I jerked my head at Ember and started up the staircase, muzzle of the gun leading the way. The steps opened into a small corridor with two bedrooms sitting across from each other, their doors partially open to show empty, gutted floors and walls. A flight of wooden attic stairs had been pulled down and sat open in the middle of the hall.

As I started toward it, gun drawn, a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye gave me just enough time to react. As a soldier stepped out of the adjacent bedroom with his gun raised, I spun and struck his wrist, making him drop the weapon. Immediately, he lunged, grabbed my weapon arm and slammed me into the opposite wall. He was bigger than me, stocky and broad shouldered, with a shaved head and small black eyes. I recognized his face, though I didn’t recall his name. A scar twisted one side of his lip down as he snarled and smashed my wrist into the frame behind me. Pain shot through my hand, and the pistol clattered to the floor.

“Fucking dragonlover,” he growled, and threw a hard right hook at my temple, thankfully letting go of my wrist. I managed to block, ducking and getting my arm up, though the blow still rocked my head to the side. I lashed out with my other fist, throwing a body shot below his unprotected ribs. He grunted and slammed me back, cracking my head against the plaster, then smashed a fist at my face. I threw out my arm, deflecting the blow to the side, and spun with the motion, using the momentum to smash him into the wall.

He whirled with a back elbow at my face. I shifted, letting it graze my cheek, then drove my foot into the side of his knee. There was a pop, and his leg crumpled beneath him. As he hit the floor with a howl of pain, I snaked one arm around his throat and braced the back of his neck with the other. He thrashed, beating at my arms, trying to loosen the grip on his neck, but I set my jaw and didn’t move, counting down the seconds. At eight and a half, with no blood carrying oxygen to his brain, he shuddered and went limp in my arms.

I held him there a few seconds longer before I relaxed and let the body slump to the floor. One soldier down. But his partner, probably the sniper himself, had to be close—

A shot rang out in front of me.

I jerked, tensing to attack, then froze. Ember, wide-eyed and pale, stood at the top of the steps, a smoking pistol pointed at the ceiling behind me. Heart in my throat, I turned as a body dropped from the attic stairs and hit the floor with a thud.

A small hole pierced his forehead, right above his eyes, a near perfect head shot. Blood trickled down his face, over the bridge of his nose toward his mouth, open in surprise. One limp hand clutched his sidearm, a gloved finger still curled around the trigger.

Ember gave a tiny gasp and lowered her weapon. “I—I saw him through the hole,” she whispered, sounding dazed. Her arm trembled as she gestured weakly at the attic steps. “He had his gun out…pointed at your back. I didn’t know what else to do.”

She was shaking, eyes glassy as she stared at the body on the floor, as if waiting for it to move. When it didn’t, she looked up at me, almost pleading. “Did I…? Is he…?”

I blew out a long breath, closing my eyes. “He’s dead.” Painfully, I bent to retrieve my weapon, reluctant to glance at the fallen soldier, in case it was someone I knew. Rising, I checked the firearm out of habit, feeling aches from new bruises start to bloom along my body. My head throbbed, and my neck and back were sore from where I was slammed against the wall. But I was still alive.

Finally, inevitably, my gaze strayed to the body crumpled at the bottom of the steps, the sniper who had been firing on us from the attic window. For a split second, I tensed, wondering if I would see a familiar face with short dark hair, glazed blue eyes now staring at nothing. But the body at the foot of the steps was older than Tristan, unfamiliar to me. Through the aching guilt of what I’d just done, I felt a tiny prick of relief. I was truly the enemy of St. George now. I’d fought beside our ancient foes and had struck down my former brothers in arms but, at least for today, I wouldn’t have to face the person I dreaded fighting more than anyone else.

I hoped it would never come to that.

Ember was still standing at the top of the stairs, gazing down at the fallen soldier. Her skin was ashen, her bright hair a shocking contrast to her face. “I killed him,” she whispered, her voice choked and horrified. “He’s really dead. I didn’t… I didn’t mean to…”

“Ember.” I took a step toward her, and she flinched away, wide-eyed and trembling. Sympathy curled my stomach. I remembered my first kill, several years back, though it felt like a lifetime ago. It had been a dragon, and though I’d received nothing but praise and admiration from my brothers, I’d never forgotten the way it had stared at me as it lay there in the grass. I remembered its gaze, confused and terrified, before its eyes glazed over and it passed into death. I’d never spoken of it, but the nightmares from that day had haunted me for weeks afterward.

I knew what Ember was feeling right now, and I wished I had the words to comfort her, or the time. Sadly, we had neither. “Come on,” I said, starting toward the stairs. “Hurry, before the authorities arrive. We can’t be caught here.”

She blinked as I brushed past her, then followed me down the steps. “What about the…body?” she asked, stumbling over the word. “The police will find it. There’ll be a murder investigation at the very least. If anyone saw us enter the house, they’ll be looking for us, too.”

“Not likely.”

She frowned at my brusqueness. “How can you know that?”

“Because St. George has ways of covering this up,” I explained as we left the house, easing around the faded walls. “That soldier you killed,” I went on, gesturing back to the empty building, “he’s a ghost. We all are. We have no background, no past, no family except the Order. We don’t register in any system. When we die, we vanish, as if we never existed.”

“Oh,” Ember mused, though she didn’t sound reassured. “That’s…kind of sad. All that fighting, and no one even remembers you when you’re gone.”

I didn’t have an answer for that, so I stayed quiet. We slipped through the fence and huddled on the corner of the street, keeping a wary eye on the crowd surrounding the burning house. The roof was fully engulfed, clouds of black smoke billowing into the evening sky. I hoped Wes and the rogue dragon had been able to get out safely. And that they had come up with a getaway plan.