Page 184 of Dukes Are Forever
He clutched at his throat, clawing at the skin there.
"Auvry!" Adele slid to his side, grabbing two handfuls of Malloryn's shirt and trying to haul him away from the deadly hiss of atomized Black Vein. Where the hell was his gas mask? He should have had it strapped at his belt. She managed to drag him three feet, but he was coughing in earnest now, and she had to presume he'd lost the mask in the melee.
Something nudged her foot.
She looked down, and found Jack dragging himself toward them, holding out the filtration mask he wore to help him breathe in London's smoggy air.
"Take it," he rasped.
Adele tore the mask from his bloody fingers and slapped it over Malloryn's mouth and nose, holding it there. "Breathe," she told him, praying to every god in the sky that it would filter the poison from the air.
Malloryn sucked in a heaving gasp, tiny little black capillaries spreading through his cheeks.
"Don't you dare die on me," she rasped through a raw throat.
A hand came up. Slid through her hair.
Then he was pushing her away.
"Never. Need… to… move."
Adele wiped her weeping eyes. There was no time for relief. No time for tears. The entire tower was on fire now, though the flames were the least of their problems. She burst into a coughing fit, trying to keep her head low, below the roiling cloud of smoke. Sweet heavens, it was getting worse.
"Jack?" he asked.
"Alive," Jack rasped, one hand clamped to his chest. He must have jerked the knife out, but as they watched he burst into a coughing fit, his ravaged lungs no match for the smoke-tainted air.
Adele tore strips of silk from her gown and hastily fashioned a makeshift bandage for him. Hot red blood wept over her hands, startling her. She was so used to a blue blood's cooler, darker blood.
"Thank you." Jack's head slumped, but he turned to look at the fallen man nearby. "Is he dead?"
Malloryn tried to roll onto his side, still gripping the mask. "Came back… once."
Balfour stared sightlessly at the ceiling, his entire face ravaged.
Malloryn crawled toward him, bloody knife in hand.
"This time, I'll make sure he stays dead," he promised, and Adele turned her face away as he set about removing Balfour's heart.
* * *
The air was so thickwith smoke that Adele couldn't see a damned thing as she heaved Malloryn to his feet.
For a second, panic bloomed. How were they going to get out of here?
A rope suddenly dropped through the open hole where the atrium's glass roof had once been.
Then a figure in black was sliding down it, wearing a similar mask over his face as the one Malloryn wore. A second figure followed the first.
"Over here!" Adele screamed, waving one arm.
She sucked in a lungful of smoke and started coughing as both figures turned toward them.
Nighthawks.
She recognized the hard leather body armor and the golden striking hawk embossed on the chest of the lead figure.
Then Malloryn's weight was being eased from her shoulders, and the leather-clad figure hooked some sort of harness around her husband's waist.
