She had one shot at this. She had to knock Anoka unconscious with one clean blow. Make her senseless before she had the chance to feel any pain.

All of her strength concentrated as she slammed Anoka's head against the wall. Plaster cracked and dented with a small cloud of sawdust as a solid conk resounded down the hall.

"Ow fuck!" said Anoka.

Shit. Sloan slammed Anoka's head against the wall again, harder (or more desperate), hoping instead of pure plaster to find a crossbeam or a support or something, but the second blow only caused Anoka to yelp louder. The pain from the first strike exploded in Sloan's head, too immense to contain and so it swiftly spread down her body, drawing her neck taut and stiffening her shoulders, sweeping into her gut with a violent wave of nausea.

Sloan's hands, independent of their owner, released Anoka as the second firecracker of pain succeeded the first, waves that rolled through her as though all her guts had blasted out her chest cavity to fly across the hall. But, contained inside her skin and skeletal structure, they only brightened with the fury of Anoka's magic, and Sloan's strength gave out, and she sagged to her knees.

Nearby, Anoka rolled around and clutched her temples. Sloan flopped a hand to reach for her but her synapses shut down one after the other, overridden by the suffering. She writhed instead, random spastic motions of akimbo limbs and motor-deprived fingers. Her foot continually kicked a wall.

Anoka pulled herself to one knee, using the knob to Lynette's room as a crutch. She rested her forehead against the door as she propped herself on her scimitar. The point dug deeper and deeper into the carpet as more of her weight pressed against the hilt.

But for Sloan, no recovery, gradual or otherwise, allowed her to unlock her body or even think, a million red alarms in her brain blaring humanity's preprogrammed response to pain: GET AWAY, FLEE, RUN. She lifted a limp torso, dropped it again. Her eyeballs roved in the sockets against an inverted world, ceiling and light and paint and walls and Anoka and Anoka's blade as she slumped against the (not ground) wall, her arms trembling and one eye twitching and her hair a black mop as inch by inch the quivering sword tip lifted from the (not wall) ground.

"I can, only imagine, how this feels, for you." She rapped a knuckle against her skull. It made a dull thunk. "Too bad, I'm so, hardheaded, ha ha."

Sloan's eyeballs rolled again. Her gun lay (not above) behind Anoka, a discarded heap of steel already aimed almost in the right direction. She flicked her eyes. RISE, her brain commanded. Out of the white noise it shouted RISE!

The gun rose. But if she fired, it would only worsen the situation. If she pumped volley after volley of light into Anoka's unaware back, the pain would compound.

They would see who broke first.

Sloan did not wait for Anoka to lift her sword all the way. By the time Anoka's arm reached a level horizontal, Sloan changed the sole directive inside her brain from RISE to FIRE.

The barrel of the gun span. Anoka had time to tilt her head and look before it unleashed its spray directly into her. She drew her gem hand to her chest for defense as her back arched and she staggered forward, tripped over Sloan's prone body, and slammed into the wall at the end of the hallway. The light flayed her without mercy, shredding her cape and leathern armor. Her body bent at a weird angle as the wall caved inward from the force of the light crushing her against it. She screamed, a long and tapering wail at a falsetto pitch.

Sloan braced herself for what would come next by digging her teeth into the furred collar of her coat. Her jaw locked the next moment as another mindnumbing surge swept her head to extremity, fingers and toes unspared from the onslaught of liquid electric agony. Her eyes rolled up until her vision became blank.

She thought one thing to bear it: CLAIR. CLAIR. CLAIR. CLAIR. CLAIR.

The pain built with each rhythmic incantation of that most vile name. Stellated cracks spread across Sloan's inner eye, where the name flashed in epileptic neon fritz. Shards broke away until even inside all was black, and the word CLAIR became nothing but another element of the nuanced and exquisite pain that welled inside her, and—

And all at once, everything stopped. Everything shut down. So instantaneously, like the grasp of death had taken her. All remained black, but the pain had dissipated save for a few tidal ebbs so faint by comparison they felt like relief more than anything. Sloan's jaw unhinged and the thick taste of fur left her tongue with a deluge of pent-up drool. Somewhere she felt her arms move.

She shut off her gun. It dropped to the floor. She opened her eyelids, and the black vanished. The hall replaced it, colors distorted and laced with odd optical residue. But it was there, and so was Sloan's outstretched hand, and—she tilted her head with a hiss of exertion—and her legs, and her other arm, and her body.

She tried to rise but her body ached. She settled for rolling over. Anoka lay facedown at the end of the hall, her back charred and bloody. Smoke rose from the wounds. Her eyes were open, but empty.

(Chapter 26)