In The End Box Set | Books 1-3 Stevens, GJ (story books to read TXT) 📖

We’d be dead or in chains soon after. Or maybe they’d just run and no one was waiting the other side in the silence.

I chanced a look at Toni and with surprise I saw her gaze already on me as if I was the one taking the lead.

Buoyed by taking control, I drew a drag of foul smoke, letting the rest drop to the ground, knowing the only sure way out of this situation would be to lose control and let myself go where my body ached to be. I’d just have to hope I could reign it in when the job was done and not destroy my reason for being here.

By not holding back, I could already taste the change in the air. I could feel blood swelling, muscles tensing and coiling, ready to spring.

Toni’s words halted the march, made me pause enough to follow her outstretched finger down to the growing line at the door’s gap. I watched the dark fissure of a viscous liquid glinting in the light.

As my gaze locked to the view, I could taste it on my tongue. I could smell the thick iron-rich tang heavy down my throat, all before I heard the structure of her question.

“Is that blood?”

13

Gulping down the heavy air and with the Glock planted back in my grip, I pushed my hand out to my side and forced myself to continue the step. The room stayed quiet, silent if not for the low whimpers. The loudest sound came from my pounding blood.

My gaze fixed on the gap, the smell of its liquor spiralling up my nose. My forward leap only held back by curiosity of who the owner could be.

Stepping around the door, I still couldn’t see the start of the trail of scarlet glinting in the bright corridor lights as it disappeared out of the view provided by the gap.

Warm hands burnt at my shoulder and I saw the fear in Toni’s eyes as she pulled back. I knew we couldn’t wait here for the same fate and I pulled the cold metal wide like it had no weight.

Out into the corridor, I leapt forward to gasps from the room. My head twisted left, my aim following, not lingering on the pair of bodies, a soldier and a bald man in a once-white lab coat as the muffled sounds I’d heard now made sense.

I scanned along to the door in the distance before turning the other way as a piercing scream echoed down the passage.

I took a moment, the shriek sending my body into itself, but I was soon back and turned to see a figure with his head stooped low, glaring in my direction from the other end of the corridor.

Despite his features long gone, the muscle and skull not recognisable without his skin stretched over, I picked out the scar just below his Adam’s apple and the checked shirt he’d worn as we drove to this place.

I pulled the trigger all the way back, sending his torso stuttering as the bullet slammed through his bones.

Without my finger on the trigger, a second bullet shattered the centre of his skull. Turning, I watched Toni lower the rifle from her shoulder. When did she learn to shoot so well?

He dropped like a rag doll as I twisted back, his body collapsing to the floor.

We’d done him a service, I knew, and my focus went to searching beyond the body to the corridor and the bloody footsteps disappearing into the light.

Forging forward, I stepped around the body, not glancing back despite Toni’s aroma calling me to turn.

It wasn’t until another shot came that I twisted around with the gun pushed up, lowering only when I saw her lifting the rifle from the point-blank aim after shattering the bald man’s head.

A name called from a great distance and repeated, Toni’s sharp tone reminding me why I’d been so reluctant to come to her rescue; her voice like that of a parent disciplining a child.

The name was mine and as I twisted back, I watched her step over the blood and disappear back through to the room we’d just left.

There was enough of me left to stop and accept the order to wait. I stood and stayed the breath I hadn’t realised had been racing. I held back muscles itching for the hunt as my stomach groaned, with my gaze fixed to the soldier’s body with less of his head left from when I’d stepped around him.

I heard the click of a lighter striking as Toni came through the door. I tried to peer around but her body blocked the view. When she wouldn’t relent to my frustration, I looked up to see the carton of cigarettes in one hand and the soldier’s Glock in the other, which I hadn’t noticed her take from me, the rifle nowhere to be seen.

A wisp of smoke trailed from the cigarette in her mouth.

My God. She understood.

I almost broke down, something heavy draining from inside me at the memory of the connection we’d had not so long ago.

Still, I pounced towards her, like a dog jumping to her side, into her cloud to find her taste potted with a blank space. With the cigarette soon in my mouth, the blood in my veins already calming, replaced with warmth and gratitude after understanding my plight.

I heard her calm, sweet words crystal clear as she grabbed my hand and led me down the corridor to the sound of the heavy door slamming closed.

“I know somewhere,” she said as questions formed, but was forced to wait until I could remember how to get my mouth to work.

“Dan?” I managed to whisper, but she shook her head.

“They’re better off staying where they are,” she said, holding the door