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)
As more bullets hit that metal panel, he shook his head. “As long as you’re in here, I am not free.”
At that moment, the world seemed to stop and she stared at his face. In the raw light from overhead, she still couldn’t believe her eyes.
“Who did you feed from,” she whispered. “The Scribe Virgin Herself?”
There was a brief pause, as if the guards down at the other end were reloading, and Apex jumped up, cracked the door—and pulled his trigger again.
“Go!” he barked. “I’ll hold them as long as I ca—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish. The white-haired male with the flashlight and the car key locked a hold around his chest and hauled Apex right off his feet.
Kane took off up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. When he got to the next floor, which would be the first that was aboveground, he couldn’t reach the handle on the fire door with her in his arms and he stamped his boot like he was impatient with waiting even a moment. Apex and the other male were arguing as they arrived on the landing, but the former paused long to yank the handle—
“Fuck,” he muttered. “Centralized locking has been engaged, and there’s no reader for the hand. Stand back.”
Kane turned to the concrete wall and sheltered her with his body as Apex discharged three bullets at the juncture of the door and the jamb. Then he pulled the panel open.
The alarm that went off was loud enough to wake the dead.
Meanwhile, right under them, what sounded like an entire army flooded into the stairwell, the clamoring boots, mix of scents, and waft of gunpowder the kind of thing that spelled deadly defeat.
“Don’t even think about staying here to cover us,” the male with the white hair said. “I picked you up once, I’ll do it again.”
Apex grabbed his arm. “Get them out. That’s all that matters. Please.”
Kane didn’t wait for them to sort things out. He started running again, Nadya catching the door as they were the first across the threshold into the hallway. As she glanced around his arm, gunfire was exchanged, but she couldn’t track who was shooting first, Apex and his friend or the males in uniform.
Did it matter, though. They were out-gunned, outmaneuvered, and dawn was coming fast.
There was no way this ended well for them.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Kane was all adrenaline as he burst out onto the first floor of the central building. After a quick orientation, he went to an open doorway on the left and prayed he was facing the rear parking area. And that there was a window. And that the guards were new recruits with bad aim. And…
There was a window at the far end of the narrow room, and he quickly surmounted an obstacle course of broken office furniture and ceiling debris. When he got to the intact panes of glass, he considered how to keep a hold of Nadya and get the sash up—
A body streaked by him, went airborne, and solved the problem by crashing through the frame and shattering everything. As a waft of fresh air broke through the moldy stink of rot, Kane leaned out of the hole.
Down below, the wolven sprang up from a crouch and spun around. Holding his arms out, he yelled, “I’ll catch her. Come on—drop her to me.”
As gunfire continued to echo around in the stairwell, Kane looked at the female in his arms.
“It’s the only way,” he said.
“You can just save yourself,” Nadya said. “Really, you can.”
The hellfire chaos of bullets began to come down the hall, suggesting Apex had changed position—or been killed and the guards were trampling his dead body to finish their job.
Tilting out of the hole the wolven had made with his body, Kane extended his arms. On the ground, the other male sank into his thighs, bracing for the catch.
“Get ready,” Kane said. And wondered who he was trying to prepare.
His heart was in his throat as he let her go. And time halted as she dropped. She was so fragile, she wouldn’t survive a—
The wolven made a new friend for life as he snatched Nadya out of the free fall, swinging her around so that the landing against his chest was as gentle as possible. And after Kane logged a permanent memory at the flop of her thin arms and emaciated legs, he hopped up on the sill and free-fell himself.
Landing in a crouch, he didn’t have to ask the other male for what he needed. The slight load was transferred, and then the wolven took off for the lineup of vehicles. For a split second, Kane glanced up at the building. In the darkness, the discharges from the guns were brilliant flashes, and the sounds of gunfire were a staccato snare drum.