Page 222 of Dance of Defiance
The air crackles.
Muscles twitch.
Then suddenly, the electric kettle dings loudly…
…And all hell breaks loose, in a hail of violence and gunfire.
42
VAL
When I was fifteen,I was trying to impress some of the other kids in the foster home I was in, by riding my bike down Duffy’s Hill, a stretch of Lexington Avenue between 102nd and 103rd Streets, which also happens to be the steepest hill in New York.
The challenge, of course, wasn’t just to bike down it, but to do it faster than the previous record. And like I said, I was trying to impress people.
So I went fuckingfast.
I went so fast, in fact, that I broke a pedal, lost control of the bike and then veered to the side, where I hit the back bumper of a parked Honda Civic and went smashing head-first through the back window.
That, to memory, might be the most chaotic moment of my life. The surging, choking feeling of adrenaline pouring into my system. The explosion of pebbled glass shards. The tearing, searing pain and the absence of gravity.
But it’s that fractured moment, when the throbbing silence and frozen figures are shattered by the ding of that fucking electric kettle going off, that puts the bike crash to shame. Because when that chime goes off,hell itselfis unleashed, like a cannonball to the fucking chest.
It feels like a thunderclap going off inside my head as the room isfilledwith exploding gunfire. Cement dust, wood shards and blood spray into the air as one of Gunner's guys and one of the Nikitin guards go flying backward, their bodies ripped apart by the spray of bullets.
Pavel’s number two goes down next, crashing behind one of the grimy couches with blood pouring from his shoulder.
Something heavy suddenly slams into me from the side, sending me crashing across the floor. I grunt into the duct tape over my mouth as my head bounces off the cement. My vision blurs as something heavy lands on top of me.
“Hang on!”
Through the hail of bullets and the explosions of dust and blood and screams, that voice grounds me.
The heavy thing on top of me isRoman.
He grunts, wrenching himself sideways and roaring as he shoves back. He rolls off me, smashing into the floor so hard that the creaky wooden chair he’s tied to snaps. He yanks his arms and legs free, and then he’s scrambling back to me, throwing his body across mine, ripping the tape from my mouth.
“Are you hit?!”
I don't actually know. I can barely think.
I’ve seen plenty of violence in my life. But it's been bullying, street fighting, or the sexual violence that was committed against me when I was a kid.
A full-scale gun fight in an enclosed space has mefrozen.
But not Roman.
I stare at him, awestruck, as he whips his head around to scan the ongoing carnage, his eyes ablaze.
“Stay here!”
Right, because I’m goinganywheretied to a chair.
He pushes off me just as a scream rips through the room and the second Nikitin guard throws his hand over the geyser of blood that has erupted from a hole in his neck. Another shot blasts past him, turning one of the liquor bottles on the improvised bar behind him into shards, liquid spilling onto the floor.
A roar fills the room as he drops his muzzle-hot gun into the pool of high-proof liquor, igniting the whole bar.
My pulse spasms.
