“I have the volts, Chez,” Levi growled. “Isn’t that what you came for?”
“They’d be a temporary solution to a permanent problem.” Chez raised his knife to chest level. “I don’t feel sorry for you. Not a bit. All that work for Vianca, and none goes to us. The Irons will be safer with you gone.”
“I saved your life,” Levi said, still in disbelief. “I’ve been your friend.”
“That was a long time ago.”
Levi looked at Mansi. Chez, he could believe. The other Irons, maybe. But Mansi? Mansi had looked up to him since the beginning. When had that changed?
She crossed her arms and turned away. It felt like a nail had been driven into his chest, into his coffin.
Maybe he deserved this. Maybe the Irons deserved better.
But he would still fight for what was his.
He removed the pistol he’d been carrying and handed it to Mansi. Duels were knives only. And, despite everything, if he did lose, he wanted Mansi to have it.
If he was being honest with himself, he didn’t think that he could beat a Phillips in a fight—Chez had to be three times faster than him. But it was damn hard to break a street oath. He’d be hurting. Maybe that was all the advantage Levi would need to win.
To win. A challenge was a duel to the death. So it was Chez or Levi. Only one of them would be walking out of Olde Town with their throat intact.
Levi pulled out his knife and moved into a fighting stance, but his legs trembled and his arms felt weak. He wasn’t supposed to die here, just another kid playing lord whom no one would remember.
Chez lunged forward. Levi dodged his knife but missed the punch he’d aimed at Chez’s shoulder. His third was all skin and no bones, quicker with a blade and, of course, fast as lightning.
Chez ran forward and sank his knife into Levi’s leg. Levi let out a scream and frantically jabbed his own blade as he fell, but he never made contact. Hot blood boiled out of his thigh. Chez kicked him in the side one, two, three times.
Besides the pain, all Levi could think of was how fast he’d gone down.
Four, five. His stomach flipped over, and he swallowed down a tide of vomit. If he was going to die, he wouldn’t die covered in his own sick. He should’ve probably been thinking about something more profound, but he didn’t have a family who would miss him or lovers who would weep. All he had was his dignity.
“Chez!” someone shouted. Levi’s heart was pounding too loudly to hear who it was. The nerves around the knife wound in his leg screamed, and his stomach ached all over. “Stop it!”
Chez kicked Levi again, this time in the head.
Everything darkened. His thoughts whirled around his brain like a funnel, and he wondered if maybe it was the ground spinning and spinning and spinning, sucking him inside the earth.
A few more screams. Then some grunts. A clatter. Footsteps. Levi couldn’t tell if it happened in a millisecond or in minutes, but then something pressed against his leg, and Levi stifled a scream.
The person bending over him was a shadow, but everything was a shadow in Olde Town. “Muck. Muck, this is really happening.” The person wrenched his hand away, and the pain in Levi’s leg lessened slightly. He could sense his aura, weightless and translucent. Jac. “Stay with me. You c-can’t die on me.”
Jac’s words spun, too.
Panicked hands found their way down Levi’s shirt, against his chest. A welcome warmth filled him, easing the pain, coaxing him back into lucidity.
His eyes widened. “No,” he moaned, swatting Jac away.
As the hands let go, so, too, did the warmth. Levi began to shiver. Only the cold and the pain remained, sharp enough to numb everything else. All his adrenaline, gone, and with it, his sense of feeling.
All his life, gone.
The ground caved in, and he hit bottom.
ENNE
Enne stood in the hallway of black and white doors, searching for the right one. She spun in a circle, looking for something familiar. The previous door she’d opened had been her memory of the last time she spoke to Lourdes, but she couldn’t remember which door it was. The hallway stretched endlessly in both directions, every inch of it the same.
She walked to a black door. Those belonged to her.
