Chapter 39 Consequences #2
Hunters swarmed like bees, and I squeezed the trigger until my magazine was empty. Heart slamming, sweat soaking the roots of my hair, I locked eyes with a large man in Hunter black.
His smile froze my blood to ice.
“If I make you scream, will he come running?”
He launched, and I raised my knife, prepared to collapse under his tremendous weight.
Lucas materialized between us. His knife sliced into the monster before giving it a violent twist. A kick to the chest, and the giant was gasping his last breaths on the floor.
Several Hunters turned to Lucas.
“…fucking traitor…”
“…slit your throat…”
I reloaded my magazine and handed him my gun.
The crowd of Hunters parted.
“Get down!” Adam shouted.
Lucas jerked me into the stairwell as I caught sight of a Hunter armed with something large.
“Come out, come out, Scott!”
Bullets came for Lucas through the wall. He shoved me away. Staggering, I tipped over the top stair, tumbling to the landing eight steps below, knife clattering away. My elbows and knees barked as they knocked into wood. Above me, plaster showered Lucas.
Left leg throbbing, I scooped up my knife and hustled back toward him. Lucas edged to the threshold, knife ready. He waited in silence as the gunman approached. The black metal of the barrel peeked through the doorway.
Lucas slid under the firing line. He swiped his knife, tearing a hole through the gunman’s flank. The Hunter grunted, and I yanked the gun from his pliant hands. Trigger still warm on my finger, I blasted through his chest, then emptied the magazine on the nearby enemy.
Beyond the stairs, Adam and the other Defiants were locked in hand-to-hand combat in the hallway.
Lucas leapt at the swarming Hunters, flipping one and burying a knife in his chest.
“He’s up here!” one screamed.
“Goddamn it.” Lucas launched his only throwing knife at the man’s throat. “Shut the fuck up!”
Breathing hard, bleeding, Lucas struggled to fight off the horde that closed in on him. Red stained his skin, and rage built in me like an inferno. I stabbed one of his attackers in the liver. Another, the kidney.
Defiants fought behind me. Beside me. Up and down the stairs. I staggered over debris and bodies, trying to keep up with the stronger fighters surrounding me.
Adam slammed into the wall next to me. A large grenade bounced off the wall near the stairs and landed beside us.
Shit!
Adam jerked my shoulder. My fingers barely clasped Lucas’s shirt, pulling him with me as Adam shoved us through a door into a bathroom.
The room burst apart. Debris showered us at lethal speeds, embedding in my skin like razor blades. I lost my footing and crashed onto the tile floor. My leg spasmed and cramped. I clawed my fingers into the muscles to release them, eyes frozen on a dead Defiant beside me, impaled by pieces of wood.
Blue eyes, open and sightless.
As I struggled to stand, Adam snatched me behind a stall door. The world spun for several moments.
“What are you doing!” I hissed over my ringing ears.
He pointed through the crack left in the door. Lucas stabbed a knife into a Hunter’s throat and used him as a human shield when another in the doorway unloaded a pistol.
“Traitor!”
Stinging pricks came to life across my body, and I extracted pieces of shrapnel from my hands without looking. Adam kept an arm around my waist.
Pistol empty, the Hunter raised a knife.
Lucas dropped the body and lifted his own weapon. “You really want to do this?”
The man spat and advanced. “I’ve got my orders.”
Adam withdrew a pistol but found no clear shot. Lucas cornered his foe against a sink. He raised his knife. The man ducked, feinting to one side. His blade rammed into Luke’s calf, and Lucas threw his knife, catching the man in the stomach, before falling to his hands and knees.
Adam dropped his gun to the floor and slid it to Lucas. It skittered to a stop next to Luke’s hand.
The Hunter ripped out the knife and swung toward Lucas. Raising the gun, Luke shot once. A thump followed as the man dropped to the floor, a bullet in his head.
Adam released me, and I skidded to Lucas’s side. “You okay?”
He fell to his side. “Give me a sec.” He tossed the gun back to Adam, who kept cover.
Teeth gritted, Luke flinched as I unsheathed the knife from his leg. He had pieces of glass and metal buried everywhere.
“We’ve got to get out, guys,” Adam said. “Smell that?”
I sniffed.
Fire.
Lucas stood and shook himself, exchanging a glance with Adam. The grenade had destroyed the stairs and landing. Bodies littered the area, and blood stained every surface. I lost my balance as I stepped out, slipping on the mess.
Lucas squeezed my elbow. “Come on.”
We had to find another way downstairs. We tiptoed into the main hall. A shrieking explosion shook the ground beneath our feet. Fire burned far at the end of the hall.
Adam glanced up and down the empty space. “We need to get outside.”
The three of us searched the dead bodies around us for firearms. I replaced my missing knife. Lucas found a single handgun with ammo left. He gave it to me.
I checked the magazine. Three rounds.
“Use them wisely.” He coughed against the rising smoke.
Glass shattered several rooms away, and we hurried toward the main stairs. On the ground floor, the flames ate through the plaster and wood like hellfire. The cloistering heat suffocated me as we rounded the last flight. We ran for the French doors to the patio, all three blown wide open.
Vaulting into the nippy night air, we paused. Shadows shrouded the raging battle. Dozens of soldiers fought from the patio clear down the sloping, overgrown gardens to the gazebo at the far end of the museum. Sporadic bullets popped.
The fight swallowed us, and we lost Adam in the fray.
I treaded Lucas’s heels as he flew down the cement stairs, ignoring the fighting soldiers around us. We wound up on a stone path near the wild gardens. We made it to the decorative pond when I caught sight of Devon battling for his life between two Hunters.
“No!” I slid over some rocks in my way and headed toward him.
“Sophia!” Lucas yelled.
Skidding underneath the swerve of a blade, I bypassed an enemy, burying my knife into one of Devon’s attacker’s legs.
I stabbed over and over again, and he fell, twisting to thrash me.
The tip of his blade sailed across my throat.
Fire seared through the shallow cut. He swung again, but Lucas slid behind him.
Grasping either side of his head, Lucas wrenched to one side. The man’s neck snapped.
As Devon unsheathed his knife from the other Hunter’s abdomen, he turned wide eyes on me, then Lucas. “How did they find us?”
“The interview,” I said. “Listen. We have a safe house on Evanston. If we can get out, we can hide there.”
“Alright—”
Isaac appeared, bleeding and limping. He grabbed Devon’s hand and dragged him toward the gazebo.
“Come on.” Lucas pulled me along the stone path.
Running with a limp, Lucas took us by the largest pond and branched off onto another dark path leading away from the fights, toward the parking lot. He guided us off the stone footpath and into the wooded area beside it, using the trees as camouflage.
Peering through the trunks toward the gazebo, I froze.
Lucas jerked on my hand, but my feet had turned to lead.
Because there, on a bench inside the gazebo, surrounded by at least six guards, sat Jack Miller.