Chapter 20
Chapter
Twenty
The air was thick and heavy, choking my lungs.
I yanked my shirt over my mouth as we darted across the vast avenue congested with chunks of rubble, dead bodies, and overturned wagons.
The thunderous sounds of screaming, confusion, gunfire, and tumbling wreckage cracked the pavement like mini bombs, all creating a deafening sound.
Warwick took the lead, weaving through the destruction, pausing behind an overturned cart midway. Birdie and I kept on his tail, our weapons up and pointed. Alert and on guard for any trouble.
“I have to say . . .” Birdie pushed her back into the cart as she slid in next to us, pointing her gun behind us, the piercing sounds of gunshots filling the atmosphere. “For a distraction, that was pretty good.”
Warwick didn’t respond, his eyes forward, while mine watched for any danger coming from other directions. The gray skies didn’t help with the smoky air. It was hard to see more than a few yards in front of us.
“You’ll find a lot of things blow up around Warwick,” I replied.
“Like my ovaries,” Birdie muttered under her breath loud enough I could hear her. I shot her a look. “What?” She shrugged. “Like you weren’t thinking the same thing.”
Yep . . . No! No, Brexley, you were not.
“Shit,” Warwick grumbled, ducking back behind the wagon, his fury knocking against my bones.
“What?” Anxiety darted my head around. I could feel he was pissed, but not why.
“The explosion was supposed to take out that thing.” He motioned to the street.
“What thing?” I peered over, my eyes assessing every movement and shape through the hazy air.
“That,” he grunted, pointing to a huge object being rolled out into the middle of the boulevard.
“ó, hogy baszd meg egy talicska apró majom!” Oh, may a wheelbarrow of small monkeys fuck it, Birdie hissed, her head shaking. Many old Hungarian phrases had survived and seemed even more relevant now in this crazy world.
My throat tightened as I gazed upon the object. I knew exactly what it was. I had loaded it many times in a drill. Made from iron, cannons had survived the fall of the wall unscathed, highly sought after in the Eastern Bloc countries. Especially in fighting fairies since iron was their weakness.
“Fuck.” My stomach dropped at the sight of the cannon being set in position, pointing right at the rundown mansion that held the rebel headquarters, a soldier lighting the fuse.
Please be gone already. Please. The fear was instinctual. My thoughts went directly to him, pulling me to his location.
Shit. I stood on the roof, looking at Scorpion’s back alongside Maddox, Wesley, and the twin guards I met when I first arrived here.
They were hiding behind a partial wall, firing down on the HDF soldiers.
The haze was still thick, and a massive chunk of fallen debris blocked their view of what was really happening below—and the peril coming for them.
Terror plunged through me, and I saw Scorpion jerk, his body whipping around, sensing me, his eyes finding mine.
“Scorpion! Run!” I yelled through our bond. Down on the ground, I heard the sizzle of the fuse about to run out. “NOW!”
His eyes widened and he instantly reacted.
“Go! Go!” he bellowed at his group, waving them toward the stairs.
Maddox instinctually responded to his friend, scrambling across the roof, the others moving slower, questioning his reaction.
I knew they didn’t have time to get all the way down the stairs, anxiety shooting through me at the thought. I couldn’t do anything.
“What? What’s going on?” Wesley curved back to Scorpion.
“Just fuckin’ move!” Scorpion yelled, his arm waving for them. The five of them hustled for the far side, but the me on the ground heard the crackle fizzle out in a way that meant they were out of time.
“Hurry!” I pleaded and motioned for them to rush, knowing only Scorpion could hear and see me.
“Cannon . . .”
BOOOOOM!
The iron ball sliced through the top of the building, directed at the shooters on the roof.
Brick, wood, plaster, and metal shredded, exploding into chunks as the guys raced for an escape.
It flung them forward like paper in the wind.
Their figures soared off the five-story building as rubble raced them to the ground.
“Scorpion!” I screamed as I watched his body plummet.
The link between Scorpion and me was severed with a harsh snap, forcing me to suck in violently.
“What? What’s wrong?” Birdie said. She and Warwick both turned to me, my hand on my chest, trying to stabilize myself.
Were they dead? Did I not warn them in time?
“X?” Birdie called to me, but I couldn’t stop trying to reach back out. My heart thudded in my chest, grief knifing me. I barely knew him, any of them, but the link to Scorpion made all that unimportant. We were tied together. It felt like losing a family member.
Suddenly I was back behind the building, Maddox and Wesley stirring, but I searched for the other. For the guy who had suddenly become so much to me.
I spotted a figure crushed under a huge chunk of cement, blood and gore splattered everywhere.
No . . . please, no . . . Vomit churned up my throat.
A groan shifted my view to another figure in the debris
“Scorpion!” Lying on his back covered in dust, rubble, and blood, his eyes bolted open, sucking in a gulp of air. His head turned, our eyes meeting.
“Kovacs?” Warwick’s voice yanked me from the link with Scorpion, swiveling my head to him. His aqua eyes narrowed on me, like what the hell is going on with you?
“They’re okay.” I breathed, my spine curling into the cart with relief. “He made it out alive.”
“Who made it out?” Birdie asked.
“The guys . . . Maddox, Wesley, and Scorpion.” I knew at least one of the twins had been killed, but I could not deny the relief the others were okay.
“How do you know?” Birdie looked puzzled.
I could feel Warwick’s eyes probing into me, but I wouldn’t meet them.
“Reload,” a man yelled, shifting our focus to the soldiers. “Level it!”
“We have to get out of here.” Warwick motioned for us to follow. “I hid my bike in the bushes, there.” He pointed to overgrown shrubbery on the main road.
“Right there?”
“I didn’t have time to find a better spot, princess,” he snapped at me. “If I remember, I was warning your ass instead.”
We inched our way to the other side of the street, hiding every few feet, making sure we weren’t followed or seen. We gathered into an alleyway, Warwick’s bike only a few yards away now.
“Well, this is where we part ways.” Birdie reloaded her gun, her voice emotionless.
“What?” I was surprised at how I had bonded to this group in only a day.
“Yeah, I have a place to hole up for a bit.” She shrugged. “Plus, I’m better on my own.” I totally understood that.
“I have no doubt our paths will cross again, X.” She pulled her hood higher over her white-blonde hair. “Trouble seems to follow you.”
I snorted. “Yeah, I get that a lot.”
“Something tells me you will be in the middle of whatever is coming.” She nodded at me, then did the same to Warwick. “Legend.”
She was gone, running down the open-ended passage, away from the chaos with no sentiment or “take care.” It made me like her more.
Booooom!
Jumping, I swung around as another cannonball ripped through the mansion, completely demolishing the top of it.
“Come on.” Warwick stepped out, slipping against a wall, creeping toward the bushes.
I kept my gun up, eyes focused behind us while my heart slammed in my chest. The noise and pandemonium reached piercing levels, tearing at my security and sanity. Every moment felt like my last.
I had never been in a war, but this was what it was like in my mind. The dead bodies of young soldiers dotted the ground, the air thick with the smell of terror, hate, and death.
Screams and orders. Bullets and bombs.
Destruction. Bedlam.
Battle was not something you could truly understand until you experienced it. It triggered the basest responses in people. Survival. Forgoing friendships and ideals.
I was stunned, gutted, and horrified . . . because I was no different. This wasn’t the first time I killed fellow comrades to survive.
Kill or be killed.
“Corporal Markos!” The name cut through the commotion, peeling away all the layers, yanking my head to the boulevard, my stomach a nauseated swirl.
Everything stopped.
My eyes fastened on my former best friend.
The man I loved for half of my life. Only about twenty yards away, dressed in his soldier gear, his rank far above what it should have been for a new graduate.
Istvan was all about nepotism if it kept power in his family, and having only one son put all that on Caden’s shoulders.
Caden’s chest puffed, jaw tight. “Report.”
“We found Gabor dead and Sergeants Anto and Joost unconscious and in serious condition.” The soldier swallowed nervously. He was talking about Elek, Joska, and Sam. “Private Kovacs was gone. But we are searching everywhere, sir.”
I was right here. Only about 60 feet away from them.
“If you find her, come straight to me, do you understand? Not to my father or Kalaraja. Me.”
Kalaraja. Fuck. Should have figured the Lord of Death was near. No doubt he was the one who tracked me here.
“Kovacs.” Warwick had pulled out his motorcycle, flinging his leg over it. “Come on.”
Click. Click.
The sound of a gun being cocked froze me in place. I felt the barrel press into my temple as a figure stepped out of a dark, empty doorway.
Warwick pulled out his gun in a blink, pointing it at the man in a standoff.
“I can shoot her faster than you can shoot me.” Kalaraja’s familiar nasal tone sent shivers up my spine.
Every cell in my body was frozen, guttural terror freezing me in place. My gaze locked with Warwick’s.
How stupid and novice for neither of us to have considered a snake would be lying in the grass waiting for us.
“I think Ms. Kovacs is coming with me.” Kalaraja took the gun from me, unaware of the one I still had tucked into my pants.