Chapter 26 A Damnable Frenzy of Magnums, and a Fading Pulse, a Weakening Heartbeat
A Damnable Frenzy of Magnums, and a Fading Pulse, a Weakening Heartbeat
My righteous anger thumped through my head, nearly as thunderous as the reverberations from my pistol as I shot at all three Magnums. Unnervingly, the identical men merely stood there, allowing me to target them point-blank while looking concerningly smug.
As they continued to vibrate, preparing—apparent-fucking-lly—to duplicate again, I shot them in the chest—thrice each for good measure—before the three Magnums burst into nine.
Fuck. Me.
Every handful of seconds, each one had the potential to transform into three more like him. As if a single one of them wasn’t threat enough …
My bullets didn’t do a damn thing to stop any of them, instead spearing straight through their bodies as if they were as insubstantial as smoke, leaving holes in their clothing but not in their flesh. The bullets embedded in the wall behind the Magnums with small puffs of plaster.
Immediately, each of the nine Magnums began to oscillate anew.
My friends opened fire as well, the booms of our revolvers stunningly loud in the space, which had before felt unreasonably cavernous for an office, and now was rapidly becoming snug with each addition to our nemeses’ ranks.
I unloaded the entirety of my magazine into them—a full twenty bullets. In addition to the chest, I also hit them in the face, abdomen, groin, kneecaps, anywhere capable of severely incapacitating them.
The result was always the same: intact Magnums; shot-to-shit clothing and surroundings.
The reading nook no longer was welcoming; the sexy low-slung chair was battered.
The Magnums were at a twenty-seven count, and without so much as a single drop of blood shed between all of them.
There seemed little point to reloading. When my crew ran out of bullets, we switched out our magazines but allowed silence to settle, buzzing noticeably after so much racket.
“I don’t understand,” Layla murmured. “Joss killed you before.”
Yes, I had. With a knife, not a gun!
I slid a blade from my back pocket and launched it at a Magnum. I repeated the action over and over and over.
My four knives pierced the wall, a book, and the stalk of a ficus. Four of the Magnums’ fancy sweaters sported fresh slashes.
Brady muttered into our bond, sounding as disturbed as I felt.
I suggested.
Despair trawled its icy tentacles up my hands and feet, spreading to my arms and legs. But hell, there had to be a way to kill him, there just had to!
The twenty-seven Magnums occupied so much space that some of them lined up in front of the window wall close to the large desk. They grinned, revealing bright, straight, attractive teeth I instantly wanted to bash in with the butt of the gun I gripped at my side. Seemed to be no reason to aim it.
“You can’t kill us,” the Magnums said, all together, all at once, in perfect synchrony.
A full-body shudder swept along the length of me.
“Well, that’s creepy,” Layla whispered.
Creepy times twenty-seven.
“I killed one of you,” I insisted.
The Magnums’ smiles held steady. “Only because he didn’t anticipate it. You won’t get the advantage over us again.”
The words scraped, like rough cement against tender fingertips, sounding like they might contain truth. Still, I had to at least try, eliminate all possibilities.
Hands curled like claws, I launched myself at the nearest fucker. Surprise etched across the one’s face, distinguishing him from the rest of them, before I jabbed him in the throat as hard as I could.
My friends, realizing it was all-out brawl time, ran at other Magnums.
When mine bent over, gasping and choking for breath, I slammed my hands to his shoulders, pushing him down.
With a fast strike to my inner elbows I recognized as a standard self-defense move—which meant he actually knew how to fight, dammit, at least some—he attempted to dislodge them.
But by then I was jerking my knee up into his balls with the totality of my might and fury.
It was considerable.
My knee squashed his scrotum far up where it never wanted to go. He wheezed and sputtered. His face reddened. His eyes watered. He pitched forward, cupping his junk tenderly, and landed with a smack half on an expensive-looking area rug, half on hardwood floor.
Griffin told our crew.
Brady exclaimed.
Sure, despite our aspirations, we were no true ninjas. But our fighting skills weren’t too shabby either. We’d dedicated many thousands of hours to becoming stronger, faster, sharper, and more skilled.
The Magnums must have also realized we posed a real threat. The entire mass of them began to vibrate even while they fought back.
I snatched a Magnum, hooked an index finger in each of his ear canals, gripped the shell of his ears with my middle fingers, tugged, and jammed my thumbs into his eyeballs. He screamed and clutched my wrists, working to bend them the wrong way.
Without a single morsel of mercy, I pressed on his eyeballs with all my strength until the tissue gave way under the force. Like squishy pulp. Yuck.
He flung both hands blindly out at me, trying to grab me.
I backed away, straight into the arms of another Magnum.
A third came at me from one side, a fourth from the opposite.
With more pops, less noticeable now with the noise of the scuffles, two new Magnums emerged from each one already standing.
Floor and walls rattled. Another thunderclap boomed outside the building. And more gunfire punctuated its rise and fall.
My braids bouncing, I thrashed, attacking savagely, not keeping still for a moment so they wouldn’t latch on to me. If it was a Magnum body part entering my frame of view, I was striking or grabbing, scratching and clawing, twisting or breaking.
It was a damnable frenzy of Magnums, so much so that I lost sight of my friends—my family. The immediacy of danger was too great to use our telepathic link to keep tabs on one another.
I threw one of my last knives at a Magnum. Surprise widening his eyes, he twisted his torso with annoying agility, dodging at the last possible moment. The knife flew past him to nick the shoulder of another with his back turned.
A blow landed. Great and all, but far from serious enough to really even slow him down.
My final blade, at least, proved worthwhile. I faced a pair of Magnums. While they came at me, I leapt out of their way, slammed into another Magnum. When that one turned my way, I managed to drag my blade deep across his throat.
His eyes gawping, he clutched his throat uselessly while he dropped to his knees.
Even dying, with another pop, the fucker managed to expand into two more of him. They appeared on either side of him, on their knees, clutching their annoyingly intact throats. The lethal injury didn’t cross over to the newbies.
A Magnum yanked my arms behind me, clamping them back like steel bands. He tugged so hard my shoulders screamed, the ligaments one wrong pull from tearing.
“Submit,” he snarled beside an ear.
The office was now replete with Magnums, most of whom were vibrating, preparing to spawn even more nasty-ass copies. Pops could be heard every few seconds. The mass of swarming, fighting bodies kept growing.
Shouts, grunts, and the smacking of flesh felt as loud as the gunfire still heard from outside. Every minute or so now, the floor and walls rumbled, rattling whatever fixtures still remained intact.
Ours wasn’t the only battle raging at the institute.
I rammed the heel of my sneaker into the delicate bones of the guy’s foot. He growled as his hold faltered, but only the slightest fraction before he tightened it again, pulling even more terribly on my straining shoulder muscles.
“I said, submit,” he grunted from behind me.
Glass shattered like a crackling, tinkling rainstorm. One of the ample wall panels was largely missing, sharp, deadly shards lining what remained around the opening.
Charging at full speed, Griffin rammed a Magnum right through it, hastily grabbing onto a mullion to stop himself from catapulting after him.
The Magnum clutched at anything to halt his momentum, clasping a jagged piece of glass that rose thigh-high. It slashed his palm wide open and did nothing to keep him from falling backward, arms spinning, out the hole.
“Submit to me right now, or I’ll kill every single one of your friends while you watch.”
I stomped on his feet again. He grunted, absorbing the pain, but didn’t loosen his grip even the fraction from before.
I slammed my butt into his groin, pushing him back a foot, but I didn’t hurt him and his hold remained.
“Keep this up and I’ll make it really painful for your friends before they die.”
I stopped resisting, mostly because I had to come up with a better plan to get away.
“Believe me,” he whispered into my ear with the familiarity of a lover.
His voice dragged along my skin, leaving smeared filth in its wake.
“I can make it really, really, really bad for your friends before they go.”
I shouted into our link.
Magnums closed in around me, so tight all I could see was them.
No flashes of those I loved.
I wasn’t claustrophobic, but my chest tightened, making it hard to breathe. The Magnums crowded, denser and denser.
I yelled again, louder into our connection, trying to get them to hear me over the chaos.
Hunt shouted back. He grunted with effort.
Layla said, her admission faint over the nearly incessant pops, the rumbling and shaking of the building, and gunfire, much closer than before.
“Submit to me or you will regret it.”
The Magnum holding me was too loud in my ear when I was straining to hear Layla.
I asked.
was all she said.
Brady demanded.