Four knives whispered out from beneath his coat, silver arcs slicing through the smoky air.
Each blade found a throat, wrist, or artery. Men dropped mid-trigger pull, choking, hands flying to their wounds.
Grace pulled both handguns from his holster—two matte-black Eagles, modified with a custom suppressor—and fired once, twice, three more times.
Six puffs of death. Six men who’d been slammed back into walls and tables.
“Cease fire,” Spectre ordered. “That’s enough. We need someone alive to talk.”
A man hugging the wall near the bar lunged toward the front entrance, thinking he could slip past.
Meridian drew Whisper and paused, allowing the desperate man a taste of hope and safety before slashing the blade through the air in a wide arc.
Carbon steel kissed meat, cutting clean through bone and tendons.
The runner’s leg separated at his lower thigh as he collapsed forward and slid across the floor behind his severed limb.
A ragged, animalistic sound escaped his throat before the howl tore free. He stared at his bloody stump in wide-eyed disbelief, chest heaving, trying to command a limb that no longer existed.
Another burly thug had nearly made it to the back door, hand reaching for the knob.
Mirage produced a larger blade—his midnight Delta Dart—and threw it over Grace’s shoulder. It cut through the air and slammed into the wood, pinning the man’s hand with a solid thunk. The scream stalled in his throat, his eyes going wide at the sleek cobalt handle protruding from his palm.
“Anyone else wanna be stupid?” Meridian asked.
No one volunteered.
Guns clattered quietly to the floor. Rough men backed up, hands raised, tattoos over their throats flexing as they shook their heads.
Then the smell hit.
Fear that thick had a sharp scent, acidic from the sour reek of urine.
Meridian let Whisper drip blood onto the legless man’s shirt before he yanked the bandanna off his head to wipe her blade clean—did it in a movement as casual as flicking ash from a cigarette, and resheathed it.
The only sounds for a moment were the wheezes of dying men and the ragged moans of the injured, until the bartender found his tongue.
He stood behind the scarred plank of wood, rag still in his hand, jaw tight under a salt-and-pepper beard. “What do you want?” he demanded.
His voice was composed, but his eyes kept glancing to the bodies and the blood staining his floors.
“Finally.” Meridian smiled faintly, walking toward the bar. “Someone with intelligence.”
Ex ghosted his shoulder, a step behind and to the side, returning to their defensive formation.
Grace and Mirage held their position at the center of the room. Grace’s presence kept the men’s backs pressed hard against the walls.
Mirage tapped his lethal batwing throwing knife against his thigh, as if it was begging for the opportunity to taste flesh.
Meridian propped his hip against a stool as if he was a paying customer.
“I assume you don’t have Beauté du Sièclem, or a Gautier Cognac,” he asked.
The bartender stared at him as if he had horns. “You assume right,” he said snidely.
As Meridian eyed the bottles of liquor. The plastic-handled gallon of vodka, generic brand whiskey, boxed wine, and rotgut tequila, it made his palate recoil.
Movement to the left snagged his attention.
