Page 32 of Crow’s Shadow

“You alright?” Grim watches my face. “You went somewhere.”

“She’s awake.” I don’t question how I know anymore. “She’s in there. Awake and close.”

“You can feel her.” Not a question. Grim quit asking me to explain the things I can’t. “Then feel her toward the door, and let’s move.”

We move. A pressure rolls out of it, low, felt in the teeth and the back of the skull.

“The hell is going on?” Buck says behind me.

“It’s hers,” I say. “Keep moving.”

“Hers? What’s hers supposed to mean?”

“Doors,” I say, and Grim hits it.

The man door folds off its rusted frame on the second blow. We pour through into the black. Inside is a ruined cathedral, glass grit underfoot, a long row of dead lamps hung high overhead. Two men on the floor turn at the crash with rifles coming up.

“Contact,” Grim says, flat, and drops the near one through the chest.

I take the far one before he clears a crate. “Two down.”

“Left,” Byte crackles. “Movement on your left, past the big machine.”

Three men break from behind a fallen gantry.

“On you,” Storm calls, peeling wide. “Buck, cut right.”

“Cutting right.”

The first swings a shotgun toward Grim’s back.

“Grim, down.”

He drops. I shoot the shotgun man through the hip, and he folds screaming.

“Thanks,” Grim grunts, coming back up.

The second fires a round into the ceiling in panic.

“He’s yours,” I tell Buck.

Buck fires once. “He’s down.”

“Floor’s yours,” Byte says in my ear. “Nothing left moving but Renner and whoever’s in the room at the end. Get her and get gone.”

“Where’s Renner?”

“Can’t see through steel, Crow. But there’s a car warming on the flats side. If he runs, he runs west.”

“Then we get to her first.”

The third comes at me close with a knife, quick, low, trained. Nobody talks to a knife. I take the wrist, break it over my forearm and put him down on the ring of the blade hitting concrete.

“Crow.” Grim at my shoulder, chest heaving. “Which way? Talk to me.”

“Flank rooms. End door. She’s behind the end door.”

“How do you know?”