White Hot (Hidden Legacy #2)(53)

The tornado edged closer to him.

If the whirlwind of flames found him, he’d burn alive. The mage controlling the tornado had to be down the street in one of the ATVs that had been following the tanker truck.

I jumped the concrete barrier separating me from the twin squat buildings of OKR Industries and dashed through the narrow gap between them. Thunder cracked behind me. The air smelled of ozone.

The gap ended. I glanced around the corner. In front of me, two people in tactical gear and armed with automatic weapons stood on the edge of the street, hidden from Rogan by the front OKR building. The third, in the mage pose—arms bent at the elbow, palms up—floated three feet above the pavement. An aerokinetic.

Behind them, on the street, one ATV was a crushed mess, with a chunk of the truck’s cistern sticking out of its smashed windshield. Past it, thick steel bars blocked the street. I was one hundred percent sure they hadn’t been there when I drove home.

“He has to be near that building. Swing it more to the right,” a man next to the mage said, his voice accented.

I took a deep breath, steadying myself. I should’ve brought the rifle instead.

“That’s it. Cook him.”

I braced myself, put the shotgun to my shoulder, and fired. The automatic shotgun barked, spitting death. An AA-12 combat shotgun fired three hundred rounds per minute. Each three-inch cartridge in the drum held a tiny warhead that armed itself three meters after it left the muzzle and exploded on impact.

I put two rounds into the mage before he realized what was happening. The high explosive ripped his body apart, tearing through flesh. He didn’t even scream. He just fell, but I was already swinging the shotgun around at his friends. Five rounds left the muzzle. The other two bodies jerked and went down without a word, turned into human meat.

The other side of the street erupted with gunfire. Bullets buzzed, biting chunks from the building around me. I ducked back into the gap. Five rounds for two people at that range was overkill. My adrenaline was too high. I had to calm down or I would panic and then I’d die.

I grabbed the grenade, jerked the firing pin out, and hurled it across the street. The loud boom of the explosion echoed through the night. I leaned out and ducked back in as a bullet grazed my shoulder, like a red-hot bee. Didn’t get them. Damn it.

To the right of me, the wind mage twitched on the ground, convulsing. He should’ve been dead. How was he not dead?

The fiery tornado swung into my view, zigzagging wildly all over the parking lot. It veered toward me. Unbearable heat stole all the air, as if a bonfire had exhaled into my face. It hurt to breathe. I backed away through the gap.

The mage still twitched. I raised the shotgun and fired. The round took him in the head. The fire loomed over me and rained down. I sprinted back out of the gap toward my home and burst into the parking lot.

Behind our warehouse, on the other side of the building, lightning cut the sky, flashing again and again, answering a steady staccato of gunfire. On the street, the remnants of the tanker truck burned, the orange flames fighting with the darkness.

Shots ripped through the night. I spun around. It was probably the same people who’d shot at me from across the street when I took out the mage. They weren’t shooting at me this time. They couldn’t see me behind the building, so Rogan had to be the target.

A twisted chunk of truck cab shot down the street, as if launched from a cannon. Metal clanged and the shots died. Ha!

I turned and saw him pressed against a building across the street. He slumped over. Shot? Fear gripped me. No, no blood. Not shot. Tired. Rogan was spent.

Shadows leaped over the remnants of the cistern, illuminated for half a second by the flames. Hairless, wrinkled, about four feet tall, they didn’t look human. Nor did they look like any animal I had ever seen. Their legs bent backward, like the hind appendages of some demonic grasshopper, while the front of their bodies curved up, ending in two muscled arms equipped with two claws longer than my hand and a dinosaur head with round yellow eyes and a forest of teeth.

Holy crap.

The front creature let out a gleeful bloodthirsty screech. As one, the pack spun toward Rogan’s hiding place.

Oh no, you don’t.

I jerked my shotgun up and fired.

The first round took the leading creature in the stomach. It kept coming. I squeezed the trigger and kept firing. The Frag-12 rounds chewed through the monster flesh, shredding their bodies. Strange intestines spilled out. An awful sour stench polluted the air. The creatures fell, one, two, three . . . Seven rounds gone.

The leading beast was too close to Rogan. If I aimed for it, I’d hit him. The creature leaped almost ten feet, flying at Rogan, his black claws poised to rend into flesh. Rogan sidestepped like his joints were liquid. A knife flashed in his hand. He dodged and buried his knife in the beast’s side. The creature flailed, ripping a gash across Rogan’s chest. Rogan kept stabbing with brutal efficiency, sinking the blade into the wrinkled alien body again and again, slashed its throat, and dropped it aside, his knife bloody.

Only twenty yards separated me from the last three creatures. They turned and charged me. I fired twice. The shotgun clicked, empty, the drum spent, one beast unmoving on the ground.

The first beast leaped, claws raised like sickles. I jumped aside and swung the shotgun like a club. The shotgun connected, but the beast was too huge. I might have hit it with a fly swatter for all the good it did me. The creature whirled.