“I’ve waited too long for this,” Azrael said. “Get up and face me!”
“Boss, no!” Horn called out.
His voice sounded distant, but Beckham could see him on the landing below.
Horn had managed to get out from under the Chimera. He smashed the beast’s skull against the brick wall of the stairwell. Over and over, he bashed the head, the monster spasming with each blow.
Azrael walked down the stairs, a blood-soaked cutlass in hand. “I was going to give you one last chance to join the New Gods, but now I’m just going to gut you and your ugly friend and drape your intestines over the walls.”
Howls and shrieks of approaching Variants sounded over the grisly voice of their master.
Beckham tried to free himself, but the weight of the two creatures was too much to lift at the awkward angle he had fallen. He still held the pistol, but he couldn’t raise it enough to shoot Azrael where he stood.
The Prophet moved slowly down the stairs, gripping his stomach with one hand and limping. Blood drooled out of multiple gunshot wounds.
If the brute kept coming closer, then soon he would be within Beckham’s aim. He prepared to fire the pistol, hoping Azrael hadn’t seen it.
Azrael reached down and heaved the smaller Chimeras off Beckham, then stomped on his wrist before he could pull the trigger. His fingers splayed from the impact and the pistol clattered down the steps.
Beckham cried out in agony, unable to hold in the scream.
“BOSS!” Horn shouted.
Variants pounded up the stairs toward him as he got up, weaponless except for his fists.
“Horn,” Beckham choked.
“Look at me!” Azrael shouted.
Beckham met the soulless gaze of the monster and prepared to meet his fate. He had held onto hope that he could save Galveston and his family, but how could they win against such evil?
Azrael suddenly looked down the stairs as the Variants bounded up the stairs.
“I want you to watch,” Azrael growled.
Four Thrall Variants jumped to the landing where Horn waited with his fists raised. The creatures shrieked, sucker lips smacking, ready to feed.
“Fuck you!” Horn yelled. He punched one of them in the face, breaking the jaw with a crack. Then he picked up a second and tossed it down the stairs. The other two beasts jumped onto him, sinking claws into his flesh.
“HORN!” Beckham yelled.
The Variants slammed Horn into the railing along the wall, before they all tumbled backward down the stairs out of Beckham’s sight. He heard the bodies tumbling and smacking against the wall and stairs with sickening thumps.
Images of Horn’s girls and then his own family flashed through his eyes.
All the people he loved. Those who still lived. Those he had lost.
Thousands of lives depended on the outcome of this battle.
He could not let them down. He could not let his country down.
Beckham felt the cold blade of a cutlass tracing up his vest to his chin.
“I’m going to eat your heart first,” Azrael said. “And I will make your wife and son watch.”
Beckham swung his prosthetic hand at the blade, but Azrael countered it with a blow that cleaved off the prosthetic and the straps holding it to the remnants of his flesh-and-blood arm.
Then he brought the cutlass above his head and let out a deafening howl.
Three loud gunshots rang out from above.
For a moment, Azrael looked at Beckham, confusion and shock in his gaze. Beckham detected something else there. Something primal. A human emotion beneath the face of the monster.
Fear.
Azrael’s mouth gaped open, and he dropped the cutlass.
When he fell to the side, Beckham saw Ringgold looking down at him with a pistol in her remaining hand. She dropped the weapon and grabbed the stump where her other hand had been.
Heavy footsteps pounded behind Beckham, and he turned, ready to face yet another attacker.
Instead, he saw a familiar face.
“Boss,” Horn gasped. He towered over Beckham, bruised, bloody, and bulging muscles throbbing. A true mountain of a man.
He reached down to help Beckham to his feet. Holding on to each other, the Delta Operators and best friends made their way up the stairs to their president.
She had sat next to Cornelius again, resting her back against a wall.
The grizzled general had his eyes closed. At first, Beckham feared the man was dead, but when he felt the general’s neck, he detected a weak pulse pressing up against his finger.
He turned to Ringgold next. “Thank you. You saved my life.”
“Just paying you back for all the times you saved mine,” she said with a weak smile.
Beckham used his knife to cut strips off the shredded sleeve over his missing prosthetic, wincing in the pain from his injured wrist. He used the strips as a tourniquet to stop her bleeding, but she had already lost so much. It covered her shirt and pants.
“You’re going to be okay,” he said.
She could hardly nod. “Is it over?”
Beckham wanted to tell her yes, but gunfire still rang out between the screams of people and the howls of beasts.
Horn picked up an M4 and checked the magazine, then slammed it home.
“Boss, we’ve got more incoming,” he said. “We better get the president and general out of here.”
“No,” Ringgold said. “You go. Save your families.”
“I’m not leaving you,” Beckham said.
A sudden clash of footsteps sounded from the stairwell at the center of the platform leading up from the hotel. Three collaborators emerged, covered in blood and ash. Before they could so much as aim their rifles, Horn mowed them down with an M4.
“We have to move,” Beckham said. “Come on, we’re getting you—”
Ringgold wrapped her fingers around his injured wrist. Then he saw the blood coming out from under her jacket and realized why there was so much.
She had a second wound, a bullet to the abdomen.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“No, Madam…”
“Reed, I’m not going to make it,” she said, her voice sounding weaker than before. “And if we do win this
