand out as blue sparks popped and snarled between him and the hilt. He turned, his wings begi
— and the winged hellhound streaked down from the sky and hit him with a bone-shattering crunch. Japhrimel! Agony roared through me, preternatural flesh stretched to its limits, bones struggling to reknit themselves, a tide of black demon blood smashing through my lips as I coughed, creaking sounds spearing through my chest as my ribs snapped out, mending themselves. The scar turned into a red-hot drill, and if I could have breathed through the convulsions I would have screamed again, pointlessly, as the flurry of motion disappeared, driven past my line of sight by the collision.
My arms boiled red-hot with pain as I made it up to elbows-and-knees, realizing I wasn't healing fast enough. Black blood should have been welling up and closing the wounds, sealing them away — but more blood pattered on the rooftop as I scrabbled, my fingers slipping in slick hot wetness as the air closed around me, suffocatingly heavy. Material ripped as my claws extended, shearing through plasteel and fabric alike. Gunfire echoed behind me, and the snarls of the hellhound made the whole building shake like a flower on a slender stem.
Get up! Get up and fight! Stark terror boiled up through my mouth as I coughed more blood.
Every cell in my body rebelled. I forgot his betrayal, I forgot my own, I forgot everything but the need to get to my feet and fling myself at the thing that was going to kill him.
I don't know why. It was an instinctive response, like jerking your hand back from a red-hot stove.
Power smashed through the scar, flaring down my skin and sparking into the visible range, black-diamond flames twisting through the trademark sparkles of a Necromance's aura. My shielding, smashed and rent, cracked open, and for one dizzying eternal moment the entire city of Paradisse shattered through my skull again, as if I had once more opened the taplines in Notra Dama and ripped a hole in the world.
The assault smashed me flat onto the floor of the roof, blood sizzling with the heavy odor of decaying fruit. My shields closed, mended by the thunderbolt of pure Power spilling through me. I heard my own voice from very far away, an animal's howl, breaking in the higher registers as it spiraled into a deathscream.
Still I tried to get up, to make my body respond. Beating darkness closed over my vision — whether my eyes were shut or I was just blind with effort was anyone's guess. A great glass bell of silence closed over me as my body twitched, little moans escaping my mouth between sips of air.
"Be still." The voice was hoarse but utterly familiar. "Shavarak'itzan beliak, woman, be still. Calm yourself. Stop. Stop."