Kelly Mendig - Three Days to Dead

“Triads,” I said. “Wyatt kidnapped and tortured their Handler for information. How the hell did they track us?”

“It may be chance. We created a sensation down the street. Perhaps they were patrolling at precisely the right time.”

“Or the wrong time.”

“Indeed.”

A few more random shots preceded their flight toward the mall. And us.

“Shall I kill them?” Isleen asked, keeping someone in her sights. “Or merely slow them down?”

“What rounds?”

“Regular bullets.”

“Slow them down.”

She tilted the gun barrel down a few degrees. She squeezed the trigger. Tully dropped, blood spurting from his left thigh. Wormer faltered, concern for his comrade overwhelming his instincts. Isleen shot the back of his right thigh, and down he went with a cry. Both were a foot shy of the hidden entrance.

“What about the guy in the helicopter?” Alex asked.

Our collective heads turned. Air hissed and squealed, even above the din of the rotating chopper blades. Smoke, a flash of metal, and then the helicopter exploded in a cacophony of flame and heat and thunderous noise.

The concussion flattened Tully and Wormer to the pavement. Their cries were lost to the roaring fire. Heat rippled the air inside the mall, scorching and thick. Debris pinged against the building and car like hailstones. Flaming bits rained down on the injured men outside. The back of Tully’s shirt caught fire and spread fast, like a match to flash paper. He began to scream.

I was on my feet and running to the tune of Alex’s surprised shouts. Wormer was out cold, unable to help his companion. They may have been my enemies that day, but I couldn’t watch a former colleague burn to death. I tackled Tully and slapped at the oil-fueled flames eating his shirt and scorching his skin. My hands blistered and wept, but I didn’t stop until the fire was out. Tully was whimpering, facedown, un-moving.

I felt for Wormer’s pulse and found it strong. Good. I pulled my hand back. A red-feathered dart pierced Wormer’s shoulder where my arm was less than a second before. I toppled sideways. A second struck the pavement by my foot. Shit. I crabbed backward, driven by pain and surprise, followed by more darts, until the shadows of the mall enveloped me.

Alex was there, trying to look at my hands. The top of Wormer’s head exploded from a gunshot I didn’t hear, see, or expect. Tully tried to sit up and flee. He collapsed a moment later, half his face gone. I gasped, choking on bile.

“Who did that, Evy?” Alex asked. He looped one arm around my waist and hauled me to my feet. I let him drag me back to the cover of the fountain, still stunned by the rapid-fire change of events. In less than five minutes, things had gone from bad to completely fucked.

Another dart sailed over my shoulder and pinged off the front of the fountain. I dove for cover. Rough tile scraped my elbows. Alex landed next to me, on his stomach. He turned his head, looked right at me, and said, “Damn.”

“What?”

His head dropped to the floor and lolled. My heart nearly stopped. One of the darts was lodged in his hip. I pulled it out and threw it. The dart shattered against the far wall. The sound brought no satisfaction. Whoever was out there wanted us alive, and they were willing to murder Triads to get us.

“Evangeline,” Isleen said. “You must run.”

I glared. Her lavender eyes gave nothing away. Footsteps echoed around us. Small, many, and closing in fast.

“You must. They want you, child.”

“Alex—”

“You have no friends, only duty.”

A familiar line, one that Wyatt had tried on me once upon a time, back when I was new to the Triads and just learning the ropes. It didn’t work back then, and it wasn’t working in the mall. I did have friends. Friends I could no longer protect.

Isleen handed me the gun. I took a breath, turned, and bolted back down the mall corridor, toward the Sanctuary, firing over my shoulder as I went, hoping to get a target. No time to look, no time to see who was hunting me.

The only thought in my head was escape. Live to fight another day. I was completely alone. The Sancutary seemed to call to me, beckon me toward its powerful center. Everything blurred and, for an instant, I was sure my feet left the ground. I saw the interior of the Sanctuary, smelled the incense. Felt the warmth. Two places at once.

One … two … three stings in my lower back. Cold permeated my legs, my arms, my chest. I fell toward blackness, even as the floor rushed up to meet me.

43:10

Consciousness returned like an anvil. A headache and queasy stomach dropped out of nowhere and knocked me back to the real world. The dim room and stark ceiling sent a bolt of panic through my abdomen. Adrenaline set my heart pounding. I jerked my hands. Instead of finding them bound above my head, they moved easily at my sides. My back was on something hard and cool.

It still smelled of waste and sweat, but I wasn’t in that damnable closet again.

“Evy?”

The familiar voice startled me. I rolled onto my side and drew my knees up, prepared to spring. The sudden movement sent my stomach churning. My vision darkened. I swallowed against the overwhelming need to vomit.

I was in a jail cell of some sort, five-by-eight maximum, with no cot and a bucket in place of a toilet. Iron bars made up three of the walls, with cement blocks the fourth. A bare orange bulb glowed from an open fixture just outside of the cell. Others dotted the corridor every ten feet or so. I could see straight through to the other cells. The two on my left were empty. The one immediately to my right was not.

Wyatt knelt on his side of the bars, hands clenched around the slim poles. I blinked, certain the apparition would disappear. It didn’t. A purple bruise colored his left cheekbone. His nose was red and slightly swollen, and his knuckles were flecked with dried blood.

“You’re alive,” I said.

“So are you.”

He smiled, and I nearly broke my nose trying to hug him through the bars. My arms were slim enough to make it through, but he could only squeeze my shoulders and touch my face. I pressed my lips to his forehead, inhaling his familiar scent.

“I didn’t think I’d find you again,” I said.

“It’s not quite the rescue I was hoping for, but I’ll take it.”

Rescue. Shit. “I screwed up, Wyatt. I let myself get caught.”

“Doesn’t matter, Evy, we’ll figure this out. We always do.”

I looked past him, at the cell on his other side. It was empty. “Did they bring Alex and Isleen here, too?”

“You met Isleen?”

“We ran into each other at the train station earlier today.” Or yesterday, depending on how long I’d been unconscious. “She’s been helping us. She was there when we were captured.”

“I haven’t seen her.” His frown hardened. “Another guy was here for a while. They took him about an hour ago, while he was still unconscious.”

Fear twisted my stomach. I grabbed my throat and found bare skin. I gazed at the floor of my cell, even down the front of my T-shirt. The cross necklace was gone. God damn me for losing it. “They? Who’s doing this, Wyatt? It can’t be the Triads.”

“It’s not them, Evy. After they picked me up at the burger place, they took me to one of our holding stations near the Anjean. It was mostly Kismet and Willemy, and I spent an hour or so not answering their questions. Rufus showed up and said he wanted to talk to me. The door opened again, and suddenly he was shot….”

He looked down. I squeezed his hands, urging him to finish.

“I remember a flash grenade and a lot of shouting, and then I woke up here. Broad daylight and they’re running around like it’s nothing.”