He leaped over the next one that came for him, Pushing on a fallen bullet for lift. He fired a shotgun slug down into the beast’s back, stunning it, then multiplied his weight and landed with a crunch.

The thing thrashed and writhed beneath him as another leaped at his throat. He pumped and shot it in the head, then Pushed on the slug. His weight still increased—draining his metalmind at a furious rate—that bullet didn’t stop at the skull as the others had. It split bone and made a mess of the brain.

Wax sidestepped that corpse as it flopped beside him, then swung his shotgun upward into the head of the last beast coming for him. It flipped backward, exposing the belly.

Wax fired three times, emptying the shotgun. The underbelly was soft, as he’d hoped. The thing went down.

He stood, breathing deeply, the rhythm of the fight having consumed him. Nearby, TenSoon rolled over, the wounds to his arms and sides resealing. He had killed another of the things by ripping it in half. His eyes were wide as he regarded Wax. His bloodied face looked as inhuman as those of the creatures they’d just fought.

TenSoon climbed to his feet, surveying the wreckage. The lantern still burned calmly, illuminating bones scattered across the floor and masses that had once—horribly—been human, but now just twitched. Wax felt sick. He’d called them “things” in his head, but these had been people. TenSoon was right. What Bleeder had done here was worse, somehow, than even her murders.

“I will need to ask Harmony,” TenSoon said, “if I have failed Him in killing this day.” His voice was the same gravelly growl as before, when he’d inhabited the wolfhound’s body.

“Why would he care?” Wax said, still sick. “He uses me to kill all the time.”

“You are His Ruin,” TenSoon said. “I am His Preservation.”

Wax stood in silence amid the dead and dying and lowered his shotgun, trying to suppress the immediate feeling of indignation he felt. Was that all he was to Harmony? A killer? A destroyer?

“Still,” TenSoon said, picking his way through the room and speaking as if he didn’t realize the insult he’d just offered, “I do not think Harmony will mind what I have done. These poor souls…” He knelt and prodded at one of the bodies Wax had killed.

TenSoon came up with a thin piece of metal, silvery and perhaps as long as a finger. Did it have a red cast to it, or was that just the blood? He used steelsight and found that while he could see the spike, the line was duller than it should have been. Hemalurgy.

“One spike,” TenSoon said, turning it over. “Any more, and Harmony might have been able to control these beasts. How could such a change be effected by a single spike? This is a level of Hemalurgy beyond my understanding, lawman.”

Wax shook his head, checking on the creatures. Not to see if they were still a threat, but to make sure he didn’t leave one of them here to die a protracted death. He found one woman still alive, paralyzed by his shot into her back. She watched him with those eyes, shaped like a person’s, yet alien and dark. Whatever else had happened to these people, they should have been able to keep their eyes.