The paramedic, a lean dark-haired white man in his thirties, got a set of tweezers and a bucket and sat on the floor. He plucked the first metal drop off Marat’s hairy calf. The summoner winced. The silver drop stretched and wiggled in the tweezers.

Alessandro took a step forward, caught the paramedic’s arm, and looked more closely at the wriggling thing. “A metal leech.”

He released the man’s arm and the paramedic dropped the leech into the bucket and wiped the blood off Marat’s leg. “One down.”

He didn’t seem rattled by pulling a metallic leech out of his employer’s leg.

“How many times have you done this?” I asked him.

“Don’t answer that,” Marat snapped.

“No, do answer that.” Despite being drenched in swamp water, Alessandro morphed into a Prime complete with crushing authority in his voice.

“Terrence,” Marat warned.

The paramedic looked from Marat to Alessandro and back to Marat again.

“I’m here as Lander Morton’s proxy.” Alessandro’s voice held no mercy. “For all intents and purposes, I am Lander Morton. I cut your paycheck. Answer her question.”

Terrence swallowed. “About seven or eight times. It happens if people fall in the water and survive.”

“How many people didn’t survive?” I asked.

The first responder opened his mouth, eyed Marat, and said, “Several.”

Loyalty. Victoria respected it. At this point she would acknowledge it, abandon verbal gymnastics, and crack his mind open. She would let him keep it, because loyalty deserved to be rewarded, but she would leave him curled into a ball on the floor sobbing. It would take him weeks to recover.

“I’ll be right back.” I got up, and left the room to retrieve the canvas sack from Rhino.

As I walked back from the car, voices floated down through the open door. I stopped to listen.

“. . . are you fucking her or something?” Marat growled. “Does Lander know? Because that old pisshead isn’t going to like that.”

“You’re alive because she asked me to save you. I would’ve let you drown.”

“So what? You want a medal?”

“I want you to answer her questions.”

“Because you’re fucking her, right?”

Alessandro’s voice dropped into a dangerous calm. “Say that again.”

“What the fuck are you going to do about it, Eurotrash?”

Something thudded.

“Hey!” Marat screamed and choked off.

Oh shit.

I stepped into the room. Terrence was on the floor, pressing himself against the wall on my right. Alessandro must’ve thrown him out of the way. Marat sat frozen in his chair, his eyes wide, trying not to breathe, because Alessandro leaned over him, one foot on the chair, holding a knife to Marat’s throat. The razor-sharp blade hovered a fraction of an inch from slicing Marat’s jugular. Magic, potent and vicious, splayed from Alessandro, coursing through the room, sparking with orange fire here and there. It wrapped around me and licked me, flashing its fangs, like a wolf who decided he wanted a pat. Goose bumps covered my arms.

Alessandro’s face was impassive. Marat had ripped open a portal without an arcane circle less than twenty minutes ago. He was either tapped out or close to it. Even if he’d been at full power, the sheer force of magic saturating the room would’ve terrified him. It was like a high-voltage wire dancing with a live current. But the look in Alessandro’s eyes was worse. He was looking at Marat as if the summoner wasn’t even human. An obstacle to be removed. A bug to be squished. Marat saw his death in Alessandro’s eyes, and it rendered him mute.

I walked over to them and put my hand on Alessandro’s right arm. “I leave you alone for a moment, and you’re killing people again.”

Marat swallowed.

“He’s still alive,” the Artisan said.

“He’s crude, but he didn’t kill Felix. He’s just a loud asshole.” I slid my hand to his wrist and gently pushed his hand away from Marat’s throat.

Alessandro looked at Marat and hurled the knife backward without looking. It bit into the wall an inch from Terrence’s head.

“Leave,” Alessandro said.

The first responder jumped up and scrambled out of the room.

Alessandro uncoiled from the chair, walked over to the door, shut it, and leaned on it. Marat watched him like he was a rabid tiger. I needed to redirect his attention, or I wouldn’t get anywhere.

“Marat,” I called.

He tore his gaze away from Alessandro and glanced at me.

“The last summoner we fought produced a swarm of flying ticks with long scorpion tails and big mouths. I believe you designate them as a Class VII summon.”

“Face-suckers,” Marat muttered.

“Do you want to know what happened to him?”

He stared at me.

“They ate him in the end. It wasn’t Mr. Sagredo who caused the swarm to turn on the summoner. It was me.”

Marat winced. Alessandro smiled.

“When we gathered his skeleton into his coat, I could carry it in one hand.” I walked over to the table. “You asked us earlier why we were late.”

I held the bag open and let the four rings fall out.

Marat turned paler.

I sat down in the chair by the table. “Here is what we know: there are biomechanical creatures in the Pit that shouldn’t exist. They are actively fighting you. Felix knew about it. You also know about it. Felix wanted to get help. Someone killed him. I don’t think that someone was you. What I don’t understand is your hostility.”

Marat looked at Alessandro.

“Don’t look at me,” Alessandro said. “Look at her.”

All the bluster drained from Marat. He looked haggard.

“Fuck it. I’m so fucking tired. There is something in the Pit. It keeps dragging equipment into the water and killing people. Bodies disappear.”

“When did it start?” I asked.

“About three months in. We drained the outer perimeter with no problem, but when we tried to move closer to the center, we ran into Razorscales. Arcane beasts, about seven feet long, green, look like some mutant gator on two legs.”

“I’ve seen them up close,” I said. “A pack of them chased me through a park.”

“Somehow they got into the Pit and bred in there. They love it. They eat just about anything, swim like fish, and their reproductive cycle is only three months. Each Razorscale female lays between forty and sixty eggs. About half of the hatchlings survive. They eat each other, the fuckers, but they breed so fast, it doesn’t matter. I put a leviathan-class armored serpent in there, twice. They ate them both. Tatyana wanted to section off the swamp and evaporate it, bit by bit.”

“Bad idea,” Alessandro said. “The cost would be prohibitive. Money could be found, but there are at least three environmental groups lobbying to designate the Pit as a wildlife preserve. You’ve told them to relocate any native endangered species. If they found out that you burned them alive instead, the public outcry could force the city to cancel the project.”

Marat laughed. “Yes. People who never ran from Razorscales want to preserve the vicious bastards. They’re welcome to take a stab at conserving them. Maybe they can take one home as a pet.”

“How did you deal with it?” I asked.

“Well, the serpents didn’t eat them, and Tatyana’s plan was nuts, so Cheryl animated some mechanical monstrosity and we dumped that in there. It worked at first. It killed three nests, and then they must have gotten it somehow, because the Razorscales came back and Cheryl couldn’t feel her construct anymore. My guess is, it must have gone deeper into the Pit and found whatever it is we’re fighting now. The Razorscales killed a girl, one of our workers.”

Marat grimaced. “See, I have a pond. You’re supposed to aerate it and if you do it too fast, the toxic sludge that accumulates in the bottom rises to the top, and all the fish die. I asked Jiang to do it in the Pit and the bastard flat out refused. Said it would kill all life in a mile radius and it would be a crime against nature. The most he would do is set up a strong current away from the main island to drive the fish deeper into the Pit. The Razorscales followed the food supply and we started to get a foothold in the swamp. We thought we were home free, started building again, and then one morning the arcane circle powering the current was gone and the ring crap started.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean that the Razorscales started swarming and every swarm came with one of those rings in its center.” Marat nodded at the gyroscopes on the table. “They spin in place and there are glowing flowers in them.”

“Is it always Razorscales?” Alessandro asked.

“No. Sometimes we get a big monster, with some smaller monsters.”

“A hunter with his hounds.”

“Exactly. I think it’s making them out of people it kills. Felix and I took down a hunter once. There was a human corpse in it.”

The Abyss stole humans, killed them, and used their bodies and minds to create hybrid constructs. This was a nightmare.

“This is a disaster,” Alessandro said.

Marat skewed his face. “You think? Welcome to my life. We are eighty million into this project, fifteen of them mine. Maybe that’s not shit to you, Count Moneybags, but for my family, it’s everything. This project employs four hundred people. They’re counting on it to put food on the table. I have to make this work. I’m here every day. While Cheryl is going to her charity lunches, Tatyana is burning shit for fun, and Jiang jerks off to his House’s corporate logo, I’m here in the mud, trying to keep people from dying. It was me and Felix. One of us has to be here to fight it off or more of our people will die. Now it’s just me.”