The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust #5)(71)

But as time stood still, like the arc of a roller coaster as it crests that first hill and gets ready to plunge, a strange, giddy elation washed over me.

“Lover,” Caitlin said.

I looked to her. She threw back one side of her coat, like a gunslinger at high noon. Her fingers traced the brass handle of the coiled black bullwhip on her belt.

Then she smiled, and whispered, “Dance with me.”

A guard went for his weapon while the deck of cards dropped from my sleeve. Two cards whipped through the air as his pistol boomed. One flew between him and Caitlin, catching a bullet in its heart, and the other sliced open his throat from ear to ear.

Caitlin’s bullwhip lashed down upon the concrete, rippling with hellfire, and the crowd—screaming now, realizing this wasn’t part of the show—knocked over tables and fell over each other scrambling to get away. I hit the ground, rolling, a stray bullet whining over my head, and snatched up the dead guard’s piece. Jablonski was right next to him, swinging his gun around to drop a bead on me. I jumped up from a crouch, grabbed his gun’s muzzle, put my barrel up against his wrist, and pulled the trigger.

Jablonski shrieked as his wrist blew apart, shattered bones jutting through a ragged, gushing hole. I kept hold of the muzzle as I turned, using him as a human shield, and emptied my clip into the closest guard. Then I dropped the gun, yanked his away, and used that one instead, cracking off two quick shots at a bodyguard who felt like playing hero. I missed, but he hunkered down behind a flipped-over table, pinned down for a second.

One of the spectators I recognized—the golf pro—went sliding past me. He was on the ground, Caitlin’s whip coiled around his throat and his body engulfed in devouring flames as she reeled him in like a prize fish.

Rule number one in a gunfight: stop moving and you’re dead. I ran straight for the tables, snapping off wild shots on the go, and jumped. My shoe hit the edge of the capsized cocktail table, sending me up and over, and I put three rounds into the bodyguard’s panicked face. I landed hard on the other side, bullets chipping into the wood behind me and chewing away the improvised cover one chunk at a time.

I pulled the trigger again, hammer slapping down on an empty chamber, and threw the empty gun aside. The bodyguard’s piece, still clutched in his cold hand, was a sleek nine-millimeter in blue chrome. I snatched it up and sprang out of hiding before the guards could flank me. Too slow: ten feet away, one of Jablonski’s buddies had me dead to rights, sighting me down his barrel like a pro target shooter. Then Caitlin’s free hand flung up and a silver dagger, long and thin and gleaming like a needle, whistled through the air and buried itself four inches in his ear.

Another guard burst from the guard tower door, smart enough to go for the big guns. He clutched a pump-action shotgun, aiming it for Caitlin’s back. I sent a handful of cards flying. The shotgun roared and the cards dropped, taking the hit for her. She spun, crouching, and her whip cracked as it coiled around his ankle and yanked him off his feet just before his flesh ignited.

Over the screams, over the crackling of flames and gunfire, Caitlin’s delighted laughter rang out. Her wild grin mirrored mine as we went back-to-back, picking off the last of Lancaster’s men. The audience had fled, a screaming mob headed for the security gates, desperate to escape.

At last, silence.

Corpses littered the killing floor, sprawled across overturned tables and chairs, some riddled with bullets and some charred black. Caitlin casually flicked her wrist, calling her whip back and quenching the flames, then coiled it around her bent elbow. I leaned against her, and she nuzzled my shoulder as we both caught our breaths.

“We should do this more often,” she murmured.

Strained whimpers caught my ear. I turned. Jablonski knelt in a pool of his own blood, clutching the ruin of his wrist.

“Oh, we’re not finished just yet,” I told her.

I walked over and nudged Jablonski with my shoe.

“Hey. Asshole. Get up.”

He looked up at me, tears streaming from his squinting eyes. “Just kill me already. Just do it.”

“Changed my mind. I’m not gonna kill you,” I said. “Not if you do everything I say. I need you. I have to get back into Hive C. What’s the best way to do that?”

“Th-the whole place is gonna be locked down by now. Automatic fail-safe if the alarms go off.”

I pressed the barrel of my gun to his forehead.

“And that fail-safe can be deactivated by…”

“Central—central security. They’ve got overrides for the entire prison.”

“Do they have eyes on this place? Security cameras?”

“No, they’re blind when it comes to Hive B. The warden puts most of the new guards in there, the ones we aren’t sure we can trust yet. All they’ll know is a riot alarm went off and they should call for help from the highway patrol.”

“Good. On your feet. You’re gonna take us there.”

Klaxons droned through the deserted halls, every loudspeaker blaring a warning. Jablonski stumbled ahead of us, squeezing his wrist to try and stop the bleeding as he led the way. The stampede of escaping spectators had left us an open path.

“They’ll be buttoned up in there,” he whined. “It’s like a panic room; nobody gets in or out when the alarms sound.”

“Let me worry about that,” Caitlin told him.