Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
“Ay!” Alec yells out as she slides to a stop in the open expanse of the corridor that the one we’re currently in T-bones into. If this were, in fact, a movie it would all happen in slow motion. But it doesn’t. It plays out in real, horrifying, fucking time.
“Christine!” I scream as the bullets from the two guns she’s facing pour toward her in a horizontal shower of unnatural rain.
And…
They miss her.
They all just miss.
She is not thrown back, driven to the ground by the torrent of hot metal.
I don’t believe in… well, anything really except me and the two people holding rifles with me. But maybe there is some universal power looking out for us right now. Or maybe it’s just looking out for Christine, full as she is with the unusual biological magic that is creation. Or maybe the guys are, like Zander, just really shitty shots. But whatever the reason, she simply skids to a stop, the projectiles wing past her, and she squeezes the trigger on the AK she’s holding, responding in kind.
And she doesn’t miss.
I don’t peer my head back around the wall in time to see the bodies drop, but by the time Christine has stopped firing I know they’re down because there is a shocking and abrupt silence. “Where are they?” Christine asks, turning her head to us quickly before spinning it back to scan the hall in front of her for more threats. That’s when both Alec and I hazard a look and see all three of the uniformed guards dead on the ground. The two who were doing the shooting and the one Zander used as a shield. All fallen to the castle floor. All bloody and dead. “Where are they?” Christine repeats.
“Zander went through a door down there. He says he thinks that’s where Andra and Theo were before,” I say, nodding toward Liam.
“Let’s fuckin’ go,” she says, marching toward where I’ve indicated.
I look at Alec, realizing that the pain from where the orbit of my eye was clipped by a fucking bullet is really starting to ramp up. The chaos and adrenaline sort of kept it out of my awareness for a minute, but now the blood pounding throughout my body seems to all be funneling directly to the socket I’m trying to keep closed out of instinct. It really, really, really fucking hurts, is what I’m saying.
Alec nods at me and we start to follow after Christine. Liam is still sitting on the ground, moaning. Again, I got shot in the fucking eye and he only got clipped in the shoulder, so I really don’t have a ton of sympathy for the bullet he took, but on a larger, more global level, I do have some kind of sympathy for him. I realize Alec does as well, because upon hearing him moan, Alec kneels down to face him, causing Liam to jerk. “Ay! Listen to me, man!” Liam is shivering, terrified. For probably a few reasons. “Where’s home?”
“Sir?”
“Don’t fokken ‘sir’ me, man. Where do you come from? What town?”
“Durban?” He says it like he’s not sure he remembers anymore.
“Go back there.”
“Sir?”
“Fokken—GO. BACK. THERE. Get away from all this kak. Go back there, like a good laaitie, and figure out something else to do with your life. You hear me? Do it. Or I will find out, find you, and I won’t let you go so unscathed a third time. You hear me, man? Fokken go. Home.”
Liam nods, stunned and bewildered. Alec nods back, stands, and he and I start to catch up to Christine, who is steps from the door Zander went through. We bolt after her and as we race down the hall I feel compelled to make an observation: “And you thought you couldn’t be a good father.”
“Fokken shut up, man,” Alec says as we arrive in front of the door, next to Christine.
Alec takes up one side of her. I take up the other. Alec, Christine, and Danny. Facing the unknown. Yet again.
I check my clip. Christine checks hers. Alec his. Nobody says anything. No one looks at the others. We just face the closed door, take a breath…
And Christine kicks the fucker in.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
ALEC
The room is an anomaly. Not in a universal sense, but in the sense that it doesn’t comport with the rest of this centuries-old castle.
It is a playroom. Bedecked in vivid, primary colors. Soft mats on the floor so that a child might frolic and not be harmed.
Ironic, I would suggest.
A small “jungle gym,” as they call them, is in the middle of the space. It is an odd name, as there is nothing about them that resembles a jungle and they are hardly gymnasiums, but I suppose they are quite a bit of fun if one is only a tiny thing and wants to stretch one’s growing muscles.