Hidden Trump (Bite Back 2) (47 page)

“You’re getting ahead of yourself, Hoben. You haven’t wrapped us up yet. Matlal’s not going to be happy with you.” My voice came out almost as raspy as his. I had to keep it going.

“He’ll be happy as soon as I hand you over, whore.”

He was close, just a few more steps.

“He hasn’t got those guns in the factory anymore. They’re all set in builder’s foam. What’s he going to use for his attack, Hoben, bad language?”

“Fucking bitch,” he screamed at me. “You’ll pay for that. You’ve screwed me over for the last time.”

One more step. Just one.

Everything happened at the same time. Jen rolled to one side. He turned and fired at her. I saw his bullet hit her in the stomach. I launched myself at him. Jen came up with the BFG and fired back at him. The kickback tore it out of her hands. But the expanding mass of lead shot didn’t care about that. It had swollen to an area about two feet across. It hit Hoben in the middle of his chest, and his body disintegrated into hamburger.

I landed on his tattered corpse.

The pain in my shoulder grayed out my vision. I fought it down, grunting in frustration as I wrenched the pistol from his hand. Too slow. His men would be turning, firing at us.

There were screams, shots and then with an awful finality, the wet crunch that cartilage makes when it’s crushed.

I staggered to my feet. One of Hoben’s men was convulsing on the floor, his life-blood gushing from the wreck of his throat. The other was face down, his head against the floor, the enormous wolf slowly releasing the death grip on the back of his neck.

“Alex,” I gasped. He snarled and his head jerked. There was blood on his flanks, but he moved easily, turning to stare at the rest of the room.

I scrambled back to Jen’s side. There is almost nowhere in the human body where you can be hit with a bullet without a risk. The shot to her stomach could have ruptured arteries or organs. There didn’t appear to be immediate major blood loss, but I needed to get her to a hospital right now.

I’d completely lost the zone and had trouble thinking about the best way to do things.

Someone was calling my name as I struggled to gather Jen up and keep hold of my guns. My left arm didn’t cooperate—my shoulder was burning in agony. I nearly dropped her when Alex reached around and took her from me. He was stark naked, of course.

“Amber, where are you hit?” I realized he’d asked me a couple of times and just shook my head and pointed urgently back the way he’d come.

“Jen. Hospital,” I said, trying not to cough. My back and chest felt like they were in a vise.

“Come on then,” he said, running back to where the walkway came in from the warehouse. I jammed my left arm into my harness to keep it still, then I slid the BFG back into the holster, picked up the MP5, and ran after him. Any more of Hoben’s men that looked like regaining their feet I shot without a second thought.

In the warehouse, David took off down the stairs and reached the ground floor first. He started up a forklift truck that had escaped the carnage. Alex and Jen got on board and David raced it out the shattered doors and back up past the gatehouse.

“Pia!” I tossed her Alex’s clothes from the stairs. “Go! Make sure they’re all right,” I yelled.

I sprinted across the warehouse, nearly slipping on spreading pools of gas and diesel, down the passage to the factory. At the end was Paul. He was backstop, there to stay in touch with the others in Group 1 and hold their escape route open.

I slid to a halt beside him. “This is a trap. We’ve got Jen. Get them back, now.”

He touched the comms unit in his ear. “They heard that, they’re coming,” he replied. As he spoke, Jason appeared, shuffling backwards and limping, his gun wavering, but covering routes that an attack might come down. Beyond him I could see Bian, carrying an unconscious Tom, running back to us.

I shoved Jason and Paul back towards the warehouse with my good elbow. Jason’s front was slick with blood, and I knew it was bad.

“I’ve got it here,” I said. “Go. Go. Go.”

Men emerged behind Bian and I fired the MP5 on full automatic at them, one handed, not bothering to aim. Bullets ricocheted off the factory machines. A few found their targets. One magazine empty, I held the gun between my knees, ripped the magazine out and slammed the next in, my last one. Bian passed me and I backpedaled after her.

More of them were coming. My tactic had worked. Being attacked from the warehouse, they simply forgot that they could get out and surround us. It worked, but I had a big problem now. I needed to disengage and get the hell out without them being right behind me.

I ran into the warehouse and waited at the end of the passage, just out of sight. All the rest of the team were clear of the warehouse now. Soon, they’d be driving back towards the turnoff. It would all go perfectly; I would run out and leap aboard and we would drive away.

Never works like that.

I slung the MP5 over my shoulder. Time to change tactics. When the first of Matlal’s men were about halfway down the passage, heart-stoppingly close, I tossed a fragmentation grenade in among them. With the explosion concentrated in the confined spaces of the passage, the results were appalling, but I didn’t stop to see. I fired the BFG blindly down the passage and ran.

As I cleared the gatehouse I could see that some of them had figured out what they should be doing. They were coming out of the factory. But then they made the mistake of running straight across the parking lot at me.

They had no cover and, even one-handed, I can fire an MP5 accurately enough.

But I couldn’t keep that going. I was nearly out of ammunition and some of them would eventually figure out they should be going around the containers and outflanking me. Even without that, in another minute they’d all come boiling out and swarm me.

Pia and Paul and Bian had to be at the van by now, but it was too late for me. My breath rasped in my throat and my left arm and shoulder felt as if they were on fire. I couldn’t run. It was over. At least Matlal’s men would concentrate on me and the rest would get away.

I held the MP5 more firmly and scanned for the first of Matlal’s troops to break cover. I’d take a bunch of them with me.

It was dark and the rain was falling heavily now, so she was able to walk up to me without my noticing.

“Tullah,” I shouted when I finally realized she was there. “Get out of here! Get to the van.”

She stood there, ignoring me and the rain cascading down her face, her eyes focused on the warehouse.

“I’ll hold them. Go! Go!” I yelled, my voice fading.

She didn’t move, except to frown. Then her hands, clenched in fists, lifted straight out from her sides. The night writhed above her, spiraling, slick and huge and reaching up into the clouds.

I sprayed shots across at the factory doors. A group was gathering there, working themselves up to race across that deadly open space again.

My hair streamed upwards. Tullah and I were standing at the heart of a miniature tornado. Winds buffeted us, screeching and gibbering, trying to lift us off our feet. A thousand gleaming scales shimmered above our heads, coiling and turning. We glowed a strange electric blue, and by its light, I could see Tullah’s face panicking. Whatever it was she thought she was doing with her freaking dragon, it wasn’t working.

Bian’s van was coming. The Ford was following.

“Kaothos!” I shouted. “Stop it.”

I reached out to push Tullah away towards the road.

Like pushing my arm into a bees’ nest.

I touched her.

My shoulders were on fire, my skin felt as if it was rippling. Tullah’s eyes went wide and staring like a madwoman. Fat hissing bolts of brilliant blue lightning crackled and stung. And she opened her hands.

The buildings exploded.

As far away as we were, we were still lifted right off our feet and thrown into the road.

The van squealed to a halt, and David dragged us into the back.

I looked up. All three buildings were gone. There was no sign of anyone alive down there.

Of course, we had run riot through the place, firing guns and tossing grenades around. The Mack truck’s fuel tank had split. So had those box vans’. Something must have started burning and it had cooked the ammunition we’d covered in builder’s foam. That must have been what caused the explosion. Or maybe a lightning strike, I told myself.

The back of the van was painfully bright and Alex was using the emergency medical equipment. Seeing Jen, Tom and Jason lying there cleared my mind of the fog of the last few minutes, and I knelt down to see if I could help, shucking my equipment off and making the guns safe.

Alex was examining Jen, his hands sure and gentle with experience. I understood what he was doing and didn’t want to interrupt, so I turned to the other two.

Bian was attending to Tom, in her Athanate style, head bent over him. He’d been hit several times in the leg and arm, but there wasn’t enough blood to indicate any artery damage. It could have been a different story if he’d been shot with one of the assault rifles that we’d destroyed. The shock of the bullets passing through his body could have destroyed vital organs. As it was, I guessed he would live, and with Athanate healing, he’d be as good as new.

That left Jason, and I turned to him with a sick certainty in my stomach. Alex and Bian had worked a triage system on the wounded, dealing with those they thought they could save rather than those they knew they couldn’t. Jason’s skin was white and the stench told me his muscles had loosened. There was a limp finality to the way his whole body sprawled on the floor of the van. I couldn’t find a pulse or see a breath. He had only a single bullet wound through the groin, just below the Kevlar vest, but beneath him was a lake of blood where the severed artery had completed the emptying of his body. It must have taken a supreme effort for him to get back to where Paul had been waiting in the factory. He’d probably died even as Paul carried him.

I bent my head over his body. I didn’t even know how old he really was. Athanate tended to look young, but maybe he’d had a good long life as humans count it. Regardless, he didn’t deserve this. I touched my hand to his cooling forehead. At least he looked at peace, forever safe from our unprofitable strife.

I turned back to Alex and the concerns for the living. Working swiftly in the unfamiliar layout of the van, Alex had managed to rig up an IV drip and blood pressure monitor. His fingers were delicately probing Jen’s stomach, trying to assess the damage the bullet had caused.

Beneath the professional mask of the doctor, I could feel a seething anger.

“What is it?” I asked.

“She’s slipping away from me, Amber. We need to get her into an ICU.” His eyes flicked across to Bian. “She says we’re heading back to the Altau house.”

Bian’s head came back up, her eyes dark.

“Bian, I’m sorry about Jason,” I said urgently. “But we have to concentrate on the living. Jen needs a hospital now.”

“No,” she said. “We have to return to Haven. Those are Skylur’s direct orders. We have to get back now. We can’t go to the hospital.”

I could see she was furious about her orders, and that she wasn’t going to change her mind.

“Then you have to help Jen. You did it for Mykayla when she was injured.”

She turned her gaze away, closing her eyes, and her voice caught. “No, I can’t,” she replied.

Chapter 48

“What do you mean, Bian?” I reached across the van and pulled her around, gasping as my shoulder screamed protest. Bian moved easily, not resisting, but her eyes were bright with anger.

“You think I don’t want to?” she yelled at me. “I’m a healer, I want to help her. I feel her calling out to me.”

“So why don’t you?” I asked, confused.

“Skylur’s orders,” she replied. “He was patched into our comms. He said anyone in your House gets injured, you have to heal them.”

“Jen’s a bystander, for heaven’s sake.”

Bian turned her face away again. “She’s not, Amber. Even I acknowledge that. You claimed her as kin.” She threw her hands up. “And we don’t have time to argue.”

That at least I agreed with. Rain drummed on the roof of the van, making it difficult to think. Jen needed me. I wasn’t a full Athanate. I was some weird hybrid. I didn’t know how to heal people, not like Bian did. Why was Skylur doing this?

“I can’t do it, Bian. I don’t know where to start.”

It was Bian’s turn to seize my shirt and pull me close. “You are fully Athanate,” she shouted over the noise of the rain. “You think because you’ve got some crazy wolf stuff going on that you’re not, but you are. I can tell. I can tell you can heal. You have to believe me, for Jen’s sake.” Were those tears in her eyes?

“What do I do then?”

“You’re already doing it. You want to heal her. I can smell the aniatropics coming off you.”

“So…”

Bian gripped my face. “Kiss her.” A smile just touched her lips, a little of the playful Bian coming through. “It’s not as if she would object.”

She yanked me forward roughly till I was kneeling. Jen’s bloodied face was pale beneath me. My heart ached to do something. Now that Bian had said it, I could taste changes in my mouth—strange flavors, acidic, almost like unripe berries. Things were happening in me, it was just I had no idea what they were.

“Need to do something soon,” Alex said, his words blurred by the drumming rain, his fingers searching out a weakening pulse.

This felt all wrong. There was a risk that I would infect Jen with prions. I didn’t know what agents my body was producing. But Jen was out of options. I had to trust Bian. I had to try.

I kissed her cold lips. I wanted to lift her up in my arms, protect her, keep her safe. I had failed her. It was my fault for not being there, for not concentrating on getting Hoben before the Assembly. Hoben was after me, not her. She’d taken this in my place. This was my responsibility.

“BP falling.” I could hear Alex. I could feel his presence, and Bian’s, urging me on to do something. Anything.

The aniatropics weren’t enough.

Jen!