Bright blood sprayed out like a geyser, drenching my body and face like a fire hose. Yes!

The giant swayed, off balance. Oh shit. How the hell do I get off this crazy ride?

I slid Sarrat back into the sheath, grabbed the giant’s hair with both hands, and held on. The giant rocked back and forth and clamped his hand to his neck, trying to hold back the flood. I clung to his hair. My hands, wet with blood, were slipping. Go down. Come on, go down.

With a loud cry, the giant stumbled backward, turning wildly, off balance, then careened forward. The blood kept spraying. I only needed a minute or two. He was dead already. He just didn’t know it.

A lurch to the right and I caught a glimpse of the staircase. Someone was running up.

The colossus pitched forward, slumping as if drunk, trying to catch himself on the Guild’s building. His head rolled back. The runner leaped, a spear in his hands, and I saw his face. Lago. He landed on the enormous cheek. The spearhead shone, catching the light, and Lago stabbed it straight into the giant’s eyeball.

Well, wasn’t that nice and dramatic. Way to jump in there at the end. If I weren’t holding on for dear life, I’d do a sarcastic slow clap.

The giant bellowed. His whole body trembled. He stumbled around the Guild, trying to catch himself on empty air and failing. His knees gave and he sank down, his face scraping against the ruined top of the Guild. Lago jumped back onto the building. I had no such luxury.

The giant rocked back. If he fell backward, I’d be dead.

The blood was still gushing. He sagged down clumsily and fell to his hands and knees in front of the Guild’s ruined doors. About eighteen feet down, all of it strewn with debris from his rampage. I had to take this chance.

I let go and rolled down his bloody back, picking up speed. The back ended and I fell straight down, bending my knees and clamping my head. The impact resonated through my feet. God, that hurt. I rolled, dropped my hands, and saw the giant glaring at me, one eye filled with rage, the other a pale milky blob with the spear sticking out of it. His massive hand blocked the light. I had no place to go. I curled into a ball. The fingers slapped the ground on both sides of me. He missed. He missed!

The hand rose again and I scrambled away, climbing over chunks of bricks and mortar. He tried to follow me, but his left arm gave. The colossus fell clumsily, rolling onto his back. The ground shook.

I backed away, toward the Guild’s doors.

His head landed on the pavement. His one good eye rolled back into his skull. He shuddered and lay still. The blood, once a powerful geyser, slowed to a gush.

People burst out of the Guild’s doors. I searched the fear-shocked faces, looking for the familiar features and blond hair. Nothing.

A man limped out, behind everyone else.

“Is there anyone else inside?” I called out.

“No. I am all there is.”

A woman sprinted from the side, running in the opposite direction to the crowd, her face frantic.

“Mom! Mom! Here!”

Julie. I whipped around in the direction of the voice.

A dark-haired teenage girl dashed out of the crowd. The woman threw her arms around her. A man followed.

Oh my God. That was the voice I heard on the phone. My Julie wasn’t in the Guild. This was somebody else’s Julie.

The relief rocked me. I sat on a chunk of the building, leaning against it. My arms hurt, my shoulders hurt worse, and the last echoes of the misfiring power words still rolled around inside me, clasping my insides in fiery internal cramps. It hurt to stand. To sit was an unbelievable luxury and so I sat, basking in the wonderful feeling of not resting my weight on my feet.

I pulled gauze out of my pocket and wiped my eyes. The gauze came back drenched in crimson. My power word had backfired. I had had a power word fail before. Ud, the word commanding something to die, usually didn’t work. To kill something with it, you first had to own your target completely. The first two times I tried it, the pain had been so excruciating that I was convinced I would die. This was worse. Aarh was a simple order to stop. It usually froze the target for about four seconds. I’d never had it misfire on me. Was I getting weaker? Was the giant too large? Was he immune to my magic somehow? I had all the questions and none of the answers. Ugh.

The red stream running from the giant’s neck finally stopped. He had bled out. It was over.

I closed my eyes and sat very still.

•   •   •

EVEN IN POST-SHIFT Atlanta, a giant was big news. The PAD was first to arrive, followed by a fleet of ambulances, which were still parked around the Guild. The cops examined the giant, determined he was dead but surrounded him with their tactical vehicles just in case, and interviewed everyone. They took my statement and then told me not to leave the scene. MSDU, the Military Supernatural Defense Unit, came next and promptly got into a jurisdiction war with the PAD, because the PAD wouldn’t let them explode the giant’s corpse and incinerate the pieces just in case. The MSDU also took my statement and told me not to leave the scene. When the Georgia Bureau of Investigation showed up, I told them up front that I had no intentions of leaving the scene and that I wasn’t going to answer any questions unless they produced a police captain who accused me of being a loose cannon and demanded my badge. They left me alone after that.