Page 270 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

A weight mounts his hips before he can roll, one knee pinning his spine while both arms are wrenched behind him and forced together.

Something smooth closes around one wrist.

A cuff.

Absolutely fucking not.

Kade drives off his toes, bucks hard and drops one shoulder, using the roll to tear his wrist free before the cuff seals. The attacker goes sideways. Kade scrambles upright, eyes adjusting to the dark a little.

He sees grey blobs of motion.

Riley yells, ‘Kade, down!’

Kade hits the floor a third time, but this time he rolls backwards and puts distance between himself and the blob. His vision is adjusting more and more, combining with his other senses, but it’s like this motherfucker can tell because a second later, the world burns devastatingly bright before sinking back into a darkness more utter than before.

He’s night-blind.

A heel drives into his sternum, sending Kade backwards into a wall. Fingers close around his throat. Whoever this is could have killed him three times by now.

Gunfire erupts from overhead.

Blaire yells in Russian for them to cease fire.

The grip on his throat tightens.

Kade lifts both thumbs towards the man’s eyes.

One wrist is smacked away almost playfully. The other is caught and twisted into a sickeningly neat break, shattering bone beneath skin.

Riley screams.

The pain is incandescent.

Kade is dying.

‘Come on, First Captain,’ the attacker sneers around what sounds like a smile. ‘I thought you were Iron Star’s best?’

This close, Kade understands why Riley couldn’t hear a heartbeat from the corner he was staring at. His attacker’s gear feels faintly alive against him, humming and shivering with countless mismatched pulses that seem to come from everywhere except the body beneath it.

He’s losing air, losing consciousness, losing his fucking life.

Kade is slipping when the man is suddenly torn away.

Not struck.

Torn.

Kade hears fabric rip and the impact of a thrown body.

A familiar smell cuts through dust, blood and disturbed earth.

Honeycomb and summer rain.

Throat sore, he falls to his knees and chokes out, ‘L-Lachlan.’

A vicious flurry of blows breaks out, too rapid to count.

Kade crawls, feeling for anything he can use, but especially Kestrel.