It was a quiet night in Voltar’s house as I kept my eyes shut and preteo sleep, waiting for intruders to e bursting in to kill us all in our sleep.

  I’d prefer to be waiting on my feet, however circumstances dictated this instead. Shape-gers could shrink both their core and their mass, so they could scout to their heart’s tent. If they wahem to attack the house, they’d have to firm we were asleep first.

  Well, except poor Doctor Dawes stuck reading a book idly in the foyer he celr entrance, where we’d stuffed Kasyp and Edward Montague. It’d look too suspicious to not have a guard of any sort. Or at least someoo help our ‘secret’ prisoners in case they needed a bite to eat or to relieve themselves.

  So I waited uhe covers, pretending to be sleeping. To my annoyahere was no pce where I could wait awake. The pce where we’d put both Kasyp and Edward Montague when they’d arrived here? Firmly blocked off from any creature we believed the shape-gers could bee? My room? Less so. And if I was missing, that might give the game away.

  A good point. I was still infuriated because I was uhe covers, waiting for the attack. Or that I’d be fighting in my nightgown instead of anything more practical.

  I had one of my hands on top of the cripping my focus tightly. Just a precaution. I didn’t know if stories of what happened when you killed a sleeping diabolist with their focus in hand had been spread deliberately by my predecessors or not. I’d take advantage of them all the same so no shape-ger would kill me in my sleep.

  Although I wasn’t sure how well I could fool them.

  Trying to sleep while expeg someoo e bursting in at any sed was impossible, and faking sleep wasn’t much better. We used to do this to lull in the unwary in the Bck Fme, but I was years out of practice.

  Also, a little nagging voice that wasn’t the Imp kept on insisting that they wouldn’t e. Which was ridiculous on its face. Two days, two blows they hadn’t expected. The kidnapping of Montague’s son, the exposure and capture of the bishop. And their numbers were down to ten in total. It didn’t matter that we weren’t sure who the others might be. They had to be w about what our move would be. Especially now that we’d shown we knew a way to detect them besides the paralysis poison.

  They he initiative back. They o pick a target and try to sileny sources of information. There were two such targets, the Coffin taining Hawkins and the Bishop, and Voltar’s property taining Kasyp and Edward Montague.

  I knew which I’d sider the easier target. And whie the man holding the reins would prioritize.

  I ted the seds in my head just so my thoughts wouldn’t wahree hours siurned my lights out if my t was corred I hadn’t missed a sed.

  Thinking back wrecked the t though, and I muttered and turned over in my sleep.

  A thump, a ctter from downstairs, and a muffled curse.

  I rolled my eyes as I heard the pte shatter. How moronic did they think we were? Bait, so clearly bait.

  Still, bait I should reply to as I preteo blink sleep out of my eyes, lifting my head up. I lifted the covers to exit to the right of the bed, and then immediately rolled off the left side, taking the covers with me.

  A long hand stabbed at where I would have gotten out of bed, a quartet of spike fingers smming into the wall. From within the shadows, something g to the wall, a thin stretched-out film of flesh the same color as the wall. How long had it taken to creep into position?

  No matter, it was just a target now. I felt a twinge of sadhat held me back for an instant. I’d only been here a few weeks, but this room had repced my torn-apart lodgings ba the Quarter, just a little.

  Only an instant, though, as I strubsp;

  I borrowed their attae, four nces of hellfire burning across the room. They spshed across the shape-ger’s surface, flesh bing as the fires scorched its flesh. It howled as it rolled off the wall, leaving ks of itself behind burnt to a crisp.

  It shrieked and filed as it shed burning pieces of flesh. It bought me enough time to disentangle myself from those oh-so-fortable sheets.

  I was going to miss that bed.

  The four spikes retracted from the wall, bent, and swung at me as overly long cws. I was already halfway to the door, sending more hellfire spraying back at it. A wall formed, and the spikes retreated as I ran through the door.

  The trapdoor was still open. Good. I ran towards it, sending an errant burst of hellfire at part of my b before sliding down the dder.

  My leg ached as the hoof hit the bottom, but I kept on running. The stored chemical in that b would burst at any sed, and-

  The floor beh me burst, wood bending, then shattering as I was sent off my hooves. The entire house rocked, walls shaking, and the sound of a hundred shattering and falling objects joihe boom of the explosion.

  The floor shifted underh my feet and I started running for a window. The floor fell away under my feet, but I mao get to the sill, throwing it open and flinging myself out as the wall came down.

  I plummeted towards the greenery just outside the house, crashing through a shrubbery. Lucky, although I didn’t feel it as I hit the soil. Pieces of the house nded around me, and I curled up in a ball, waiting for a falling piece of rubble to crush me.

  It never came as the house colpsed in on itself, leaving a skeleton in its pce.

  “Ow,” I muttered, my entire body ag, but especially my right shoulder. I’d kept a death grip on my focus, though.

  Didn’t have time to take stock of the damage, I o get up now.

  I disentangled myself from the shrubbery, branches raking my skin as I broke free. I moved about, avoiding the broken-off ks of walls all around. Where the house oood, a few bits of interior walls were still up, everything else having colpsed down into the celr.

  They must have broken into the celr only to find the tunnel, note, and explosive charges. Hopefully, those would slow them down some.

  No one else was here, because we couldn’t trust ao hide themselves well enough to hide from. Just me, Tagashin, Voltar, and Dawes. Four versus however many shape-gers had e here tonight.

  Something hissed from further along in the bushes, stick-legs bursting from the bushes as they rose. A blob of still-burning flesh, the shape-ger from my bedroom, darted toward me on those stalks of pale flesh.

  A bst of fme drove it off but also set the vegetation alight. It scurried about, trying to avoid fmes toug its legs.

  Wrong pce to focus. And an even worse mistake, it had left its tral body too small. I swiped at a leg with rot gathered in my hand. Squealing, it came crashing down as the stalk leg split, spraying rotten bck ichor across the ground.

  I drove my hand into its chest as it fell past, stabbiill I felt the core. A touch of rot, and I left the writhing, dying thing behind me.

  I went to the house . Something had triggered the trap, and even if they were long gone, Doctor Dawes might be buried uhe rubble-

  A spear of flesh stabbed out of the rubble. I dodged to the side, but it still scored a wound along my right bicep. I sent a stream of fire onto the pile of rubble while flesh poured out, f its way from each opening. I sent fire ba equal measure, till my muscles ached and my eyes burned. Flesh no longer poured out, and as my fingers felt like I couldn’t move them, I halted the stream of fire.

  If the shape-gers uhe house were still alive, they weren’t making any efforts to escape.

  The sound of cag and annoyed screeg came from the street, and I hurried that way.

  By the time I got there, something resembling a praying mantic eight feet tall and a spiked blob were impaling each other, r as they stabbed at each ain and again. Their shrieks and screams echoed, growing weaker as they tore ks out of each other.

  Tagashin floated over both, walking towards the wreckage of the colpsed house as the shadowy figures of the remaining shape-gers tiheir retreat. Four maybe, they hurried away from their two illusion-stri rades as Tagashin pulled a mass-produced wand from her pocket.

  “Three for you,” Tagashin said from where she floated. “Two for me. You leave Malvia. I finish these two off easily enough.”

  I frowned. “Three?”

  “Two underh there. Both are roasted beyond belief, too roasted to force their way out. They could be faking their injuries, of course, but I doubt it. Do you want to pursue them?”

  I eyed the retreating figures. They were further away now in the darkness, but I still backed away.

  “Don’t feel like fighting them?” Tagashin teased, only to suddenly drop out of the sky.

  A tongue shed out at where she’s floated, thid covered in e, glowing blisters.

  “Do you?” I asked as I sent a ball of bck fire into the darkness.

  “Not particurly,” the Kitsune admitted. “Dawes and Voltar are two houses down, barricaded inside. I harass this lot to make sure they leave, but I don’t think I kill them. You?”

  “I doubt there will be any more opportunities,” I muttered, sending another bst of oily fme shrieking dowreet.

  It illuminated forms further down, still retreating dowreet. Humanoid forms, probably trying to slink away into the dark. I still kept my guard up, just in case another bone spear came stabbing from dowreet.

  “Just go link up with Voltar and Dawes,” Tagashin said, floating bato the air. “I’ll hahe rest.”

  I nodded, paused for just a sed. “Don’t die.”

  And then I left.

  ***

  ***

  Voltar and Dawes were sitting just ihe house, between them a quivering mass of pale flesh spreading into a circle.

  I eyed the shaking puddle of flesh.

  “Mind sharing how exactly you disabled this one?” I asked the pair.

  “No,” Voltar replied evenly. “Two escaped. I’m guessing some escaped you as well?”

  “More like we escaped each other,” I said. “Three of them are down permaly. Tagashin took care of awo. With your prisohat makes seveotal, ting Lady Karsin.”

  The blob froze at the name, although I couldn’t put much sto that. Who knows what was stimuting it at this point?

  “Less than half they started with,” Voltar said. “Assuming that our estimate of their total number is accurate.”

  Dawes nodded, face pale. The doctor looked far more tired than Voltar, sweat dripping off his . Had he done most of the fighting, or was just more out of shape thaective?

  “Probably,” I said. “She’ll want to to run, ohat gets back to her. Assuming she wasn’t out here herself. We need her to stay here.”

  Vhed, looking up into the night’s sky. “I dislike doing this to people who have itted no crime against us.”

  “It’s either that or she runs,” I said. “We have one anchored here. Now we just he other.”

  “Unfortunately, I must agree. Kidnap the Karsin boy, and I’ll send the invite for tea.”

  Saithorthepyro