I forced myself to take a seat at my desk and opened my computer. The quantic laptop was an impressive piece of tech, though I wasn’t as fascinated by it as Eric was. I held my hands above its keys, careful not to make contact with the laptop. The last thing I wanted to do was make myself blind and deaf by connecting to the laptop.
After what felt like hours of pretending to type some homework, I was sure we’d fallen for a false alarm. I felt terrible for Henry stuck in the closet, cramped from standing still until his feet swelled inside his boots. He had to be hurting no matter how much of a professional he was. Maybe I could go down and get him something to eat. Slide it under the door.
I stood up from my desk to do just that, stretched my arms overhead, and headed for the stairs.
That’s when everything went to pieces.
Lines of black jinsei shot through the air outside the cottage’s rear window. They converged on a central point and wove a web of dark lines that pulsed with movement and deception aspects. There was no more than a single heartbeat between the instant the first line had appeared and the last one forged the final connection.
The web unfolded in a flash of black light, and a woman clad in a tight-fitting black bodysuit burst through the darkness at the heart of the jinsei web. She wielded a short jinsei blade in each hand and hurtled toward my window so fast she was little more than a blur of motion.
“Incoming!” I shouted. It was the first and only warning I could think to shout, and I hoped it didn’t confuse anyone.
My fusion blade appeared in my hand, and I dropped back into a defensive stance, blade raised horizontally across my body. My Eclipse nature greedily sucked up aspects as I cycled my breath. My adept-level core merged with my aura and nascent serpents, uniting all three parts of my being so they could work together in perfect unsion. It would only take a few seconds for me to gather enough energy for the Thief’s Shield.
I didn’t get the time I needed.
The Death Weaver burst through the window at astonishing speed. She was incredibly fast, but the scrivened circle that guarded my window was even faster. A siren wailed, and a tremendous flash of white light washed through my bedroom.
I was blinded for a moment and prayed the assassin was crippled as well. If she recovered from the scrivening first, I was a sitting duck.
“Burn you!” The woman cried out in obvious agony. When my vision cleared, I saw why.
The trap had knocked her flat on her face. Three rings of red jinsei encircled her shoulders, waist, and ankles. They’d pinned her arms to her sides, and smoke drifted away from the points where the rings touched her.
Before I could move, Henry burst from the closet and pounced on the assassin. He landed with his knee in her back and rammed the muzzle of his pistol into the back of her head. The big, ugly weapon forced her face into the carpet, and she went instantly still.
I couldn’t blame her. The weapon looked big enough to turn her skull into an messy red stain on my floor.
“Clear!” Henry shouted.
“Clear at the back!” a man called from outside the rear window.
“Clear front,” another guard shouted.
“The portal’s closed,” Hagar called as she poked her head up from the stairway. “No more hostiles detected. Good work, everyone.”
Henry stood and dragged the Death Weaver onto her feet. She staggered and winced as the jinsei rings bit into her. The barrel of the pistol against the back of her skull couldn’t have felt nice, either.
“They know it’s you, Jace Warin,” the assassin spat at me. “I won’t be the last one to take the offer. Your luck will run out, eventually.”
“Shut your mouth,” Henry said.
“Wait.” I raised a hand. “Who knows what about me?”
The Death Weaver glared at me, eyes burning with hatred.
“You called them,” she said. “You’ll pay for that.”
Hagar appeared at the top of the stairs, and she and Henry both looked at me quizzically.
I shrugged. I had no idea what this woman was talking about. She sounded insane.
“Now what do we do with her?” I asked.
“We’ll secure her, then arrange for transport to a holding facility,” Henry said. “She’s worth a pretty penny to the authorities, so after we’ve finished with her, the elders will turn her over for the reward.”
The Death Weaver opened her mouth to say something, and her face exploded in a fountain of blood. She stood for a moment, then her knees buckled, and she crumpled to the floor. Henry was already on the ground behind her, a fist-sized hole through the center of his head. I saw the red-stained wooden floor through the space where his face should have been.
The guards downstairs shouted in alarm, and Hagar screamed a warning. It was all just noise to me. A warbling hum surrounded me, and my Eclipse nature bayed like a wolf answering a distant howl. Something tugged at my core, and I had a sudden urge to kneel.
What the hell was going on?
There was a blur at the stairway, and Hagar shouted in surprise. Her red Mohawk vanished, hidden behind a strange blurry smear across my vision. Blood blossomed in the space where my handler had been standing, and she tumbled down the stairs to the cottage’s first floor.
I wanted to rush to Hagar’s side and make sure she wasn’t hurt.
Instead, I stood frozen in place, silent as the grave.
A tall, thin woman with a face as pale as a full moon stepped through the blur that had taken Hagar down. Her hair was as utterly colorless as her face, every strand as smooth and glossy as wet paint. She wore a tight gray T-shirt and matching shorts that hardly covered enough to be decent. She had no shoes,
