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moment, when I aimed the gun and fired the last bullet into the membrane of his wings.
    The griffin dropped to the ground as blood poured from the injured wing. “You’re going to hurt for that,” he seethed.
    I reloaded the gun. “Come show me how,” I taunted.
    He darted forward, dodging or deflecting the four shots I fired in his direction. The loss of his wings did little to slow his speed. He jabbed up at my throat with his spear, which glistened in the sunlight coming in from the glass dome overhead. It appeared to be covered in something. I dodged the attack, and knocked him back with a blast of air.
    I waited for the griffin’s next move, but all he did was smile again and look past me. I immediately risked a look, moving just in time to avoid the jet of flame from the hands of the elemental crawling on the ground toward us.
    I fired twice at his head, stopping him and removing a sizeable portion of his skull. I spun back to the griffin, and used a blast of air to stagger him as he lunged forward with his spear. I barely managed to blast the spear tip aside, moving its trajectory from my heart to my shoulder.
    The griffin pushed until the blade of the spear reappeared out my back, tearing muscle apart. He pushed down harder, forcing me to my knees, while blood poured freely down my chest and back. Only then did he tear the spear free, and I collapsed, the warm blood a stark contrast to the cold tiled floor.
    “Why you? Why did you have to be the one to kill me?”
    “I was given the honor. And what an honor it is, to kill the famed Hellequin.”
    Since the return of Hellequin, I’d expected people to come after me, to gain revenge, but the fact that a griffin wanted to kill me was a bit of a shock. I couldn’t think of a single thing I’d ever done to a griffin that would lead them to go to this much trouble to try and kill me. “You’re a disgrace to your people.”
    Anger lit up in his eyes. “My people are nothing more than slaves to Hades and his allies. They know nothing of freedom and are not worth the blood that runs in their coddled veins.”
    The griffin glared down at me. “Any last words?”
    “Fuck you very much,” I said and shot him in the head.
    The griffin managed to dodge in time to avoid a kill shot, but the bullet still smashed into its skull, just above its eye, before ricocheting off and hitting a nearby wall. I held the gun in the hand of my ruined arm—that one shot had been more than I’d hoped for—but the pain wracked my body, and there was no way I was going to get a second.
    I used my good arm to pull myself to a sitting position as the griffin screamed in pain and anger, the blood pouring over its face pretty much blinding it in one eye. I forced myself to stand and picked up the gun, being careful to avoid the spear that the griffin was swinging around like mobster using a baseball bat. The second bullet took it in the throat, causing it to stagger back as the sound of shouting echoed around me.
    The griffin crashed to its knees, its one good eye zeroed in on me with all the hatred it could muster. I remained upright as the armed police unit shouted orders and ran up. I’d dropped the gun by that point, and Mike came over and helped steady me.
    “And you didn’t come in earlier because?” I asked.
    “It was my decision,” Kelly explained, as she appeared beside Mike, her tone suggesting that she had made the right decision and wasn’t about to apologize for it. “I knew you’d be able to deal with them. And the hostages were the main concern.”
    She showed zero concern for my current state of injury. I got the impression that so long as the hostages were alive, it didn’t really matter what happened to me. That knowledge, along with the considerable pain wracking my body, didn’t exactly elevate my mood.
    “Yeah, that worked out well for everyone, didn’t it? You fucking idiot,” I said to her and then threw up blood all over the floor. I glanced down at