All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [215]
Heat surged through her and seared away the pain.
Six more soldiers saw her over their fallen comrade. They ran at her, yelling, and leveled their weapons.
She moved toward them.
They opened fire.
This time the bullets felt like wasp stings. They hurt. A lot.
But Fiona shrugged them off.
She whipped her chain around—it elongated, links clinking—and cut through black gun metal, wooden stocks . . . fingers, and hands.
The soldiers screamed and writhed on the ground. The smell of their blood repelled her, and, at the same time, it was intoxicating.
When she’d cut Perry Millhouse in half, that had been a different Fiona Post. She’d actually mourned the death of that killer.
These men were murderers, too. They would have killed innocent people. Little kids.
The only thing she felt for them was contempt.
She stepped over them—left them crawling, in shock, bleeding—and strode toward the church.
Every soldier in the courtyard saw her now, though. There were two dozen of them. They screamed. Some made the sign of the cross. Others ran away.
Most opened fire.
They couldn’t touch her. She was no longer Fiona. No longer susceptible to mortal inconveniences like death. Power and hate pulsed through her every fiber—
A monstrous diesel engine coughed to life behind her.
Fiona froze. She’d forgotten one very important thing.
She whirled and her overblown ego deflated . . . along with her sense of invulnerability.
The armored tank on the corner belched black smoke from a tailpipe. Treads chewed through cobblestones as it and its turret rotated and the main gun arced toward her.
Stupid. Stupid!
How could she have been so blatantly arrogant to turn her back on an armored tank?!
Three options flashed through her mind.
First, she could stand here like an idiot and get blown to bits (an option her body seemed to favor at the moment because her knees wouldn’t unlock). Not that it even had to hit her to kill; the overpressure blast from the cannon could do that without ever touching her.
Two, she could run. She was sure, though, all that would accomplish was to get her blown up a few paces from where she stood. Great.
Or three . . . she could do what she came down here to do: fight.
Her body moved before she finished that last thought—as it had when she’d fought Mr. Ma. Her muscle and sinew knew more about saving itself apparently than her brain.
Fiona sprinted toward the tank. The chain played out through her grasp.
The turret locked on her dead center.
She jumped and flicked the chain forward. The slender bracelet that had loosely fit about her wrist was now five times her body length, each link as large as her fist, the edges razor sharp. It wrapped about the tank’s turret—whipped around and lashed twice about the main gun’s muzzle.
Fiona felt rapid pings through the metal in her grasp . . . the shell clicking into the tank’s firing chamber.
She grasped the chain with both hands and pulled.
Infernal metal shrieked through hardened steel. The turret slid apart at an angle where it’d been severed; half the muzzle clattered to the ground.
The tank fired.
Turret cut in half, firing mechanisms no longer aligned, the shell exploded inside . . . along with the rest of the tank’s munitions.
The air filled with firecracker flashes, each as bright as the sun.
Fiona only distantly registered this as she was hurled back, felt a thousand stings—and then a section of steel tread hit her.
There was blackness. . . . It was quiet. . . .
That was nice. Peaceful.
But then a ringing intruded on her rest, which started faint and then turned up to an ear- and then skull-splitting intensity.
She blinked. There was a dull blur. The sky? Clouds?
Yes; they were nice. Fluffy. That one looked like a hand. Those, a flock of white crows.
She rolled over. The courtyard where she and the tank had been a moment ago was a crater of smoldering