In For the Kill (McClouds & Friends #11)(112)

“You are exactly like Zhoglo,” Sasha said to him with surprising clearness. No hesitation, no stutter, no cough.

“No, I am not!” Pavel hissed, stung. “I killed Zhoglo! I defeated him for you! It was all for you, you ungrateful piece of shit!”

“You defeated nothing.” Sasha’s broken nose bubbled with blood with each breath, but his voice rang clear. “Zhoglo just found a new body to inhabit. Yours was perfect, because no one was home. He possessed you. He owns you. You are pathetic.”

One of the men slapped Sasha on the back of the head, sending him stumbling forward again.

“Let the boy speak,” Pavel said. “It’s just the sound of a baby whimpering when he does not get his mama’s tit.”

“Don’t speak of my mama. You killed her, too.”

For that one moment, everyone’s attention was focused on the emotionally fraught interchange between the vor and his son.

Sam twisted, sprang up. His forehead smashed into the face of the man holding him.

Josef’s grip slackened for an instant. Sveti jerked her hands free, seizing the thorny branch. Josef grabbed her wrists again. She pulled back against him, with all her strength . . . and then reversed direction suddenly, driving the long, stiff thorns straight into Josef’s face.

He screamed. So did she. Bam. Bam. His gun went off in her ear.

A shower of prickly pear fruit pulp rained down on them. Joseph clawed at his face. Blood streamed from one of his eyes. He was screaming, but the gunshots had deafened her. She barely heard them.

Sam’s foot spun through the air, connecting with Josef’s gun hand, but he lost his balance, stumbling to his knees. He rolled back up again. Josef’s gun bounced and spun on the broken asphalt.

Pavel’s mouth was wide, in the deafening silence. His gun swung in strange slow motion to aim at Sam.

Sasha leaped up and flung himself in front of Sam.

Bam, bam, bam, bam. A heavy vibration thudded, deep in her body. The bullets jerked Sasha this way and that. He crumpled on top of Sam, bearing him backward, onto the ground.

Sveti dove across the broken asphalt for Josef’s gun. Pavel swung his pistol around. “Do not move a muscle, whore.”

Sveti froze, then drew her hand back slowly. She could not tell if Sam was alive. Sasha made wheezy, sucking sounds. Shot in the lung. Sam had been shot in the lung once. She remembered it so clearly. It was right after she’d met him. And fallen madly in love with him.

Thoughts spun in her head, buzzing and frantic, uncoupled from the events that were unfolding. Pavel walked around Sasha’s slight form, still sprawled over Sam’s legs and torso.

“I wish you had never been born,” he said to his son.

“Me too.” Sasha’s hand jerked out from under his blood-drenched shirt. Bam.

Pavel stared down, astonished, at the revolver in Sasha’s hand. Then at the small hole, right in his heart. Blood leaped out, arching and spattering. Flooding down his shirt.

He crumpled to the ground on top of Sasha, eyes blank.

“Tato,” Sasha whispered.

“Vor!” the guy with the shotgun bellowed.

Bam. Bam. Bam. Sveti opened fire on the man, with Josef’s gun. The guy’s shotgun fell to the asphalt, bouncing out of reach as his legs buckled, folded.

He sank to his knees, sagged to the side on his ass, clutching his belly. Blood seeped through his fingers. His eyes were wide.

There was only the sound of labored breathing. From all sides.



“Sveti.” It took all his energy to punch the sound out to her. He was leaking, blood pressure dropping. “Baby. Look sharp. Talk to me.”

Sveti jerked her gaze from the guy she’d gut shot. Josef’s Beretta PX Storm compact bobbed dangerously in her shaking grip. “What?”

“Baby, it’s me. Sam.” He made his voice louder. “I need you.”

The stunned blankness in her eyes vanished, and she jolted into movement. “Sam. Oh, God. Sasha.” She scrambled over to them, on bloodied hands and knees, laying the gun down. “You’re shot?”

“Don’t know, exactly. I can’t use my arms. I don’t want to move, and jar him. Get Pavel off, and lift Sasha so I can crawl out.”

Sveti heaved Pavel off with a grunt of effort and slipped her arm beneath Sasha’s blood-drenched body. He made a thin keening sound.

Sam crawled out from beneath Sasha. His shoulders felt torn from their sockets. He glanced at the gun that had fallen from Pavel’s hand. A Kahr PM9 Black Rose.

“You’re shot, too? Oh, God, Sam!”

“I think most of the blood is his,” he said. “I caught a couple bullets that went through him.” He looked down, evaluating as best he could without his hands. Chest, upper thigh. Lucky his femoral artery wasn’t nicked.

Sveti’s eyes widened in horror. “Sam! Your chest!”

“Must have caught on my rib,” he wheezed. “Hurts like a motherf*cker, but I can still breathe okay. How about him?”

She lowered Sasha to the ground and struggled out of her crocheted sweater. Sasha’s red, sticky hand lifted, seeking blindly. Sveti clasped it while she pressed the shrug against his wounds.

Sam scooted over. His wrists were bleeding, he felt the hot slickness, though his fingers were numb. But Sasha was way worse off.