something soft and chilly moved under me. I let my eyes slit open. My backpack. My head was resting on my leather backpack like it was a pillow.
I tried to remember where I was, how I’d gotten there. I had a sense of urgency. It was all very, very important. If I could just put my mind back together…
I sat up. The city spread out below me, streets marked by the glowing yellow lines of their lights, the shifting red of taillights in traffic. The western sky was red and gold, the sun already set. All around me was pebbled gray gravel, wide sheet-metal ductwork on raised steel beams. Something partway between a radio antenna and the Eiffel Tower rose up to my left, a red beacon glowing at its tip.
A skyscraper. I was on top of a skyscraper. I tried to stand, but my knees were weak beneath me. I turned slowly. There was a door-green and rust with a dead bolt lock. Coin was sitting beside it. Five inches above his open hand floated a small cylinder of metal that came to a point at one end. The bullet.
The thing in Coin’s body looked over at me, then back at the artifact floating above its hand.
“Nasty piece of work, this,” it said. Its voice was conversational, deep, inhuman. “Ya’la ibn Murah and St. Francis of the Desert both. Unpleasant.”
I tried to think, to focus. I had to say something.
“Fuck you,” I slurred.
It made a soft tsk-tsk and shook its head.
“It isn’t yours. I know that,” the thing said. “Heller designed it. It’s his style. Oh yes, I know my enemies. And I’ve known Heller quite well. You, though, I confess I didn’t expect. You’re Jayne, yes?”
He knew how to pronounce my name, and for the first time since I’d come to, I felt the deep, penetrating rush of fear. Far to the south, a storm cloud still hung on the horizon, lightning flashing so far away there was no thunder. Coin nodded.
“The niece,” it said. “The heir. Eric’s next incarnation. I thought we had put an end to all that, but here you are. And Alexander gone because of it. I suppose I should have guessed. Heller was the past master of putting things in motion.”
“You killed my uncle,” I said. My voice sounded steadier now.
“Yes,” Coin said.
“You’re going to kill me,” I said, sure as I did that it was the truth.
The rider narrowed its stolen eyes. The bullet slid down through the air to land on its upturned palm.
“Possibly,” it said. “If it’s necessary.”
I almost had my feet back. The city below us glittered and darkened. Somewhere out there, down below us, Midian and Chogyi Jake were running for their lives. And Candace and Aaron and Kim. Every minute I kept Coin focused on me was one that its attention wasn’t turned to them.
Run, I thought. Wherever you are out there, get the hell away from here. Live.
“How much do you know?” it asked.
“Enough,” I said. It was silent for a long moment, then nodded.
“And you have made yourself part of this,” he said. It was almost a question.
“Yeah,” I said. The thing in Coin’s body sighed.
“You are a woman of great power. Great potential,” it said. “You needn’t take your uncle’s path. Even with the hurt you’ve caused me, you don’t have to die here.”
I looked at it. The ink marks on its pale flesh seemed to shift, letters forming and re-forming. Something in the pit of my stomach warmed and rose, and against my own expectations, I laughed. Coin looked nonplussed.
“You’re saying I could join up with you?”
“That’s an option,” it said, vaguely offended.
“Next you offer me all the nations of the world?” I asked. When it looked confused, I gestured to the wide, empty air around us. “Temptation. High place. Devil.”
“Ah,” it said, nodding. “No, I’m not Satan, and you’ve little enough in common with Christ, for that matter. I wasn’t offering to purchase your soul. Only that I would rather we not end this in violence if there isn’t need. If alliance isn’t interesting to you, armistice at least remains a possibility.”
“What? ‘Oops, my bad. Won’t do it again,’ and you let me go?”
“Of course not. I’ve underestimated Heller’s reach, but that doesn’t make me a fool. Renounce your vengeance and there will be an agreement. A binding of intention. Then, yes, you can walk away.”
“Really can’t,” I said.
Coin stood. The man’s body was only a little taller than mine. The business suit looked perversely in place with the arcane designs on its skin. I raised my chin.
“You killed my uncle,” I said again, and shrugged.
“And you are determined to walk in his footsteps,” Coin said. It wasn’t a question, but it was the last chance I had.
I shifted my feet, the gravel crunching under me. I was a thousand feet above the ground, facing a supernatural evil that had already said it was willing to kill me. I didn’t have another bullet or a rifle with which to fire it. Eric’s protections might have been stripped away by Kim’s cantrip. I didn’t have any friends or allies. I was alone, and if I didn’t do what the thing in Coin’s body wanted, I’d be killed. Or I could say no, accept whatever binding it had in mind, and live as its slave and subject until I found a way to slip my leash. If I ever did. But at least I’d be alive. All I had to say was No, I’m not.
“Yeah,” I said. “Really am.”
Coin nodded, its expression resigned and unsurprised.
“This gives me no pleasure,” it said, and drew in its breath. I jumped at it, swinging low. Coin danced out of reach, lifted its hands, and shouted a single syllable. The sound was louder than anything I’d ever heard-like a jet engine about two feet from my face. There were other voices inside it. I heard a chorus of shrieking words, a high wailing, and something deep and chthonic and inhuman. Sound pushed at me like a storm wind.
I set my feet, leaning forward toward Coin’s gaping mouth and outstretched arms. The gravel under me shifted as I slid backward. My mind was jumping in a hundred different directions. I tried to pull up my qi, to force my will down into the soles of my feet to stick me to the spot. There was nothing.
The edge of the building came up behind me faster than I’d expected. The raw force of Coin’s will had shoved me a dozen feet or more. The parapet came up to my thighs, the void on the other side. I dropped to my knees, trying not to pitch over it. My ears rang, and my eyes felt dry and scoured, like I’d been staring into a sandstorm.
And then I was in motion. I curled to the side, pushing through my legs as I did. I landed on my shoulder, rolling gracefully through my back to end up catlike on my fingertips and the balls of my feet. There was no surprise on Coin’s face. It lifted its raised fists, and I jumped to the side as the roofing where I had been burst open, pebbles flying like shrapnel. I felt something dig into my leg, but I ignored the pain. My backpack was inches from my hand, and I swept it up and threw it, the leather singing against the air. It took Coin in the belly. Nothing more than a moment’s distraction, but I was running forward, teeth bared.
My blood was a song, my body a weapon. My mind let go and let my flesh take control without me. Coin blocked a claw-fingered swipe at his neck, but not the kick that I sent hammering into its knee. I wanted to see surprise in its expression, but there was only momentary pain and then grim determination. I danced back, and Coin flipped up a handful of gravel, the unnaturally powerful stones hissing past my ear like gunfire.
It didn’t speak. That time was over. We circled each other, waiting for a break, a moment. A chance. I thought I saw a tremble in the knee I’d kicked. I lunged forward, but it had anticipated the move. It stepped into the attack, taking the momentum on its arm, grabbing the front of my shirt and twisting. I lost contact with the ground, flew through the air out of control. I reached down with one hand, willing myself down to the gray stones. My hand slapped the parapet as I sailed past. For a fraction of a second I was over the edge, looking down the endless drop of black glass and chrome to the distant, glowing street. Then I was hugging the wrong side of the parapet, my legs kicking against the void.
Coin stood above me, both hands raised. I could feel the air change as it gathered its will. I think I screamed, but what I remember thinking was Oh, well. That’s it.
The world became a clockwork. My arm, slung over the edge, carried a certain mass at a particular angle. The friction of my feet against the side of the skyscraper held a particular and measurable force. Coin’s hands were only hands, its will a faint echo of what it had been only seconds before. Someone had performed Kim’s
