It occurred to me a second too late that we hadn't seen a single one of Absher's bodyguards the whole time we had been here.

A grinning man was looming over me when I turned around, blood soaking both his hands and speckled up his shirt. I had met this guy twice before, he was the bastard who killed Bishop.

I couldn't even get the first expletive out when he step-kicked me square in the chest, knocking me back a few paces. 'A few' turned out to be one too many and I tripped backwards over what was left of Absher, landing in the cold pool of blood with a disgusting wet slap. The assassin followed it up expertly with a stomp on my chest, and I swear this guy felt like his foot alone weighed a ton. I could barely move, only struggle under his weight.

“You've got a lot of nerve, coming to save this man.” The assassin started another rant, presumably more confident that I wouldn't interrupt him again this time. “I ought to call you a traitor just for that.”

My rampant heartbeat echoed in my ears, I could feel my head throbbing and my face getting redder and hotter with each beat. The sounds of the assassin's speech faded into little more than background noise, I was overtaken entirely by the growing rhythm of power that was rolling over my whole body.

“SHUT IT!” My roaring command surprised both of us, but what especially surprised the assassin was my wild swinging fist that brought with it a razor-sharp crystalline spike of Absher's blood from the floor and aimed directly for the guy's crotch. I missed, unfortunately, but it worked well enough to get the smug git off me long enough for me to stand up.

Standing up actually took a fair bit of work, the blood pool clung to my back, coming away in long sheets that formed together into more glassy shards, those shards meeting together and becoming a pair of complete shapes. By the time it was done, the stain on the floor had changed from a wet, vibrant red to a dull and dry rusted brown.

The shapes on my back were built of four straight edges that angled into each other to make a long arc from my spine to beyond my shoulders. Hanging down from those arcs were four more single shapes that hung down from them, tapering off to sharp points. A pair of massive wings, they moved as naturally as my hands, I could even feel them like any other appendage.

A rush of power came up with them, my arms felt feather-light and every sense was as sharp as a razor. This guy had escaped me once and had framed me for murder in the same moment. I wasn't about to give him the satisfaction of doing it again.

I almost pounced on the guy, launched forward like a rage-fuelled missile. When I swung my fist around to punch him, my wing followed the motion, the strands merging together to make a wide, flat, blade.

Frustratingly, he had the experience advantage over me, swaying back like a pro boxer to dodge my blade. He couldn't dodge my whole body, though. We collided together and started grappling at one another, trying to knock the other down and get the deciding blow in first. My wings went to claw at his back and he countered with his own, almost becoming a second battle running alongside our brawl.

After a few wild seconds of no effective blows on either side the clash finally broke.

“You're a mighty thorn in my side.” Fun fact, fights in real life don't work like they do in movies. You don't get to stop and go on a tirade halfway through. So when the assassin started going off on one again I took the chance for all it was worth.

I hurled my whole bodyweight at him, one leg kicking out to try and lurch more momentum into my upper half as if that would make my punch hit that much harder. Sure it didn't exactly have the kind of finesse you would want, but it worked. My knuckle made contact with the bridge of his forehead and knocked him back, making him slam his head against the wall. The paint and plaster broke apart into flakes and fell away, showing the poured concrete underneath. This was my shot, my chance to put this guy's head on a spike and clear my name in the same breath.

Of course, that was the moment of perfect drama for the assassin to pull that trick of his for the third time in a row. He just blinked out of existence right in front of me. No ripple effect, no fade or smoke. Just gone. And what would have been the killing blow from my wing met the cement wall with a smooth, metallic scrape and left a wedge-shaped line.

I allowed myself to get angry at that. This was the third time he had slipped through my fingers. If I had just cleaned him out back at the warehouse car park then I could have avoided all this. I'd be living in utter luxury if not for him.

A single more coherent thought cut through the fog in my head. Flint and Sand had probably finished checking the lower floors so they'd be on their way up here. I wasn't about to get framed for two murders in under a month, when I heard the unmistakable sound of Sand stomping up the stairs I wished away my wings with a thought, the edges dulled and shrank, pulling the shapes together into my back and sinking under my jacket, even sucking away the stains from the fabric so they looked spotless.

Sand and Flint came up the last few steps with weapons drawn to meet me coming the other way.

“We're too late.” I puffed as if I was out of breath. “Somebody beat us here. Absher's dead.”

Sand pushed past me and rounded the corner to see the ruined remains of the wizard. Swearing and holstering her gun, she seemed to go right into crime-scene mode, checking over poor Paul's shirt and trouser pockets.

Even Flint was knocked back a step by the sight of the mangled remains, scrunching up his face and making a guttural “Oouf.” sound. Which seemed a little hypocritical to me, considering what I had seen Flint do before.

A police CID squad came and took care of things from there. Clay and Sand both joined them in picking the place apart and, surprisingly, Clay didn't come back with armfuls of stuff. Just a single black leather briefcase and a haunted expression. He barely stopped to babble something at Copper and hijacked one of the police interceptors, tearing off without a second thought.

“Is he gonna be okay?” I had to ask, Clay didn't strike me as the sort to do something like this without a good reason.

“Wizard deaths are pretty serious.” Flint had run out of things to do while Sand and Copper were busy wrangling the police. “Clay has to go talk to any Circles that Absher was part of and do what basically amounts to a will-reading turned up to eleven.” I nodded, that actually made a lot of sense.

“Got to make sure all that knowledge isn't lost, right?”

“Bingo.” Flint was leaning against the passenger-side door of one of the police cars, much to the annoyance of the officer in the driver's seat. “What about you? You doing okay?”

“Hm?”

“You're fidgeting and your face is red.”

I suddenly became very aware of every little tense movement in my body. “Adrenaline crash.” At least that much was honest. Flint nodded and looked back over at the house. Sand was still in there scouring the place for any leads. I couldn't tell her about the assassin, they would never believe that the same man who killed Bishop had killed Absher. It would just implicate me and make me look like a madman. No, I needed proof. Something that proved every word of what had happened to me. But what?

“We'll all be having nightmares about this for a while.” Flint stared up at one of the top floor windows. You could just about see the top of the panic room door from where we were sitting, and the occasional head of the CSI officers passing by.

“Hopefully we can resolve this quickly.” Flint was trailing off and mumbling like he was already thinking about something.

“Any hunches?” Hopefully, I could use this to steer the conversation a little.

“Well, we know he was working for House Dutch.” Flint turned away from the house to face my way again, looking down at his boots with intensity. “There's plenty of people who aren't happy about American Vampires interfering with things here.”

“Well, whoever did that wanted to make a real point. They messed him up.”

“Let's just see what the cops come back with.”