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I kept my head together—and us together—when a rival gang member flicked a plasma rope through our speeding coach. Metal, upholstery, and wood collapsed and crashed into itself, but I'd kept contact with the boss, whom I'd pushed down on the seat, and in the two seconds I had, got all our limbs and extremities reflexively tucked into the repelling gravity spell apparition, without losing my wand. Debris deflected, we got ejected down the block, bounced, slid, and clanged against a postbox. A wheel rolled by.

The boss cursed. I popped the bubble and shoved her behind a cement staircase to a brownstone. The boss had planned the flash point at the gang summit; it had never been about peace. I'd worked with all her lieutenants, helped them deal with orders to squeeze the competition while avoiding fighting; simple efficiencies your average high school dropout never learned, but the boss had set a tea kettle on the fire and today had twisted the knob to max.

Steam and violence erupted across the city.

She'd planned this, made sure I was here to save her ass.

My team reassembled quickly. Black's leg was burnt and blistered, but we hustled the body we guarded north. Toward the bridge. Through a riot. She refused Midtown park, to go to ground, or the subway—we'd have been at the docks in minutes.

No.

She. Wanted. The f'ing BRIDGE.

I wanted to ignore her orders, for her own good. But didn't.

I wasn't the bodyguard I fancied myself.

Ten blocks later, we walked into an ambush. We manhandled her between parked trucks, again screaming her anger incoherently, waving her hands. Crap people had temerity to get in her way! She popped up just as a bolt of fire flew overhead. I shoved her back. The stink of burnt hair filled the air as I doused ember-ended fuses with gutter water.

Half your hair burnt off ought teach you a lesson, right?

Wrong.

She rummaged in her messenger bag and brought out something round. She popped up as I heard rival gang members rushing aside, expecting a wand attack.

I heard only a /ting!/

I saw a flash, felt the thump in my gut. Bits of a bus-stop roof, bench, and trash flew up, crashing and bouncing in the street.

A man ran, covered in blood, screaming in the sudden silence of my stunned ears. A moment later I realized he didn't have a face to scream, about the time he ran into a signpost because he'd already been dead and didn't know it.

Possessing a firearm got you summarily shot in this city. What she'd thrown...

I sat shaking. I'd once fought, injured, not knowing I'd been bleeding to death, and blasted a beast woman attacking us across a room because fear of death let the magic do such things. Had I killed then? I never learned. Or the time before, no... I failed that, too.

This man.

In this silence...

I'd killed him.

The boss had started a war I'd not worked hard enough to stop. She'd lit the match to the kerosene: I'd escorted her to the summit. I'd saved her from the sundered coach. I'd shoved her down, preventing her head being cooked.

She'd killed him because I'd not had the courage to do what I'd—in the last weeks—begun to know was right. It was her ego, not the organization, and never the people. The hilt of my knife hurt my fist.

Black pulled us to another cover. He shook me, may have slapped me, then hugged me—shouting but I couldn't hear. I saw a dead man running, silence squealing in my head.

Then he kissed me. Black was 17, younger than me; he had a crush on me. He held my head so I couldn't look into the street. His insistent lips, tongue—they wanted to take me out of my head, away from the horror.

Insistent.

I let him.

The sounds of the riot returned as I returned the kiss. I decided he'd been practicing, but I didn't mind sloppy. I'd picked the man I'd had teach me about my body, then refined my knowledge to master the boss' lieutenants when needed tactically. Black, however...

I nipped his lip, my head cleared. As his hand went up, I said, "Business. Now."

He nodded curtly, his grin flashing, then business returning to his features. He was my bodyguard when I was hers.

Keeping him between me and the street, we hustled toward the bridge. I started my mental tally at 1. I thought about what I needed to do to end the gang war with a razor edge; not the ribs because the first strike had to count.

Keeping us safe got in the way.

She lobbed another minutes later. Six on my tally. Later eleven.

I lacked courage as the squealing silence seeped into my bones. I saw a dead man running around corners, in alleyways, but wasn't there. What would it take to end what I'd let start?

[1 1/2 hours writing. Author retains copyright.]

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