With a guttural screech, the Harpy charged Guillaume head on.

Bodies lie piled around her, none of the original near dozen or so that had engaged in direct combat with her left alive in her wake. Under the pale glow of the moon overhead, her singular, bleeding lens snapped to face her true target.

Evelyn lurched forth with staggering, jerky motions propelling her every step of the way. She acted more like a creature possessed than… well, the actual possessed people that had surrounded her minutes ago. Single-minded fury fueled every last strained muscle and servomotor in her body, pushing them all well past the safety of their limits just to reach him that little bit sooner.

It was all very concerning, but Henry could only half pay attention to it. If that. He was fighting for his life, too, after all. That would always take precedence. Nevertheless, he redoubled his efforts to find an opening they could both use to break away from the scrum they were currently in.

"YOU WILL DIE BY MY HAND," the Harpy's heavily distorted voice cried out, audible to all. "IN THE NAME OF EVERY LIFE YOU'VE DESTROYED, YOU WILL D_D_DIE."

Those words made something click in the back of Henry's mind, something he hadn't realized he was still processing. The word he'd been looking for to describe her voice. His previous attempts were all close, but he'd missed one crucial detail.

He'd been assuming that this was strictly between the two of them. But, as it turned out, Evelyn had gone into this with loftier motivations than he'd previously realized.

She was doing this for more than just herself. Whether as a change of heart or a closely held conviction, he couldn't tell, but in the end, the difference mattered little. As she descended upon an increasingly terrified Guillaume like an avenging angel, Henry couldn't help but think back to the surviving mage-slaves she'd apparently rescued from captivity.

Avenging. As one of – and on the behalf of – the numerous people that Guillaume had subdued since the Witching Hours, this was her purpose. All summarized in one neat, orderly package.

Panicking, Guillaume started frantically running towards the slim tatters of his remaining lines, despite his age not being best suited for the task. As crippled as the Harpy was, it was actually a close call on if he'd get away or not. Almost. She still gaining on him one centimeter at a time even as he desperately hobbled away.

Not that the guards were standing idle while their master was under threat. Far from it. One by one, the remaining half dozen or so mind-controlled fighters peeled back to circle around him, all so that he could buy even a minute more time for himself.

The Knights keeping Henry and Layla in check peeled away just the same. A mistake, from a tactical point of view. When you get in a fight, you never turn your back on an enemy if you could help it.

Neither of them gave the mindless stragglers a chance to return to their master. Henry sank a knife deep into the important arteries of one thug's leg, while Layla grabbed another by the neck with one arm and threw him bodily over the side of the skyscraper.

Guillaume looked in their direction a second too late to save them. He spewed a string of what had to be curses in his native tongue, as he realized the scope of the tactical blunder he'd managed in his panic. With only six defenders left and three Devils bearing down on him, the leader of the Gentleman's Club realized that he was on the losing end of this fight. Desperation seeped into his actions bone-deep, and Henry felt no small amount of satisfaction seeing him squirm as he was. In mere seconds, now, the three of them would have him surrounded, and that would be the end of that.

But, when pushed to the absolute limits, people tended to reveal their true nature to the world. Unfortunately for them, Guillaume's life choices up to this point had been both very true to his nature… and a bit understated.

He fell back on a tried and true tactic. Taking advantage of the suffering of others.

With a wordless order, the six remaining drones began forcibly overloading what enchanted gear they had left on them. Inscriptions flared bright, normally unwavering ley lines wavered and particles of excess Domain mana leached from the surface of their equipment as they all overrode every last safety measure put in place to keep the wearers out of harms way.

The sickening smell of roasted meat filled the air as the mana radiation began to literally cook a few Knights in their armor. Pushing through burns that would make even top-rank Fauna healers wince, the six amped-up defenders once again ran out to fight Evelyn tooth and nail with the one advantage that the reckless action afforded them.

The power of each enchantment was vastly increased in this state. It would only be a minute or so before the inscriptions burned out completely… but it was a minute more than Guillaume had before.

With fervor unexpectedly matching her own, Evelyn was put on the back foot for the first time this whole fight as they counter-charged. Air blades clashed against spellshot. Enchanted shortswords parried her remaining wing, chips of steel flying from the impact as they circled and lunged, hoping to hack away the remaining stem. One Knight, particularly sturdy looking and braced against the floor properly, managed to wrestle the clamp of the servo arm away from his head and lock it under his armpit, pinning the Harpy in place for the first time as the others worked together to bleed her dry with a thousand cuts.

This time, it was Henry's turn to curse loudly.

"Bugger," he settled on. Layla was much more colorful with her language, but acted quicker.

She steered them both in the direction of their flagging friend, tugging him along behind her to remain in contact with his innate mental defenses. Henry tripped over his feet a bit at first, but got back into the rhythm enough to follow along after her. While it pained him to see that they were giving the man a chance to slip through their fingers, her priorities would always be in keeping other people alive, first and foremost. Henry could respect that.

But as he saw Guillaume turning tail towards the fire escape, he couldn't just leave him to his own devices, either.

Time for the ace in the hole.

Free hand whipped around behind his back mid-sprint, pulling out his revolver. Four bullets would be more than enough, surely. Especially if they couldn't miss, like the Constable had claimed.

He still aimed a bit, just to be sure. Squeezing the trigger, the familiar deafening report of his handgun thundered out. The bullet tore through the air, leaving a trail of light in its wake as it passed.

Huh. So that's why the Constable's shots always looked so flashy during the Kennel Massacre. The glowing afterimage definitely isn't part of the gun, at least.

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Lead met tissue, and Guillaume's kneecap essentially exploded. He staggered on his feet, trying to use his cane to keep himself upright for a few moments, a few steps more. It half-worked for a time, but ultimately the damage proved to great for the old man to ignore. The once formidable mob boss fell to the ground helplessly.

It would have to be enough, for now. As much as Henry would have liked to perform a follow-up shot, they were mere moments from diving into the fray. Close as they were – and precious as his ammo supply was – he switched back to the knife just in the nick of time to hamstring one of the closer ones.

"Hang on, Evelyn!", Layla shouted over the din of battle. "We're almost there! Just hold on for a little longer!"

She was making a beeline for the Knight anchoring the entire battle with his body. Henry caught on to the plan pretty quick. Provided they could pull Evelyn out from being surrounded, they'd be able to watch each other's backs as they ran down Guillaume and finished him off before time ran out. It would be a close call, but there didn't seem to be anything left to get in the way at the last minute, either. He just needed to buy the time and space for them to do so.

He glanced back over his shoulder at Guillaume in a brief moment he had between clashes. He'd half expected him to try crawling away by now, but instead he seemed to be… smashing the head of his cane against the floor?

Has he gone mad?

He couldn't make any sense of it, but then again the fight wasn't giving him a good moment to puzzle it out, either. Even just taking the moment to look back managed to earn him a black eye from a Knight punching him in the face. He could feel a thin trickle of blood leaking from just above his brow after the blow, and it would only be a matter of time before he'd have to contend with blood in his eye on top of everything else going on.

Nothing for it. He just knuckled down, and kept a hand on Layla's shoulder as she twisted the arm of the Knight to an unnatural angle. Visions danced at the periphery of his mind as they fought, side by side in a way they'd become intimately familiar with in the months after the Shroud came down.

There were no words for the struggle, both the one currently playing out and the one looping inside his head. One moment, he was thrusting the tip of his knife towards the ribs of a brainwashed GC elite to get him to back off, the next he was fighting his first vampire one-on-one in much the same way. One arm tied behind his back – in a manner of speaking – clinging desperately to a short, edged blade that served as his only real line of defense against the bitter world around him. Scrapping with the worst of the worst that Hallow London had to offer.

Funny how history repeated itself, in its own way. Whoever thought to coin the phrase saying the contrary was clearly a bit off.

With the shrieking whine of metal against metal Evelyn's servo arm wrenched free from the grapple in a single wild motion. The battlefield anchor was dislodged, sparks flying through the air as steel scraped against steel and scuffed up layers of heavily abused inscriptions. The Knight staggered back, arm hanging uselessly at his side as he tried to recover in time.

He never got the chance. Layla dealt with him more permanently by way of an empowered left hook to the head. There was an audible crack as the man spun back, collapsing to the ground with his neck twisted at an odd angle. None of the other five so much as gave him a passing glance as he dropped.

Evelyn seized the opportunity, and joined them at their side without hesitation.

"WARNING: CRITICAL FAILURE IN… T-MINUS – 4 – MINUTES," she droned to Henry in a prerecorded voice reminiscent of an error message.

"Then let's make them count!", he responded with a shout over the ringing in his ears.

A flaming shortsword sang through the air aimed directly at his neck. He ducked the swipe at the last moment, his face close enough to feel the dry heat as it crackled by as he crouched low. A gap opened, and Evelyn capitalized on it instantly, moving to counter the offending man's overextension.

Henry used the brief lull to withdraw the revolver from its holster again. Fully prepared to blind fire in Guillaume's direction and finish the job, but… no. That wouldn't be right.

In a split second decision, instead of pulling the trigger… he pulled Evelyn back a step from the melee while Layla rotated in, then flipped the gun around to pass of to their one-winged friend.

"Three shots. Constable's personal supply. Give him hell!"

"GLAD:LY<>."

Her voice was even more corrupted than before, her movements that much more erratic. But, in direct contrast to the wounds of her battle damage, she took the gun from his hand in one flawless, fluid motion. Guillaume redoubled his pace to break his own cane, the pewter beak already hopelessly deformed and cracking the silver facade on the topmost layer. Cheap, soft metal underneath a surface of refined polish. Probably a metaphor somewhere in there, if he could be bothered to think of one-

Two shots rang out in quick succession, one streak of light taking Guillaume in the shoulder while the other sailed past, curved around, and punctured his lung. Wheezing, on death's door but with one final, desperate swing, the cane's head finally gave way. Blood dribbled from the edge of the old man's lips as he raised the item hidden inside the cane to his head.

To Henry, it looked… passingly like a Domain crystal. But, instead of the usual chromatic glow that corresponded to one of the Ten Domains, this one was pitch black. Neon black, he'd almost call it.

He had no idea what to make of it. Layla and Evelyn, on the other hand, apparently did. When the two of them saw that crystal come out, they immediately shifted into full assault mode on the opposing Devil.

The final shot rang out just as the stone touched Guillaume's forehead, shining black light pulsing from within as it sank into the flesh of his skull. The bullet tore through his heart milliseconds after, sending him sprawling back into the rapidly growing pool of his own ichor flowing away from him.

In front of Henry, the remaining five men fell to the floor, unconscious. Silence reigned in the streets of Stratford once more, save for the baying of the ever-present wolves just out of sight.

They'd… they'd won.

He let out a sigh of relief he hadn't even known he'd been holding in, arms dropping to his sides.

…They'd won.

"We… we did it," he said aloud, not fully believing it possible just yet. "That was... that was all of them, wasn't it? The Club's main base of operations is in ruins. Everyone else is dead. There's no one left to fight."

That last part, he said more to remind himself than anything.

"Despite everything, all the complications and this whole fight being much more than I bargained for in the first place… we did it."

He made to sit down, needing a moment to come down from the adrenaline high the short but intense firefight had been. Layla and Evelyn turned their back on the corpse of the Eighth Devil, and before long the other five survivors on the roof began stirring awake, too. He cried out in elation into the midnight sky.

"WE DID IT!!"

His voice echoed out across the streets of Stratford, lost in the wind as it traveled. It was a heady feeling. For the first time in recent memory, he'd managed to look a direct challenge in the eyes, and win. To him, that was a momentous occasion in and of itself. And more intoxicating than anything else he had experienced. To his surprise, instead of the typical lack of direction he'd had before, his mind was spinning with new ideas-

A high-powered kick from behind sent him sprawling to the ground. He hit the rough tarmac floor ribs-first, skidding to a halt in front of the awakening survivors and definitely fracturing something in the process.

What?! Who-

Adrenaline that had only half flushed itself out came flooding back in a near debilitating torrent. Ignoring the pain for now, he rolled onto his back to see just where the attack had come from.

Evelyn hit the ground just beside him, struck by the person responsible caught red-handed in the act.

"...Layla?"

He didn't want to believe his eyes. She'd never do something like-

"Not quite, mon ami," something familiar murmured with satisfaction, puppeting vocal chords in a way that twisted her voice into a mockery.

A pair of hands restrained his arms and lifted him to his feet. The survivors, he realized absently. One of them spoke next, that same familiar something using a voice that wasn't its own.

"Ah, but you are a smart little rat, non? I'm sure you've figured out what is happening, already."

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