Indigo(73)

No choice, Indigo thought, and she dropped the cloak of shadows she’d been hiding in. Kenny Ortega, part of the sports staff, swore as he shoved back so hard in his chair that he tipped over and slammed to the ground.

“Everybody, stay where you are!” Indigo snapped. She backed away, moving swiftly and skillfully across the tops of several desks, keeping the killers in sight even as they spread out through the office. “It’s not you they want!”

Doesn’t mean they won’t kill these people, she thought. This was a gamble. Caedis might be manipulating them, but if the slaughter nuns thought they were the good guys, Indigo hoped that meant they wouldn’t kill innocents at random.

“Selene? If you have a plan, now’s the time to speak up!”

Nora checked over her shoulder, and spotted an emergency-access stairwell sixty feet away, at the other end of the room. Its glowing red EXIT sign shone like a beacon. Only three of the sisters had managed to block the way so far. Selene had shifted into a combat stance, but if she had suggestions, she hadn’t volunteered them.

“Okay, first things first,” Indigo said. “We take this fight someplace else.”

They had to move the fray away from this bustling room full of people. The NYChronicle staffers were terrified, probably assuming the slaughter nuns were terrorists. Several stood up and tried to flee. Kenny Ortega climbed to his feet and barked at the nearest nun to back off. He took a fighter’s stance, and the nun smashed his nose in, then swept his legs out from under him. The sisters started shoving the journalists aside, pushing them over, knocking them out of the way.

Anything to reach Indigo. Anything to kill her, and ostensibly to kill the god within her, too.

“Damn it, Selene!” Indigo shouted, nodding toward the metal exit door.

Selene glanced that direction, saw the glowing sign, and understood. “Got it! Make a run for it—I’ve got your back!”

Indigo pivoted and dropped into the aisle. She faced the three warriors blocking her way and charged them headlong, leaving Selene to handle the rest.

They didn’t all have to die—not here, not now—but they all had to move.

From this position, most of the nuns were at Indigo’s back. She wasn’t sure if it was better or worse that way, but Selene was running point and the EXIT was calling her name. In the stairwell, there would be shadows. In the stairwell, Indigo would have options.

In the stairwell, nobody else had to get hurt.

But the first of the three obstacles was ready for her—blades in hand, and scowl on face. Indigo went in low, counting on her weight to carry her smack into the woman’s knees. Indigo crashed into her like a bowling ball, knocking her hard without sending her flying. The Androktasiai flailed but rallied, snagging one blade on the rough Berber carpet and swinging the other one around at Indigo’s head.

Indigo ducked, rolled behind the nun, and shoved her forward—directly into Selene’s sword. Maybe the woman gasped, maybe she cried out. Indigo didn’t watch, and she didn’t listen. She didn’t have the attention to spare, not when the second and third nuns were bearing down and closing in. When one of them tried to sweep her legs, she leaped aside, bounced off a metal desk with a loud clang, and slid on her ass to a more defensible position against a cubicle.

From there, she kicked with both feet and caught the first woman in the chest—propelling her back into the third. It was only a little save. Indigo was still on her heels, and then on her feet.

Selene got a grip on the nearest nun and seized her by the tunic, then flung her back down the aisle toward her friends. One of them tripped over her, and another jumped. They did not stop. They did not close ranks. They trickled around the mail carts and the printers and advanced at a graceful, terrible speed.

But the EXIT sign was still calling, and now it was closer. Twenty feet away, maybe.

For twenty feet, Indigo scrambled, and with Selene breathing down her neck she slammed into the emergency bar and leaned on it. IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, HOLD LEVER: DOOR WILL OPEN IN TEN SECONDS.

The slaughter nuns were going to close the gap in a whole lot less than ten seconds.

The alarm began to wail, starting at a low whistle and working its way up to a hard scream. Everyone on that floor who wasn’t fighting for her life popped up and looked around. Women grabbed purses and men collected satchels. Several stayed cowering in their cubicles, but most of them made a run for the elevator alcove and the main stairs there.

Indigo wondered what they were thinking now, those people. She’d been an urban legend, and now they’d all seen her. What would they remember?

Selene sliced, chopped, and stabbed, using her body to shield Indigo’s while they waited those ten interminable seconds. The press of the sisters’ bodies was a crush of wild limbs and sharp blades, but finally the emergency exit door gave way, and they all collapsed into the corridor in one vicious tumble.

Indigo could breathe again. There were shadows again.

She seized Selene and pulled her into a corner beneath the stairs, gaining a few feet of distance. But it wasn’t that easy, not against these women. She knew it would be bad, and she knew that Florence had almost been too much—and now she was in even closer quarters.

But she had shadows. She slipped in and out of them, popping free when she had to, slicing and thrusting unseen when she could … and in the face of more blades, more fury, when she couldn’t.