Toys fell sideways, his elbow on fire, and his head ringing so loudly it was like church bells on Christmas morning. But he knew he could not stop, so he got to his knees and crawled to his enemy, swung a foot over so he straddled the man at midback, looped an arm under Stafford’s head, and cinched it tightly around the neck. But he was not trying to choke the man. Instead, he clamped his other hand around the wrist of the looped arm and simply sat down. He did it as a limp drop and then jerked backward with all his strength. The motion jerked Stafford’s head up and back. Too far back and too quickly. There was a double crack-crack as the man’s neck broke and then the spine between the shoulder blades.

Toys let go and collapsed onto the floor beside the man he’d just killed.

Violin shot a Fixer four times before the Sandman took him down, but he collapsed before he reached her, his hands brushing her boot as he landed facedown on the floor.

Behind him, a tall, slender Black woman and a shorter, heavier white woman were fighting like cats, snarling and biting and rolling around on the floor. Violin shot them, too.

It occurred to her that it would simply be easier to shoot everyone instead of trying to pick who was a Fixer, who was a duped militiaman or radical, and who was a civilian caught up by the hysteria of violence. She had six magazines for her gun, each of which carried thirty darts. That was more than enough to put a third of the room down.

So, she began firing.

Violin’s weapon of choice was a sniper rifle, and she had been the one to train Belle in the art. But Lilith had required that she be proficient with every kind of gun, long or short. Just as she was highly skilled with any edged weapon. Years of experience had given her timing and savvy and refined her battlefield judgment.

And so she put her back to a wall and targeted the people with guns first, taking them down before they were aware of her. Then, as bodies began to pile up around her, she shot whoever was closest and the person directly behind them.

Civilians scattered, and she let them go. The patsy militants tried to outshoot her, but she was the better, faster, more accurate, and less emotional shot.

Fixers took several rounds each, but she had darts to spare.

It was only after she’d built a landscape of drugged bodies that she saw two distinct things that broke her concentration.

To her left, Toys sprawled next to a clearly dead Michael Augustus Stafford. Oddly, Toys reached up and patted Stafford’s cheek before that hand flopped back down.