Coup de Grâce

WHEN I REACHED THE ALLEY BEHIND THE CAFÉ, LUCAS was gone. Edward was on the move. Of course he was. He knew who was chasing him. He wasn’t running from Lucas; he was luring him in.

I raced down the adjoining alley, where we’d last seen Edward. I didn’t worry about how much noise I made. If Lucas heard me, he’d come running, away from Edward, which was exactly what I wanted.

When I rounded the first junction, I saw Lucas. He was walking carefully, looking from side to side, his back to me. I opened my mouth to shout to him, then stopped. If Edward was lying in wait around the next corner, any disruption could spook him. I wasn’t about to spook a vampire with a gun.

I jogged down the alley. A few yards from Lucas, as I ran under a fire escape, a shadow moved overhead. I whirled and looked up to see Edward, crouched on the fire escape.

“Lucas!” I yelled.

As I raced toward Lucas, I realized that we were in a blind alley, with only an alcove adjoining at the end. I wheeled just as Edward leapt to the ground. He raised his gun. I side-lunged into his firing path, and started casting a binding spell. Edward trained the gun on my chest.

“I’ll fire before you finish,” he said. His sunglasses were gone, and his eyes were as flat and emotionless as his voice. He looked over my shoulder at Lucas, who’d also frozen mid-incantation. “You, too. Cast and I’ll shoot her.”

“Paige,” Lucas said. “Step aside. Please.”

“So he can shoot you? You’re the one he’s after. That was the message Faye was trying to give us. You’re the target.”

“Do you really think I won’t shoot because you’re in the way?” Edward said.

Yet he didn’t. He lifted the gun, as if considering firing over my shoulder at Lucas, then lowered it back to my chest, clearly not comfortable enough with his marksmanship to try for anything but a torso shot. He might not care about adding me to his body count, but he wouldn’t take the chance that, in the time it took to shoot me, Lucas could cast a spell and escape.

“Do you know what Benicio will do to you if you kill Lucas?” I said.

“Same thing everyone else wants to do. Hunt me down and kill me. Do you think I care? I stopped caring the day I came back to my hotel room and found those Cabal assassins had finished their job.”

“We—”

“I walked into that room, and do you know what I saw?” His gaze skewered mine. “Her head on the bedpost. My wife’s head on the bedpost!”

I tried to summon up some sympathy, but all I could think about were the dozens of bodies buried behind that cabin.

A soft breeze fluttered down the alley, coming from behind us. Though I didn’t dare peek over my shoulder, I knew there was a three-story wall behind Lucas. No breeze could come through that. Was I casting without knowing it? I’d done that once before, under stress. Could I do it again? But no, I couldn’t rely on magic. Not now. I plowed ahead.

“So you took what was dearest to them,” I said. “But when Benicio finds out—”

“Are you listening? Have you heard a word I’ve said? I don’t care!”

“But you wanted immortality—”

“I wanted eternal life with my wife. Without her, it doesn’t matter.”

A gust of wind whipped through the alley, making us all freeze. It came again, not so much a wind now as a quaking, as if the air itself was heaving, churning.

Edward stepped to the side fast and raised the gun at Lucas. I pitched sideways, throwing myself into his path, but the air around us vibrated so violently that I lost my balance and fell to one knee. As I twisted, the still-healing knife wounds blazed and I gasped.

“Don’t move, Paige,” Lucas said, his voice tight. “Please, don’t move.”

I shifted my eyes, straining to see Edward. He had the gun pointed at my chest.

“Don’t do this,” Lucas said. “She hasn’t done anything to you. If you let her go, I can promise you—”

Edward swung the gun toward Lucas. “Shut up.”

“Listen to him, Edward,” I said. “If you stop now, you can be with Natasha.”

“Natasha is gone!”

“No, she’s not. She’s a ghost.”

His lips twisted. “You lying bitch. You’d say anything to save him, wouldn’t you?”

He started to turn the gun on me. Then the air around us crackled and popped, and he swung the gun back toward Lucas.

“I told you, any magic and—”

Behind Lucas, the air darkened, then the backdrop shattered, like a mirror breaking. Light streamed through. A woman’s figure appeared in the light. Edward looked up. He blinked.

“Nat—? Natasha?”

She reached for him. Edward took a slow, cautious step forward. Then suddenly, Natasha’s body jerked ramrod straight. The hole shimmered around her. Her eyes went wide and her mouth opened in a silent scream, and she tumbled back into the yawning hole, arms still stretching toward Edward.

“No!” Edward shouted.

The gun jerked, then fell from his hand as he raced for the portal. I saw the gun fall. I swear that is the first thing I saw, and in that moment I knew Lucas was safe. Then Lucas toppled backward, a dark hole in his breast pocket. Then, only then, I heard the shot echoing through the alley.

I twisted around. Lucas was still falling into the hole. The light swallowed his head, then his chest, and finally his feet.

I dove in after him.