Infinity Bell: A House Immortal Novel (11 page)

“This way.” Gloria took the lead, since she knew the quickest way to the old library.

We jogged through the rising confusion that wasn’t quite chaos yet, but would be soon.

“This is it,” Gloria said.

Ahead of us was a building that must have once been made of brick but was mudded over with multiple layers of concrete, all of which had fallen off in clumps. The state of disrepair was echoed by busted windows and
copious graffiti. It looked like a building-devouring blight had hit the thing and eaten it from the inside out.

A tall concrete barrier rolled off from our right, and separated us from the empty plaza in front of the old library.

The place seemed to be abandoned. No movement. Not even any sleeping transients.

That was weird.

“Are you sure?” Quinten asked.

“Yes,” Gloria said.

“Where’s your contact, Ned?” Quinten asked.

Neds stood just in front of me and to the side a bit. So I saw when he suddenly stiffened. “Shee-it,” Left Ned breathed.

Too late. Too late to run. Too late to hide.

Domek stepped out from behind a column of that dilapidated building and opened fire.

I’m afraid, but then, everyone is afraid lately. There are rumors of the plague returning.

—from the diary of E. N. D.

C
haos.

We dove for cover behind the concrete wall. The barrier was old and wouldn’t last long under the heavy artillery he was unloading.

Shit.

“Does he have anyone with him?” Quinten yelled over the gunfire.

“Does he need to?” Left Ned answered as bullets chipped holes through the top of the wall we were huddled behind. Concrete scattered over us in a rain of rocks and sand.

We couldn’t stay here. We couldn’t call for help. Even if there was someone out there who would help us without turning us in, Welton had shut down the city and all modes of communication.

There had to be a way out of this.

I unzipped my duffel and pulled out my revolver.

“You have a gun?” Quinten asked.

“No one ever searches the girl.” I squat-walked to the edge of the wall. “Knife? Mirror? Screen?”

Gloria dug through her duffel and handed me a palm-sized mirror. I pressed my back against the wall with the mirror aimed over my shoulder so I could get a line on Domek.

Another barrage of bullets rained down around us, lasting for at least a minute this time.

Holy hell, that was a lot of bullets.

But I’d gotten a look at him before I’d had to tuck back behind the barrier.

Domek stood out in the open of what had been the library’s plaza, like an idiot who underestimated that one of us would be armed, and two of us were galvanized.

“He has an automatic weapon,” I said.

“Old news,” Right Ned said.

“And he’s in the open,” I went on. “Nothing for cover.” I checked the chamber of my gun for bullets.

“Revolver’s not going to do you any good.” Left Ned said.

“If my aim’s clean, it only takes one bullet to end this.” I pulled up the mirror again to locate him. Then leaned out, took aim, fired.

But the wind shifted, my hand shook, and I was pretty sure I didn’t do anything more than make him aware that we were not going to go with him peacefully.

Not that he’d asked us to put our weapons down or go with him, peacefully or otherwise. Weren’t hired guns for the Houses supposed to tell us to come out with our hands in the air or something? Or had he skipped basic etiquette class in assassin school?

“Got any bombs left?” Left Ned asked Quinten.

Quinten nodded. “One.”

Abraham leaned forward a bit. “I’ll toss the bomb and draw his fire,” he said. “All the rest of you run into the building.”

“Like hell, you’ll draw his fire,” I said.

“If some of us are to survive, some of us will have to make sacrifices,” Abraham said.

Hadn’t we just gone over the
no
of this back at Gloria’s?

“All of us are going to survive,” I said. “
None
of us are going to make sacrifices.”

A hard hail of gunfire shattered the air overhead.

“Sonofabitch,” Left Ned said. “We need to move.”

“We need a plan,” Quinten said.

Then Domek decided to join the conversation. “Quinten Case,” he yelled. “Surrender yourself and the others will be unharmed.”

Quinten?
We all stared at him.

I’d thought Domek was after Abraham, who was accused of murder. Who would have sent an assassin out looking for my brother?

Quinten’s back was pressed against the wall. Even through the tunnel dust, sweat, and concrete debris that covered him, he went pale. His clever blue eyes ticked over to me, wide with fear; then a decision narrowed them. I shook my head.

“No,” I said, “Whatever you just thought of? No. Nobody sacrifices themselves.”

“A distraction,” Quinten said. “You could run for the station.”

“Like he won’t shoot us in the back?” I said. “We do
not trust people who are shooting at us. C’mon. That’s survival 101, Quinten.”

“He said he wants me,” he said.

“He’ll have to go through me to get to you,” I said. “If you walk out there, I will do mad, foolish things to save you. You know I will. And you know I can survive a hell of a lot of hits before I go down. Let’s not go willingly into that nightmare, okay?”

He shook his head. “Matilda . . .”

“No.”

“She ain’t budging,” Right Ned said. “So your surrender’s out. What else you got, Tilly?”

No support from satellite, phone, or any other connection. Local law was tied up with a million problems from the blown grid, so no cavalry to come riding to the rescue.

We had one gun against a heavily armed, highly trained killer who was just playing with us.

“How far is it to the station entry?” I asked Neds.

“Should be right behind Killer Man there,” Right Ned said. “The actual entry to the station is inside the building.”

I tipped the mirror to get another look at the distance to the door. “Okay. Fifty yards. There’s another concrete half wall about ten yards from the door.”

“I’ll give you to the count of three,” Domek yelled into the relative silence. “Then you will all come out with your hands where I can see them.”

“Options?” I asked.

“Quinten throws the bomb,” Abraham said. “You and I take out Domek.”

“With one revolver?” I asked.

“With brute strength.”

Abraham was terribly wounded. Even so, we were both galvanized and frighteningly strong. “Rush him?” I asked.

He pointed to a rusted blue industrial Dumpster that stood on broken skids about half the distance between us and Domek. Concrete and scrap metal filled it. “I am in the mood to throw that at his head.”

“Shee-it,” Left Ned said. “Can you?”

The thing must weigh a couple thousand pounds. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

“What?” Quinten said. “No.”

“Three . . .” Domek yelled.

“Yes.” I handed Quinten my gun. “Bullets won’t kill us unless he gets in a very lucky head shot, which isn’t likely after a bomb blast and us crushing him under a Dumpster. Give Neds the bomb.”

“Why Neds?” Quinten was talking, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t also moving. He quickly dug the glass vial out of his duffel and handed it to Neds.

“I know the arm he has on him, and, no offense, brother, but you haven’t been working the farm for three years. Ned,” I said, “chuck it and make it count. If he goes up in pieces, I’m not going to cry any tears.”

Right Ned took the corked glass vial from Quinten. “Do unto others, I always say. And that man is out to see us dead.”

“Two . . .”

“What happens after the bomb?” Gloria asked.

“You, Quinten, and Neds run for that building and get inside fast,” I said. “Use the half wall there for cover if you need to.”

“But what about you and Abraham?” she asked.

“We’ll be okay,” I said. “And we’ll be right behind you. Ready?”

“One!” Domek yelled. He didn’t even wait a second longer before he starting shooting again, blowing through chunks of concrete.

“Jee-zus!” Right Ned pulled a Glock out of his pocket.

“You had a gun?” Quinten yelled.

Neds leaned out and unloaded the clip, then cocked back and threw the bomb, whipping it full force.

A blast of white-hot fire shook the ground and buildings around us.

“Go, go, go!” I yelled, even though I couldn’t hear my own voice.

They bolted for the building. Abraham and I ran to the Dumpster.

But Domek recovered too quickly.

The bullets came fast and hard. One hit my thigh, another my arm.

I yelled and slammed up behind the Dumpster, breathing hard.

“For shit’s sake!” I said. “I think we made him mad.”

“You’re bleeding,” Abraham said.

I wiped the pain sweat out of my eyes, my hands shaking with adrenaline. “So are you.” I nodded to his gut, which was seeping red through his crappy secondhand clothes. “Ready?”

His eyes hardened and he nodded. “Lift. Throw. On three. One . . .”

I crouched, my hands under the edge of the metal. If the thing hadn’t been tilted on broken skids, there would have been no way to get leverage.

Use your legs,
I said to myself. I exhaled, prepping mind and body for the lift.
Just like a bale of hay. A really big, really heavy bale of hay.

“Two,” he said.

I inhaled.

“Three!”

We both stood, balancing the massive weight of the thing between us as we used our upward momentum to heave the Dumpster up and out.

It should have been impossible.

But, then, we were a little impossible ourselves.

Concrete and metal thundered across the plaza as the Dumpster tipped too far over in midair, scattering part of its load before it landed in a ground-pounding thump right on top of Domek. The stink of rust, oil, sour water, and garbage rained down around us as the impact shot debris into the air.

“Go!” Abraham yelled.

I turned and starting running toward the library.

But Abraham was striding the other way, toward the Dumpster, toward the fallen, buried Domek.

Had he lost his mind?

Abraham bent and picked up a hundred-pound chunk of concrete one-handed and threw it like a skipping stone at the mess of debris over Domek.

He was cursing in that language I didn’t know, his body filled with a rage it couldn’t contain, every movement power and pain and violence.

I took a step toward him.

“Go!” he yelled again.

A flash of metal moving in that pile of debris caught my eye.

“Abraham!” I yelled. Too late.

A spattering of bullets fired out from the garbage. Abraham jerked back as they hit, riddling him.

I ran for him, not thinking that I was running into the fire, not caring that the bullets would tear through me next. I couldn’t die,
we
couldn’t die unless Domek blasted our brains out of our heads. And I wasn’t going to let that happen.

I didn’t know how Abraham was still standing, but he yelled in that language, bent, grabbed spine-breaking chunks of metal and rock and heaved them at the gunman.

Abraham was anger, violence, hatred. Unstoppable. Galvanized.

The bullets paused.

I grabbed his free arm, determined to get him the hell out of there before they started up again.

He pivoted on me, eyes burning red, scorched by pain and fury.

“Move!” I yelled.

He seemed to come to his senses. We ran, pounding toward the building, three steps, six.

Bullets hissed into the ground beside us, tracking our path. In less than a minute, we’d be nothing but holes and lead shot.

But we didn’t get that minute.

A cannon blasted out overhead, followed by gunfire that screamed with guided ammunition, target guaranteed.
Shit. Tracers.
If someone wanted us dead, this would do it.

Searing, spitting bullets rattled out like World War End. Far more than Neds or Quinten could lay down. Far more than Domek had on him.

Abraham and I ducked and rolled behind that low concrete wall not far from the library door. None of the others were here. I hoped they’d made it into the building.

“You will stand down,” a new voice bellowed over a bullhorn during a short interval in the holy-shit chorus. “Throw all weapons on the ground. Now.”

“Do you see him?” I asked.

Abraham scanned the sky and the roof of the abandoned library. “No.”

“Is this making sense to you?” I asked.

“No.”

The only thing I could come up with was either a House had just stepped in to stop our killer and capture us, or Ned’s contact we were supposed to meet here had a lot of illegal tracer firepower and a bullhorn.

Then I didn’t have time to ponder. The distinctive
plink
of metal canisters hitting the ground rattled across the plaza.

Not just canisters; tear gas. Dozens of them.

Damn it.

Domek went back to shooting, but the bullets weren’t coming our way. I didn’t care who was on whose side now. We just needed to get out of here.

Abraham was on his feet, pulling me up.

I ran through the cover of tear gas rising to fill the air, went blind by the time I’d taken ten steps, and had to feel my way along the side of the building.

Wandering blind in the line of fire was going to get me dead. Any minute now.

Then hands reached out pulled me into a space with no wind and a hell of a lot less smoke. I heard a door shut behind me.

“Here,” Quinten’s voice said, “put this over your face.”

We must be inside the library. “Abraham?” I croaked.

“He’s here,” Gloria said.

So we all must have made it inside the library. Hurray for our team.

Quinten dropped a damp cloth in my hands and I pressed it over my face, taking in several breaths of the sour-grape and chemical solution. Whatever he’d drenched the cloth with did an amazing job at stopping the burning in my eyes, nose, and throat.

The voice on the bullhorn outside was still yelling demands. Another volley of bullets rattled out. If Domek wasn’t dead, he would be soon. Tracers always hit their mark, and if not, some clever weapons designers had rigged them to act as impact explosives.

Right on cue I heard the
pock-thoom
of the mini explosives triggering.

“Is this everyone?” a man’s voice I didn’t recognize asked.

“This is us, Slip,” Right Ned said.

“One extra will cost you extra,” the man said.

“Of course,” Right Ned said.

I squeezed my eyes tight and rubbed the cloth carefully over both eyes, then my mouth and nose. My vision was a little foggy, but the basics of the situation were easy enough to see. We were in the burned and gutted library. Abraham had planted both shoulders against the wall and was scowling, silent, as he drew the cloth away from his eyes. Gloria handed him a new cloth, which he pressed against the wound on his stomach. He wasn’t just bleeding. He was bleeding badly.

“Pay before party, Harris,” Slip said.

Slip was medium height and build, strung together with the ropy muscles of someone who spent too much time in salt water. He stood with his back toward the interior of the building, facing Neds, who were ahead of me to my right.