Page 68 of Blood We Steal

I let my lips linger near her ear but then moved when I saw the shadows up ahead. They weren’t a trick of the light.

It was them.

“We keep a tight formation and take them down,” I called to the men.

“It could be hundreds, krye,” Lorik said.

“Yes, it could be.” I tightened my grip on the knife.

Thousands even, but I didn’t say that out loud. It didn’t matter how many there were. I would not die in this dark hallway cowering.

“Aim for the head, destroy the brain. Stomp on them if you have to, but make sure they stay down,” I yelled as I moved forward.

The men already knew that, as evidenced by the way Arben gripped the knife. The hallway was tight and narrow, but that worked to our advantage. One down, another down, then another, then another. The corpses were falling into a stack, making a new walkway. It was difficult standing on the tiny mountain of flesh, and every time I pushed down my foot dug into soft deadness, a floor made of concrete and what used to be humans.

My eyes stung from the gas, but the farther we got down the hall, the fainter the effects became. Soon my muscles were burning from the exertion, my hands slick with the red-black goo that spurted from those things. I didn’t look back, couldn’t let myself look back. Damian was fine. The men were fine. I was fine.

And I hadn’t given Simone permission to die yet, so she was fine too.

When we reached the end of the hall, I looked left, right, saw that both hallways were empty, then looked back and saw the stack of corpses and the men behind.

“To the left,” I said, and we moved.

This walk was much, much easier, and I felt something like relief.

Until the lights went out.

THIRTY-TWO

Simone

I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine.

I kept whispering that in my head even when I stepped on something slick, soft, human, or what used to be.

I’m fine, I’m fine.

I kept saying that, even as my eyes burned, my lungs burned, and my head pounded like it would explode at any moment.

I’m fine. I’m fine.

I said that even as the horrid moans filled my ears, the screams in the distance got fainter, which didn’t comfort me at all when the sounds that could only be gunshots came rapid, then slowed, then stopped altogether.

I’m fine. Just walk, Simone, I whispered to myself.

And so I did that, counting each step, 632 so far, wishing I had a weapon, not knowing what I’d do with one if I did, but feeling so…exposed.

My fists were clenched tight, and we were more than halfway down the pitch-black hall when I remembered I was holding playing cards. I’d had the Ace of Diamonds and the Ace of Clubs, and Aaron had been on the verge of defeat. Pride had been on the line, and I was going to win. He always hated when I did that. Said he was the one who had taught me how to play, so I could at least have the decency to let him win.

And then pandemonium.

I still wasn’t sure why that surprised me, why I’d let myself think for even a moment that everything was okay.

It wasn’t.

It never would be again, and I was playing cards like a moron, fucking an Albanian mobster who hated me, pretending like dead people hadn’t gotten up and walked around, pretending that I wasn’t trapped in a city jail in the middle of a city with four and a half million people and no way out.

And I had plastic playing cards as my only defense.