For a few seconds, James did not move.
The flat was wreckage around him. Nyra was still in the air behind him, crying, her wings trembling, the small horn still showing on her forehead. The men who had come for his mother were scattered across the room, some groaning, some barely moving at all.
He could feel the shape of all the things he was supposed to do. Call Marcus. Call Finn. Call TRB and let the people whose job it was handle the men on his floor.
He was not going to do any of them.
They had come into his home while he was gone. The only thing James needed from any of them now was the next name in the chain.
He went to his mother first.
He knelt beside her and put two fingers to her throat. The pulse was there, steady enough. Her breathing was slow but even. The blood at her hairline had dried dark, and there was bruising rising along her arm, but nothing was pumping and nothing was open that needed pressure.
She was alive.
