Page 141 of Tracking Snow

He throws the second barstool, but a HAM catches it with both hands and drives it into him. The legs crack against his chest. Geanie stumbles, gasping, right into the swing of a bat.

The sound is dull and awful.

His pink kitten shirt flashes as he drops behind an overturned chair.

Oh fae lords, no. My heart flutters painfully fast and hard as I try to keep up. There’s only one of me, and everything is moving too fast.

Rap shouts his name, banana-blonde mohawk bright through the rising smoke. She’s beating back two others, just barely.

The side hall spits out a body I know.

Ryder, gun drawn and low, reading the room in one flat sweep. The muzzle finds Wrecking Ball, and Rap crosses straight through the line. He holsters it.

"I sent you home," she snarls at him, ducking a pipe.

"You did." He catches the pipe on its next swing and folds the man's wrist toward his own elbow until the guy squeals into the floorboards. "Bad feeling."

They fall in shoulder to shoulder without discussing it, and the two HAMs on her become two HAMs on them, and that math goes bad for the HAMs fast.

"We will be discussing," Rap grits out, swinging the Jolly Roger bottle, "your inability to follow instructions."

"Looking forward to it, boss."

Even through the smoke, I catch the color climbing her neck. She hits the next HAM harder.

I take a step toward Geanie and Lilah rushes me from the side. Her switchblade flashes toward my ribs.

I turn just as she reaches me. I catch her wrist. She catches mine.

For one breath, we’re locked together, both of us straining hard enough our arms shake.

She shoves in close, teeth bared. "Not much, are you, when you don’t have your dirty magic friends to help?"

My stomach twists.

Ariel. Cinder. Goldie. Kiki. Carolee. Red.

Four.

All gone.

My hand slips for half a second. Lilah’s blade slices across my upper arm.

Pain flashes white behind my eyes. Before she can draw back for another strike, I drive my knee into her stomach.

Lilah doubles over with a grunt.

I wrench her arm across my body, twist until her shoulder locks, then slam her face-first into the nearest table. Glass jumps. Her switchblade skitters from her fingers.

"Not much?" I hiss, grabbing her hair poof. "I’m more than you can handle."

I shove her down hard enough that the table legs scream against the floor and she drops to the ground unconscious.

Across the room, a bottle comes out of the smoke sideways and catches Ryder above the ear. He drops to a knee, and a bat across the shoulders lays him flat beside Geanie's overturned chair. Rap screams his name on the same raw note she screamed Geanie's.

Every hair on me lifts at once. My body turns to the front door the way a compass needle turns north.

The Seven walks through.