The eyes of the servant of the Beautiful Goddess were locked right on him, and to Martin they seemed just as dangerous as the barrel of her revolver.

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” Martin said.

  “Isn’t that your dagger down in that corpse’s limp grasp?”

  The woman looked down into the darkness where the corpse lay. She was totally relaxed, knowing full well Martin wasn’t a threat to her and couldn’t escape.

  “No, my dagger is right here.” Martin started to reach toward his belt to pat it, but thinking better of it, relaxed his arm.

  The woman stood between him and the only exit. There was no way he could fight her and no way to escape. His only chance would be to buy time until Jacques could find another way in.

  “I know there is a chapel of the faceless god located in this city. Tell me its location and I will make your end swift.”

  “Listen, ma’am. I’m just the night watchman here. I was just trying to figure out how that body got here when you ripped the security door off the hinges. Who’s going to…”

  The woman’s smile widened and Martin stopped speaking immediately. The woman hadn’t moved, but he suddenly felt completely immobilized. Her teeth were perfectly white. Martin had thought that was usually reserved only for royalty. He could feel them closing around his neck. The pressure increased, and it became harder and harder to breathe. The teeth pierced his flesh, and blood began to pour down his shirt. Tighter and tighter his neck constricted, and his vision began to swim as his head was deprived of oxygen. Suddenly, with a snap, his neck was broken in two, and he fell to the floor.

  Released from his paralysis, Martin fell once more to his knees, the contents of his dinner rapidly spilling across the grating and dripping through to the warehouse floor below. His fingers went quickly to his neck, relieved to find no blood and no visible wounds. His breathing slowly returned to normal, and he looked up at the woman in fear. Her smile had returned to its earlier state, still unnerving, but lacking the strange power that had just overcome him.

  “Do not play games with me, rat,” the woman said. “I did not come to this wretched city to play games. Tell me the location of the chapel, or I will let your mind experience the breaking of every bone in your body, and then I’ll break them one by one for real.”

  Martin began to gather himself for a retort when suddenly a small bolt of lightning came shooting in from over Martin’s shoulder. The woman moved again with astonishing swiftness, leaning out of the way, but not quite fast enough as part of the bolt caught her cheek, causing her to let out an inhuman cry of pain that seemed to shake the entire warehouse. The bolt landed in the walkway, embedding itself into the steel and revealing itself to be a knife.

  “Let him go, gorgeous,” came a voice from behind Martin. “I’m the one who killed the Faceless.”

  Martin turned to look and saw a man sitting on the frame of one of the broken windows, way above the walkway. The man let himself fall from the window. Catching a wire on his way down, he flipped himself on the walkway with the skill and grace of a professional trapeze artist. Although he didn’t recognize this form, he knew it must be Jacques, come to his rescue.

  Before Martin had a chance to even think about celebrating, a high-pitched whine came from behind him.

  “You. You. Damaged my face.” The woman whined again, louder, this time with enough force that a few of the remaining windows in the warehouse shattered. “You will both die here today.”

  “We’ll see about that, love.” Jacques said. “Martin, back away slowly.”

  Jacques slowly walked towards them as Martin backed away from the woman. Despite her rage, she seemed content to let the two switch places. Jacques was wearing a short sword that he drew confidently as he approached. As Martin and Jacques passed, Jacques quickly whispered, “Guncotton in the crate in the back left marked rice. Get it out.”

  “What do you—”

  “You’ll know.”

  Jacques kept walking, and in a few more steps, stopped in front of the woman.

  “I don’t suppose you’d take this opportunity to make your way home and never return.”

  The woman’s smile began to widen. Martin wanted to yell out to warn Jacques, but he had already responded, a dagger appearing in his left hand and thrown with deadly accuracy at the woman’s face. Just like before, this one turned into a bolt of lightning, but this time the woman was quicker. Her smile evaporated, and she ducked under it, charging toward Jacques. Jacques swung his sword, only for the woman to catch it in her bare hand.

  The two froze like that for a moment. Slowly, the woman started to laugh, a deep, slow chuckle. “Do you think a mere blade can stop—AHH” with a scream, the woman let go, staggering backwards and looking at her hand. “What did you do to me?”

  “Blade of my master. The Devourer.” Jacques said, taking a bow.

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  The woman tsked and reached into her trenchcoat, withdrawing a pair of gloves. Putting them on, she cracked her knuckles. She stood up to her full height, towering over Jacques, and slowly bent her head to the left until a large crack was heard throughout the warehouse. She repeated it slowly, cracking her neck on the right side. The fresh scar on her cheek from the knife blow added an extra level of unnaturalness to the face of absolute terror that gazed at Jacques with pure hatred.

  “Move, Martin,” was all he said, and then the two met in combat.

  Martin heeded his call and ran for the ladder. He could feel the walkway shake with every clash of the two fighters. The gloves offered the woman some protection from Jacques’ blade as she continued to bat it away with her hands and not draw any other weapon. However, she still refrained from trying to catch it again. Jacques demonstrated a speed and agility Martin hadn’t seen in their sparring matches, and he now realized how much Jacques had been holding back. Even with his copious abilities, Jacques was hard-pressed to keep the woman at bay. From every clash of blade and fist, it was apparent that Jacques was sent farther back. If just one of the woman’s fists connected with Jacques’ body, it would be enough to end the fight.

  Martin slid down the ladder and temporarily lost sight of the battle. Night had fallen completely and it was hard for him to find the crate Jacques had specified. Martin wasn’t sure what guncotton was, but he could only imagine it went boom. A sudden scream of metal rang out as part of the walkway became detached. The woman fell hard, landing on her feet with a heavy impact, but she seemed only slightly staggered. Jacques landed with a roll, again demonstrating his circus past. He came to his feet smoothly, shooting Martin a look to ask what he was doing standing about, before another knife appeared in his hand.

  The new terrain was advantageous to Jacques as he now had more space to dodge. The woman responded by coming on even faster and wilder in her swings. Martin resumed searching and finally found a box labelled rice. Grabbing a pipe he found nearby, he pried open the lid of the container and looked inside. Inside, the crate was padded with straw, protecting several sealed glass jars. He picked up one of the jars. Inside was what he could only describe as tightly waded strips of white cotton.

  “What am I supposed to do with these?” he muttered.

  Suddenly, he heard a thud followed by the sound of something soft hitting metal. The woman laughed again, this time a laugh of pure glee that entered Martin’s body like nails on a chalkboard. He quickly grabbed several of the bottles and bolted out from behind the pillar where he had located the crate.

  Jacques had seemingly taken a blow from one of the woman’s fists and now lay slouched against the wall. He still somehow held his sword in his right hand, but his left was held to his side, his face a mask of pain.

  The woman approached, and Jacques swung his sword to ward her away. Once again, the woman caught it. Both pairs of eyes locked on the blade to see if she would be driven back again. The blade began to glow red hot and the muscles in Jacques’ arm trembled as he struggled to push the woman back, but she remained immobile. Once again, that laugh of glee that caused physical pain to both men in earshot rang out.

  “Gloves of my master, the eternally Beautiful Goddess,” the woman taunted. “Time to die, faceless rodent.” This time, Jacques smiled.

  Before the woman had time to ask why, a bottle was broken over her head. Martin had snuck up behind her and, with a leap, landed on her back. The broken glass didn’t leave a scratch, but freed up the guncotton inside the bottle, which Martin quickly stuffed down the woman’s trench coat, cutting his hand on the glass in the process. The woman released the sword and staggered backwards away from Jacques, her arms swinging up to defend her face and remove Martin from her blindside. The other bottles Martin quickly smashed and tried to hide on the woman’s person. He only managed a second one before the woman grabbed hold of Martin’s back, and with a yank pulled him off of her own back and threw Martin bodily to the ground. He fell to the hardpacked dirt and felt his breath driven out of him.

  “You bastards,” the woman shouted. “Death to you all.”

  “Finally,” Jacques muttered, having risen to his feet during Martin’s distraction. “Catch this, love.”

  The sword, which had grown red hot while Jacques had channeled power into it earlier, now burst fully into flames. Even from where Martin lay, he could feel the heat, and behind it, the presence of something far more powerful and evil. With the same precision he had with his knives, Jacques cast the blade right at the base of the woman’s neck. Without thinking, the woman caught the blade, catching it with the tip just inches from her body. She smiled again. Then the heat from the blade ignited the guncotton.

  The guncotton ignited, exploding with a force several times that of normal gunpowder. The first batch Martin had stuffed into the collar of the woman’s trench coat went first, taking out a huge chunk of the woman’s upper torso and leaving just a portion of her neck still attached to her body. The second batch that had made its way into her belt went next, taking an equally sizable chunk of the woman’s midriff and catching the coat itself on fire. The guncotton had exploded without smoke, just scattering blood and fire, but now that the woman’s clothes and flesh had begun to burn, smoke rose.

  What was left of the woman staggered once. The unnatural smile, perpetually frozen on her face, remained there in death. Slowly and with a crushing finality, the body fell face-first into the dirt, hiding that cursed smile for eternity. As the smoke continued to rise, so too did black ooze, escaping from the wounds in her body, mixing with the smoke, and rising out of sight.

  Jacques went over quickly to the body to search for what was left before the flames consumed it. Seeing the woman was dead, Martin let himself go limp, a sigh of relief escaping from him. He lay there for a moment before a boot lightly tapped him on the side.

  “Get up,” Jacques said, his voice labored. He offered him a hand, and Martin took it, although he immediately regretted it seeing the look of pain cross Jacques’ face as he bore Martin’s weight.

  “Are you alright?” he asked.

  “I’ll be fine. Here, what are you doing leaving this around?” Jacques held out his Faceless Dagger.

  Martin took it quickly with a word of thanks.

  “We’ve got to get out of here. Our battle was hardly discrete, and who knows what attention that explosion will draw.” Jacques said, guiding Martin back towards the ladder to the second-floor railing.

  “What was that stuff?” Martin asked.

  “Guncotton. Even the Cosmics sometimes pause at the terror mankind invents to use on itself. I’m not sure about the science, but it’s an explosive far more potent than gunpowder. If the Navy ever figures out a way to prevent it from exploding with the slightest sneeze, it’ll be used on every battleship in the fleet.”

  “How on earth did you get it?”

  “That’s really what you want to ask about now? No more questions. We don’t have time.”

  A bang sounded against the security gate, and the whole building shook.

  “They’ve come.”