“Hey!” Damsel barked, voice pitched to be heard. “Big guy!”

He turned to look at her. Her blast had been to carry her along the concrete pad that the fancier station building rested on, and her destination had been Paris. Now she held pointed fingers to Paris’s throat.

Thud paused. It looked for a moment like he intended to fight on, pressing forward even though we had a hostage. Then he relaxed.

Another shot struck his intact eye. This one didn’t catch the eye socket and send metal wire out into the other external bits. It simply sank in, then detonated.

He screamed, his mouth remaining frozen where it was, while the slick yellow-green muscle fibers across his neck and shoulders parted, the gaps vibrating with the passage of the sound from within him.

I’d taken one eye, was that somehow license to the Harbinger to take another? What had Citrine sent to me? Worse, what did it say that she was okay employing little monsters like this? Did she use them in this kind of capacity?

Thud didn’t stop, and he swung and stomped madly now, cracking the concrete and spreading the effect. He heard distant voices and lunged toward them with the same movement trick, only to stumble where the platform ended.

Chastity ran toward him, and he seemed to hear the footsteps. He turned on her.

I flew to the side. “Thud, Paris!”

I wasn’t sure why I shouted the names, but I wanted his attention, and I felt like people reacted to their names and the names of people they were fond of to any degree.

He did turn. He swung a fist out, pure rage and recklessness, but Chastity ducked the part of it that would have clipped her. She sprung up, stepping onto his knee, and leaped up to a height where she could hit his face.

A backhand slap knocked him out cold. Chastity stumbled with the awkward step down as his bulk toppled forward, pressing against her.

“Losing your edge, sister,” Damsel said, smug.

“Stop,” I told her. “No.”

Swansong gave me a long look, but she didn’t say anything, her lips shut, the hood of my costume hugging her head with the general damp that had set in, no doubt from Byron’s activities. I lent her a shoulder to help her limp forward.

The fires had spread as a result of the shower of sparks from MYOSHA’s power. The fires, in turn, illuminated the rise of Cretan’s maze. Buildings folded and twisted, ground rose and fell, and the effect rose up skyscraper high around where Cretan no doubt was, with other areas catching up.

“You want that favor?” I asked Bluestocking, my hand at my ear, “Now’s the time to earn it.”