Free Harsh Gods by Michelle Belanger Page A

circled warily and the amber glow of the blinking traffic light caught the glint of a blade in her hand. Long, slender, and serrated on one side, it looked like a fishing knife—meant for scales, but it would cut flesh just as well.
    “Get off me!” I snarled.
    Straining to keep the man from locking his arms round my throat, I seized both of his wrists. With a sharp pivot, I smashed him into the wall. His shoulder hit the stones with bone-jarring force. It did nothing to slacken his grip.
    “Hands to take. Eyes to see!” He spat the words wetly against my ear.
    More of Whisper Man’s crazed vagrants. Great. These were probably the ones who’d gotten away. I wondered if they’d doubled back, and how long they had been following me. Stupid of me not to check.
    “Hold him! Hold him!” she cried. “He can’t know. He can’t see. Not this one. Master says he sings the names!”
    While I struggled with her companion, the woman darted forward. She held the blade low, and if I didn’t get out of its way I was going to be singing soprano for a very long time. I could move fast when I wanted—a brief, inhuman burst of speed. It wasn’t something I could sustain for long, but it was damned useful in fights like this.
    With a hundred and sixty pounds of dead weight hanging from my neck, however, even my speed couldn’t save me from her knife. I sidestepped, nearly losing my footing as I hit a patch of ice. It kept the knife-wielding woman from making a castrato out of me, but her blade still nicked me high up in the hollow of one thigh. It was such a swift cut that I only processed it as a brief flash of stinging heat. I teetered under the lumbering burden of the male attacker, controlling the motion in the next instant so his own ballast carried him thuddingly into the wall.
    His head smacked into stone. The fingers of his left hand spasmed, and I used the opening to slip my own hand between his arm and my throat. He was skinny as a refugee, tendons and muscles cording over the knobby ends of his bones. Blue-white power leapt between us as I closed my hand round his wrist and jerked hard on his forearm. All the strength fled his fingers, and I tore his hand away.
    Following through, I ducked forward, dragging him by that arm till I flipped him from my back. He landed on the sidewalk at the Fish-Knife Lady’s feet, the back of his skull hitting the concrete with an ugly crack.
    I staggered backward, my left leg buckling suddenly beneath me.
    Something wasn’t right. I didn’t feel pain, exactly, just a rushing sense of heat. It felt like water gushing down my skin.
    Except it wasn’t water.
    It was blood. Lots and lots of blood. My heart thudded in my head, and answering spurts of crimson gouted from my thigh—a little spray at first, but thicker with each pulse.
    Fuck.
    She’d nicked the artery. The pressure tore it further with each heave of my racing heart. In a panic I clamped my hand over it, pressing down as hard as I could. The femoral artery—that was a big one. That was bad. That was really bad.
    I was going to bleed out.
    The street was empty. The nearest house was more than a hundred yards away. I could scream, but no one would hear me. At this hour, no one was awake. Running wasn’t an option. I’d never make it.
    With every course considered, then rejected, more life flooded through my hand.
    I was immortal, but this body could die. Untethered, my soul would drift on the Shadowside. With my memory loss, I had no idea if I could navigate the process of rebirth that allowed me to survive. So much had been torn from me—maybe I would dwindle to a scrap, and lose myself entirely.
    The thought left me terrified.
    Fish-Knife Lady lunged again. Desperate to survive, I lashed out with my left hand faster than even I could track. I bellowed the syllables of my Name, even as black spots started chewing the edges of my vision.
    How long does it take to bleed out from the femoral?
I knew it was quick. Seizing