“Stand down and don’t even fucking look at them,” I said, pointing at the people they’d used as human shields. “And don’t fucking think of raising a weapon. I will shatter you, and you can see how well they take care of you here, or you can go to the hospital, get fixed up, and they’ll send you back home.”

I paused. I stared at them, meeting each one’s eye in turn. Roughly half their number were on the ground.

“Do you really think the Fallen are going to look after you when the weather gets colder, food is short, and you can’t be a farmer or a soldier?”

I saw movement. A blur. I moved away, ready to raise the Wretch, and as much as I could raise my defenses as fast as I could put my thoughts together, the attacker was fast and I hadn’t anticipated being blindsided.

The hit was hard, and the only reasons it wasn’t harder were that it hit my armor, at least partially, and I was moving back and away.

I winced, my hip aching. Maybe it was telling, that I’d been driven to get back and away before I’d thought to make myself impervious.

Mama Mathers had kept bodyguards close, but she either had reinforcements from the other family, or this mob had more powered Fallen in it.

It was a Fallen woman. She was younger than me, going by stature and frame. A Leviathan theme to her mask, but with a fin on top and at the sides.

She came at me again, and this time I had the Wretch up. She hit it hard, winced, and turned pitch black, freezing in space.

She got me from behind, a cord encircling my neck, pulling tight. With my breastplate set up the way it was, there was a little flare of spikes, a few inches in front of my chin, pointing slightly outward. The cord or wire caught on that, and I brought my good hand up, gripping the wire.

I pulled to get free, and I met resistance—at the same moment the obsidian black figure in front of me resumed motion. She hit the ground with one foot, and launched herself at me.

I activated the Wretch and tore through cord, catching on something solid enough that the Wretch flickered out.

Metal wire, it seemed. A garotte, no association with my friend and teammate. In the course of moving away from the attacker, I moved closer to the unfrozen woman, and put her off her rhythm. She changed, freezing in place, and the attacker I hadn’t yet seen attacked me from behind, hit me sufficiently hard to make me crash into the frozen woman. The hit was enough that I’d bruise, but the residual impact made my gunshot wound explode with pain.