Page 115 of Fanged Embrace
Then rough hands seized my shoulders, dragging me backward, and one of the guards pressed a sharp, serrated blade against my throat. It wasn’t any more comforting than a gun to my head, and I realized with a sickening lurch that the cruel, curved weapon was lined with rows of vampire teeth. My pulse fluttered against those jagged points, flesh prickling as dozens of needle-like fangs nicked ever so lightly against my neck.
The first guard turned triumphantly to Laurie. “Behave,” he sneered, “or she’s dead.”
I gritted my teeth, hissed the words out. “Go fuck yourself.”
Laurie’s eyes darted from me to the guard and back again, and I could see her mind working overtime to orchestrate a new plan, racing to identify the few options we had left. Her fingers around the gun grew limp, teetering on the brink of defeat, when a sudden commotion erupted outside.
Shouts, scuffling, then gunfire ripped through the hallway. Heads turned sharply toward the door, just in time to see the wave of swirling shadows pouring in. Darkness billowed through the boardroom, blotting out the fluorescent lights overhead. The guards cried out in a clash of alarmed exclamations, blinded and disoriented as that impossible darkness filled the room.
A familiar, dry voice rang out from within the swirling shadows. “Hands off our oracle, asshole.”
Dylan emerged from her shadows like the ghost of goth girls past, dark tendrils twisting around her head. Behind her, the rest of my motley crew arrived on the scene, all of them bloody and in various stages of disarray, but ready to dish out another ass-kicking if the moment called for it. Which it certainly did.
Maxine clenched her dainty fists and whaled on the first guy in her line of sight, while Jordan and Sky protected her back, both of them baring vicious fangs, ripping and tearing through jugulars before any of the guards knew what hit them.
Hunter was in front of me in a flash, dark eyes flashing as she hissed a command to the guy behind me. “Drop it.” The blade clattered to the floor and I dropped to my knees, rolling away while she coiled back a fist and decked him flat in the face.
I dove for Laurie, tackling her to the ground as bullets began to fly. The guard from earlier, the talkative one, made a desperate lunge at us, but I vaulted to my feet and met him head-on, drawing my cutlasses from my back and slicing a streaking red X across his chest. The blades cut through his armor like a knife through butter, and he went down with a choked cry of agony.
Laurie stumbled to her feet beside me, hanging onto my arm while weapons clashed and clattered around us.
“Elevator—now!” I shouted over the din, and pushed her ahead of me as we weaved through battling bodies. Laurie squawked a warning over her shoulder, and I parried another attack from a whirling, wicked blade. Steel clanged violently, ringing through my ears as I swept the attacker aside. Then I gripped Laurie’s hand and hauled her onward, dodging and weaving through the fray. “Keep moving!”
With a bit of assistance from Amara, who zipped by in a blur of motion and took out three raging guards at once, we managed to make it to the hallway, spilling out of the boardroom and racing for the elevator at the end. The stairs we’d climbed earlier were a no-go; more guards were rushing up from downstairs. Our only option was to keep running, to book it for the elevator and get Laurie to the bottom floor before anyone could come after us.
I had to get her out. I had to get her home.
We almost made it, we were almost there—when a sharp, burning pain flared through my upper arm. I gasped, stumbled, and dropped one cutlass, and blood seeped between my fingers when I pressed a hand to the fresh bullet wound.
“River!” Laurie shrieked. She stumbled to a halt, grabbing at my shoulder. “You’re hurt?—”
“I’m okay,” I gritted out, forcing myself upright as guards closed in behind us. “Just keep moving!”
We raced for the metal doors as bullets whizzed by. I shielded Laurie as best I could, screaming out a curse through clenched teeth when another shot found its mark in my calf. Behind us, the rest of the Leyore women were converging, tackling our pursuers before they could land another shot.
We reached the elevator. I slammed my palm against the call button and turned frantic, wild eyes on Laurie. “You’re taking this down and you’re getting the fuck out of here.”
The doors slid open beside us, but Laurie froze on the threshold. Her face was a blank mask, mouth creased downward in a vengeful curve. Her fingers tightened around her gun, and my heart seized in my chest. I knew what that look meant. I knew exactly what she planned to do before she’d even opened her mouth.
I gripped her forearm. “Laurie, no?—”
“Let me protect you for once, River.” She reached for my face and cupped a gentle, tender hand to my cheek. “Let me do this for you. For all of you.”
She gave me no time to speak, no time to demand she pick another plan. I’d barely parted my lips before she was grabbing my collar and yanking me down into a fierce parting kiss. I clutched her closer, crushed her in my grasp despite the pain radiating hot and blinding up my arm. I wanted to hold on forever, keep her safe, never let her go. Not ever again.
But another bullet sliced past us, shattering the mirror inside the elevator, and I snapped around to face the attacker. Ilifted my remaining cutlass and sent it spinning through the air at the guard who’d fired at us. The blade lodged in the center of his forehead, and a trickle of blood split down over his eyes. He dropped to the floor, dead in an instant.
In that brief moment of distraction, Laurie had stepped backward into the elevator, and when I turned to reach for her, I saw the pained, glassy sheen in her eyes.
“Laurie,don’t?—!”
The doors closed swiftly between us, and her anguished gaze locked on mine until the last possible moment, until the sliding steel clamped shut. The light above the elevator flickered on, blinking arrows illuminating the direction she was moving: Straight to the very top.
58
Laurie
It took less than a minute for the elevator to reach the top floor, less than a minute to prepare for what might be my final stand, and to make peace with the fact that—under a hail of gunfire and spurred by urgency—that might have been my very last kiss with River. My eyes stung and my heart pounded in my chest, sporadic and desperate, like it wanted to leap right out and run to her. But the elevator doors dinged open and there was no going back.
