“I am,” I agreed, lowering my aim as I stepped back out of his reach. I fired a single shot through his right kneecap, watching him crumple to the concrete beneath our feet. “I have no intention of killing you right now.Thatwould be a far quicker death than you deserve.”
“If you need a gun to win this fight, then you’re hardly a man at all,” he spat, swinging uselessly with his pipe. The absence of a gun of his own was odd, given his personal preference toward them. I hadn’t imagined I would find him mostly unarmed.
What man runs for his life without a gun?
“I am merely a man who is impatient to tend to his wife after you tried to burn her alive. She just refuses to die, doesn’t she?” I smiled as he realized I’d already found and saved Isa. “You should have known you cannot burn the wife of the devil.”
“No. I suppose you can’t,” Pavel said, a slow smile taking over his face as he dropped the pipe to the floor. The blood from his knee stained the concrete, but a cruel smile claimed his face as I hefted the pipe into my hand.
His own hand tightened around something he clung to, squeezing gently. It wasn’t until I looked down at it that I saw the blinking light held within.
Too late to stop the explosions that detonated around me, I dove toward my prey and the exit just on the other side of his body as the tunnel collapsed.
Rubble rained down; chunks of concrete and building foundation and rock surrounded me and pinned my limbs. The exit disappeared, only a few feet away as all the moonlight was blocked by debris.
My world went dark.