Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Otherwise, they would have been ambushed.
Pulling his own trigger, he cursed as the flank of lessers broke ranks and scattered into shadows, corners, and doorways. This was bad, this was fucking bad. They were engaging the enemy and discharging guns in full view of every fucking tenant with a rear-facing apartment—and already there were only about a dozen drapes getting pulled back, the outlines of all kinds of humans with all sorts of cell phones poking their heads into their windows to see what the commotion was about.
As he himself ducked for cover behind the car he’d shot up, Rhamp and L.W. joined him around on the driver’s side—
The moaning was loud enough for them to hear, soft enough so nobody else could. Popping his head up over the door, Shuli punched the safety glass out and got a gander at the lesser behind the wheel. The bastard was leaking like a sieve, black blood dripping all over the place, but as with the night before, it was far from “dead”—
Annnnnnnnd that was when an entire church choir of cop sirens started to ring out, all of which were close by—way too close by.
“Stab the lesser,” Rhamp snapped. “We gotta disappear him before we—”
“Fuck that,” L.W. cut in. “I’m taking him with us—”
“Fuck you. Are you out of your mind—”
“He might have information—”
The robocop cars were approaching from all directions, the speed of their response frustratingly efficient going by how the noise was ramping up. But hey, at least it cut off the conversation about taking a hostage for interrogation—something Shuli was not about to let happen with all the eyeballs around them.
Whipping out one of his steel daggers, he leaned into the car, and got a quick close-up of the leaking mess that was already trying to escape by crawling for the passenger-side door. Trading grips on his hilt because of the angle, he called on all the strength in his left arm to get that fucking blade into the sternum—
Happy Fourth of July in January.
The burst of light was bright enough to blind him, but the complication was the burst of energy. He caught the whoof! of incineration right against his chest, and it was powerful enough to blow him out of the car. His landing was a flat-on-the-back kind, his breath knocked from his lungs—
Just as the robocops arrived on scene.
Funny, he thought. He couldn’t hear the sirens anymore. The ringing in his ears was so—
“You’re injured,” someone said from all the way across the city. Or maybe the whole ass state of New York.
Were they talking to him?
“We gotta move him.” L.W. bent over him, and patted around like he was trying to find Shuli’s torso. “Now.”
Wasn’t his chest still attached?
“I’m fine,” he mumbled as he forced himself to his feet. “Let’s go—”
Rhamp shook his head. “Lyric’s here. I can’t leave without her—”
“This is the Caldwell Police Department,” a calm, robotic voice chimed in. “Please drop your weapons and put your hands over your heads. Any further gunfire will put you at risk of lethal counteractions. Please drop your weapons and—”
As all kinds of robocops exited their vehicles, Shuli struggled to make his mouth work. “Lyric’s at home, she went—”
“She whistled.” Rhamp nodded toward the roof. “Up there. The tipoff signal was hers.”
Trying to blink his fuzzy sight clear, Shuli noted that a fourth cop car was tooling down the alley those lessers had come from, its headlights turning everything to noontime. A quick survey of the environs and there were no retreating figures with granny hair—so the slayers had already disappeared back into the night.
“—put your hands over your heads,” the robocops continued as they advanced their position.
“Go get her, then,” L.W. said. “I’ve got Shuli.”
Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd that was when the fucker took out a hand cannon.
The gun was four times the size of a forty-five, and appeared to have old-fashioned revolver action. “Go, Rhamp.”
At which point, the guy started working out his forefinger.
Boom! Boom! Boom—
L.W. was just shooting and making noise to get the cop-bots to take cover, something they were programmed to do, and God love Rhamp. Even though you had to calm yourself to dematerialize, the fighter somehow pulled off that trick in spite of the chaos—and it was just as he disappeared that Shuli looked down and smelled his own blood. No time for an exam—and he didn’t need one to know he wasn’t going to be able to dematerialize.
For a split second, he played carousel in his head for options. Most were grim, with only one that held any chance of getting him out of this shitstorm alive. But hey, that was where life landed you sometimes.
A lot of the times, recently.
While L.W. kept the cops off, Shuli dragged himself into the Toyota and squeezed behind the wheel. The engine was somehow still running, even though there was all kinds of lead in the damn thing. At least it was facing in the right direction—assuming he wanted to play bowling ball with the CPD’s city surveillance and rescue resources.