I slapped his hand away before he could reach his weapon, then pulled the gun from its holster and tossed it down the hall behind us. The whole time I kept up the pressure on his throat, my bicep and forearm digging into the sides of his neck. His struggles grew weaker, his grunts and wheezes less frequent, and finally he went still. Pinching off the blood supply to the brain hadn’t killed him, but he and his friend would be eating aspirin together to soothe their savage headaches.
“No time to hide this one,” Hagar said, her words hurried. “Your next target changed direction. He’s coming from the left. Twenty seconds out.”
“Great,” I growled.
“Something’s wrong,” Hagar said, panicked. “There’s another coming from the right.”
My Eclipse nature surged to life, its animal aggression screaming for me to slaughter these foes and finish the mission. It showed me a vision of the future, blood splattered across the hallway, dead men at my feet.
It took me long, painful seconds to push the dark urge down and out of my thoughts. I wasn’t going to kill these men who were just doing their job. There had to be another way.
“They’re almost on top of you,” Hagar breathed into my ear. Her voice was tight and twisted with worry. “Do something.”
I lunged out of the hallway and rushed to the left. My Borrowed Core technique gathered in more rats to the fold, filling my aura with bestial aspects. Unfortunately, the guard heard me when I was still too far away for me to reach him with my serpents. He found his weapon, raised it, and drew a bead on me.
In the next second, he’d pull the trigger.
I was fast, but not fast enough to dodge a bullet.
My fusion blade appeared in my right hand at the speed of thought. I hurled it down the hallway at the guard, knowing even as I threw it my attack wouldn’t be fast enough. He’d squeeze off the shot, and it’d punch into my chest. That would be lights out for me.
The guard flinched at the unexpected attack. As my unbalanced sword flew toward him, he jerked to one side and his shot went wide.
The gunshot’s echo in the hallway was deafening. It felt like someone had slapped me on both ears with their open palms, and yet I still heard the whiz of a bullet as it ripped past my head. The guard’s second shot followed hot on the heels of the first one, a wild and undisciplined squeeze that sent a bullet into the ceiling above my head.
My fusion sword slammed into the guard’s chest, hilt first. The heavy weapon fell away from the guard, and he took his eyes off me for a moment to watch it hit the floor.
I hadn’t stopped my headlong charge at the man. My serpents struck the instant the guard’s eyes were off me, driven as much by my Eclipse nature’s survival instincts as my conscious thought. They slammed into the guard’s core, rocking him back on his heels and stripping jinsei out of his core in the blink of an eye.
The sacred energy, laced with aspects of panic and anger from my target’s aura, hit my core in a delicious flood of power. I pushed the aspects back into my serpents, strengthening them and solidifying their grip on the guard’s core.
It would be so easy to finish the man. I could let my core go for another second, maybe two, and the last of the jinsei would drain out of the man’s body and into me.
Just like Singapore.
I ripped my serpents away from the guard, and my Eclipse nature roared. It filled my head with all the reasons the man needed to die. He wasn’t out of the fight yet, which meant he was still a threat. He could shoot me. He could call for me.
“Halt!” the other guard shouted. He’d stopped twenty feet away, his weapon raised in a two-handed grip, legs spread, and shoulders squared in a stable firing platform.
“Abort!” Hagar shouted. “Get out of there, Jace. We’ve lost the element of surprise. They’re coming for you.”
Hagar was right. Hurried footsteps rang through the building. If I stayed where I was, they’d outnumber me in the next few minutes. One gunman I could deal with. Two was pushing my luck.
More than that?
Even a sacred sage could be taken down by enough bullets, and I was nowhere near that powerful. The smart choice was to run.
But if I cut and ran, we’d miss this chance to grab the material. That would put the elders’ plans back by months, maybe years. Which meant they wouldn’t be able to devote any resources to the most important thing to me: finding my mother.
“No,” I said, my voice calm and quiet. I’d made my choice. I wasn’t running. “I can still do this.”
One of my serpents snatched my fusion blade from where it had fallen. The other looped around the downed guard’s neck and bounced his head off the floor hard enough to knock him senseless.
The remaining guard’s aura sparked with anxiety, dread, and violence. He didn’t know who I was or why I was there—all he saw was his fallen friend. He could have fired, but he hadn’t.
My Eclipse nature told me why. He was prey, paralyzed by the sight of a true predator before him.
I pushed the stolen jinsei into my legs and ran faster than the guard could track with his gun. I zigged to the left, then zagged back to the right as he fired into the space I’d just left. The bullets missed me by feet, not inches, and then I was on top of my foe.
My sword lashed out at the guard’s gun, shattering his fingers as the weapon twisted free of his grip. Before he could cry out in surprise, I reversed
