The gun’s percussive roar split the air worse than the loudest thunderclap. Madeleine cried out, and Asgall staggered backward as dark liquid bloomed on his chest.

Smoke drifted from the double barrels of Jonathan’s gun. The barrels trembled. His eyes were wild.

Asgall groaned and stepped back again. Blood dripped from where Jonathan had shot him. Was it near any vital organs? Where did Each-uisge keep their hearts?

“You’ll need…more than that.” Asgall’s head dipped before he raised it again, as if with great effort.

“I’ve got it.” Jonathan’s voice was thick. “Have you?”

Asgall bared his teeth again and looked at Jonathan with flashing eyes. Would Jonathan be able to shoot him again? He seemed reluctant, as if he couldn’t understand the danger they were all in.

Madeleine had grown up with the Ten Commandments, including: You shall not kill. But if she had the gun and knew how to fire it, she’d break that one. “He killed the trow,” she heard herself say. “The trow that protected the farm.”

“I noticed,” Jonathan said. “Everything looks proper fucked. I expect that was your plan,” he added to Asgall.

“You…” Asgall stepped backward unsteadily. “You have no idea what I’ve done. The lengths I’ve gone to.”

“I know you’ve been creeping ’round the place at night in the man’s skin you wore to fool me. I knew it was you, I just couldn’t face it.” Jonathan bared his teeth too. “Even the dogs didn’t bark.”

“They knew better.” Asgall’s breathing was labored. “Well? End it, then.”

The gun shook in Jonathan’s hands.

“Hæra and I both betrayed you,” Asgall said. “We both intended to slay those who only sought to love us. This is your moment, old man. Have your revenge.”

Jonathan looked at Madeleine then, for some reason.

Hæra sank lower to the ground, bleeding from the wound on her back.

“Not her,” Madeleine choked. They couldn’t kill Hæra. The thought turned Madeleine’s bones to lead. She’d come all this way to find her angel, find her answer, and even if that answer was full of lies and bleeding in the mud, they couldn’t kill her.

In the distance came the sound of a motor. A car. No doubt Jim or Connor, coming to check on the farm.

“Get out,” Jonathan said again to Asgall. He waved the gun, his face haggard. “Now.”

Asgall’s head turned toward the sound of the motor. He looked again at Jonathan, at the pointed gun.

Then he turned and loped away with an uneven gait, a smudge of darkness against the green field. White sheep cried out and scattered before him in panic. Some of the sheep, Madeleine saw now, lay dead on the ground. That lightning strike, maybe.

We’ve never lost an animal in a storm, Connor had bragged to Madeleine once.