Hey kids; the new Avery Cates novella, The New World, is available for pre-order everywhere. Here’s a short excerpt to whet your appetite.
I sighed. “Burn her mark, upload her face, dump her outside.”
There was a wave of something that might have been frustration, or disappointment. I knew there was a contingent that thought the Angels should all just be set on fire when caught in order to send the right message to the Archangel, and there were my fans who seemed to like the idea of me killing everyone I met. I could only imagine that Renque and the other Idiots told themselves that The Pale had not read Nicoleta’s fortune, and thus it wasn’t in the cards for her to be gloriously slaughtered by Avery Cates.
As I started to turn away, she convulsed again, and all of Dan’s Tele-K’s went into the air. They flew like missiles, smacking into everyone else and instantly plunging the space into chaos.
Nicoleta fell, as Danni’s team released her from their grip in startlement. She hit the packed dirt floor hard, bouncing a little, her bones rattling. As I ducked a body, I saw her climbing to her feet, rattled but conscious and moving. She spun around, then chose a direction and lurched into something resembling a run.
The Roon was in my hand. I was moving before my thoughts caught up, which was good, because my thoughts were centered on how old I was and how fragile my back was these days and how the whole fucking point of being a City Lord was that I had people for this sort of shit. And then I was in the tight brick tunnel, running.
She wasn’t fast. I rounded the first curve and saw her up ahead, limping, arms flailing as she tried to will herself to move faster. We were in a straightaway, so I planted my feet and took aim, squeezing the trigger, the shot sounding incredibly loud in the confined space.
Without even turning around, she sent the bullet back at me, screaming just past my ear. Not fast enough, maybe, to kill me, but disconcerting nonetheless. I grimaced and took two more shots, one high and one low, quick and sloppy.
She spun around, eyes big and round, and I was off my feet and sailing backwards. I smacked into the wall and the breath got knocked out of my lungs. I hit the floor and my teeth clicked, sending a dull throb directly into my brain. Hands were on me, then.
“Why do we fucking bother to provide security when you leave us behind all the damn time?” Moreau complained, as he set me on my feet.
“Come on,” I said, throwing myself into a staggering run.
We didn’t know anything about Nicoleta—what she’d come to do here, what she’d seen, what she’d be able to report—or who she’d pass that information to. And we didn’t know anything about the Archangel and his forces. All we knew was that he didn’t seem keen on non-Tele-Ks walking around breathing.
“Where’s this tunnel exit?” I asked.
“No fucking idea,” he rumbled.
Every step seemed to shake something painfully loose in my back, and whatever it was sifted into my lungs and clogged them up. I ran like gravity was getting stronger with each step. The world wasn’t designed for someone of my vintage. I’d so wildly overshot my life expectancy things were breaking down that I hadn’t known were part of my physiology.
We thundered down the tunnel, and for once I didn’t mind the noise—terror was useful. When we rounded a final curve and found our quarry standing in front of a solid brick wall, I had the presence of mind to duck down and hug the ground just as she spun around. Tele-K’s, like anyone else, tended to deal with things in their eye line first.
I heard two strangled grunts of pain behind me. I rolled onto my belly and brought the Roon up, squeezing off two shots in quick succession. Nicoleta spun back around, smacking into the wall and crumpling to the ground.
For a moment, it was just breathing. I got my feet under me with a grunt and a wince, clinging to the wall as I stood up. Sweat stung my eyes as I holstered the Roon and tried to look like something other than a broken-down old man.
“Burn her mark, upload her face,” I said, breathing hard. “Then dump her outside.”