My face was still swollen and bruised, but pain was the last thing on my mind. A conflict felt unavoidable.
I kinda hoped it was Clara trying to trick me.
But the moment the cab pulled up across the street, a dark tinted van parked near the building entrance caught my eye. Not good.
Traffic had eaten up precious minutes, and every second felt like a countdown. In the blind panic of the ride over, calling 911 had slipped my mind.
I rushed to the entrance and hit Clara’s buzzer. Silence. No answer. My chest tightened with dread.
Fuck, fuck, fuck…
Still, a grim thought grounded me: as long as I was breathing, our soul tether was intact, which meant Clara was still alive.
I pulled out my phone. The arcane mark Luna had carved onto the screen was shifting, its luminescent lines warping and pulsing with a faint, unnatural hum.
I needed to get inside without tipping anyone off. I buzzed a dozen different units, claiming to be a delivery driver with a food drop. After four failed attempts, a buzzer clicked, and the heavy glass door unlocked.
Inside the lobby, a man in a maintenance uniform stood blocking the elevators.
"Out of order," he said flatly, his eyes cold. "Take the stairs."
These weren't solitary hitmen anymore; they were an organized strike team.
They had located her address, cut off the main routes, and deployed multiple bodies. Since these people were puppeteered by mind-control spells, I assumed survival instinct wouldn't slow them down.
Opening fire in the lobby wasn't an option. Gunfire in broad daylight on Earth meant real murder charges, and I refused to end up in prison over an alien feud. But with Clara in danger, hoping a sucker punch would knock him cold was too big a gamble.
Thankfully, the puppet didn't recognize my face; their directive was only Clara.
"Ah, man, are you serious?" I played dumb, rubbing the back of my neck. "I got a heavy soup order for 8B. How many guys are working on the lift? Is someone up there fixing the motor?"
"Nobody is fixing it," the man muttered, his stare fixed on the wall. "Go."
No service crew, but a guard on the ground meant the rest were already upstairs.
My eyes caught the red pull-station mounted on the corridor wall.
Perfect.
I pretended to head for the stairwell, slipped up to the second-floor landing, called the elevator from the service panel, and rode it straight up to the eleventh floor.
Stupid medieval assassin. They thought it’d be enough to only block people on the ground floor.
As the car rose, the mark on my phone twisted strangely, the mark glowing brighter with every passing floor. Then I realized that it wasn't just a mark, but was responding to active arcane puppetry, acting as a radar.
Clara was on the twelfth floor. I stepped off at eleven, pulled off my sneakers, and moved in silence toward the emergency exit.
Before hitting the stairs, I reached out and pulled the fire alarm handle.
A deafening siren tore through the concrete shaft, strobe lights flashing red along the walls. Within seconds, doors flew open as residents scrambled to evacuate, their panicked shouts and stomping footsteps masking my approach.
I crept onto the twelfth floor.
Through the haze of flashing strobes, a figure in a heavy windbreaker was pacing toward Clara's door. Normal residents were either running for the stairs or barricading themselves inside; anyone lingering in the open hallway was a target.
I closed the distance from his blind spot, lunged forward, and locked my forearm around his throat in a tight rear-naked choke. He thrashed for three seconds before his limbs went limp. I lowered him quietly to the carpet.
Down the hall, a second puppet emerged from Clara’s door, turning toward the noise. I ducked into an open doorway just in time.
When the man walked over to check his fallen partner, I stepped out behind him and locked my arm around his neck, dragging him down into the same silence.
Why are there so many of them this time?
I crept closer to Clara's unit. The violent, rhythmic thud of an axe splintering wood echoed through the corridor.
Near the threshold lay a fourth man, unconscious without a scratch or bruise on him.
Clara must have used a burst of sleep magic to drop him when the breach started.
I peeked around the corner. Three men were taking turns hacking at her reinforced front door. The wood frame was warped, but Clara had clearly bound it with a protective ward, forcing them to chop away for minutes to carve a narrow gap.
Distant sirens wailed outside, echoing up from the avenue. The men quickened their swings.
Clara’s muffled scream pierced through the wood. The door was about to give.
I stepped out into the open hallway, leveled my Glock with two hands, and took aim at the center man's chest.
"Drop the axes. Your lookouts are down, and the NYPD is on the block."
"Lee?!" Clara’s voice cried out from behind the wood. "You're here!"
The three men froze mid-swing. Their grips tightened on the fiberglass handles, their clouded eyes locking onto the muzzle of my gun. They stood still, as if they were calculating whether a thrown blade was faster than a hollow-point bullet.
"Why interfere with divine justice?" the lead puppet spoke, his voice carrying an eerie, hollow resonance. "Who are you to stand in the way?"
"I'm her bodyguard with a loaded magazine," I said, my finger resting on the trigger. "Drop the weapons. Now."
"You are the outlander tethered to her," another puppet rasped. "We believed you were a victim. We believed we shared common ground…"
"I don't share any damn ground with creepy home invaders. Put the fucking axes on the floor. NOW!"
The lead man shook his head slowly. "You are defending a monster."
"You hijack innocent minds, put civilians in the line of fire, and call other people monsters?"
"We never wanted to harm the innocent," the lead puppet replied, slowly lowering his axe to the floor. The other two followed suit. "Had you remained calm that night rather than fighting, that innocent man would not be sitting in a holding cell."
"You came at us with a piece!" I snapped. "How are you slipping people into my city, anyway? Get the fuck out of my world, will you?"
"A foreign energy was slipped from this realm into ours," the puppet said. "The balance was disturbed. An equivalent exchange must be made. That is the fundamental law."
The snacks. The processed food and manufactured goods I smuggled into Falkenreach… oh shit, I’m the one who dragged their hunt straight to my own World.
"Whatever, man. Lay the weapons flat and release these people," I ordered, keeping the gun level.
"We will withdraw," the puppet said, stepping back from the door. "Do not harm these vessels. But remember this day, outlander. The hour will come when you witness the true nature of the monster you serve."
"Yeah, yeah. Heard it all before. Clear out."
As the words left my mouth, the light faded from their eyes. The three men collapsed to the carpet like cut puppets.
The door lock clicked, and the splintered oak swung inward.
Clara stood not far away, clutching a kitchen knife. The moment her eyes met mine, the blade clattered to the floorboards.
I was all set to accept a hug, but she pounded my chest and said, "This is for hiding my dagger."
"Well, you did worse to me."
Before I could mock her more, she kissed my neck. “This is for saving me.”
"You really need to learn how to pay your hero back." I kept the pistol pointed down the hall.
“And you’ve stuck with me.” She tilted her head up, her violet eyes swimming with tears, and pulled my collar down.
I brought my free hand up between us to halt the motion.
"Not now, Clara," I said. "Not now."
Down on the avenue, the sirens wailed louder, red and blue emergency strobes painting the outside.