“We should just take the pills and clean up and go—let some poor fucker find her in the morning, or maybe she’ll be dead by then, huh?” A nervous chuckle.
Adeline held up two fingers. Two guys. Tian nodded.
“Or maybe she crosses the bridge and gets out. We can’t have her loose, you idiots.”
Adeline caught Tian’s glance. Three. Except this new voice, she recognized.
“What are you, noble hero? Who cares what she does to other people.”
“You want to tell Fan Ge you got the police involved? He’s taking nothing right now unless it’s his son back.”
“Ricky should go check it out. Huh, Ricky? You think you’re a man now? Go handle her, then.”
“Yeah,” the third man drawled. “I agree with that.”
Christina nudged Tian, wondering about the plan, but Tian shook her head and pointed their attention toward the dark bushes.
The two Steels managed to bully their younger brother into unlatching the door. It slid open in groaning halts and stutters that might as well have been sirens in the night. Tian tensed, still sensing something no one else did, her eyes fixed on the undergrowth. The Steels had been sayingher. A memory came to Adeline: a girl in the alley with too many teeth, tasting a dead Crocodile’s blood.
Trembling gun first, the gangly Steel boy stepped out. Tian motioned for the girls to back out of his line of sight—and then some.
The boy walked slowly forward, trigger finger twitching. If he knew what he was looking for, he didn’t know where to look for it. He was casting the gun around like a talisman. In the opposite direction, Adeline noticed, from where Tian was looking.
As the boy walked past, eyes opened in the bushes.
With a lunge, a figure all white and red and limbs fell onto him, nails finding flesh. He screamed. Jade stifled a yelp. The gun went off and then thumped to a side as he grappled with what had once clearly been a girl. Dark long hair obscured most of her face as she knocked the Steel to the ground. She was spattered with blood, had gone for the throat, the undersides of his wrists, the soft, exposed, veined places.
Another gunshot went off. Another Steel, aiming through the shutter. The girl jerked—hit?—and rolled off the first boy, wiping her mouth. The men should have closed the door. By the time they realized this, she was already inside.
Gunshots went off like firecrackers—shouts, thuds, crashing. Then the slam of a door, and silence.
Unbelievably: a voice, the one Adeline had recognized. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” He was pacing.
No response. Tian looked at Adeline and held up one finger.
The Butterflies moved now, slowly. Adeline felt what Tian must have picked up: a feral rage suffusing the air, almost electric where the girl had been. But there was a well deeper beyond that, too, and something accumulated. Tian pushed the door open farther as they stepped inside, Christina training her gun on the man left standing.
His brother was twitching on the ground, face and chest mauled. The final standing man had light gashes on his arm, but was otherwise on his feet. His tattoos seemed to have saved him from the brunt of it. It took a moment for him to see the Butterflies, thenanother to understand who they were. But finally it dawned on him, and he snatched up the pipe behind him and desperately swung.
Tian stepped under and caught his arm with a flash of fire. He jolted and dropped the pipe with a howl, staggering backward with renewed shock.
It was Lilian’s boyfriend, the voice Adeline had recognized. He looked more than ever unformed and in near pieces, panting and gaping at them like a fish. He’d been there the whole time at the Steel house. Adeline remembered his leering presence in the corner. Her heart thudded, and a keening sense of purpose began to build.
“She ran off down there?” Tian said. “Why didn’t she kill you?”
“You’re behind this, witch? Call a truce just to come in here and kick us in the back?”
“We just got here. Seems like you brought this upon yourselves. We—” A high-pitched giggle interrupted her. Tian paused and turned to look down the warehouse, and the Steel’s machismo faltered.
“We locked her in there. She was going after the pills.”
“What are the pills?” Tian demanded. “They’re the magic of gods, aren’t they? How is it done?”
“They don’t tell us. We just send out the blood and handle the girls.”
“What blood?”
But Adeline had noticed something in the rafters, hanging between the pendulum lights. She held fire up to be sure. Large metal hooks, attached to a loop of rusted railings. This was an old abattoir.
