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27
Kaige
The street was soempty it was eerie. Usually at this time on a late summer afternoon, music would have been spilling from restaurant doorways and masses of shoppers would have been ambling past the storefronts. Now it was all still and silent, as if frozen in time.
A pretty awful time. Several of the windows had been shot out, shards of glass glinting in the fading sunlight. A dead body sprawled across the sidewalk nearby, and I spotted another near a car down the street. Xavier had continued to leave a path of carnage in his wake.
But there were some signs of living humanity left. A few faces peered out of the windows on higher floors, pale with fear.
“He’s been shooting anyone desperate enough to try to make a run for it,” Gideon reported. “Hard to say whether they’re safer taking that chance or staying put.”
Mercy peered down the street. We could see Xavier and the two Storm men still with him a few blocks away, pacing by a small delivery truck they’d stalled in the middle of the road. As I watched, Xavier took another shot, shattering a second-floor window. Someone yelped, whether in pain or just fear I couldn’t tell.
“Where’s the building he’s set up the explosives around?” Mercy asked.
Gideon gestured toward the distant figures. “It’s that coffee shop on the corner. The upper floors are divided into three apartments, and several of the shop’s customers ended up fleeing upstairs when the shooting started. Xavier’s set up the explosives all along the front of the building with a trigger switch he hasn’t moved more than ten feet from since he placed it. The Storm’s men barricaded the back door so no one can escape that way.”
“Who’s going to try me now?” Xavier hollered, still pacing like a caged lion. He slammed his fist right into a store window, making it burst apart. “You want a piece of me? I’ll tear you to pieces.”
The guy was fucking insane. Not that I’d had much doubt about that fact before, but he’d somehow pushed the title of maniac to a completely new level.
A familiar burn of rage spread from my gut up through my chest. My teeth set on edge. This asshole had destroyed enough already. He’d tormented the woman I loved, smashed up the city I called home, and tried to kill the guys I considered family too many times to count. It’d gone on for too long. I was going to end the motherfucker and protect what was mine before he could do any more damage.
“Let’s go,” Wylder called to our troops. “Remember, keep low and don’t make yourselves an easy target. Surround him as close as you can safely get and pick off him and his men as soon as you have an opening.”
A few of the Claws men pumped their hands in the air. “For the Claws!”
“For the Claws!” Mercy echoed. “And the Nobles, and freeing Paradise Bend together!”
With a rush of energy, the men dispersed, some hustling along the sidewalks where the parked cars offered some shelter, some jumping back in their own cars to drive around and come up on Xavier from the other side.
The four of us stuck close together, moving down the street with our eyes fixed on Xavier and our guns ready. My free hand balled into a fist. I wanted so badly to charge right up to him and pummel his face into a pulp, but I wasn’t reckless enough to give in to that urge, which would probably end with me dead before I got within half a block of him.
It was a good thing I didn’t go dashing off into the open, because we’d only closed the distance by one block when bullets sprayed down at us from above. We leapt back against the nearest buildings, but one of the Noble men hadn’t been fast enough. He slumped with the back of his head blown out.
“There’s someone on the roof,” I yelled out.
Wylder motioned everyone in view as close to the buildings as we could get, where the shooter wouldn’t be able to take proper aim. The anger inside me churned even more furiously. Our job had just gotten twice as hard.
Xavier had taken notice of the activity at our end of the street. He let out a roar that sounded as enraged as it did triumphant and smashed another window with his fist. Blood was trickling over his knuckles, but I saw no sign in his wild expression that he cared. Then he let loose his own hail of bullets from his rifle, forcing us to drop low to the ground. Gunfire battered the sides of the cars and set off a couple of alarms.
But a few of our men had made it farther down the street to come at Xavier and his accomplices from the other side. With a bang, one of the Storm men next to Xavier crumpled. Xavier growled and jerked back closer to the safety of the truck, shooting indiscriminately all around him. We couldn’t move any closer, not without walking into the path of a bullet from one direction or another.
“If we could just kill him, the other men would take off,” Wylder muttered. “They’ve only stuck around because they’ve got him on their side.”
“But how do we get close enough?” I asked. “Do you think the other Nobles—”
Before I could even finish the question, more of our men opened fire farther down. The other Storm lackey went down with a splat of torn guts, but Xavier had stayed out of range. Then he grabbed something he’d stashed under the truck and hurled it toward the combined Noble and Claws forces.
“Watch out!” Mercy cried.
I couldn’t tell how many of the men managed to dash far enough for safety before the device Xavier had thrown exploded with an earth-shattering force. Two cars flipped right onto their sides with the impact. When the dust cleared, I thought I spotted a few limbs lying on the street with no body attached to them.
My stomach clenched with nausea, and my rage burned hotter. We couldn’t let Xavier keep at this.
I aimed my gun around the side of the nearest car and shot at his head as well as I could, but it was too far. The bullet just dinged the truck’s side mirror five feet to Xavier’s left.
I glared at the buildings around Xavier as if it was their fault for not simply jumping off their foundations and burying him in rubble, and my gaze caught on the electrical wires running from post to post along the street. I grimaced. “Too bad we can’t just shoot one of the wires and electrocute the fucker.”
