Hellfire Drop (Brimstone Cycle Book 2)(7)

My desire to take a looksie is quickly replaced by a hope, a stupid, irrational idiotic hope, that the sounds I am hearing are just the cooks, or maybe a cat.

That’s bullshit, though, because from my hiding place I can still hear the movements, and worried panting of everyone else inside the diner. The people around me are clumsy with their movements, dropping pistol magazines because their hands are shaking too much or bumping into tables because there’s just too much damn fear in the air to do something like watch where they’re going.

The sounds I’m hearing from the kitchen area, however, are different. Measured, purposeful, and like the shotgun blasts that I’ve seen earlier, precise. No cook is moving back there. It’s the mercenary from before. Him, or one of his friends.

They’re coming for me, and if I stay here, they’ll find me before they do anyone else. For a moment I consider shouting out a warning to the other deputies before I leave. But if I did that, I’d give my position away. The men coming after me from the kitchen already have the element of surprise. I don’t want to hand them my one advantage - a bit of stealth and their not knowing where I am in the building.

I shake my head at the thought as I take out the lighter. It trembles in my hand, but when I flick it, a flame catches, and I use it for a drop.

The sensation of a drop is kind of hard to explain to someone who’s never been through one. Old Beeze tried, once and briefly. He’d said that it was little like the sensation of sinking deep into water. A kind of weightlessness, or floating, that was gentle in its own way.

It only took one drop for me to learn that Ole Beeze was a fucking liar.





CHAPTER SIX


Even when you’re used to them, drops can still be fucking scary. I’ve heard skydivers describe a weightless sensation after hopping from a plane. I don’t think they’re lying, it’s just hard to describe what happens downstairs with anything close to words that peaceful.

To start with, there’s no way of confusing the sensation with floating. You’re falling, and the sound and sensation of all the wind flying by leaves your brain with no doubt of what’s happening.

There’s also nothing visible to land on once you enter downstairs. No ground. No ocean. Just an endless, throbbing miasma of cloud and burning ash. There are colors, mostly red, and a whole lot of sulfurous smoke - so much of it that it’s best to hold your breath if you don’t want to end up choking.

Last but not least is the heat - it is Hell, after all. Most of my drops, no matter how short, tend to flash dry whatever sweat is covering my skin before bearing down on my flesh, with a nagging little sting that wastes no time in unfolding into naked agony. My clothes, quite often, will even start to smolder as well. For some reason, though, this isn’t one of those times.

I’ve barely had enough time to register what’s off about this drop when my fall changes abruptly. It’s an odd sensation, one that I’ve never experienced before. The closest thing to it that I can think of is the whole-body feeling of being jerked back in a seatbelt after smashing into something. I feel my legs go sideways and my inner ear lose its mind, followed by the feeling of slamming hard into gravel.

I blink the shock from my eyes and look around to see that I’m splayed out, not on a roadway, but the gravel parking lot of the diner I’d just left behind. The car is still burning a few feet from me, and when the light of it starts to dazzle my eyes, I realize that out here, where almost everything else is surrounded by growing darkness, I’m probably by far the easiest thing to see.

Tiiiiiiime to start moving. Being easy to see is a good way to get shot in a gunfight, so I claw my way to my feet and start sprinting before anyone can start shooting at me. Sure enough, about two seconds after I start pounding the pavement, I hear a gunshot, then another, not too far from me.

I still have the lighter clutched in my hand, and as abrupt and unexpected as my landing had been, I figure that trying a second time beats the prospect of being riddled with lead.

I flick the lighter again while running and start another drop. The sensation of falling down is even shorter this time, because I’m interrupted by another strange jerk, which throws me into another unplanned landing.

My knees slam into the ground again, the impact sending a wide spray of gravel. My eyes had already adjusted to the light from the car fire before, and as a result, I’m half blind in the relative darkness now around me. I can still see well enough to recognize the gravel under me. It’s more of the parking lot that surrounds the diner, and when I look up, I see that I’m now close to the backside of the building.

Oh shit. Shit. I’ve barely gone anywhere. My drops, the tool I’ve spent more than a decade relying on, aren’t working. Realizing that terrifies me. More than the gunfire, more than the bloodshed, more than the prospect of taking on Ole Beeze. Without my drops I’ll just be slightly scrappier than average unarmed woman on foot being chased by multiple trained men with guns. A flutter of panic tries to settle in, but I refuse to let it take hold. I know that somehow, someway, I’m getting out of here. Giving up is out of the question, not if I want to get to Ole Beeze.

I start to rise to my feet, then wince as pain laces up my knees. A few shards of rock have punched straight through my jeans and into the skin underneath. My first instinct is to let out hiss or a curse, but there’s still gunmen out there, and I need to be quiet.