The Witch With No Name (The Hollows #13)(124)
Author: Kim Harrison

Trent began to walk, his steps usually so graceful now jarring.

“Okay,” I said more to myself than anyone else. “We’ll finish this, find out where Ivy and Nina are, and then go to Trent’s to check on Lucy. I’m sure they’re fine. Trent, I’m sure she got Lucy out of here before the sun went down.”

“She did,” Trent said as we turned the corner. “I already . . . called. My God . . .”

He stopped dead on the sidewalk as the wall of sound hit us. My mouth dropped as I stared, heart hammering. The square was packed with screaming people, angry, with their fists in the air. The lights were bright and the big TV showed a frightened newscaster, the captions spelling tragedy and fear as the sun went down across the U.S. On the stage in a bright spotlight was a man with a handgun. He was pointing it at a kneeling figure before him, bloodied and beaten. Bound and held from behind by two more men was an androgynous figure with big bony feet showing from under a shapeless robe. Newt.

“No!” I screamed, wiggling until I hit the ground. Trent pulled me up, and I reached out.

“Stop!” I screamed as the man on the stage shouted something. The crowd howled, and then I almost passed out as the flash of the gun and the sound of a shot shocked through me.

A wave of sound echoed between the buildings as the mob cried out. I could not breathe, could not believe it as the bound figure fell, dead, on the stage. I. Could. Not. Believe. This.

“At least it smells better than the French revolution,” Al said at my elbow.

I spun, almost falling until Trent propped me up. “My God,” I said, touching Al in his new suit and lingering on his red, goat-slitted eyes. “Go,” I said, shoving him back toward the hotel. “Go! Get out of here! Trent has a copter coming. Go!”

“It’s her!” someone shouted, and my heart seemed to stop. “It’s her! It’s that demon woman!”

“Shit,” Trent whispered, and I went cold as people in the streets turned, their faces ugly with fear, hatred, and a mad aggression. “Rachel—”

I gasped as someone grabbed me from behind. My leg gave way and I fell. “Trent!” I screamed, fighting the elbows and hands as I was pulled up and away. “Damn it, let me go!” I demanded, and then screamed when they twisted my arm behind me, forcing me through the crowd. Agony numbed my leg and I fell, so they picked me up, shoving me from person to person, pinching my arms, pulling my hair, tripping me. I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe.

“Jenks!” I called out. He was gone. I fought to be free but someone punched me in the middle and I bent double, unaware and struggling to breathe until they hauled me up onto the stage.

Terrified, I hung in someone’s grip, shocked and bleeding as Al landed next to me in a sliding thud. Men kicked him to stay down, and he sat where he was, his new suit torn and his face bloodied. Newt still stood, her expression proud and a little wild as she waited beside me, her hands bound with a plastic bag.

“You try anything and I’ll shoot you!” the man with the gun screamed at us. The bleeding corpse behind him was dragged off, and the crowd carried it away. My gore rose, and I struggled to keep from vomiting. Trent? Where are Trent and Jenks? Jenks couldn’t fly. He’d be crushed.

“If you have any ideas . . . ,” Al said, sitting cross-legged with his hands laced behind his head.

“No, not really.” I pulled my eyes from the slick smear of blood, wondering how many demons they’d killed so far. What the hell kind of an ending was this?

“Get up!” the man with the gun screamed. “I said, get up!”

Al stood, his expression far more placid than I would’ve expected. “Thank you for our freedom,” he said to me as the man with the gun cavorted before us, whipping the crowd up to bolster his own courage. “I will never understand why you cared.”

“I don’t like bullies,” I said flatly, and Newt smiled. The electric lights caught a glint in her eye, almost anticipatory. I knew she longed for an end, but this was wrong, so wrong.

“They will all die!” the man screamed. “All the demons. Magic is dead, and we will be safe! Safe from the freaks and unholy demons!”

They might kill me, but they would damn well listen to me first.

“Shut the hell up!” I shouted, my voice cutting through the noise as if it was supplemented by magic. The crowd heard me, and in the barest hesitation of their outrage, I added, “And get your stinking hands off me!”

Adrenaline was a silver ribbon, snapping through me as I plowed my elbow into the man holding me. Weight on my good leg, I spun to break his nose with my elbow, shoving him off the stage and into the crowd.

Al cried out in elation, his expression fearsome as he rose and moved in sharp, decisive motions, flipping the two who held him into the crowd. Like a banshee gone berserk, Newt howled, kicking at everyone who got close. Between them, no one dared try the stage, and in the sudden hush, I realized no one was up here anymore but us, the forgotten gun, and the man who had shot it, now huddling beside a huge amp.

Al paced back and forth, his steps red from stepping in blood. Newt held her hands out to me and I tried to get the plastic knots free. “I was beginning to think you might not make it in time,” she said dryly.

My heart was pounding, and I couldn’t feel my leg. “Who was that?” I asked, eyes darting to the blood smear. Behind us, the man who’d shot him cowered. His hand had bones sticking out, and the gun, now useless to him, lay tauntingly within reach.

Newt glanced at the blood, then rubbed her wrists as the knots came loose. “I don’t know. He wasn’t a demon. Honestly, I was simply enjoying the fountain and he was sitting beside me.”

Relief coursed through me, quickly followed by anger. “They killed an innocent man because he might have been a demon?” I said loudly, then turned to the crowd, slowly realizing what they’d done, what they’d allowed, hell, what they’d encouraged to happen. “You killed a man and he wasn’t even a demon!” I shouted, my voice echoing between the buildings. “What is wrong with you people!”

“They’re demons!” someone shouted, quickly hushed by those nearest her.

“Yeah? So what?” I shouted back. That didn’t go over so well, and the murderous rise of complaint started to gain strength. The crowd, though, was beginning to break up at the back as the I.S. and FIB began to show.