Wonder Woman: Warbringer (DC Icons #1)(62)
Alia pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes as if trying to shove back her tears. “Diana, swear to me that if we don’t make it, that if something happens, you’ll end this. I can’t be the reason the world goes to hell.”
Diana dropped her hands. I’m going to need you to kill me. She’d hoped those words had been spoken in haste, that they were the result of shock and Alia would abandon such thoughts. “I can’t do that. I…I won’t commit murder.”
“You pulled me from the wreck,” Alia said, her voice hard with resolve. “You took me off that island. You can’t ask me to live with all the rest.”
A sick sensation settled in Diana’s gut. Making this vow would mean turning her back on everything she’d been taught to believe. That life was sacred. That when it seemed violence was the only choice, there was always another. But Alia needed strength to continue, and maybe this grim excuse for hope was the only way to give her that.
“Then we make a pact,” Diana said, though the words felt wrong in her mouth. “You agree to fight with everything you have to make it to that spring.”
“All right. And if it isn’t enough?”
Diana took a deep breath. “Then I will spare the world and take your life. But I want your word.”
“You’ve got it.”
“No, not a mortal vow. I want the oath of an Amazon.”
Alia’s eyes widened. “A what?”
“Those are my people. Women born of war, destined to be ruled by no one but themselves. We make this pact with their words. Agreed?” Alia nodded, and Diana placed her fist over her heart. “Sister in battle, I am shield and blade to you. As I breathe, your enemies will know no sanctuary. While I live, your cause is mine.”
Alia placed her own hand over her heart and repeated the words, and as she did, Diana felt the power of the oath surround them, binding them together. It was a vow Diana had shared with no one else, one that might make her a killer. But she did not let her gaze falter.
“All right,” said Alia on a shuddering breath. “Let’s find Jason and get the hell out of here.”
That was when the air tore open around them. A loud, staccato clamor filled Diana’s ears. She knew that sound; she recognized it from the vision she’d glimpsed in the Oracle’s waters. Gunfire.
Diana covered Alia’s body with her own, hurling them both to the ground as the ugly cacophony of gunshots filled the gallery, battering her senses. It was so much louder than in the vision.
“Alia—” she began, but her words were smothered by a thunderous boom.
The vast wall of windows shattered, dropping to the floor in a cascade of glass.
Diana kept Alia’s body shielded, jagged bits of glass peppering her back and shoulders like wasp stings as people cried out around them.
Men in black body armor were rappelling in through the huge hole where the windows had been. They dropped to the floor near the reflecting pool as party guests scattered, screaming and racing for the doors, gunshots echoing through the room.
Diana dragged Alia behind the shelter of a table. “We have to get out of here.”
“The others—” protested Alia.
The men were advancing from the opposite side of the gallery, tossing guests out of the way as they shone lights in the faces of the bodies that had fallen, examining their features.
They were clearly looking for someone—someone they didn’t intend to take alive—and Diana knew she and Alia didn’t have long.
She could smell the fear-tinged sweat of the partygoers, feel her heart racing in her chest, as if she’d woken suddenly from sleep. She tugged at the knots in the shawl Nim had made of her lasso. There wasn’t time to untangle them all. The one weapon she had was useless.
“We can’t just stay pinned down here,” Diana said, shrugging off the knotted rope and tying it around her waist to keep it from constricting her movements. “We have to make a break for the doors.”
“I don’t see the others,” Alia said, peering around the table. “We can’t leave without them.”
Though Diana’s heart was pounding, her thoughts were clear as she adopted and discarded strategies, her mind turning over the layout of the room, calculating the positions of their assailants. The other guests were trying to crowd through the room’s two doorways, shoving and pushing at one another in their panic, but she suspected the soldiers would have already barricaded the hallways and would move to seal the doors. Any time someone tried to escape through the shattered glass wall, a bullet struck them down. Diana scanned the shadows of the wide balcony above the reflecting pool where she knew snipers must be lurking.
A bullet struck the slate floor beside the table, sending up a puff of pulverized stone. Diana wondered what a gunshot might do to her, but there was no time to worry about it. She had to get Alia to safety.
“Diana!” The shout came from the other side of the temple, barely audible in the chaos. Jason and Theo were crouched behind another table. She met Jason’s eyes and gestured toward the rear of the temple. It was the one spot in the room that provided a defensible position with any kind of real cover. If Diana could get Alia there, she would have time to locate Nim and maybe figure out an escape plan.
“I’ll find Nim,” she said. “But we need to get you behind that temple. We can’t just sit here and wait for them to flank us.”