Chapter 19 #2
“You think I’m a waste? Meridian hired me, Sugar. Me!” Ormond thumped his chest. “He knows I’m someone he can count on. Can you count on Snake for anything?”
“You’ve forgotten something about me, Ormond—I only count on myself.”
Arm a blur, Sugar flung his dagger at Ormond. It spun in the air—a vortex of honed steel—not coming to a stop until it penetrated the soft flesh behind his eye patch. An agonized scream ripped from his throat as he crumpled to his knees.
“Take Sugar and Horatio Slice to Clairidia,” Ormond shouted, voice ragged with pain. “Imprison the rest.”
Snake knew the Reptilians wouldn’t bother arresting them—they’d slaughter them all. Fighting back with all they had was the only way out.
“Code word,” he muttered to Horatio.
“Attica!” Horatio shouted.
Chaos erupted.
Snake whipped a poison gas bomb at one of the Turks.
Horatio turned an advancing Reptilian into bloody chunks.
Sugar used his remaining blade to gouge out the eyes of another guard, while Gunner stunned an unarmed rebel who tried to run away. Snake was about to shout, “Nice work, lad,” when a massive guard grabbed Gunner from behind.
Time slowed to a crawl.
A scaly, muscular arm—a flash of metal—a spray of blood. Gunner’s mouth opened in a silent scream, hands gripping his neck, eyes turning white as he lost consciousness.
His lifeless body hit the ground.
“Gunner, no!” Horatio sprinted toward him, still strumming. Pieces of jagged flesh rained down as Snake and the guard squared up.
“I’ll tear you in half!” Snake roared.
The Reptilian pointed at Snake with a knife that dripped with blood—Gunner’s blood. “Not if I kill you first, leech!”
Rage ignited. Snake lunged, fangs throbbing with bloodlust. Before his next breath, he’d ripped open the scaled throat and drank him dry—riding the corpse as it hit ground.
Rust flooded his tongue. Iron choked the air.
He snapped into berserker mode, his visual field now a blur of crimson and flesh.
The guards kept coming, but the crew fought at his side, screams loud as banshees while they sliced through the throng.
“Snake, Ormond’s getting away!” Suki shouted. Thighs wrapped around a Reptilian’s neck, he shoved his thumbs into the soft eye sockets. “Get him!”
That cursed name snapped Snake back to reality. He rushed at Ormond as he dragged an unconscious rebel toward an open portal. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
“Stay away from me!” Ormond had one leg through when Snake dove forward. The force of his body knocked them through the gateway. They landed hard, Snake on top, the unconscious Rebel sprawled face down in Turk’s dry earth.
“You backstabbing son of a whore!” Snake pulled the blade from Ormond’s eye and stabbed it through his shoulder, intent on torturing him for as long as possible. “How long have you been Meridian’s plaything?”
“You’ll kill me no matter what I say!” Blood leaked from under his eye patch and rolled down his cheek like vampire tears.
“You’re right.” Snake bared his fangs, but before he could bite, a blade sliced upward through the soft underbelly of his jaw, skewering his tongue to the roof of his mouth.
“Remember me?”
A swarthy figure stepped into Snake’s line of vision. Stick-straight auburn hair, one keen amber eye, the other pure white and sightless. Roland. Despite the bad blood between them, Snake had never considered him a viable threat. Until now.
“You stole Ormond from me over a century ago. Back then, you thought I was an insect you could crush under your boot. But now, you know better.” Roland flashed a sinister grin. “Payback’s a bitch. And so am I.”
Knees buckling, Snake dropped as shock swallowed him whole. Helpless, he watched Roland pull Ormond through a portal and disappear. Sugar’s ringtone sounded. Fingers slick with blood, he pressed the phone to his ear.
“Snake, we need you. We’re out of transfusions, and Gunner needs more blood.”
“He’s alive?” Snake forced the words through locked teeth.
“Barely.”
It took everything Snake had left to open the portal—and even more to crawl through it.
Seven, Slash, and Saki were waiting on the other side.
Barely conscious, he felt their hands hauling him up the ladder while the world blurred in and out.
The only thing keeping him alive was his own blood dribbling down his gullet, feeding him in slow, cruel sips.
Gripping Seven’s arm, he begged through his locked jaw.
“Just save Gunner.”
He blinked awake again when his back hit a cot. Through haze, he saw Gunner lying still—eyes sunken, skin gray—the thick bandage taped to his throat stained maroon.
“Snake! Who did this to you?” Sugar knelt by his side.
“Ro-land.” His voice was a death rattle, but he took comfort in the fact that Sugar’s would be the last face he saw.
Sugar examined the blade. “We can’t remove it until he’s stable.” He let out an anguished cry. “Who do I transfuse first?”
Snake pointed to Gunner. Vision dimming, he knew that he was fading fast.
Horatio’s face loomed over him. “Shut up, vampire.” He sliced through his own arm and pressed the dripping wound against Snake’s lips. “No one’s dying today.”