I was surrounded now. The shield-womans charge had put me in the middle of a circle the assault team had formed around me during all the chaos. Even the wounded members still held their formation, Sand limping on one good leg and Flint bent double with a pair of holes in his gut.

Night was burning down fast, if I was going to win this I needed to break their formation and scatter them. I also needed to get away from the windows, sunrise could be any second.

Sightly to my left were two men, one wearing a full-on steel breastplate, complete with arm and leg covers and emblazoned with an almost neon red cross. He would be too much of a hard target to crack, but the one to his left seemed almost unarmoured besides a police stab-vest. He was an easy kill, that would take out one of their number and put me on the other side of their battle line. Not to mention something to eat.

I lifted my right front leg and slammed it down into the stone floor, crushing the tile into shards. One good beat of my wings launched those shards forward in a quarter-circle, showering the knight and the unarmoured man, forcing them to cover their faces or be blinded by shrapnel.

Now was my chance, while the two were looking away I surged forward and slammed into the unarmoured man. I uppercut him just beneath the ribs and dragged, the armoured vest didn't stand a chance this time. He tried to scream but just choked, grabbing my wrist and trying to wriggle himself free. It didn't do him any good, I turned us both so the man was between myself and the armoured knight, grabbing his head and exposing his throat.

I heard a cry go up from the others when I bit into his neck, the man convulsing and thrashing a few seconds while I drank.

But something wasn't right, the wound in my side still burned with pain, was I not healing?

Didn't matter, I was in the middle of a battle and couldn't afford to sit down and inspect myself.

The shield-woman roared a battle-cry and the armoured knight shouted something in what might have been Latin, both swinging at me at the same time. I felt the familiar tingle of magic coming from the knight, somebody had gotten the knife to him during all this and he was winding up to strike at my chest. I freed my jaws from the dead man's throat, claws still buried under his ribcage. I ducked left, swinging the corpse out so the shield-womans sword bit into his back, sticking into the armoured vest. She tried to hold on to the sword when I redirected her momentum, swinging her around to slam her shield-first into the knight. The knife hit the steel rim of the round shield and the quick, sloppy weld that held the blade to the new hilt cracked, leaving the knight holding the hilt and the blade spinning away on the floor. One more shunt sent them both to the floor in a tangle, perfectly positioned for me to crush their heads, and this time there was nobody close enough to interrupt. I threw the corpse aside, spreading my talons for the final strike on the knight first.

“Fucking lizard!” Sand's shout was distant, but something glanced against the underside of my jaw and my body started to feel heavy, cold and numb. A faint warmth trickled down between my eyes, along my snout and off my nose. I couldn't move. Why wouldn't my body move?

A metallic chime landed just to my side, a faint tint of magic radiated from it.

My vision tunnelled inwards, my legs couldn't support my weight anymore and I slumped over. The last thing I saw before everything went black was the bloodsoaked blade on the floor beside me.

Sand sat on the chair of the booth with a thump, wincing in pain. Her eyes were partially glazed over, staring blankly at Mac's body slumped on the floor, grey was spreading steadily from the two wounds, an unseen fire burning the body away to nothing.

Flint sat down opposite, sucking in air through his teeth. He had his shirt thrown loosely back on and unbuttoned, the two holes in his abs starting to loosely heal, the bleeding had stopped at least.

Neither spoke, not wanting to really address what had happened. Flint wordlessly offered up a glass with an inch of amber fluid. Sand accepted it and knocked back half of the liquor in one gulp without even blinking. Flint sipped his own drink more moderately. The radio on Flint's hip crackled faintly into life, the tinny, distorted voice of Copper came through. “It's all gone quiet in there. Somebody give me a status update.”

The two stared at each other for a second, Sand wiped something from her eyes.

Flint reached awkwardly to his side and pulled the radio from its mount, pressing down the button. “This is Flint.” His voice cracked ever so slightly. “We have a man down. Target is confirmed dead.”

Copper paused and there was some muttering on the other end of the line. “Roger that. Ambulance is on the way.”

Flint put down the radio on the table and the two operatives stopped being Flint and Sand for a while. For the night, they were Simon and Martha.