Lover At Last(53)

That foolhardy son of a bitch.

There had been so many times when Blay had thought, He’s going to kill himself.

So many times on and off the field.

But now this was the one that was going to stick—

The bullet struck him in the thigh, and the pain that raced from his leg to his heart suggested that his full attention needed to shift back to the fight: If he wanted to live, he had to completely focus.

Yet even as the conviction hit him, there was a split second when he thought, Just end this all now. Just be done with all the bullshit and the punishment of life, the almost-theres, the if-onlys, the relentless chronic agony he’d been in…he was so tired of it all—

He had no idea what made him hit the snow.

One moment he was staring toward the plane waiting for the burst of flames. The next he was chest-down on the ground, his elbows digging into the frozen, intractable earth, his injured leg throbbing.

Pop! Pop! Pop—

The roar that interrupted the sound of bullets was so loud he ducked his head, like that would help him avoid the chronic airplane’s fireball.

Except there was no light and no heat. And the sound was overhead….

Soaring. That bucket of bolts was actually in the air. Above them.

Blay spared a second to look up, just in case he’d gotten shot in the head and his perception of reality was fucked. But no—that piece-of-shit crop duster was up in the sky, making a fat turn and taking off in the direction that, if it could stay aloft, would eventually lead Qhuinn and Z to the Brotherhood’s compound.

If they were lucky.

Man, that flight path wasn’t pretty—it was not an eagle going straight and true through the night sky. More like a barn swallow fresh out of the nest—with a broken wing.

Back and forth. Back and forth, tipping from side to side.

To the point where it looked more like they had pulled off the impossible and gotten in the air…only to quickly crash and burn over the forest…

From out of nowhere, something caught him in the side of the face, smacking him so hard he flopped over onto his back and nearly lost hold of his forties. A hand—it had been a hand that had palmed his puss like a basketball.

And then a massive weight jumped on his chest, flattening him into the snowpack, making him exhale so hard, he wondered if he didn’t need to look around for his liver.

“Will you get your fucking head down?” Rhage hissed in his ear. “You’re going to get shot—again.”

As the lull in shooting stetched from seconds to a full minute, lessers emerged from the tree line up ahead, the quartet of slayers walking through the snow with their weapons drawn and poised.

“Don’t move,” Rhage whispered. “Two can play at this game.”

Blay did his best not to breathe as heavily as the burn in his lungs was telling him he needed to. Also tried not to sneeze as loose flakes tickled his nose on every inhale.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

John was about three feet away, and lying in a contorted position that made Blay’s heart flicker—

The guy subtly flashed a thumbs-up, like he was reading Blay’s mind.

Thank. Fuck.

Blay shifted his eyes around without changing the awkward angle of his head, and then discreetly exchanged a gun for one of his daggers.

As an unhinged hum started to vibrate in his head, he calibrated the lessers’ movements, their trajectories, their weapons. He was nearly out of bullets, and there wasn’t time to reload from his ammo belt—and he knew that John and Rhage were in a similar situation.

The knives that V had hand-made for them all were their only recourse.

Closer…closer…

When the four slayers were finally in range, his timing was perfect. And so were the others’.

With a coordinated shift and surge, he leaped up and started stabbing at the two closest to him. John and Rhage attacked the others—

Almost immediately, more slayers came from the woods, but for some reason, probably because the Lessening Society wasn’t arming inductees all that well, there were no bullets. The second round rushed across the snow with the kind of weapons you’d expect to find in an alley fight—baseball bats, crowbars, tire irons, chains.

Fine with him.

He was so juiced and pissed off, he could use the hand-to-hand.





NINETEEN


Sitting on the examination table, with a frail paper gown covering her, and her bare feet hanging off the padded lip, Layla felt as though she were surrounded by instruments of torture. And she supposed she was. All manner of stainless-steel implements were laid out upon the countertop by the sink, their clear plastic wrappings indicating they were sterile and prepared for use.

She had been at Havers’s clinic for an absolute eternity. Or at least, it seemed that way.