Hellfire Drop (Brimstone Cycle Book 2)(15)

“Jesus.” he says once he gets there.

“Moving.” says the woman, about ten feet away from me. She covers the thirty feet or so separating herself from the window, and takes up position no more than five feet away from the driver. She looks down in the direction that the driver is looking. A moment later she steps back, her eyes wide.

“Jesus.” she says, repeating the driver.

I can’t see what they see, but at least I can move. My legs, though still stiff from being tied up so long, work fine enough.

“Moving.” I say, picking up their lingo, as I walk around to the space between the two mercenaries. I don’t know the specifics of how these two have been trained, or what combination of techniques they’ve developed together, but I have a feeling that any kind of unannounced movement behind them would be a good way to get accidentally shot. I’ve dealt with enough gunfire today, so the last thing that I’ll ask for now is taking a bullet by mistake.

Neither the driver nor the woman look up at me as I come around, but the man gives a half nod of acknowledgement in my direction. They’re both too busy looking at whatever it is on the ground. When I finally catch a glimpse outside the window, I see why.

Lying on the ground is the body of a man, his chest punctured by three large, wet looking holes. I recognize him. He has a long, scarred face, a narrow nose, and thin fingers splayed atop one of the wounds. It’s fucking Tom, still wearing his suit and tie from our meeting at the diner before.

“Jesus fucking shit.” I say forcefully, my heart rate picking up. A bad feeling sweeps over me from toe tips to sternum. I start backing away from the window, moving slowly, my hands raised.

My reaction is strong enough to make the driver look at me. By the time he does, I’m already five or six steps away.

“What the fuck is this?” he says. His gun isn’t pointed at the body through the window anymore. His hips are now turned at a new angle. My way.

I recognize the stance. Low ready position. One of the best ways to prepare for a snap shot at close range. While he isn’t quite aiming at me, it’s close.

“What the fuck is this?” he repeats, and I notice the shimmer of tears in his eyes. His eyes are fixed on me, and when I glance at the woman standing next to him, I see that she’s trained her eyes on me as well.

Neither of them notice the movement starting up where the figure lay. But I do, which is why I’m not surprised when a voice answers him loudly enough to carry across the divide.

“Tom isn’t here right now.” said a voice, the tone mocking and cruel.





CHAPTER FOURTEEN


The driver’s eyes go wide and he snaps his gun back towards the window. By the time his barrel comes in line with his original target, it’s too late.

The devil riding Tom shot through the broken window almost too fast for me to see in the darkness. He reached down and grabbed the driver’s kneecap, fingers spread wide, and squeezed tight. For the second time tonight there’s that ugly tree branch cracking sound. The driver falls, his mouth jammed open in a silent howl of pain.

The woman only hesitates for a second, which is fast considering the situation, before she fires her revolver from the hip at close range. The blast hits Tom in the chest, just under his collarbone and blows a dark spray of fluid and flesh out into the night.

It doesn’t matter though, because the devil is still moving. First climbing to his feet, then dashing away from us, gone.

The woman flicks on a small flashlight attached to the bottom of her revolver and moves closer to the window - she swings it in fast controlled arc that methodically paints the darkness outside the warehouse with white. She doesn’t find the devil though. He’s nowhere to be seen.

The woman keeps the revolver raised, and the sights even with her eyeline. She turns in more circles, the barrel kept in line with whatever direction she looks in from moment to moment. After another sweep of the darkness, she starts backing up towards the window covered wall until her back bumps into the frame and her feet come in line with the driver, shaking and gritting his teeth at her feet.

“What’s the call, chief?” she whispers down to the driver at her feet. Her voice is no longer under unyielding control, and takes on a shaking quality that I doubt she’s experienced in using. The driver answers her with little more than moaning, his control broken.

The woman squints out into the darkness, then calls out, changing tactics.

“It’s me, Tom!” she calls out. “It’s Janie! We’ve been looking for you!”

No sounds answer her beyond the moans from her friend.

The woman shakes her head and again aims left and right with the shotgun, this time pointing in my direction for a bit. I flinch, worrying that in her panic she’ll open fire on me.

The one bright side is that the woman responds like a professional once she catches sight of me. Acting by what seems like a reflex, she lowers the weapon down to a 30 degree angle a moment before it can come level with me.

Whatever silver linings I see in that are short lived, because the devil chooses that moment to come back to us. I hear something shuffle in the night, and turn away from the woman just in time to see the devil wearing Tom sprinting at us at full speed.

No, I realize in a moment of horror. More than full speed. Full speed for an Olympian is 100 meters in ten seconds. The devil wearing Tom, however, is running so fast that he could probably cover the same distance in half that time.