When fighting a sentry, you had to act faster than you could even think. She exploded up from the ground, jumping onto the sentry and wrapping her lean legs around his waist, straddling him. As his arms came up to grab her, her hand came down with the knife, right into his neck. He roared, sending spittle into her face, and then I was there. I pulled my samurais and dropped into a crouch, careful to keep my injured leg from taking too much strain. I slid under the big guy’s legs, dragging the blades along his inner thigh meat as I passed under him, and he fell backward like a bag of potatoes. Rolling to the side, I just got out of his way as he crashed to theground.
Josephine was still on top of him. His throat was gouged out, and she was covered in blackblood.
“You straddled a sentry!” I said inawe.
Dear universe, please let me be this badass when I’mforty.
She grinned. “I’ve still gotit.”
“Jo! Kit!” Damien roared behindus.
Josephine and I popped up and saw a horde of sentries had just entered the kill camp, at least a dozen. All strong and tall and super deadly. Josephine yanked my arm and hauled me up. Brisk had helped Ronnie drag her patient away and they were in the circle with the rest of the civilians. They were waiting on us. My leg was still healing, I was in a walking cast for Christ sake. We started running, Josephine practically dragging me, but I wasn’t fastenough.
All those people in there with nocuffs.
“Go!” I told Josephine and pushed her alittle.
She shook her head. “Lift your bad leg and hop. Use me as acrutch!”
She dipped down and put my arm around her neck, I lifted my bad leg, and she took off running. I tried to hop and keep up with my good leg, but she was going too fast. My leg gave out and I started falling. I slipped out of Josephine’s grasp and was about to face-plant when two big hands went under my armpits and I was dragged into Damien’s strong arms. He scooped me up and turned, running full speed toward the circle of plasma bricks. Nox, Brisk, Maxine, and a bunch of others were knelt before each brick, ready to turn themon.
Raising my head from where it lay against Damien’s neck, I saw a sentry right behindus.
Ohfrick.
Reaching into my thigh holster, I pulled my throwing blade. Damien was a fast guy, but the sentries had supernatural speed. He’d be on us in seconds. The ghoul’s face shield flew back, exposing his mouth, opening wide. I threw the knife and it sailed through the air just as Damian crossed the plasma brick circle and we were inside. The steel knife sank into the meat of his eye, and then the bricks were turned onsimultaneously.
With a pop, the continuous plasma shields shot out. Seconds later, the sentry I’d gored slammed against them. Two sentries and over a dozen grunts right behind him did the same. They hit the translucent barrier with strength and speed but were quickly knocked back. The barrier bowed in slightly at the contact, even made a smacking noise, but didn’tbreak.
I stared up at the sky, still in Damien’s arms, to see the barrier held over our head like adome.
“How did you figure that out?” I knew he’d been working on that problem for the last threedays.
He looked down at me, his breath hitting my chest. “Mirrors.”
The ghouls rammed the shields again, but they heldfirm.
“Turn on the data dump,” Jeremy said, from his spot on theground.
Everyone in our group froze.Did he just talk to us? In the DreamWars?
Nox fiddled with a bar on the back of the brick and the ghouls were brought to their knees, writhing in pain before backing away slowly. Even the sentries were cringing and backingup.
The cheering of the fifty-some people we had contained in the circle was simultaneous and deafening. A mother was weeping, holding onto her teenage daughter. Even Maxine was hugging a complete stranger,smiling.
I looked at Damien. “You can put me downnow.”
He just shook his head. “I’ve been meaning to tell you something.” He squeezed me tighter, bringing me into hischest.
“What?” I asked, overwhelmed with the smell of him, the feel of his hard muscles pressed againstme.
“Freckles are my kryptonite.” Then his lips fell ontomine.
His soft kiss took me by surprise. First kiss.My mouth parted to let his tongue in, and his kiss grew hungrier. Need traveled south of my navel and I moaned slightly. I felt like I’d wanted this forever. His hand came up to the back of my neck as he pulled my face closer to his, and I raked my fingers down hischest.
When he finally pulled away, I was absolutely sure of two things. One, that was the best kiss of my life and two, I was scared as hell because I was totally falling forhim.
* * *
