Marco leaps from one rooftop to another, riding high across the stone forest. He hunches as he skirts a tall spire, topped by the shadow of some huge horned beast. He sniffs, but it gives off no scent. It is as much rock as the bricks under his paws. He moves on, gaining speed. In his ears, he hears notes of warning in a brief command toSLOW, to keep with the pack. He obeys, less out of obedience as the draw of home and a full belly and a scratch behind the ear and a tussle under the sun. He listens sharply, not for commands, but to the other’s breath in his ear. It warms through him as much as any hot sun. As he strains, other sounds ping through him.
—the trickle of sand off a roof’s edge.
—the pop of distant ice.
—the blast of another explosion.
The last is closer now.
As Kane runs, the tang of hot smoke rolls high overhead. His ears ring with each boom. He tastes the bitter drifts of older blasts, marked in age by their pungency as their smoke settles denser between walls. He leads a path toward where those notes are less potent, where the smoke still drifts, where the blasted stone is still hot.
His path leads toward the heart of the bombardment.
He knows this path.
He has run it countless times, toward the sting of steel, the burn of flames, the cries of the wounded. He does not balk. Not ever. Not now.
But not forever.
He races with this one hard truth locked in his bones, a hard lesson taught by his brother. Still, this only makes him run harder, ignoring the ache in his limb, the breaths that come less easily.
He runs onward, heart pounding with both lust and joy.
The other’s breath fills his senses.
He wills his own command to his packmate.
One more time, one more time, one more time...
Before it ends forever.
51
May 14, 6:07P.M. ANAT
East Siberian Sea
Sensing death was near, Gray rushed low. The left side of his face burned. A grenade had struck too close, shattering stone, pelting him with shards, several still embedded to bone. He fisted blood from his left eye, clearing his vision—the little that there was.
Seichan kept her flashlight muffled with a palm, only periodically letting a bright sliver shine through to illuminate their path. And it wasn’t only the darkness that stymied them, but also the thickening smoke.
The initial salvo of grenades and rockets had chased them deeper into the city, then back again as a fusillade of blasts exploded in front of their path. Both knew what was happening. The Russians were driving them into a kill zone. Gray and Seichan had tried hiding, believing they had found a deep enough rabbit hole, but a rocket had struck, nearly collapsing the structure atop them.
So, they ran on, trying to keep one jump ahead of the enemy.
But the soldiers were closing that noose, coming from multiple directions.
“On the left,” Seichan hissed.
Gray dropped, his rifle at his shoulder. He caught the merest shift of shadows. He fired at it, raging on full auto for three seconds. He heard rounds ricocheting off stone—then a sharper cry.
They both turned and dashed through a doorway, across a room, andout a far door into a small yard, walled by stone. A flash of Seichan’s light revealed steps up to the next home. They rushed over and climbed quickly, leaping steps. At this point, it felt like they were fleeing through an M.C. Escher painting—one that was slowly burning around them, leaving them little room to maneuver.
Shots rang out, sparking around their feet in the darkness.
A sniper.
Still a ways off.
