The Last Sanctuary Omnibus by Kyla Stone

Author:Kyla Stone [Stone, Kyla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Paper Moon Press
Published: 2019-02-28T22:00:00+00:00

14

Gabriel

The rats poured down the hallway toward Gabriel. Adrenaline shot through him. “Follow me out!”

He spun, pried open the doors, and shoved his way through. Celeste and Horne were right behind him, trembling and terrified but moving fast. He slammed the doors closed. Several dozen bristling, hunch-backed rodents smashed against the glass.

He sucked a single cold, oxygen-infused breath into his starving lungs and launched himself at Alvarado. There was no cover in the wide-open parking lot. The nearest vehicle was the van twenty yards away. The only cover he was going to get was human.

The man started to turn, sensing movement, but Gabriel reached him first. He slammed the butt of the gun against the man’s skull, hard enough to stun him, not hard enough to knock him out. With one hand, he jammed his knife against the man’s throat, with his other, he pointed his gun at Mohawk.

“Drop your gun and kick it away,” Gabriel croaked. His throat was seared. He needed air. He couldn’t gulp in enough oxygen.

Alvarado obeyed. His voice was laced with hatred. “You’re dead, you hear me? You just don’t know it yet.”

“Not today.” Gabriel had to bend his knees and partially squat to keep his head from becoming a target, keeping as much of Alvarado’s short, meaty body between himself and the female Pyro’s bullets as he could.

The woman with the mohawk swore. She dropped into a crouch and aimed her rifle at him.

“Run!” Gabriel shouted hoarsely. Horne and Celeste edged out from the mall’s entrance into the freezing rain. Mohawk’s gun swiveled toward them.

“I’m the one who’s going to shoot you!” Gabriel unloaded a blast at Mohawk’s feet. Chunks of asphalt sprayed her legs. She leapt back, her weapon swinging back to him.

“Come on!” Celeste yelled. Horne froze like a deer in the headlights. She shoved Horne, almost knocking him over, but it got him moving. Celeste and Horne sprinted into the darkness. Safe, at least for the moment.

Gabriel turned his attention to the task at hand. He clenched his jaw. He should kill Mohawk. She had no cover, nowhere to hide.

An image flashed through his mind, sudden and uninvited. Simeon instructing him in an old, graffiti-scarred gym, teaching him how to kill ruthlessly and efficiently. Training him to become a mindless, unthinking soldier, able to kill enemy combatants and innocent collateral alike.

This woman wasn’t innocent. She was the enemy. She’d nearly burned them alive. Still, he hesitated.

He thought of Micah. He thought of Nadira. He remembered the square of blue cloth in his pocket, remembered the dirt beneath his nails from burying the girl who’d given her life for his. He’d sworn to seek redemption, to earn her sacrifice.

Was more blood on his hands the way to do it?

“Drop the weapon!” he shouted. He offered her the same deal he’d given to the boy. “Leave now and we’ll let you go, unharmed.”

“Do what he says, damn it!” Alvarado gasped.

The Pyro shifted, and Gabriel dug the knife deeper into his throat, drawing blood. The blade was slick in his hands.

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