Page 189 of The Wild Charge

“That sound you all just heard,” Ian told the camera, “was courtesy of Miss Nikola Howard, of Howard Models fame. She’s sitting with Sal and Matt Moretti, restauranteurs. All of them co-founders of this organization, by the by.

“Jack,” he continued, setting the bloodied tip of his sword beneath Waverly’s chin. “I asked you a question. Do try to answer it.”

~*~

Abe managed to hobble along, arm hooked around Fox’s shoulders, and Mercy led the way up the last flight of steps, hammer cocked at the ready, to the thirty-eighth floor. Going through the door felt a bit like walking face-first into a mirror. There stood Tenny, a half-dressed Reese with an arm around his shoulders.

Except there was a third boy. One pale, shaking, with his hands bound, and a face that looked remarkably like Reese’s.

“Aw shit, kid.” Mercy reached toward Reese.

And Tenny snarled at him. “Don’t touch him. Your giant hands will only make it worse.”

“Alright.” Mercy showed his empty palm in acquiescence.

“Ten,” Reese said, reprimanding – and utterly wrecked. He sounded like he’d gargled with rocks.

Tenny met Fox’s gaze. “You’re alive?”

“Mostly. You?”

“Mostly.”

Realization struck. “Where’s Devin?”

Tenny’s expression shifted; if he didn’t know better, Fox would say he looked guilty. “Upstairs. He challenged Hunter to a one-on-one fight so we could slip away, and the crazy son of a bitch took him up on it.”

That…didn’t sound like Devin. At all.

“We need to get going,” Tenny said, adjusting Reese’s arm. “And I guess we’re taking this shitstain with us.” He jerked his head to the shivering boy at his side. “Gonna need a doctor, though.”

“He’ll have to get in line.” Fox flashed his hand, and noted the way Tenny’s gaze widened.

“You go on. Take Abe. Mercy, you get them downstairs and to the alley exit.” He ducked from under Abe’s arm and started across the room.

“Charlie.”

He turned back.

Abe’s face had gone pale with pain, but his composure was the same, unwavering sternness of Fox’s adolescence, of every hard lesson he’d learned on that gym floor.

“He’s not wrong when he says he’s like the rest of us. That we’re the same. He’s not a good man – but he’s not a bad one, either.”

Fox worked his jaw against what he wanted to say, the automatic denial. Then he turned again, and jogged across the room.

His pulse quickened in the dark stairwell between floors. His mind filled with a tangle of memories, overlapping like cut-outs in a collage. His mum crying at the kitchen table. Devin’s hand tousling his hair. King’s quiet, stoic fury, lashing out in hot bursts in Fox’s direction because Devin wasn’t around to hate. ‘Chelle and Tommy wanting to do riskier and riskier jobs, that legacy of the covert and the dangerous bleeding through their bloodline. Everything, all of their lives – it all went back to Devin, in the end.

He opened the door at the top of the stairs soundlessly, just in time to watch Hunter swing two-handed at Devin, pushing him back and back and back across the floor with a glitter of knives. Devin blocked, again and again, but he kept giving ground, until he was backed up to a huge plate-glass window. His face gleamed with sweat, and his teeth were gritted. His blocks were sluggish, almost too late each time. He went down to one knee, arms shaking with effort. Hunter raised his right hand for a final strike, grinning, sensing victory.

His strike fell.

But didn’t land.

Devin feinted to the left, liquid as smoke, and delivered a strike of his own, knife punching into the back of Hunter’s thigh.

Hunter let out a winded sound, and toppled backward as his leg gave, hamstrung.

Devin stood, a grin of his own in place, now. He’d been faking tired to draw his opponent into a sloppy approach, and it had worked.

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