“That’s Ferris,” I said. “Never bring a gun to an elemental fight, Drasche.”

Ferris reached the alchemical tattoos on Drasche’s scalp and cheeks—arcane sigils that gave him the power to leech energy directly from living things as long as he had line of sight—and then the iron elemental began to feed on the raw magic imbued in the symbols.

Judging by the sounds Drasche made, it was not a painless process. His attempts to repel Ferris were fruitless—the furry iron flowed like water around and under his fingers. I smiled faintly as I sank back to the floor and dialed 911. The screaming in the background would provide some urgency, I hoped, to the ambulance and the police. The operator tried to ask questions about what she was hearing, but I thumbed off the connection once she knew the location and that I’d been shot.

A dull thud suggested that the lifeleech had collapsed to the ground, but I didn’t worry about his health. Ferris woudn’t kill him—he couldn’t, because that would be breaking the rules Gaia set down for elementals. He’d merely turn Werner Drasche from a monster to a human with monstrous proclivities.

I was far more worried about myself. The energy in my bear charm ran dry—overtaxed by the demands of healing and further evidence that I should really make another ten or so—leaving me with five gunshot wounds, a wave of pain, and a fine start on a case of shock. When my vision turned red, I thought I was on the verge of blacking out, but it turned out to be Gwendolyn floating above me.

“NNNNigel? You’re hurt?” her whispery voice breathed.

“Yes. The blackguard shot me. But paramedics—I mean, a doctor is on the way.” She wouldn’t know what a paramedic was. “Though I’m not sure he’ll be in time.”

Her pale smudged face turned to where Drasche writhed and screamed in the aisle.

“What is happening to himmm?” she asked.

I didn’t know how to explain Ferris to her, so I said, “Justice. Are there any more men outside?”

“Nnno. He came alooone. He shhhhould die.” Her fists clenched at her sides and her eyes lit up with rage.

“No, no. Gwendolyn, listen to me,” I said, realizing that this was my chance to set her free. “He is getting what he deserves now and will get more when he arrives in hell. Do not tarnish your soul with violence. It is time for you to move on, as it is time for me. Go on and wait for me, Gwendolyn. I’ll be there soon and we can be together again.”

Her head turned back to regard me, and the signs of anger fell away. All her edges softened and she made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a coo. The ghost swooped down until she was a mere inch above me, and I shivered from the chill of her proximity. “I love youuuu, Nigel.”

“I love you too, Gwendolyn,” I said, hoping it would be enough to soothe her restless spirit. “Always. Go on now, and I’ll join you. Very soon.”

“Sooooon,” she said, slowly rising and then dissipating in wisps of red until all I could see was the ceiling of the theatre.

“Farewell,” I whispered, hoping that wherever she went she would find the real Nigel waiting for her.

Werner Drasche’s screams wound down to moans and eventually whimpers in German, and I might have let loose a moan or two of my own. When Ferris finished with the lifeleech, he thanked me before leaving.

//Delicious// he said.

//Thanks for your help earlier// I replied, since he could do nothing else for me, and he melted away, leaving me to shiver in silent pain and hope I didn’t bleed out before help arrived. Or that Drasche wouldn’t summon the strength to grab one of his guns and crawl down here to finish me off. Apart from getting shot, it had been a couple of good days in Toronto—though to be truthful almost any day would be good in comparison to getting shot. Still, I had enlisted the Hammers of God in the world’s biggest vampire hunt, stripped Werner Drasche of his powers, and sent a long-suffering ghost to her rest. It would be a good story to tell Oberon—oh, gods below, Oberon! He was still in the hotel room, and I wouldn’t be getting back to him anytime soon. He was also much too far away for me to reach via our mental bond, so he’d be worried. I thought of calling Hal, since I didn’t know where Granuaile was, but didn’t want to remind Drasche that I was still alive. I silenced the phone and texted him instead:

Shot in Toronto. Need someone to take care of Oberon in hotel. Send Owen maybe?

I added the hotel info and sent it. In a few seconds I got a glorious if terse reply:

On it.

“O’Sullivan,” Drasche’s voice grated. “What did you do to me?”

I made no answer and tried to breathe as quietly as possible. The lack of damage to my lungs kept me from coughing, at least.

The acoustics of the theatre allowed me to hear the rasping of cloth on carpet as Drasche dragged himself down the aisle and a wet hand slapping against the metal of a gun. “Going to make verdammt sure you are dead,” he growled.

There was nothing I could do. I had all the mobility and martial capability of a soggy sponge and the same magical ability as he did—that is, none whatsoever. He must have picked up only one of his guns, because I heard him begin to crawl in my direction and the gun made a clacking noise at odd intervals when his hand came down. He grew closer and closer, and the sound reminded me of that final sequence of The Terminator where the robot dragged itself after Sarah Connor. Except that she could move a little bit and had some handy machinery around to crush her pursuer.

“Ahh, there you are!” I stretched my neck, looked to the end of the aisle, and saw Werner Drasche peering back at me. His eyeballs gleamed abnormally white and mad in a puffy red face with little pinpricks of blood dotting it and plenty more smeared around where he had tried to shoo Ferris away. The ink of the alchemical tattoos still remained, but the magic infused with them was gone and he still didn’t realize it. He knew from experience that he couldn’t leech any energy from me, so he truly didn’t know what had been done to him except that it had hurt. “Lying defenseless in a pool of your own blood. I kept telling Theophilus that gunning you down was the simplest solution. How delightful to be proven right.”

“That’s not his real name, is it?” I asked. “Theophilus. That’s some kind of nickname he thinks is clever.”

Werner Drasche laughed at me. “You think I would ever tell you that? I would—”

He cut off abruptly as a squad of shouty, armed men burst into the theatre and demanded that he drop the gun now. He looked back over his left shoulder, but since he was flat on the floor the result was that I saw the very top of his head for the first time. He had a Rose Cross there instead of an alchemical symbol. Strange.

“Ah, sustenance!” Drasche said, grinning as he twisted to face the officers. He didn’t move his right hand with the gun but rolled a bit onto his right side so that he could stretch his empty left hand back at them, clutching at the air. He was trying to leech energy from the officers, first to heal and then to pump himself up to finish me off, but it didn’t work, and the shouts got more insistent. Every second he held on to that gun increased the chances that he would be shot himself. But Drasche was stubborn and perhaps a bit slow to realize his predicament and just remained still, straining to do something he no longer had the power to do. The police converged, pointing their weapons at him, fingers on triggers, and eventually kicked away his gun. It skittered down the aisle as they grabbed his arms and yanked them behind him. Drasche finally realized he was a regular, powerless human, and his carefully cultivated arrogance evaporated. Being manhandled like the criminal he was caused him to lose his shit. He shouted curses in a mixture of German and English and struggled to free himself, but they had him cuffed in short order.