I don’t know what to expect but he risks everything to grab the back of my head, the cool metal of his knife pressing against my cheek, bringing me into a hot-mouthed kiss. My senses go on overdrive, the Mutt in me igniting in a totally different way.
He pulls back and says, “End this.”
He pivots and jumps back into the fight, slashing the throat of a Hybrid charging toward us.
With his words and the taste of his mouth as my motivation, I jump over the side of the bridge.
Chapter Twenty-Two
My feet hit hard, but it’s as though my soles and ankles are reinforced. Two other people drop beside me. Jude and Jane.
“Chloe’s in that tank,” I inform them, dodging an Eater coming my direction. I kill him easily, knife to the eye, and take off in a run before the Hybrids find me. Dashing between legs, punches, and bullets, I feel like I’m in the Matrix, moving in slow motion as I navigate the chaos. When I reach the tank Cole is on the roof wrenching the door off with his bare hands. The metal whines under the pressure, reluctantly bending. Jude jumps to his aid. I climb to the top of the tank and hold my gun steady, aiming at the door.
The top pops like a lid, screaming in protest. It flies backwards, cartwheeling over Cole and Jude’s heads, landing twenty feet behind them with a loud clang.
The Eaters howl and rush for the disturbance.
I hold my gun steady. Jane watches my back. I laugh at silence in the pit of the tank. “What? You too scared to come out and play?”
Cole doesn’t wait. He dives down the hole, boots sticking out. Jude reaches for his legs and yanks at his calves. His head appears followed by his arms and hands, wrapped tightly around his sister’s neck.
He flings her away and she clings to the tank looking around like a wild, rabid animal.
“You’re done,” I tell her.
“Do you not see my army? What I’ve built? There’s no end to this, Alexandra.” I can’t argue what she’s saying. We’re in the eye of the chaotic storm. “Look at you, you’ve taken the injection. You’re no better than him.” She spits in her brother’s direction. He hauls off and slaps her hard across the face. Laughing like a maniac.
Cole grips her throat again with his large hand, muscles bulging as he fights off rage. Her eyes widen as he constricts her airway. I think killing her would be very, very easy for him right now.
“Let her go,” I demand. “Cole, let her go.”
The tendons in his neck strain as he fights against the demon in front of him and whatever one lurks beneath the surface. I step forward and press the barrel of the gun against her head and say again, “Let her go. I’ve got this.”
He releases her and we stand, eye-to-eye, enemies longer than we were friends. It still hurts for it to come to this, but family doesn’t kill family. It’s my job to do and I cock the trigger.
Chloe’s eyes narrow and she hisses, “My Hybrids will live to fight on, Alexandra. It’s in their blood. Attack. Conquer. Spread. Killing me does nothing.”
“Do it,” my sister shouts from her position just out of reach of the fighting.
“I never wanted it to end this way,” I say. I can tell by the look on her face that she doesn’t believe I’ll do it. Neither do I, until I actually pull the trigger.
Even over the roar of battle the sound of the gun firing cracks my eardrums. Chloe’s eyes widen just before the bullet slices through her brain, our eyes meet, and it doesn’t feel like a victory but a harsh, painful defeat.
She tumbles backwards, falling off the tank into the fray below, and the first person I look for is Cole, who stares at me with wide, clear eyes. I don’t look away, unwilling to watch her become cannibalized by her own soldiers as they stomp on top of her remains. She’d been right about that; her beloved Hybrids never stop. Not for a second, unaware that their leader is gone.
The tank from the opposing side of the bridge rolls forward, led by skull-masked Mutts. The battle rages on and I blink, trying to acclimate back into the scene around me. I feel a hand on my arm and I look up. Cole stands close to me and says, “Thank you for releasing her.”
His words would have cracked a non-mutant Alexandra. But my armor is still mostly intact and I just nod that I hear his message. I didn’t kill Chloe, his sister. I killed the monster she’d become. I watch as Cole dives off of the tank and into the fray, racing to meet with his mutant brothers.
Two Hybrids spot me on top of the tank and lunge for me and I barely get out of their way. Jude shoots them in the chest and they fall back, only to be replaced by two more. My hands tingle and I hold them up to my face and although they don’t look different they feel different. My brain is still alert and ready, like I’m hopped up on a mega dose of caffeine or something more lethal.
You know, the way you feel right before the crash.
Jane comes to my side. “I think the EVI-3 may be wearing off. My legs feel weird.”
“Same.”
Even if we can keep going we’re not going to stay strong as the injection wears off. I know at least one other person out there, no matter how bad-ass he is even without modification, that can’t keep fighting forever.