The killer in the bedroom opened the closet door. Clearly not expecting to see Isaac, his eyes went wide, and he reached for the gun protruding from his waistband. Isaac fired three times, the first two shells flying true, impacting in the center of the man’s chest and the third missing as he collapsed, shattering the nightstand lamp.

The gunfire echoed through the house. Isaac trained the pistol on the hallway, waiting for the witch hunter’s companions to rush into view. And one did. The tall man with the axe stepped from Brit’s bedroom. They locked gazes as Isaac aimed. The assassin didn’t even attempt to move out of the way—just stood there, seemingly willing to test the bullets. Isaac, more than happy to oblige, started to squeeze the trigger.

Before he could fire, the young hunter, suddenly not dead, leaped up and tackled him. They fell against a cabinet, then to the floor, grappling as they went. The pistol spun from his grasp.

“Aldo! Aldo! Grab him!”

The tall man, apparently named Aldo, strode toward the door at the young man’s call. Isaac, from underneath the younger assassin, got one hand loose, waved it, fingers spread, and magically slammed and locked the bedroom door in Aldo’s face. He then got the hand to his face in time to deflect a punch. He countered with a telekinetic lashing, only to be disappointed as it washed around the man ineffectively, like wind around a tree. It must be the same kind of magical resistance that allowed Aldo to force his way through Brit’s barrier spell and he took a punch near the eye for his failure.

The door shuddered from the big man’s shoulder but held secure. It wouldn’t last long. Isaac twisted his head to slip another punch from the man on top of him. The assassin was grinning, enthusiastic with the fight, his eyes alight with an eagerness to hurt.

With a silent command, Isaac brought his new scarf to life. It slithered off the bedpost, flashed through the air like a striking cobra, wrapped around the man’s head, and pulled tight. The young assassin fell back, hands pulling at the fabric. A telekinetic pull brought his pistol back to Isaac’s hand and he put a bullet dead center into the scarf. The man stayed on his knees for several seconds, blood staining the scarf around the dark hole, forming a cyclopean red mask, then he fell, just as the door frame shattered and fell open on twisted hinges.

Aldo entered, long legs making strides that negated his ponderous speed. He pounced on Isaac before he could react, a large hand around the magician’s throat, lifting him off the floor and slamming him to the wall. Framed pictures shook and fell from the shock. Aldo snatched Isaac’s left hand and squeezed until pain popped the gun from it. He casually glanced at his fallen comrade before moving his gaze to Isaac, studying him like a novelty. Isaac stared back as if he’d just met Bigfoot.

“You killed my brother,” Aldo told him in a somewhat higher-pitched voice than Isaac expected, a polite, soft tone more suited to a maître d.

“Yeah,” Isaac squeaked out with barely enough air to breathe, much less talk. “Sorry?”

Aldo nodded, maybe not accepting the apology but understanding it. “It’s a dangerous business. We all know the risks.”

A voice called out from downstairs. “Aldo? Where are you? What the hell’s going on?”

“Upstairs Fergus.”

Great, another one, thought Isaac. He wheezed his air in and out. Aldo could easily snuff that but didn’t. The tall man must have seen the wondering in Isaac’s face because he addressed it with, “Fergus will want to meet you.”

“Ah,” Isaac replied. He heard footsteps downstairs. Mystery Fergus on his way. “He sounds nice. What say I take us all out for beers?”

Aldo shook his head. “We’re quite past that now.”

Index and middle fingers in a “V” shape, Isaac snipped them across Aldo’s ear. The lobe came off, cut cleanly, with a splash of red. It proved painful enough to make the man flinch and step back, allowing Isaac to twist free. With silent command Isaac’s blood-soaked scarf writhed to life, unknotted from the dead brother’s head, and lashed itself around Aldo’s legs. While not enough to topple him, it did force him to put a hand to the wall to maintain his balance.

Isaac scooped up his pistol as he ducked out of the room. He turned at the top of the stairs and took aim at Aldo, ready to put him down. Almost immediately there was a thunderous bang and the railing post shattered, splinters spraying him. Isaac lost his balance, tumbled backward, catching himself about halfway down the stairs, and saw the man-who-must-be-Fergus in the living room, aiming his shotgun for a second blast. Isaac lashed out with his telekinesis. Surmising that this assassin probably had the same form of magic resistance his companions did, he aimed at the weapon and not the man. The shotgun was pulled from unsuspecting hands, spun across the floor, as Isaac brought his .38 to bear, emptying it in the man’s direction. He either missed or only managed to test the Kevlar again.

“Who the fuck are you?” Fergus shouted as he retreated to the porch.

Isaac responded by magically slamming the door on him and turning the deadbolt, locking Fergus outside. Clambering to his feet, he hopped down the remaining stairs two at a time. Spying Fergus’ fallen weapon, he moved towards it until Aldo, freed from the scarf, appeared at the top of the stairs. Outside, Fergus began to kick on the front door.

“You’re not walking out of here,” the assassin said in that reserved, unexcited voice. It sounded less like a threat, more like a fact, which made it oddly more menacing. He took a step, then another. Slow. Unconcerned.

“Not walking. Running,” Isaac said, backing up. He had always regarded the pistol as a backup and thus, stupidly had no more bullets for it. With assassins on either side, Isaac realized he’d picked a bad battleground.

Movement on the landing caught Isaac’s attention. Testiculies. The cat appeared at the top of the stairs, his little head panning back and forth, compensating for having a half-a-world view. Then he moved—darting down the stairs and in between Aldo’s feet. The giant stumbled and fell.

Isaac didn’t wait for him to pick himself up. He took off through the kitchen, burst through the back door, and leaped off the porch. Testiculies quickly outpaced him and vanished into the shrubbery. He sprinted out of the reach of the house lights and concealed himself in the nearby trees. He planned to circle the house and make his way back to his truck—a scheme cut short when Fergus tackled him from behind.

The witch hunter was clearly an established hand-to-hand combatant, as Isaac painfully learned when he took two hard punches to the ribs and then found himself flat on his back after a perfectly executed hip-toss. Fergus leaped on him then, a forearm across his throat. Isaac went for the scissor snip again, but Fergus slapped away and then pinned his right hand, and the magician would have cursed if he could breathe, about his dumb ass learning a one-handed spell.

“Who are you? Whitworth’s apprentice?” Fergus demanded.

Isaac shook his head, unable to draw enough air to answer. With his free left hand, he reached...for nothing. Enough trees shielded the moon above them that they wrestled in deep shadows. And that is what Isaac grasped at.

He’d been experimenting with spells of this sort since the Hell-spawned messenger fly bit him. He mentally called to the shadows, felt them respond by solidifying around his outstretched fingers, a gelatinous ooze that flowed around his hand and covered it like a glove. Then it constricted, squeezing his flesh painfully. He had to act quickly. As Brit had said before, it was foul magic.

With his shadow-wrapped hand, he grabbed Fergus’s bare elbow. At first, the assassin just smirked. Isaac, the smaller man with no leverage, was clearly not going to physically overpower him. Then the pressure started with a vice-like compression on the arm. Fergus pulled away from Isaac’s grip, but not from the pain. Isaac grabbed the man’s forearm, then his wrist, each touch leaving behind black handprints that continued to squeeze with unnatural strength.

Fergus scrambled off, shaking his arm, wiping at his flesh, but the shadow hands clung like stains. The pressure increased and Fergus howled in pain and stumbled away, heading back toward the house. He only got a few steps away before Isaac heard the wrist break and the witch-hunter screamed before disappearing into the trees. The magician smiled as he crawled to his feet...and nearly lost his head.

Aldo’s axe spun through the air, the blade barely missing his face but the handle hitting his shoulder with enough force to knock him back down. The gangly giant came striding through the trees. Isaac snatched up the axe, scissor-spelled the handle in half, and made quick cuts to one end to craft a rudimentary spear, which he flung at the assassin.

Isaac never really considered himself all that athletic, but with a telekinetic boost and guidance, the missile flew true and struck Aldo in the right thigh. It stuck there, maybe not as deep as Isaac had hoped, but enough to slow the man.

With Aldo exposed, Isaac reached into his Everbag for Wilma Wagon-Fixer but stopped when he realized the constricting pain in his left hand would prevent him from aiming. The darkness there tightened, a shrinking glove that curled his fingers to his palm. While its effects were not nearly as immediate as they had been for Fergus, Isaac couldn’t linger. It was dangerous magic, one that would eventually turn on him.

He had to make a break for it, revenge be damned. He’d taken one of them in Brit’s name. It would have to suffice.

He picked up Aldo’s now much smaller axe, still red with Brit’s blood, and ran. Making it to the front of the house he found a Cadillac parked there, surmised it belonged to the killers, and promptly flattened a tire with the axe, before running to his truck.

The crushing blackness on his left hand had grown more powerful. He hissed with pain. Flipping on the headlights he hurriedly put his hand into the beams. Relief came immediately as the shadowy glove melted away, smoky tendrils wafting into nothing. He knew his hand would ache and bruise, but the foul magic had saved his life.

Maloc’s pickup was a beat-up wreck, but completely reliable for starting and driving—the only really important parts of a vehicle. It cranked to life, farting angry black smoke as Isaac gunned it, spraying gravel as he tore down the driveway. The engine roared, and he didn’t hear the gunshots from the house until they banged into the truck with metallic thuds. The truck bulled on and he turned onto the main road, the lights of Brit’s farm receding into the night.

***

On the porch of Brit’s house, a seething Fergus lowered his rifle. His fractured forearm had thrown off his aim and he could only watch as the truck lights faded away. He leaned the rifle against the porch railing, peeled open one side of his Kevlar vest, and tucked his injured arm in as a makeshift sling.

The magic-resistant tattoos had failed miserably with that spell. Maybe they weren’t strong enough or maybe this stranger was too powerful. It would be unsettled until he forced a rematch. He’d solved the crushing shadow hands by sheer chance, stumbling into the house in a blind panic, with the lights then undoing the spell. Damage had been done, but he assumed the spell could have crushed his bones to powder if left unchecked.

Something caught his attention in the trees. A large owl perched silently on a limb, eyeballing him intently. He only noticed it because of its snow-white feathers, which almost glowed in the moonlight. As furious as he was, he almost shot the bird out of spite, but the door opening distracted him.

Aldo came out, carrying lifeless Ladd in his arms, like a new bride across the threshold. Fergus thought he saw some sadness in the tall man’s face, wetness around his eyes maybe, a hint of a frown. It was the most emotion he’d ever seen on his brother.

“We should move quickly,” Aldo said. “This was a loud encounter. No telling who may have heard.”

Fergus nodded. He stared at Ladd’s face, focused on the perfect hole in the young man’s forehead. It seemed so small, almost a blemish, on his brother's fair skin. But it had been fatal. His brother was over. Fergus had failed him.

“Fergus.” Aldo’s voice snapped him back. “We need to move. The job is complete. It is not up to us to decide to track and eliminate an unidentified target.”

Fergus ignored the last statement and glanced back at the tree. The owl was gone.

***

Isaac drove through the night, the direction chosen only by whim and avoidance of big cities. He stopped at dawn, eyes bleary, ready to pass out in a cheap motel. Sitting in the bed of the truck was Testiculies, looking especially surly.

The magician sighed. He didn’t want an animal traveling companion, especially one that had tried to neuter him. But he supposed he owed the cat a debt. His owner had been killed, and Isaac had no idea if her death was in any way his fault. Plus, Testiculies had tripped up Aldo, which, even if it didn’t really help much, had been pretty funny to see.

“Fine,” he said to the cat. “You can tag along until we find you a suitable family with bad enough karma to deserve you.” Testiculies yawned and licked a paw. Isaac wasn’t sure what was more annoying—when the cat acted with almost human intelligence or when it acted like a damn cat. Regardless, he walked into the motel office intending to get two single beds.