Shadows of Self (Mistborn #5)(86)

Wax caught sight of her just as she unlocked the door to the governor’s saferoom, using a key she shouldn’t have. She pulled the door open with a flourish, then glanced back at Wax, shaking her head. She obviously thought she was still a blur moving with incredible speed. And she was.

Wax had simply joined her.

One of the fallen bodies stirred, and Wayne pushed back his hat, showing a grin. Wax raised his hands, a gun in each, and was rewarded by an expression of utter shock on Bleeder’s face. She’d regrown her eye, though blood still streamed down the front of her mask. As he had chased her, talked to her, she’d always seemed fully in control.

Until this moment.

Wax blasted away with both guns. That wasn’t usually a good idea, at least if you wanted to hit anything, but they were barely ten feet apart—and besides, he was inside a speed bubble. His bullets would refract when leaving sped-up time, and so aiming was of questionable value anyway.

At a time like this, you didn’t want to be precise. You wanted to be thorough. Steris would be proud.

He fired in a cacophony, empting both weapons. He took advantage of Bleeder’s shock, dropping his guns and pulling his other Sterrion out of its under-arm holster and unloading it. His short-barreled shotgun, from the holster on his thigh, followed, belching slugs and thunder as Wax strode to the edge of the speed bubble.

After reaching the rim, the bullets deflected out into normal time, moving painfully slowly. But less than a foot separated Bleeder and the edge of Wayne’s bubble. Wax dropped the shotgun and pulled out one of the syringes again, and shoved it toward her, Pushing on the metal, hoping against hope that—stunned from the gunfire—she wouldn’t notice it coming.

As the kandra turned to run, the first bullet hit. Others followed in a storm. Half missed, but Wax had fired almost two dozen shots. Many punched into Bleeder, who dropped her Feruchemical speed as they caught her. She moved lethargically, trying to escape the hail of bullets, sprays of blood bursting silently into the air, like the seeds blown from a dandelion.

She stumbled against the doorframe, and one of the shotgun slugs hit the back of her head, ripping a hole through her face and breaking off the mask. She sagged, gripping the doorframe, draped in her red cloak.

The needle flew from Wax’s Push, spinning in the air, but it—like the bullets—had been deflected by the edge of the speed bubble. It impaled itself into the wood of the doorframe just inches from Bleeder.

She righted herself a second later, and sped up again, wounds vanishing. She didn’t look at him as her back straightened and she strode through the door. She did flip the needle off the frame, sending it toppling in slow motion toward the ground.

Wax dug a handful of rounds from the pouch on his belt, then leaped out of the speed bubble. He felt an immediate lurch—as if the world had been upended—and heard a faint popping sound. The nausea hit him like a punch to the face, but he was ready for it. He’d ducked out of speed bubbles before.

A single gunshot sounded from the saferoom.

He crossed the distance to the door in a rush, throwing the cartridges in front of himself, ready to Push on the ones that he might need to hit Bleeder. Once inside, however, he let the rounds drop to the ground. Bleeder wasn’t in the room; an open door at the back led out, presumably through a tunnel to the grounds above.

The plush saferoom—round and rimmed with bookshelves—had a wet bar on one end and was lit by comfortable reading lamps. The governor knelt on the floor, holding a bleeding Drim, frantically trying to stanch the blood coming from the bodyguard’s neck.

Wax dashed across the room, stopping at the door into the escape tunnel.

“Lawman!” Innate cried. “Help. Please … oh, Harmony. Help!”

Wax hesitated, peering into that empty, dark tunnel. He was reminded of another one like it, dusty and shored up by beams at the sides. Both a tomb and a stage …

Behind, Wayne stumbled into the room, then scrambled to help Innate. Wax remained by the door into the tunnel, rolling a few rounds between his fingers.

“He saved me,” Innate said, weeping. By this point, he was drenched in Drim’s blood. He’d pulled off his shirt, trying to use it to stanch the blood. “He leaped into the way right as the assassin shot,” Innate said. “Tell me you can … Please…”

“He’s gone, mate,” Wayne said, settling back.

“Other casualties upstairs, Wayne,” Wax said, pointing. With reluctance, he shut the door to the escape tunnel. He couldn’t give chase, not and leave the governor alone here.

Wayne rushed out of the room to check on the men who had been shot upstairs. Wax walked over to the governor, who knelt before his bodyguard’s corpse. He’d never seen Innate look so human as he did at that moment, shoulders slumped, head bowed. Exhausted, wrung-out. Could anyone fake that?

He checked anyway. “Leavening on sand,” Wax said.

Innate looked up at him, eyes unfocused. Wax’s heart skipped a beat, but then the governor sighed. “Bones without soup.”

He knew the passphrase. This was really Innate.

Wax knelt beside the governor, looking over Drim’s corpse. Annoying though the man had been at times, he had not deserved this. “I’m sorry.”

“She stopped moving at a blur,” Innate said, his voice strained. “She appeared inside, gun out, but seemed angry about something. Drim leaped for me right before she shot. She was gone a second later. Surely she could have paused to finish me off, rather than running.”