Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 138274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
“The fucker entered something on the keypad,” Z continued over the dim ringing of the elevator’s my-door-is-open! alarm, “and sprung this vault. I got a quick view of the tunnel on the far side. Smart move using steel so we can’t dematerialize in or out of it.”
“You called V, yes?” his twin asked. “Maybe he can spring the lock electronically.”
“Yeah, he’s coming as soon as he can. I told him it was a numerical thing, but I don’t know enough to give him any more information than that.”
Z glanced around the basement again, not that anything had changed in the last five minutes. The place looked like it had been ridden hard and put up wet, all the bucking fuckets—
Fucking buckets, that was.
“I need a vacation,” he muttered as he went over and checked out one of the Home Depot drywall specials.
The thing was filled with the oily black blood that coursed through Lash’s veins, and Z had a feeling it was because the slayers threw up after they were turned. Always buckets at the induction scenes. There were also smudges of the nasty shit all over the floor, and articles of stained clothing lying around like dead soldiers on a nuclear battlefield.
Phury nodded to the stairwell that had been blown open. “I think we need to relocate until reinforcements come. This site is beyond not secure. For all we know, the slayer wasn’t leaving, but going for backup, and we’re about to get ambushed.”
For a split second, Z saw his twin properly, in the way he always did when there might be a threat coming, a final snapshot in case something went badly: Phury was standing under one of the ceiling lights, and with his long, multi-colored hair pulled back in a tie and all that black leather, the similarities between the two of them were even more clear—and as the center of Z’s chest got tight, the shot of fear was a reminder that having his blooded brother by his side in the field was always a double-edged sword. On the one hand, because they were twins, there was no one better to fight with. They had a sixth sense on what to do and when with each other, and that coordination, whether there were weapons involved or it was a hand-to-hand combat ground game, was deadly.
Really handy when you’d infiltrated one of Lash’s lairs, tipped your hand to your presence by chasing off a lesser, and were rolling the dice on maybe becoming the target of a coordinated attack.
But their closeness was also a weakness. The flip side to their connection was that he and his twin were not objective when it came to each other. Not only did they have families of their own to return to, but because of their history? There was an enmeshment that didn’t promote the kind of objectivity required by war.
“Well, I think we should stay,” Z said. “Butch and Rhage are up on the street, monitoring the entrance, and more of us are on their way.”
Except Phury was right, the street access wasn’t the real problem. If the slayers pulled a reverse Uno and swarmed through the tunnel seal with their Ken-doll-looking evil master?
“Has Lash never heard of a mop,” Xcor announced as he drew his shitkicker through the ooze on the floor.
The stocky Band of Bastards leader lifted his foot and glared at the tread on his boot, his distorted upper lip curling off his canines.
“I don’t think that male’s worried about any Yelp reviews,” Phury tossed back. “The intel was right, though. This is a lesser factory—”
The scent of Turkish tobacco preceded the arrival of the resident computer genius, and as V bottomed out at the lower level through the busted fire door, the brother took a last inhale and flicked the butt off to the side like the whole building was his ashtray.
“Gentlemen,” he said as he came forward. “What we got.”
“You tell us,” Z said as he went back over and Vanna White’d the vault door. “And fair warning, we might have company soon.”
“When do we not, true? And could someone turn off that fucking elevator alarm?”
There was a ringing pop! as a bullet was discharged into the Otis. Then Xcor glanced over his shoulder and lowered his gun. “Fixed it for you.”
“I love you, man. I mean”—V put his gloved hand over the black daggers strapped to his chest—“I really love you.”
With that out of the way, the brother went to the keypad and took out a black box the size of his hand. As he hovered whatever the hell the device was over the square of numbers, Zsadist palmed up both his guns—and Phury and Xcor did the same, the three of them establishing a guard perimeter around Vishous while he worked. The good news: In this corner, there were no ceiling lights, no doubt to conceal the tunnel entrance, so there was a little coverage here—assuming those stairs all the way across the induction scene were the only other way down to the basement.