Page 129 of The Dark Mirror

‘I’d rather you shot me,’ I said, my voice on the verge of cracking.

‘If you insist, I’ll aim for your knees.’

I had seen enough kneecapping to know I wouldn’t recover from that sort of injury in a hurry.

‘All right.’ I threw away the gun. ‘I’ll come with you. Just leave the others alone.’

‘You’re in no position to make demands.’ She marched towards me. ‘You’d have used your trick by now, if you could.’

Arcturus suddenly came into the light of the headlamps. Seeing him, Cordier grabbed me and locked me against her, one arm across my throat, her gun jammed to my temple.

‘Well, look at that,’ she said, with a surprised laugh. ‘You made it out.’ Arcturus watched her back me towards the car. ‘I will blow her jaw off if you come any closer, Warden.’

‘I doubt that,’ he said. My ears rang from the gunshot. ‘Paige clearly has value to you, Dr Cordier.’

‘Paige does,’ she agreed. ‘I can live without her teeth.’

‘There is no cause for violence.’

‘What, you’re just going to let me take her, are you?’ she asked. ‘Because I do have to take her.’

‘Then we are at a stalemate.’

His gaze seared into mine as he spoke. Through the dread, I understood that he was distracting her. I drove my elbow into her side, right where I had stabbed her in that final memory. She let go of me with a cry and dropped her pistol, which I kicked towards Arcturus.

‘You vicious little—’ She bent almost double, clutching her side. ‘I should have left you in a hole to starve.’

‘I remember it. All of it.’ I grabbed her by the collar of her coat. ‘You took me from Paris. Why?’

Her hand found my left wrist and pulled. Even with the brace, it was agony. As my sight went grey, she threw me aside, drew a revolver, and shot Arcturus. I had seen him absorb bullets without even flinching, but now that he was tired and poisoned, the rounds floored him.

The anger that rushed over me was uncontrollable, as if my body had been taken over by a poltergeist. Cordier turned the gun on me and wrenched me towards the car.

She hadn’t expected me to know where she was wounded, or to lose her accomplice. With all the strength I could muster, I pinned her to the ground. My old self reared, the mollisher with a debt to collect, and before she could writhe away from me, I had a knife to her throat.

I was in the sewers of Paris again, a sickle in my grasp, the blade pressed against skin. A pair of dark wings seemed to cover my eyes. All I had to do was cut, and the Devil would bleed.

‘Flora,’ Ducos shouted. ‘Don’t. We need her alive.’

My hand tightened around the knife.

‘Paige.’

Arcturus had managed to come to my side. I looked up at him through a stinging haze.

‘She did this to us,’ I whispered. ‘She betrayed you to Scion.’

‘If you kill her, we may never know why.’ His voice was soft. ‘Stay your hand, for both our sakes.’

Cordier looked between us, her face slick with sweat. I turned back towards her, just as she reached up to weakly grasp the blade, blood on her driving glove.

‘I’ll tell you,’ she said. ‘Paige. I’ll tell you.’

After a pause, I shoved her down in disgust, resisting the urge to punch her. Arcturus passed me her pistol, which I trained on her as Ducos caught up, taking in her former colleague and the corpse.

‘Eléonore.’ With some difficulty, she picked up her gun. ‘You have some explaining to do.’

Cordier had chosen the perfect spot on the motorway for an ambush. No one had come to investigate the collision. Now she was sitting on the grass, her wrists and ankles secured with cable ties. Despite her pallor and the blood leaking from her side, her gaze was defiant.