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)
The male was hanging on, going by the breathing on L.W.’s biceps, but he was losing blood stuck-pig style—
Down at the end of the alley, a lesser dropped into their path from a fire escape, like something from Spider-Man 22.
As the thing lifted its arm and a gun flashed, L.W. tried to get to one of his autoloaders—
The discharge of a bullet was loud as a clap of lightning in his ear, and for a split second, he thought someone was behind them. But then it came again—
Shuli was shooting, and his aim was good, the slayer ducking and returning fire before jumping into an inset doorway—
L.W. flattened against the wall of the building on the left, and decided Shuli’d been right. They had just done this last week. Then again, they’d done this last month, too. And the month before that.
Just not necessarily together.
“Nice shootin’, Tex,” he muttered to the aristocrat as he wondered when more backup slayers were going to arrive.
“You’re not… going to leave me, are you.”
Not a question. Resignation. And because L.W. liked making people miserable, he said, loud and clear: “Nope.”
The guy coughed weakly. “You hate me, remember?”
“Yeah, I do. Always.”
Shit, no cover. No doorway like the slayer had. He looked up. Under his arm. All around. It was dark as a colon in the damn alley because the buildings that formed it had no windows, no security lights, no—
“Fire escape.” As Shuli swapped out magazines, he pointed with his nine. “Right there. Go—”
“That’s gonna get us nowhere—”
Ping! Ping! Ping—
Fireflies flared all around them as the lesser discharged a variety of shots that ricocheted off the bricks—
“Fuck!” L.W. crumpled sure as if someone had baseball’d his lower leg. “Goddamn—”
He did what he could to give Shuli a soft landing, but there was no helping the poor sonofabitch. Like a load of manure dumped by a wheelbarrow, the guy spilled out all over the ground—
Despite being seriously injured, Shuli flipped onto his belly, shoved his elbows into the ice, and went classic sniper position as he let his trigger finger go autoloader-aerobic. The barrage of return fire cut the crap with that slayer, so certainly the thing had been hit—but the reprieve was only going to be a temporary kind of thing.
And motherfucker, the cops were just two blocks over. They’d surely heard the fresh gunfire, and there’d been enough of it to track. This place was going to be swarming with plug-in policemen in the blink of an eye.
L.W. craned his neck around. There was no going back where they came from. Not unless they wanted to dance with the CPD patrol cars who’d revved by just as the dumpster had appeared—and as soon as those cop-bots figured out they were in pursuit of absolutely nothing, they were going to be pulling one-eighties.
Okay, they were totally trapped.
As he tried to put some weight on his left leg, his brain stem went opera-singer with pain. “Fuck.”
“How bad are you?” Shuli asked as he reloaded again—with hands that shook.
“I’m just great—”
“Can you fucking walk?”
He gave it another shot with putting his shitkicker in the snow and pushing on it a little—and had to lock his molars to keep from yelling.
“No—”
The slayer started shooting again, and as bullets pinged around, L.W. glanced back at the dumpster. He couldn’t get himself there to take cover, much less Shuli—
The high-pitched whine of a motorcycle going fast at a low gear rang out off in the distance, so loud, you could hear it over the continuing gunfire. L.W. grabbed Shuli’s leather jacket and used his good leg to push against a tread-hold and drag them farther back while staying against the wall. As flecks of brick hit his face and speckled his chest, he knew that shit was about to get so much worse, assuming that bike came with a lesser.
Snagging his cell phone, he fumbled with the damn thing. He had so much blood on both of his hands, he couldn’t enter the code. Shoving the phone in his own face, he blinked because suddenly there was a brilliant light on them—
Even more bullets now, to the point where he had to hunker down and protect his head and internal organs. At least the bike had slowed its roll, though—
“Don’t shoot me!”
Huh…?
L.W. couldn’t see a thing, but he’d know that voice anywhere. “Rhamp—”
“Oh, fuck. You’re injured, too. I’m calling for backup—”
“I can dematerialize. Take Shuli—”
Shuli’s voice was nothing but a weak mumble: “Take L.W.—”
“Shut up—”
“Shut up—”
As he and Rhamp barked the same two syllables at the aristocrat, he was reminded why he loved Lyric’s twin. Only a male with balls as big as church bells would steal a bike, and penetrate an active shooter situation in a blind alley when there were more CPD bots around than human gawkers at this point.