It was a quiet night in Voltar’s house as I kept my eyes shut and pretended to sleep, waiting for intruders to come bursting in to kill us all in our sleep.

I’d prefer to be waiting on my feet, however circumstances dictated this instead. Shape-changers could shrink both their core and their mass, so they could scout to their heart’s content. If they wanted them to attack the house, they’d have to confirm we were asleep first.

Well, except poor Doctor Dawes stuck reading a book idly in the foyer near the cellar entrance, where we’d stuffed Kalasyp and Edward Montague. It’d look too suspicious to not have a guard of any sort. Or at least someone to help our ‘secret’ prisoners in case they needed a bite to eat or to relieve themselves.

So I waited under the covers, pretending to be sleeping. To my annoyance, there was no place where I could wait awake. The place where we’d put both Kalasyp and Edward Montague when they’d arrived here? Firmly blocked off from any creature we believed the shape-changers could become? My room? Less so. And if I was missing, that might give the game away.

A good point. I was still infuriated because I was under the covers, waiting for the attack. Or that I’d be fighting in my nightgown instead of anything more practical.

I had one of my hands on top of the cover, gripping my focus tightly. Just a precaution. I didn’t know if stories of what happened when you killed a sleeping diabolist with their focus in hand had been spread deliberately by my predecessors or not. I’d take advantage of them all the same so no shape-changer would kill me in my sleep.

Although I wasn’t sure how well I could fool them.

Trying to sleep while expecting someone to come bursting in at any second was impossible, and faking sleep wasn’t much better. We used to do this to lull in the unwary in the Black Flame, but I was years out of practice.

Also, a little nagging voice that wasn’t the Imp kept on insisting that they wouldn’t come. Which was ridiculous on its face. Two days, two blows they hadn’t expected. The kidnapping of Montague’s son, the exposure and capture of the bishop. And their numbers were down to ten in total. It didn’t matter that we weren’t sure who the others might be. They had to be worrying about what our next move would be. Especially now that we’d shown we knew a way to detect them besides the paralysis poison.

They needed the initiative back. They needed to pick a target and try to silence any sources of information. There were two such targets, the Coffin containing Hawkins and the Bishop, and Voltar’s property containing Kalasyp and Edward Montague.

I knew which I’d consider the easier target. And which one the man holding the reins would prioritize.

I counted the seconds in my head just so my thoughts wouldn’t wander. Three hours since I turned my lights out if my count was correct and I hadn’t missed a second.

Thinking back wrecked the count though, and I muttered and turned over in my sleep.

A thump, a clatter from downstairs, and a muffled curse.

I rolled my eyes as I heard the plate shatter. How moronic did they think we were? Bait, so clearly bait.

Still, bait I should reply to as I pretended to blink sleep out of my eyes, lifting my head up. I lifted the covers to exit to the right of the bed, and then immediately rolled off the left side, taking the covers with me.

A long hand stabbed at where I would have gotten out of bed, a quartet of spike fingers slamming into the wall. From within the shadows, something clung to the wall, a thin stretched-out film of flesh the same color as the wall. How long had it taken to creep into position?

No matter, it was just a target now. I felt a twinge of sadness that held me back for an instant. I’d only been here a few weeks, but this room had replaced my torn-apart lodgings back in the Quarter, just a little.

Only an instant, though, as I struck.

I borrowed their attack on me, four lances of hellfire burning across the room. They splashed across the shape-changer’s surface, flesh blackening as the fires scorched its flesh. It howled as it rolled off the wall, leaving chunks of itself behind burnt to a crisp.

It shrieked and flailed as it shed burning pieces of flesh. It bought me enough time to disentangle myself from those oh-so-comfortable sheets.

I was going to miss that bed.

The four spikes retracted from the wall, bent, and swung at me as overly long claws. I was already halfway to the door, sending more hellfire spraying back at it. A wall formed, and the spikes retreated as I ran through the door.

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The trapdoor was still open. Good. I ran towards it, sending an errant burst of hellfire at part of my lab before sliding down the ladder.

My leg ached as the hoof hit the bottom, but I kept on running. The stored chemical in that lab would burst at any second, and-

The floor beneath me burst, wood bending, then shattering as I was sent off my hooves. The entire house rocked, walls shaking, and the sound of a hundred shattering and falling objects joined the boom of the explosion.

The floor shifted underneath my feet and I started running for a window. The floor fell away under my feet, but I managed to get to the sill, throwing it open and flinging myself out as the wall came down.

I plummeted towards the greenery just outside the house, crashing through a shrubbery. Lucky, although I didn’t feel it as I hit the soil. Pieces of the house landed around me, and I curled up in a ball, waiting for a falling piece of rubble to crush me.

It never came as the house collapsed in on itself, leaving a skeleton in its place.

“Ow,” I muttered, my entire body aching, but especially my right shoulder. I’d kept a death grip on my focus, though.

Didn’t have time to take stock of the damage, I needed to get up now.

I disentangled myself from the shrubbery, branches raking my skin as I broke free. I moved about, avoiding the broken-off chunks of walls all around. Where the house once stood, a few bits of interior walls were still up, everything else having collapsed down into the cellar.

They must have broken into the cellar only to find the tunnel, note, and explosive charges. Hopefully, those would slow them down some.

No one else was here, because we couldn’t trust anyone to hide themselves well enough to hide from. Just me, Tagashin, Voltar, and Dawes. Four versus however many shape-changers had come here tonight.

Something hissed from further along in the bushes, stick-legs bursting from the bushes as they rose. A blob of still-burning flesh, the shape-changer from my bedroom, darted toward me on those stalks of pale flesh.

A blast of flame drove it off but also set the vegetation alight. It scurried about, trying to avoid flames touching its legs.

Wrong place to focus. And an even worse mistake, it had left its central body too small. I swiped at a leg with rot gathered in my hand. Squealing, it came crashing down as the stalk leg split, spraying rotten black ichor across the ground.

I drove my hand into its chest as it fell past, stabbing deep till I felt the core. A touch of rot, and I left the writhing, dying thing behind me.

I went to the house next. Something had triggered the trap, and even if they were long gone, Doctor Dawes might be buried under the rubble-

A spear of flesh stabbed out of the rubble. I dodged to the side, but it still scored a wound along my right bicep. I sent a stream of fire onto the pile of rubble while flesh poured out, forcing its way from each opening. I sent fire back in equal measure, till my muscles ached and my eyes burned. Flesh no longer poured out, and as my fingers felt like I couldn’t move them, I halted the stream of fire.

If the shape-changers under the house were still alive, they weren’t making any efforts to escape.

The sound of cackling and annoyed screeching came from the street, and I hurried that way.

By the time I got there, something resembling a praying mantic eight feet tall and a spiked blob were impaling each other, roaring as they stabbed at each other again and again. Their shrieks and screams echoed, growing weaker as they tore chunks out of each other.

Tagashin floated over both, walking towards the wreckage of the collapsed house as the shadowy figures of the remaining shape-changers continued their retreat. Four maybe, they hurried away from their two illusion-stricken comrades as Tagashin pulled a mass-produced wand from her pocket.

“Three for you,” Tagashin said from where she floated. “Two for me. You can leave Malvia. I can finish these two off easily enough.”

I frowned. “Three?”

“Two underneath there. Both are roasted beyond belief, too roasted to force their way out. They could be faking their injuries, of course, but I doubt it. Do you want to pursue them?”

I eyed the retreating figures. They were further away now in the darkness, but I still backed away.

“Don’t feel like fighting them?” Tagashin teased, only to suddenly drop out of the sky.

A tongue lashed out at where she’s floated, thick and covered in orange, glowing blisters.

“Do you?” I asked as I sent a ball of black fire into the darkness.

“Not particularly,” the Kitsune admitted. “Dawes and Voltar are two houses down, barricaded inside. I can harass this lot to make sure they leave, but I don’t think I can kill them. You?”

“I doubt there will be any more opportunities,” I muttered, sending another blast of oily flame shrieking down the street.

It illuminated forms further down, still retreating down the street. Humanoid forms, probably trying to slink away into the dark. I still kept my guard up, just in case another bone spear came stabbing from down the street.

“Just go link up with Voltar and Dawes,” Tagashin said, floating back into the air. “I’ll handle the rest.”

I nodded, paused for just a second. “Don’t die.”

And then I left.

***

***

Voltar and Dawes were sitting just inside the next house, between them a quivering mass of pale flesh spreading into a circle.

I eyed the shaking puddle of flesh.

“Mind sharing how exactly you disabled this one?” I asked the pair.

“No,” Voltar replied evenly. “Two escaped. I’m guessing some escaped you as well?”

“More like we escaped each other,” I said. “Three of them are down permanently. Tagashin took care of another two. With your prisoner, that makes seven left total, counting Lady Karsin.”

The blob froze at the name, although I couldn’t put much stock in that. Who knows what was stimulating it at this point?

“Less than half they started with,” Voltar said. “Assuming that our estimate of their total number is accurate.”

Dawes nodded, face pale. The doctor looked far more tired than Voltar, sweat dripping off his chin. Had he done most of the fighting, or was just more out of shape than the detective?

“Probably,” I said. “She’ll want to to run, once that gets back to her. Assuming she wasn’t out here herself. We need her to stay here.”

Voltar sighed, looking up into the night’s sky. “I dislike doing this to people who have committed no crime against us.”

“It’s either that or she runs,” I said. “We have one anchored here. Now we just need the other.”

“Unfortunately, I must agree. Kidnap the Karsin boy, and I’ll send the invite for tea.”