Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 92392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
The guard folded.
The twins were already past him.
Kenji tore off his mask and dropped it on the ground.
Reo came in from the right and attacked two others. His blades did clean, economical work. He opened a throat. He took a wrist. The dim light worked for us and against them.
One panicked and took out a gun anyway. The muzzle flashes blinded. They were white bursts, yet the twins and Reo lived in the space between those flashes.
A guard stumbled backward into a crate.
Reo finished him against it.
The final man got his daggers up halfway. One twin pinned the wrist with a blade through it and the other took his throat, and the daggers clattered to the floor without firing.
Akiro’s guards were dead in seconds.
Good.
Then Akiro uncoiled the kusarigama. “Will you all be going after me or will you make it fair with just one?”
Kenji leaned his head to the side. “Make it fair?”
I laughed. “You’re more like our father than I’ve ever given you credit for.”
Akiro blinked. “Is that right?”
“You’re an absolute coward.”
“Hiro.” Akiro glared. “The funny brother.”
“And you were always just our father’s puppet.”
Fast, Akiro whipped the chain. The heavy ball cracked against a steel support beam beside my head. The sound rang through the whole space like a struck bell, and I felt it in my teeth.
I dropped under the backswing.
The sickle came next, a flat silver arc aimed at my eyes, and I gave ground and let it pass and felt the wind of it on my cheek. The chain caught a cargo strap on the recoil and Akiro snapped his wrist and tore it loose, and the ball came around again from a wall I hadn't been watching.
This was the trouble with him in a box.
In the open, a chain weapon needed room. In here, every surface gave it back from a new direction—floor, ceiling, crate, beam.
He bounced it off the metal and made the whole cabin into his hand. I couldn't trade range with that. I had to take it away from him.
“That’s enough of that.” I closed in on him.
Behind me Kenji's guns clicked.
What?
He had them out fast and aimed to the side. Fire bloomed orange at the muzzles, lighting the cabin in two-foot bursts. Thank God he didn’t use bullets.
Men I hadn't seen rose out of the darkness from behind crates, and rushed us.
Smart. You hid some, but we’re too strong, Akiro.
Kenji set them on fire.
"There’s more of them!" Reo called out.
I looked over my shoulder.
Seven rushed out of the cockpit.
Not bad planning, Akiro, but still. . .too much has happened for us to die here.
We all battled them.
I caught a man's wrist as he swung a knife. I broke his elbow over my forearm and drove my palm up into his nose and felt it give.
The plane lurched and threw both of us against a crate and I used the wall to fold him into his death. Once done, I left him on the floor.
I checked to make sure Kenji was alive. The twins worked beside him in the strobing dark, all sweeping legs, trapping arms, and short brutal elbows. Most of all, they protected my brother like they always did.
I headed for Akiro.
“Not so fast, brother.” Akiro swung at me.
I let the ball pass, lunged inside the chain's reach, and got my hand on it. “This is nice. Can I have it?”
“No!” Akiro pulled.
I did too. “Are you sure?”
For one breath we were locked, the chain singing taut between us with his eyes wide above the steel.
Then Kenji came out of Akiro’s blind side. Kenji's hand closed on the kusarigama's shaft, and with one savage pull he ripped it from Akiro's grip.
“Ah!” Akiro's hands flew open. All confidence drained out of his face like water sputtering out of cracked glass.
Now you feel it.
“I’ve got him.” Kenji grinned. “Go check on the Fox, Hiro. Be a good son and make sure our father is doing okay.”
“I would love to.” I headed off.
Two men stood between me and the Fox.
I looked at them and shook my head.
“Are you sure you want to die for him?” I quirked my brows. “Seriously? He shits in a diaper. There are better men to die for.”
One charged.
I took the lead man's arm at the shoulder and turned him into a shield right as the second man's knife buried in his own partner's back, killing him fast.
Then, I had the other guy’s knife hand. I broke it and put the second man down on the metal with my elbow across his temple.
The Fox raised a gun and fired at me.
Fuck!
I fell to the ground.
The round went wide and punched clean through the wall, and a small hole opened beside my head with a shriek of wind that hadn't existed a second before.
“Check on me?!” He fired again.
Sparks burst off a crate.