Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [134]
“I’ve got an idea,” I exaggerated. It was barely half an idea, but we were going to have to wing this, goddammit, and we couldn’t sit around all night with our thumbs up our asses.
“Let’s hear it.”
I didn’t spell it out. I just acted, trusting him to play along.
I seized the upended desk just as someone’s arm went reaching around it—and I shoved it hard enough to break the offending arm. I heard a shout of dismay and a groan of pain but I didn’t hang around to dwell on it. With a hearty shove I pushed the desk out the door; it squealed along the floor in jerky fits, and it was heavy as hell but I’m pretty damn strong and I kicked it around—using it as cover for the both of us.
Adrian got the drift. I let go of the desk and let him hold it up with his shoulder, and I set to the fast, messy work of disposing of the guys standing between us and the stairwell. There were more than a couple (four by my vicious, bloody count) and they had guns.
They opened fire. I leaped forward, taking down the first one so fast he probably never saw me coming at him. I broke his neck and used him to catch a few bullets from the remaining assholes, then I flung him aside and went after the other three.
One slug caught me just under the collarbone and another went zipping through my side. They both burned like crazy but there was nothing I could do about it right that moment. I worked through the pain and I worked fast, bringing the other guys down one after another while Adrian used that carbon steel blade he’d adopted to hack, slash, and slice any body parts that came jabbing around the desk.
In less time than it takes to write a paragraph about it, the path to the stairwell was clear … but probably not for long. I couldn’t hear much over the din of close-quarters fighting and gunfire, but when I took an instant to stretch my psychic sense—listening with it, for lack of a better way to put it—I detected people crashing around downstairs, maybe on the first floor. And outside there were cop cars, fire trucks, and other official sorts of vehicles wending their way toward us with the speed of the righteous.
But we didn’t have to make it all the way back down. We only had to make it to our hole over the stairs, and then we’d pray that no one who’d rappelled down from the roof had noticed our point of entry. Or was hanging around waiting for us.
I was back at Adrian’s side in a flash. He was busy acting like a tiger around the edges of the desk. I hissed into Adrian’s ear, “Can you hold it?”
“Alone? Not for long.”
“I don’t need long,” I said and I gave the desk’s underside a shove that concussed at least two skulls on the other side. We didn’t have the advantage of numbers, but the defensive position was ours and two were far more maneuverable than however many were on the other side.
I was bleeding. Not bad. It was slowing to a trickle even as I trickled it all over Berber carpeting. Had to ignore it. Had to keep pushing. We were in deep shit. Ian and Cal might be in deep shit. First things first.
Out.
And that meant using whatever was at hand, up to and including whatever the dead guys behind us were toting. I rummaged through their clothes, pulled off two guns, stepped back, and began firing two-fisted badass-style—which chased a few of the more adventuresome bastards away from the corners.
One corpse left, the farthest one. By the stairwell.
He was carrying bulky loot; I could see it under his zipped-up sweater. And when I unzipped it with a one-handed rip, I saw that he was wearing a bandolier loaded with grenades.
I have no doubt that a wide, manic smile spread across my pretty little face.
I unbuckled the bandolier because the canvas was hard to tear and anyway, I wanted to bring the whole bunch, not just one or two goodies for chucking. I returned to Adrian’s side.
His eyes bugged out when he saw the grenades. Then he made a smile just like the one I’d made when I first saw them. “On the count of three, okay?” I said, and I jutted my head toward the stairs.
He got it. He