A sense of purpose and satisfaction roared through me. There was no uncertainty this time, no questions about who might be using me or moral ambiguity about the killing. For once, I was absolutely sure I was doing the right thing. These people were scum. They didn’t deserve mercy. All I was doing was handing out what they had brought on themselves. It wouldn’t take away what had happened to these kids, but it would make sure these sickos never did it to anyone ever again.
The scythe flashed, and blood sprayed. His head rolled across the bedroom floor, and the wakizashi clanged as it bounced off the bedrail, but his dead fingers stayed clamped around that whisk.
A little lump under the covers trembled, cowering.
I didn’t have a voice box right then to explain to the kid that I was there to help, and I didn’t want any of the patrons upstairs to have a chance to escape, so I left him behind and headed for the next room.
In minutes, every adult on the upper story of the Every Comfort Palace had been reduced to pools of blood and cooling bodies. The low-lying turquoise fog of Miasma swirled and eddied in my wake. I pulled it into my Spirit sea and started spirals turning as I headed back downstairs.
Warcry was in the main room, crouched next to the stage, trying to reassure some kids who had crawled underneath to hide.
“There, you’re all right, ain’t ya?” he said in what he probably thought was a soothing voice. He put up his hands to show them he was unarmed. “You’re safe now.”
Around the room, more kids cowered under tables, behind knocked-over chairs, and huddled next to the staircase, shaking, crying, and whimpering in panicked little clusters.
Because a skeleton with a massive black scythe was standing over them, dripping blood.
I let the scythe go. The pain of it ripping back through the meat of my body to cover my bones snapped my brain back into action. We had to get these kids out of here before an owner or gang member or something showed up.
“Guys, it’s going to be okay,” I said. “You can come out.”
I reached out to a little boy and a demon-winged girl shivering under a table.
The boy wailed and buried his face in the girl’s hair. She hugged her arms and wings around him, putting herself between me and him and squeezing her eyes shut like she was bracing for the kill shot.
I didn’t know what to do. My hand sort of drifted down on its own, and I realized it was wet with blood. I tried to wipe it off on my jeans, but I was covered in gore.
“Go, grav,” Warcry said, raising his voice so I could hear him over the crying. “I’ve got this sorted. Tell her it’s done and get our info, yeah?”
A six-armed little girl peeked out from under the stage.
“You’re the meat roach who saved Mutsu,” she said to Warcry.
“That’s me, lovey.” He waved her over. “Come on, then.”
The little girl held out all of her arms to Warcry, and he scooped her up. She buried her face in his neck.
Over her head, Warcry jerked his chin at the door. “Shift arse, grav. The rest of ’em ain’t coming out ’til you’re outta sight.”
He was right. They were terrified of me—with good reason. I’d just slaughtered everyone over the age of twenty in this place. It didn’t matter that I’d done it to rescue them or that every one of these sickos had gotten what they had coming. The violence and the death probably freaked the kids out as much as anything else they’d had to live through here.
“Meet you at the port,” I said. Then I headed for the door.
Run Through the Jungle
I GOT TO THE SPACEPORT an hour later, blood-encrusted hands shoved into my pockets. I wished I hadn’t left the ring with my last cleaning script back at camp.
Warcry was easy to find, leaning against a tin shed at the outer corner of the tarmac. Stripes of light spilled out from inside the little building, shifting as the shadow of a guard or air traffic controller moved around in there.
“Got a location?” Warcry asked when he saw me.
“We’re headed west.” I sent him the map marker I’d gotten from the dancer. “What about the kids?”
“I sent home the ones who were local and wanted to go. All except the dancer’s little gal. Her and the rest took off probably fifteen minutes ago.”
“Where to?”
He glanced up at the moonless sky. “There’s a fleet headed for Qaspar-7 passing through the system. The shuttle’s going to meet with them and transfer the kids.” He shrugged. “I only burnt down one of the orphanages; the rest oughta be in working condition. They might be rubbish, but they’ve gotta be a better place for a kid to grow up than a comfort palace, don’t they?”
“Surely.” I scratched at some of the blood drying on my face. “Do you think they’ll take a bunch of random kids from another planet?”
“They ain’t gonna turn down a Thompson, grav. They know which way the credits flow.”
Camp was on our way to the location the dancer had given us, so we stopped by to pick up some supplies. Nothing heavy, just canteens and bags of dried food shoved into a backpack we found in Smoky’s tent.
The ground around the place was churned up, and both the jackal and Unu had been shot in the back of the head, execution-style. I turned them over and tried to lay them out in a more dignified position.
Over at the fire pit, a cast-iron pan sat on the ashes with the charred remains of some unidentifiable food stuck to the inside. The smell of burnt popcorn and scorched sugar hit
