Thicker Than Blood (Thicker Than Blood #1)(27)

Not bitten. Those two words were like fuel to my dwindling fire. My waning energy erupted, my worries for myself instantly gone, replaced with nothing but concern for Evelyn.

After dislodging my foot from the skull of the infected and helping me to my feet, Alex kept one arm looped around my waist, holding me up as he unchained me from the altar. It took several attempts, but he finally found the right key and removed my shackles. I winced at the sight of my bloodied and mangled wrists, but then quickly forgot about them.

“Evelyn,” I whispered frantically. “We need to find her.”

Alex, his back to me now, was bent down next to the body he’d dragged into the room. Roughly rifling through the man’s clothing, he was pocketing whatever he could find.

Getting to his feet, he thrust a small blade at me and I readily took it, grateful for it. The smooth handle was hot in my cold hand, steady and sure against my shaky resolve. I could do this if I had to. It wasn’t as if I was any stranger to using a knife on someone, even if that person had been sleeping. My apprehension stemmed from the fear of retaliation. I wasn’t a fighter, with very little physical strength. If a full-grown man came at me…

Gritting my teeth, I shut down that line of thinking. I would do what I had to do. I would be strong and fight, if need be. I’d be like Evelyn.

“Stay behind me,” Alex said, his voice a hushed whisper. “If anything happens to me, you run. Understand? Just run.”

I managed to bob my head up and down, my relief at finding out I hadn’t been bitten short lived. We still had to get out of here…wherever we were. The last thing I remembered was being torn away from Evelyn, and then I’d woken up here, shackled and alone, only to have an infected shoved into the room with me.

“What is this place?” I asked as we crept quietly toward the door. “Where are we?”

With one hand on the knob, the other clutching a handgun, Alex turned his head just enough to look at me. In the bouncing light that gave his already shadowed features a menacing glower, he swallowed audibly.

“Hell,” he replied darkly. “Just another version of hell.” His expression and his words were a window to his soul, and for the first time since I’d known Alex, he seemed honestly afraid.

Instinctively, I reached out, placing my palm on the small of his back and fisting the material of his shirt. It was a reassuring gesture, both for him and for myself. His eyes shut, just for a second, but in that moment I saw his features relax. The worry seeped from him, and when they reopened, he was the Alex I knew once again.

Hard. Determined. And ready to fight his way out of hell.

Again.





Chapter Twelve



Evelyn

“You’re going to regret that, friend.”

Somehow I’d backed myself into a corner, the heavyset man blocking any chance of escape I might have had. At least he was no longer smiling. In fact, he looked furious, so much so that his saggy jowls were quivering with rage.

Glancing behind him, toward where his companion lay unmoving, and hopefully, not breathing, he turned to back to me, his upper lip rising in a crude snarl. “The Lord will not be pleased.”

Crouching lower, I backed even farther away, my back now pressed against the cool, damp wall. I’d been lucky with the younger one. Leisel’s screaming had spurred me on and I’d struck out wildly, gripping hold and ripping out his hair, my nails digging into his eyes, but it had been his own weapon that had been my saving grace—a long-handled police baton that had been tucked into his belt. Taking hold of it, I’d swung as hard as I could, feeling the crack against the man’s skull, the force of the impact radiating down the baton and into my arm. Then I’d taken off running down the hall, in the wrong direction, no less, only to find myself boxed in.

Now the other man was advancing on me, a shotgun in his hands, and I knew there was no way out of this. You didn’t bring a metal club to a gunfight and expect to make it out alive.

Tears, unexpected and unwelcome, formed behind my eyes, startling me as one by one they slid down my cheeks. Trying to staunch my emotions, I took a deep breath, and ended up whimpering instead. I was suddenly furious, hating myself for allowing this man, this lunatic, to see my weakness. Hating that it was this stranger who was the first to see my tears after so many years of containing them. Not Shawn, not Jami, not Leisel, but this vile, hateful, murderous man who used God as an excuse to hurt others.

And that was where I found it, my strength. In the knowledge that I was better than this man, than these people. That even if I were to die here today, I would die with the knowledge that I was a survivor, a true fighter, who didn’t resort to violence, who hadn’t lost my mind just because the world as we’d known it had ended.

Gritting my teeth, I unfolded from my crouch and stood to my full height, ready to meet my fate head-on. So focused was I on my quickly approaching death, I nearly screamed when Alex was suddenly there, running up behind the man with his own gun drawn. Alex jumped up into the air, and as he came crashing down, slammed the butt of his pistol into the back of the man’s head.

The shotgun fell first, falling free from the man’s hands as his eyes went wide. The man himself fell next, slumping into a heap on the floor. But Alex didn’t stop there. He leaped on top of the man’s lifeless form, using his gun to hit him again and again, over and over until blood sprayed from several gaping wounds in the man’s head.