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A jaw beneath my fist.

A blade sliding between ribs.

A gunshot too near my ear.

My shoulder screamed as I tore free of the hook-chain and left skin behind.

My shadow rose in the shape of a hound, huge jaws snapping through fog and bone.

Someone screamed.

I laughed with him.

Couldn’t help it.

“You wanted the Hound,” I said, stepping over a body. “Don’t start whimpering now.”

“You’re insane,” someone yelled.

“No,” I said, taking a step forward. “I’m worse than that. I’m in love.”

One of them backed away.

The comm was dead somewhere behind me. No orders. No coordinates. No medical team. No one left in my ear to remind me I was supposed to remain civil, sane, whatever passed for a man with his shit together.

My knife entered through the general’s eye.

His smile left first.

The rest of him followed.

I stood over him, shaking, blood running down my side, my shoulder, my wrist, soaking into the black of my clothes until even the fabric grew heavy.

Everything blurred around the edges when I spotted it.

A barrel of cinderbloom. Illegal. Highly explosive. A specialty from the southern marshlands, and exactly the sort of thing no one with self-preservation should store near a rail line.

I pulled my last weapon from my ankle holster and forced myself to my feet. My bad leg nearly folded. I ignored it, tossed a flash-bang at my feet, and ran with the last scrap of strength I had left.

Light detonated behind me. I twisted and fired the gun. The bullet punched into the barrel. The explosion picked me up and threw me like I weighed nothing. I hit the concrete hard, shoulder first, then slid across the rough surface until pain tore the air out of my lungs. Red. Black. Red again.

I needed to go home.

No.

The thought came slow, dragging itself through the wreckage of my head.

Not home.

Her.

The drive blurred.

I remembered stealing a southern car because mine had acquired too many inconvenient holes. I remembered blood slicking the steering wheel. I remembered laughing when I stopped at a stoplight, which was wildly out of character for me, let alone while I was dying.

The city rose ahead, my tower cutting into the clouds.

I drove past it.