He saw what looked like leaders, the high council maybe, running out of a conference room. They wore gold robes and were festooned with necklaces and head dresses and rings. He sent bullets into backs and bellies, rolled behind a column painted in hieroglyphics and dropped spent magazines. Gun fire ricocheted across the room, clouds of smoke and puffs of stone dust from heavy caliber bullets filled the air. Scarlet danced her dance of death, unkillable and unstoppable, a dervish of movement and angry thuds of steel on bone. Jessie drew their fire and dashed from one position to another, guns spitting flames with bullets that exploded into flowers of lead. They ripped away huge chunks of meat, left some of them dead before they hit the ground, some of them with so much blood loss they died reaching for a gun to try to fight back. They were super soldiers. They were enhanced. They were stronger and faster but they still died when the cross-cut bullets expanded inside of them leaving huge holes where living organs used to be. They weren’t schooled in the art of war like Jessie had been. They’d never had to live by the gun, it was only something they shot on occasion. It wasn’t an extension of them, wasn’t a part of who they were. Gauzy curtains went up in flames from spilled oil lamps and added their own dancing light to the nightmare scene. Their bullets chased Jessie around the room. They tried to anticipate his moves, tried to shoot where he would be but he wasn’t there. They could barely follow him and the Heretic as they rolled and jumped and spun and killed. They were machines of flowing grace. Precise and blindingly fast. A flash from a muzzle, a blur of leather, an explosion of gunfire. Weapons were pointed but the spot was empty, the death came from a dozen feet away or from behind a stone coffin.
Jessie’s last magazine ran empty, the slides locked back and he dove for a dropped rifle. Automatic gunfire from an AK stitched a line of holes in the tile floors and he rolled back behind a concrete column, pulled his blades and waited for the bullets to stop.
“He’s empty! Get the Heretic! Shoot the Heretic!” one of them yelled and all guns turned towards Scarlet.
Ricketts emptied the last few rounds from his AK into her as she flipped high over a stone coffin and brought her baton down on the head of a guard trying to follow her with his rifle. Jessie saw the big bullets rip into her and send her crumpling gracelessly to the floor. He rolled away from the cover of the column, grabbed the rifle and sent more rounds towards the black-clad men on the other side of the room. They dove for cover and guns stopped hammering for a moment. The smoke was cloyingly thick in the dimness from the flying debris and fires from toppled lamps. The guards sent a few more rounds in their general direction but they were shooting blind from the far side of the casino. They were too afraid to attack, they knew they were outclassed by the kid with the guns and out maneuvered by the Heretic with the steel fists.
Jessie crawled over to where she’d landed in a broken heap and pulled her towards him. The bullets had torn through her leg, breaking it and leaving it twisted at an odd angle. His eyes were dry, he was all cried out, they knew this was coming and he didn’t want to be consumed with sorrow in their last few minutes together.
“We almost did it.” she said. “We almost finished them.”
Jessie leaned against the Sarcophagus of some ancient king or queen and pulled her into his lap. Blood was tricking down his cheek from a bullet graze or a splinter of flying stone, he didn’t know which. His back hurt, his breath was short. He must have taken a bullet or two in the Kevlar. He stroked her two-tone hair and looked at the destruction that lay all around them. Bodies of servants and soldiers littered the floor, a dozen small fires were finding more things to burn and were spreading fast. Shattered lights, kitschy decorations, food and curtains were strewn among the dead. He should be digging for more ammo, looking through the bodies for another magazine. The guards would be coming soon, they’d regroup, maybe gather some servants and send them in first but they’d be right behind them. Scarlet was done for, with her busted leg, she was a sitting duck. Him, too if he didn’t find some bullets. He couldn’t take the guards hand to hand, especially in the shape he was in and definitely not two or three of them at once.
They waited for an attack to finish them off but it didn’t come. The smoke got thicker, the fires spread and they heard the men cowering on the far side of the casino, shouting into radios, awaiting orders.
“We won.” he told her and watched the shadows from the fires dance across her face.
He held her, put his cheek against her hair and felt
