Page 54 of Monster Queen Rising

He doesn't. He should — everyone does, the driver on the interstate did, the guard in the corridor twenty feet back did — and he doesn't. The units in his ears. Whatever they are, they're working.

"Put it down."

Nothing.

I don't get to do anything else.

Crull's already moving — not away, across, the whole mass of him folding into the space between me and the gun before the muzzle finishes settling, and I understand in the half-second it takes that there was never a moment I could have stopped this, because he didn't wait for me to try. He protects.

The round that was aimed at my chest opens his shoulder instead.

He falls.

And my whole world goes down to one thing.

His blood on the floor. That's all there is. The cabinet is gone. The list I came two floors up for is gone. Linden against the doorframe is gone. The white room, the fluorescent, the chemical air — all of it gone. There is Crull, down, red spreading under him.

The slate doesn't climb this time. It floods. All of me, between one breath and the next and I don't decide it because the woman isn't here anymore. Only the thing that protects what's hers.

Claws.

The units in his ears were built for a voice. I don't need a voice.

It comes in flashes and they don't come in order and I don't keep all of them.

His hand still on the gun.

Mine.

The gun on the floor.

His hand off it.

A sound that isn't a shot.

Red where there was white.

I'm on my knees next to Crull with no memory of crossing back, my hands wet to the wrist, and the slate is already draining off my skin the way water goes out of a tub, arms first, then the rest, the room coming up around me again in fluorescent and chemical and the shape of what I did against the far wall that I don't look at.

"Crull —"

His eyes are open. He gets a breath and holds it and I watch him lose the fight to hide it for exactly one second — the pain goes all the way across his face, his jaw clenching around a soundhe won't make — and then he has it packed down under, Crull again.

"Get behind me," he says. Bleeding, graying, still turning his body to shield me from the room.

"Crull, oh my god. Let me see it."

The pain's coming down the bond so total my own shoulder's gone numb. I press my hand to the wound and he grunts, and I hold it there.

And behind the pain, the rest of bonds fire all at once, and I feel every one. Dean somewhere east, going white with it. Daron already running. Harek's mind snapping into triage from wherever he is. Thaw at the truck feeling it land and bending the whole op around it in a heartbeat:get him out.And Fen — the instant the round hit, crossing ground toward the me.

Linden is on the floor against the doorframe where she went down when I attacked. Her eyes are open. She watched all of it. Crull fold around me. What I became. What I did to the man with the earpieces.

She isn't afraid. She isn't gloating. She looks at the far wall, then at me, her head tipped, and she’s analyzing all of it.

"There it is," she says. Not to me. To the result on the floor. "We spent forty years building a perfect hybrid." Her eyes go over what's left of the enforcer, over my hands. "And you were out there all along. Very violent when protective instincts triggered. You would’ve never done that on command." Something settles in her face, admiring and bitter in the same breath. "We found the exact ingredients. Still couldn’t make them work."

"Stop talking."