Fang leapt onto his back and slammed both daggers into his skull. Glowing, orange blood sprayed her face. Soaked into her skin. Every plunge of her blades became weaker.
He tossed Coyle to the side. Her body tumbled, and she reached out to stop herself from rushing into the propellers. The spinning blades less than yard away. She glanced back. Moreci slammed Fang into the glass. Her arms flailed like a rag doll. She was covered in aurorium blood. He tossed her into Coyle. Fang’s broken body slid. Coyle pulled her close, held her tight and looked up.
“Aww, there you are. Such a nice duo. Coyle and Fang has such a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? I say, it’s better than Coyle and Moriarty, though our love for each other eclipses your friendship with this pitiful vampire,” Ronan said.
Coyle glanced down at Fang’s still form. The vampire she never wanted to trust or help, let alone be near was now in her arms. Defenseless, helpless, close to death if not there by now. And yet, despite all that Coyle leaned in and squeezed her friend. If they would die, then they would go together.
And that’s when she saw it.
Coyle pulled out Fang’s baton and pointed it at the monster. She flicked her wrist, cable spun out and wrapped itself around the misshapen, glass-studded arm. The creature held up its arm, inspecting the tangle of wire.
“Oh my goodness,” he said. “Sweet cakes? You must have thought this was a weapon of some sort. And here I thought you were more powerful. All this work, only to end up here in the sky. And now you’ll never why I did all this. Ah, then. Time to die.”
“You first.” With a flick of her wrist, the baton shot a cable out its other end and into the propeller.
“Oh,” Ronan’s voice crackled.
She let go before the monstrous form zipped by into the spinning blades and exploded. Bones and flesh and glowing blood splashed the glass-domed roof. The propellers shattered. And then the ship lurched, shuddered and fell.
Chapter 36
Two weeks later
The Treece mansion
Sausalito
Coyle stirred another cube of sugar into her cup of tea. She stared at the dark liquid spinning inside the white porcelain and caught her purple eye in the reflection. She shrank back and looked outside. Lace curtains curled in the light breeze, but she could see the rise of green hills across the bay. The streets of San Francisco were busy with people going about their day, running errands, gathering their shopping, holding hands or walking alone. All of them carrying on with their lives as if she hadn’t helped save thousands from being Turned.
It had been more than two weeks since the Dawn’s Point fell out of the sky and crashed into the plains of Iowa. The ship was low enough to the earth so that almost all of the two hundred passengers aboard the rescue ship walked away without too much injury. The Dawn’s Edge turned into a strange twisted ball of steel and purple lightning before it disappeared in a ball of chaos. Newspapers had a field day with the witness reports of strange lightning in the sky, blaming everything on the nether realm.
The corpses of the Turned had been collected and shipped back to San Francisco under the strict control of the Templars where they would studied before being buried in a mass, undisclosed grave.
A quiet knock on the door gave her the opportunity to focus on something else. Gibby, the train attendant, opened the door with her usual demure smile.
<Tea good?> Gibby asked.
<Yes, thank you. News for me?>
Gibby glanced behind her before signing, <Nothing. No one’s seen or heard from Fang. No one knows where she is.>
Coyle looked down at her fingers, before signing, <Thank you.>
<I’ll keep my ears open.> They both smiled and with that, Gibby left.
Coyle stared at the mirror across the room, catching just the top of her head. It was just as well. She didn’t really want to see herself all bandaged up and bruised. Her body felt as though she had been dragged by a carriage. It was lucky she had been covered in bruises instead of having every bone in her body broken. And what of Fang? She had disappeared in midst of the carnage. And now she was gone without a trace.
But, where?
The why was understandable; almost everyone wanted her dead. Everyone except Coyle. They had formed a quick friendship since that jail cell so long ago. Both of them broken in their own way, and yet they complimented each so well bringing the villainous Moreci to an end.
Together.
Another knock on the door. But, this wasn’t Gibby’s uncertain, sheepish knock.
“Come in,” Coyle said.
Treece opened the door. His face fraught with concern, yet doing his best to smile. She sat up.
“No, no. Don’t worry. You need to rest as much as you can.” He pulled a chair close. “Can we talk?”
“Yes.”
“I feel we, or rather I, owe you an explanation. The past month has been quite remarkable, and I’m not sure where to start.”
“Why not at the beginning?”
He cleared his throat. “You deserve that. Ronan James Moriarty was one of our own—a top detective, in fact. But Ronan had many issues, and we discovered he had been hiding things. At first we believed he was suffering from mania, which is common in our line of work when dealing with strange phenomena. But then evidence arrived that he was absolutely disturbed. He vanished without a trace before we could bring him in.” Treece straightened his tie and smoothed wrinkles from his coat.
“We looked for him for quite some time. There was word he had... fallen in love with a young woman, but we weren’t sure who or where she was.”
Coyle frowned.
“We heard a rumor she was a sleuth of sorts. And when you successfully completed the detective tryouts—”
“You used me as bait.”
Treece studied his fingertips, sparing her only the slightest glance. He sighed and stood,
