Oh God. What had I almost done to her?
Everything hurt.
But there was enough left of me to feel shame.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Butters, I’m sorry.”
His face twisted with empathy, and his tears fell harder.
“Sanya,” I choked.
“Am all right,” I heard a groggy voice say from down the alley. “Bozhe moi, you fight dirty.” I felt a large hand come down on my shoulder. “Like a Russian.”
“Sanya’s here, too. He’ll be okay,” Butters said.
I teetered forward abruptly, unable to stay upright.
My friends caught me.
They held me.
“I’m here, Harry,” Butters kept saying. “I’m here.”
“She’s gone,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know. I’m here.”
And for a time, there was nothing else to be done.
I wept.
And the city burned.
Chapter
Twenty-four
Sanya and his people had gotten their act together pretty quick. They’d come in numbers, down three parallel streets, the one we’d been on and the street on either side of it. They’d gone with a simple tactic—advancing in a line and shooting anything that didn’t look human with lots and lots of slugs and buckshot.
Those largest Huntsmen were a big job—but many hands make light work. The way Sanya told it, the first one to come roaring out of the haze had been scary—but he and his appointed uniformed officer had managed to stand and shoot, and enough of the volunteers had stood with them to bring it down before it could complete its charge. And after that, after they saw with their own eyes that the enemy could bleed and die, things changed. The volunteers just stalked forward, killing Huntsmen, whose spears, while terrifying and destructive, really weren’t up to exchanging fire with pump-action guns while outnumbered five or six to one.
The enemy and creatures of Winter alike gave way before that kind of pressure, much to their mutual dismay. The humans that those beings would normally consider their prey had opened their eyes and armed themselves and were willing to fight. For now, the volunteers outnumbered the foe, and the Fomor fell back, ceding the area to the Scattergun Brigade.
I don’t know how long I was out of the fight. Butters told me later it had been only a few minutes. All I know is that after a time, the physical pain began to recede, and I felt the Winter mantle settle around me again.
Sanya had broken my nose for me, I realized. Not that I hadn’t earned considerably worse. Sobbing hysterically with a broken nose isn’t real dignified. Or practical, for activities like breathing. It took me half a minute of coughing and spitting to get things cleared up. By the time I had, and had swiped at my eyes with a cleanish portion of my coat’s sleeves, the burn of my broken nose and the aches and pains had once more faded beneath the staticky curtain of the Winter mantle.
Except for the burn on my arm.
That one hurt. Period.
I’d dealt with burns before. This one wasn’t the worst I’d ever gotten. Even so, it throbbed and pulsed and made me feel a little queasy and shaky.
And it made me feel . . . human.
I’m not saying pain is what defines us as human beings. But it is, in many ways, what unites us. We all recognize other people in pain. Damned near all of us are moved to do something about it when we see it. It’s our common enemy, though it isn’t, really, an enemy. Pain is, at least when our bodies are working properly, a teacher. A really tough, really strict, and perfectly fair teacher.
I didn’t enjoy the steady, throbbing pain coming from the burn the holy Sword had given me.
But I did find it immensely reassuring.
The pain on the inside of me was something else entirely.
Carefully, I put that aside. I didn’t try to bury it or freeze it. I just set it in a different room of my mental house and swung the door mostly shut.
Later, there would be time to feel it. All of it.
But I’d lost people before. That’s the thing about being an orphan. Grief is a known quantity. Loss is your family. Sure, it was going to hurt. It was going to tear me up. The empty place where she had been would make me its bitch for a while.
But that was for later.
First I was going to finish what we’d set out to do: protect the city.
And I was going to provide Murph with a fitting escort to what came after while I did it.
Butters walked over to me with my staff. He passed it to me.
I nodded at him. I didn’t know where Rudolph was, or what Butters and Sanya had done with him. I didn’t want to know. Rudolph wasn’t my problem. He couldn’t be. I had too much responsibility to the city, to my friends—to my family.
I slammed one end of my staff onto the asphalt and shoved myself back to my feet. I think someone was trying to talk to me on the way. I didn’t listen. And without a word I walked back to Murph’s body.
It really was so tiny.
Now that she was gone, it seemed even smaller.
I picked Murph up. She weighed almost nothing.
I cradled her body against my chest and then walked, briskly, my arm throbbing, through the blocks back to Millennium Park, where Mab still waited behind her cohort of warrior Sidhe—but instead of facing the oncoming threat, her gaze was waiting to find me as I emerged from the haze.
She gave no visible signal, but the unicorn moved, nudging its way through the Sidhe as the Queen of Air and Darkness rode out to face me.
She regarded Murph’s pale face, my bloody form, and said only, “You have returned.”
“Yes,” I said. “She’s a Jotunslayer. She deserves to be laid with dignity.”
“And so she does,” Mab agreed.
She turned and pointed a finger at one of the blocks of waiting Sidhe warriors. Half a dozen of them peeled off from the formation instantly, in unison, and marched over to us.
“See that this warrior is laid in state,” she said, and moved her head in a curt gesture toward the Bean. “She has shared our enemies and earned our respect, and so shall it be known amongst my vassals and to the furthest reaches of my kingdom.”
The Sidhe saluted, fists to heart, their weird faemetal armor ringing with tones like bells or wind chimes where it was struck. One of them offered up a long, narrow shield, and they took position on either side of it.
She wasn’t heavy.
But I couldn’t carry her and do what we’d set out to do.