Page 267 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

He swings around with seemingly impossible speed, and a well-formed punch lands with meteoric impact in the mouth of one man trying to electrocute him; the blow shatters, dislocates and disconnects the jaw almost entirely from the skull, leaving it hanging by cheek flesh alone.

Riley grabs one of Blaire’s copper pans to swing viciously into the face of the man he was fighting.

When he looks over at Lachlan, he physically gags.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Kade breathes.

Kade has never seen anyone so completely certain of victory.

He doesn’t evade what cannot kill him. He accepts damage to create openings no living fighter would dare use. A baton hits his spine, so Lachlan uses his own convulsion to add force to the elbow that caves the sternum. When the man drops to his knees, he vomits blood.

Lachlan Tanner seems then to be a man who knows the full range of his capacity for wrath and has no honour or mercy with which to temper it. Kade can’t help but admire it the way he naturally admires the most simplistically lethal animals on the planet. He stares, lips wet with his own blood, breathing hard; every nerve inside his body is brilliantly alive.

Lachlan looks him over. ‘You good, baby?’

Kade nods. ‘Y-yeah.’

Around him, Blaire’s beautiful home has become wreckage.

Broken furniture, shattered crockery, ruined books and dead bodies.

Riley’s hands are rose-red, and he’s panting shallowly.

‘That was fucking gross,’ he tells Lachlan.

‘Which part?’

‘The jawbreaker.’ Riley bends to offer Blaire a hand, which she takes from her position on the floor. Her skin is too pale, her eyes rimmed by faint shadows. ‘You OK?’

‘More will come.’

When her knees buckle, Riley keeps her steady.

Lachlan steps over a mutilated torso. ‘Harker, can you carry her?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I can walk.’

‘Your misty slime trick clearly drained you.’

‘There’s movement above.’

‘Vasily’s people,’ she says, looking up. ‘We have to bury the tunnel. There’s a failsafe.’

‘I know. I killed the command circuit.’

Blaire hisses. ‘Of course you did.’

‘I can trigger it manually.’

‘What? No, absolutely not,’ Kade says quickly.

‘They must have followed us, which means they’ll keep coming in this way unless we flatten it. I can bump a five-second delay and get back out.’

They leave Blaire’s apartment together.

The goo clings to Kade’s boots, and the smell of freshly exposed insides makes his stomach turn. Their guns were dented and mangled by the magnetic shield, now useless.