Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
“Nadya…”
“Is it really you?” She asked this even though his scent was like the sound of his voice, unmistakable. “How is this possible?”
“I’m going to get you out of here.” In her peripheral vision, she saw him test the chains. “I need to cut these.”
He looked around and cursed softly. Then he put his hands on his hips—
“Keys.” He grabbed at the belt of weapons around his waist. “I have keys!”
Kane yanked the jangling ring off its mount, and as he leaned into her, she caught his scent again. Drawing it down deeply into her nose, she noticed that it was slightly different than she remembered. Then again, no wounds. He was…
“What happened to you?” she breathed.
Kane—or what appeared to be a version of Kane—shook his head. “I don’t know. And that’s the truth. But we can talk about it later.”
She could feel his eyes searching her, and hated what he saw. Which was a sign, she supposed, of how attached she had grown to him.
“Please. Stop staring,” she begged.
Bending forward, he went to work on the lock on the links, his fingers moving so swiftly as he tried key after key—and when the chains dropped free, he immediately shifted to the other side. When they also went loose, she started to collapse and he gathered her, pulling her against him. His body was so solid, his muscles flexing as he held her easily.
“I’ve got you,” he said as he picked her up. “But we have to go fast.”
“Wait, wait.” Extending a hand to the floor, she tried to reach her hood. “I need—”
He swooped down and grabbed the fall of dark fabric. Giving it to her, he started striding off as she yanked the cover back into place. As her face was draped once again, her breath was an unpleasant blasting of heat, and she thought of how good it had been to breathe more freely, even if she had hated revealing herself.
Even though she’d been about to die.
Looking around Kane’s bulging arm, she focused on the stained wall, and wondered how much longer until the head of the guards came back out. “Hurry.”
He began to run, and as they zeroed in on the stairwell’s doorway, she found herself praying unto the Scribe Virgin. So close, so close… but the danger seemed to magnify as they covered more and more of the distance.
Down at the exit, Apex swung the steel panel open and urged them on, his frantic hand motions as if he could remove obstacles out of their way—
The head of the guards emerged back where the pegs and the stains were.
“Run faster,” Nadya hissed. “They’ve seen us.”
At which point, the head of the guards shouted and drew a gun.
Later, Nadya would wonder the hows of everything that happened next, but she knew the “why”: In a split second, she pictured Kane getting shot in the back, and she could not let that happen.
Moving with a desperation that meant she ignored the pain, she shoved her hand down under Kane’s arm, got the gun that was on his hip out of its holster, and lifted the weapon up over his shoulder. She was so weak that she had to use two hands, and after she flipped the safety off, she just started pulling the trigger without bothering to aim. As a bullet exploded out of the muzzle, and another, and another, Kane put another surge of speed into their escape—and the head of the guards ducked back behind the door.
Nadya shot again and again, the discharges hitting the wall, picking off pegs and putting holes in the stained gray panels. Sweat broke out across her forehead and she struggled to keep the gun up, but fear gave her what she needed.
And then they were in the stairwell.
Apex grabbed the weapon from her just as her hands lost their grip, and he quickly reloaded with a clip from his own gun belt.
“Smart thinking,” he said to her as he shoved the muzzle back out the door. “Take the hand! Go to the chute!”
“I have the key,” someone said. “To one of the vehicles down in the lot. We can drive out!”
Everyone glanced at the male who spoke up. White-haired, and very definitely not scenting like a vampire, he was dressed in a flannel shirt and blue jeans, with a flashlight in one hand and a large gun in the other.
Before he could say anything else, a barrage of bullets sprayed the door Apex was at, pinging off the steel, shattering the wired glass window. The male braced the thing closed and winced, sure as if the lead was going into his own body.
Kane ducked down. “Can you dematerialize—Nadya, can you—”
“No,” she said grimly. Then she gripped his massive shoulders and looked at him through the hood. “Leave me, you’re free—”