man anymore, if he had ever been much of one at all. He was a monstrosity who wanted only to grab and hold onto everything he could. He was cunning and manipulative.
And more than anything else, he was selfish.
Phil had been counting on his team loyally coming to his rescue—but Roger hadn’t come up the mountain to save him. Roger didn’t have any sense of loyalty, not really. All he had were temporary arrangements, places where his greed intersected with someone else’s enough for them to be useful to him.
Phil had been useful to him once. But now that Cooper and Gretchen knew the truth—and now that Roger knew that word of Cooper’s innocence might have spread—Phil was nothing more than a liability. Absolute, concrete proof that Phil was alive was the only thing that could irrevocably prove Cooper’s innocence—and the only thing that could destroy the lie that Roger had spent his life maintaining.
Roger wasn’t here to rescue Phil. Roger was here to kill him.
All of that flitted through Cooper’s mind in a millisecond, and then he barreled into Phil, knocking him down to the ground.
They hit the dust just in time to miss the jet of jade-colored acid that blistered the space where Phil had been standing.
So Roger was part wyvern now, too. That was fun.
“What the fuck?” Phil said, his voice shrill now, splitting the air.
“You’re a problem now,” Cooper said. “You know what Roger does with problems.”
He was surprised at how steady he sounded, even with everything that was going on, even with the fact that he’d landed belly-first on one of Phil’s sharply pointed elbows. It had knocked the wind out of him a little, but aside from that, he sounded fine. He almost felt fine.
Of course he did. For the first time in a long time, he was doing what he’d always done best.
Like Gretchen, he was a Marshal first. And now he had a witness to protect.
Admittedly, it was a witness he hated, but hey, you couldn’t have everything.
Ruffles around Roger’s scaly throat flared out as he began to gather up another deadly burst of acid. Cooper wasn’t waiting around to see how successful he’d be this time. He hauled Phil up to his feet and shoved him, hard, in the direction of the winding path down the mountain.
“Run.”
“Zigzag,” Gretchen advised, drawing her sidearm. “We’ll be right behind you.”
Her voice was splendidly cool, and Cooper was grateful yet again to have such a capable partner by his side. She took aim at Roger and fired, and while he mostly slithered/flew out of the way of the bullet, she at least skinned his hide a little, producing an ear-splitting wail.
“Nice shot,” Cooper said.
She nodded. Sweat was running down her face, and he could feel it on his own, too. The odds were against them. Only Gretchen had a gun (one that was already short on ammo), Cooper was already injured, and they had no idea of the extent of Roger’s hideous new capabilities. If they were going to survive this, they would have to be smart.
He heard the frantic beat of Phil’s feet against the ground. He might not have had much of a chance—it was hard to run in handcuffs, especially down a steep and dusty road—but at least he had a sliver of one.
Don’t think this means I like you, Cooper thought grimly at Phil’s departing back. I’m saving your life because it’s my get-out-of-jail free card. And because it’s my job—but I know you wouldn’t understand that.
“Fine,” Roger said. It was still surreal to hear such a creature talking—and in such an ordinary voice, too. “I’ll kill the two of you and then I’ll kill him. I’m not picky about the order.” He turned his enormous head to look at Monroe, and the only thing weirder than hearing him speak was seeing a kind of juvenile pissiness in a face that would otherwise have been completely alien. “Do you want to contribute to this?”
Monroe had shifted back to human, Cooper saw, and he’d gone so pale he looked almost bloodless. Maybe, despite everything, Monroe had still believed—at least a little—in honor among thieves. Either Roger hadn’t filled him in on all the details of the plan to kill Phil, or he had lost the stomach for it at the last moment.
Monroe had possibly been the one to take the lead back in their earlier shootout, Cooper realized. That one had been almost entirely dependent on skillfully done basilisk-related hallucinations, with none