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Killing Luca might have been a bad idea.
“Take out as many as you can,” I said. “When they return fire, we take cover.”
Wendel swapped his dagger and his pistol in his hands. The shadows hiding him swirled like storm clouds. “Ladies first.”
I leaned out from behind the train and sighted down the barrel of my pistol. I aimed for the captain’s head.
It had been a year since I last fired a gun.
I squeezed the trigger.
My shot went wide, hitting the captain in his shoulder, but it was enough to stagger him. Wendel shot twice. A miss, then a crippling hit. The remaining five rebels returned fire. Bullets ricocheted off the sides of the train and buried into tree bark. I dove into the snow and crawled under the train.
Wendel slid after me. He dropped his gun.
“What are you doing?” I hissed.
“Take my hand. Trust me.”
I already trusted him. Why? I didn’t know, beyond an instinct deep in my bones, but that was enough for me to obey.
Shadows crawled from his skin to mine and slithered over my body. It felt like being dunked in cold water. The darkness covered my face, and I gasped, claustrophobic for a second. My vision rippled before returning grayer than before. When I looked at my own hands, they were all but invisible.
The rebels ran toward us, their boots kicking up bloody snow.
“Find them!” their captain shouted.
“Don’t let go,” I whispered.
Wendel’s hand tightened. “I won’t.”
His voice sounded so protective, I shivered. No one had ever taken care of me like this before. I always fought alone.
Flashlights shone under the train, just to the right of our hiding place, then swept closer. Wendel scrambled out on theother side and pulled me with him. We ran along the train. I peeked between the cars.
A rebel looked in my direction. His gaze slid right over me.
I raised my gun and shot the rebel square in the chest. Before he even had time to fall, I was running away with Wendel.
Four rebels left. Including the captain, if he wasn’t too wounded to fight.
“Slow down,” Wendel whispered.
“Why?”
“Too loud.”
“Too late for that.”
I darted between the cars, sighted a rebel, and fired. My pistol jammed. I tossed it aside and unsheathed Chun Yi. The rebel fired his rifle, missing wildly, and I dropped Wendel’s hand. Shadows vanished from me before I launched into an attack.
The whites of the rebel’s eyes gleamed.
I drove Chun Yi into his heart and kicked the rifle from his hands. Wendel swooped in and, with a kind of macabre grace, touched the man as he died. The rebel never hit the ground; he never breathed again.
Life flickered from the man’s eyes, replaced by the flat gleam of death.
“Attack them,” Wendel told his minion.
