Лорел Гамильтон - Obsidian Butterfly

Edward pointed at Riker, and I heard one word of the sentence, "Guard." He wanted me to guard Riker, not kill him. Of course, we needed to know where the children were being held. I hoped he didn't die before he told us.

My hearing came back in stages. I could hear Riker saying, "Please, don't." It was what Peter had been saying on the monitor. It pleased me that Riker was begging. Edward came back from checking the hallway. He had one of the sub-guns in his hands. He'd closed the door so that if we had company, we'd get a little warning.

By the time he started asking Riker questions, I could hear, but there was a ringing echo in my head that didn't seem to want to go away.

"Tell me where to find Peter and Becca?" Edward said. He was leaning on the back of Riker's chair, face very close to his.

Riker rolled his eyes to look at him. There was bloody foam at his lips. I'd pierced at least one lung. If it had been both, he was dying. If only one, then maybe he could survive if he got to the hospital soon enough.

"Please," he managed to say again.

"Tell me where the children are being kept, and I'll let Anita call an ambulance."

"Promise?" he said, in a voice thick with things that should never be in a throat.

"I promise, just like you promised me," Edward said.

Either Riker didn't get the double entendre, or he didn't want to. People will believe a lot of things when they're afraid they're dying. He believed we'd call an ambulance because he gave directions in that thick wet voice. He told us where they were being held.

"Thank you," Edward said.

"Call now," Riker said.

Edward put his face almost next to Riker's. "You want to be safe from the monster?"

Riker swallowed, coughed blood, and nodded.

"I'll keep you safe from the monster. I'll keep you safe from everything." And he shot Riker in the head with the Beretta.9 mil he'd reclaimed from Rooster's body. My guns were still on Mickey somewhere out there.

Edward felt for Riker's pulse and didn't find it. He looked at me across the man's body. I'd always thought Edward killed with coldness, but his baby blues held a fine, heated rage, like a forest fire barely under control. He was still in control of himself, but for the first time I wondered if there would come a point tonight where he'd lose it. You can only stay cool and collected when things don't matter. And Peter and Becca mattered to Edward. They mattered more than I'd have ever thought anyone would matter to him. Them and Donna, his family.

He told me to reload the sub gun. I did what he asked. If Edward said I'd nearly emptied an entire clip in just a few seconds, I believed him. I added the extra clip from the dead man to the purse.

Edward went for the door, and I followed him. I'd thought that nothing could be scarier than Edward at his most cold. I was wrong. Edward the family man was downright terrifying.

HOURS LATER, THOUGH my watch said thirty minutes, I was plastered to a wall, crouched as low as I could get, trying not to get shot. I knew that I originally started out to rescue the kids, and I still planned to do that, but my immediate plan was just to avoid catching a bullet. That had been the plan for about five minutes. I'd heard the expression a hail of bullets, but I'd really never understood what it meant. It was as if the very air had turned into a moving, spattering thing, where tiny fast-moving objects peppered the air around you, bit into the solid rock wall beyond and left holes. There were two submachine guns down the hall, pinning us in cross fire. I'd never been shot at by fully automatic machine guns before. I was so impressed, I hadn't done anything in the last five minutes except hug the wall, and keep my head down.

The secret panel had been exactly where Riker said it would be. Edward had killed the guard on the other side with a knife, quick, efficient. We'd killed two more men before Simon and his crew, or what was left of it, found us and started fighting back. I'd thought I was good at killing people. I'd thought I was good in a gunfight. I was wrong. If what was happening to me now was a gunfight, then I'd never been in one before. I'd shot people and been shot, but that had been one on one with semi-auto pistols. The bullets whined by me in a near constant stream of noise and percussion. I was so not putting my face out there.

It was pure luck that I hadn't been shot before we got this far. The only thing I'd been doing right that had helped my chances was using every freaking bit of cover offered. The one comfort to my new-found cowardice was that Edward was crouched with me, though he kept peeking around the corner and firing short bursts at the shooters that had us pinned.

He reached around me, firing. I could feel the vibration of the gun against my body, the tremble of his arms as he held it. He darted back behind the wall, and a fresh burst of bullets thundered down at us. Edward held his hand out and I handed him another clip from the purse. I felt like a surgical nurse.

I leaned close to Edward's ear and whisper-screamed, "You want the vest? I'm not using it."

"I've got a vest on." Deuce had kindly left Edward's vest in the study.

"You could put mine on your head," I said.

He actually smiled at me as if I'd been joking. He motioned for me to scoot over, an acknowledgment from both of us that I wasn't doing much. He took up my post at the corner of the wall, and I flattened my back where he'd been. He went to his belly, firing around the corner. It only took seconds for him to peek around the corner, fire and come back, but while he was staring down the corridor I saw the tiniest corner of a head peek round the bend of the stairs just above us. The head ducked back out of sight.

I started to touch Edward, to let him know we had company, when something came sailing through the air. Something small and roundish. I don't remember thinking about it. I was just on my knees, letting the sub-gun dangle. I caught the object in my hands and threw it back up the stairs, before my brain even had time to form the word grenade. I threw myself back to the floor, touching Edward's leg, and then there was an explosion. The world shuddered, and the stairway collapsed in a shower of rock and dust. Rock rained down on my arms where I'd curled them over my head. I thought that if the bad guys came running down the hall now, I wouldn't be much help, which made me raise my head enough to see the corner and Edward.

He had his head covered by one arm, but was looking round the corner, gun in one hand. Of course, nothing would make Edward forget the bad guys, certainly not a little thing like an explosion and the ceiling about to come down on us.

The silence came gradually full of creaks and groans from the stones around us. The dust lay like a thin mist in the air. I started to cough, and Edward's hand was just suddenly on my mouth. How had he known? He gave a small shake of his head.

I got the idea that he wanted me to be quiet, but I didn't know why. Of course, I didn't need to know.

We lay quiet, and the silence seemed to build. Finally, I heard the first scrape of a footstep coming down the hall. I tensed, and Edward's hand pressed on my shoulder. Easy, he was saying, easy. I swallowed as quietly as I could and tried to relax. Quiet I could do. Relaxed was not happening.

The movements were stealthy, very quiet. Someone was creeping down the hallway towards us. Wondering if we'd gotten blown up. We were pretending that we had, but once the man got down here, the jig would be up. We could kill him, but there was another man at the end of the hall. If he didn't run out of ammo, he could hold the hall against us. He didn't want to come to us, and we needed to go down that hall. Becca and Peter were in cells in the hall. The bad guys had the upper hand because we needed to move forward, and all they needed to do was hold position.