Even though she’d been about to die.
Looking around Kane’s bulging arm, she focused on the stained wall, and wondered how much longer until the head of the guards came back out. “Hurry.”
He began to run, and as they zeroed in on the stairwell’s doorway, she found herself praying unto the Scribe Virgin. So close, so close… but the danger seemed to magnify as they covered more and more of the distance.
Down at the exit, Apex swung the steel panel open and urged them on, his frantic hand motions as if he could remove obstacles out of their way—
The head of the guards emerged back where the pegs and the stains were.
“Run faster,” Nadya hissed. “They’ve seen us.”
At which point, the head of the guards shouted and drew a gun.
Later, Nadya would wonder the hows of everything that happened next, but she knew the “why”: In a split second, she pictured Kane getting shot in the back, and she could not let that happen.
Moving with a desperation that meant she ignored the pain, she shoved her hand down under Kane’s arm, got the gun that was on his hip out of its holster, and lifted the weapon up over his shoulder. She was so weak that she had to use two hands, and after she flipped the safety off, she just started pulling the trigger without bothering to aim. As a bullet exploded out of the muzzle, and another, and another, Kane put another surge of speed into their escape—and the head of the guards ducked back behind the door.
Nadya shot again and again, the discharges hitting the wall, picking off pegs and putting holes in the stained gray panels. Sweat broke out across her forehead and she struggled to keep the gun up, but fear gave her what she needed.
And then they were in the stairwell.
Apex grabbed the weapon from her just as her hands lost their grip, and he quickly reloaded with a clip from his own gun belt.
“Smart thinking,” he said to her as he shoved the muzzle back out the door. “Take the hand! Go to the chute!”
“I have the key,” someone said. “To one of the vehicles down in the lot. We can drive out!”
Everyone glanced at the male who spoke up. White-haired, and very definitely not scenting like a vampire, he was dressed in a flannel shirt and blue jeans, with a flashlight in one hand and a large gun in the other.
Before he could say anything else, a barrage of bullets sprayed the door Apex was at, pinging off the steel, shattering the wired glass window. The male braced the thing closed and winced, sure as if the lead was going into his own body.
Kane ducked down. “Can you dematerialize—Nadya, can you—”
“No,” she said grimly. Then she gripped his massive shoulders and looked at him through the hood. “Leave me, you’re free—”
As more bullets hit that metal panel, he shook his head. “As long as you’re in here, I am not free.”
At that moment, the world seemed to stop and she stared at his face. In the raw light from overhead, she still couldn’t believe her eyes.
“Who did you feed from,” she whispered. “The Scribe Virgin Herself?”
There was a brief pause, as if the guards down at the other end were reloading, and Apex jumped up, cracked the door—and pulled his trigger again.
“Go!” he barked. “I’ll hold them as long as I ca—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish. The white-haired male with the flashlight and the car key locked a hold around his chest and hauled Apex right off his feet.
Kane took off up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. When he got to the next floor, which would be the first that was aboveground, he couldn’t reach the handle on the fire door with her in his arms and he stamped his boot like he was impatient with waiting even a moment. Apex and the other male were arguing as they arrived on the landing, but the former paused long to yank the handle—
“Fuck,” he muttered. “Centralized locking has been engaged, and there’s no reader for the hand. Stand back.”
Kane turned to the concrete wall and sheltered her with his body as Apex discharged three bullets at the juncture of the door and the jamb. Then he pulled the panel open.
The alarm that went off was loud enough to wake the dead.
Meanwhile, right under them, what sounded like an entire army flooded into the stairwell, the clamoring boots, mix of scents, and waft of gunpowder the kind of thing that spelled deadly defeat.
“Don’t even think about staying here to cover us,” the male with the white hair said. “I picked you up once, I’ll do it again.”