The Judas Line

couldn’t pass it up …”

Instead of responding, Maggie shouted Vigor, inhaling the sweet odor of strawberries and Alan yelled Grace, releasing the musky smell of a great cat.

He let go of the weapon and immediately Maggie took swing, trying to punch the butt of the pistol through her opponent’s skull, but missed. She tried again and again, but Alan was always just out of reach, ducking and weaving with uncommon fluidity.

Back and forth, back and forth they danced in the elevator’s confined space, Maggie striking with unflagging stamina and Alan dodging with preternatural elegance.

The elevator doors opened.

More blood and gore was smeared about the hallway, marking the remaining golems’ movements. Alan, leaping over a sweeping leg, made for the opening. He almost made it.

No matter how graceful he might have been, once his back was turned in flight, Maggie had her chance and she made the most of it.

One muscular hand clamped down like a vise on the calf of the fleeing man and Maggie, standing a good six foot two, weighing 190 pounds, a one-woman battalion, fell on him like the wrath of God.

Maggie had been a champion in the League of Valhalla for two years running, fighting men much bigger and stronger than her to the delight of the Asgardians and their noisome crowd. One of her opponents described her as “the she-wolf from hell.” She won so many fights that she’d become the darling of the Asgardians, that is until she had used magic in one of her bouts. That had landed her hard into trouble and a concrete cell under a League warehouse.

Alan kicked, thrashed and bucked, but he couldn’t escape her furious grip, not even with Strength. A sledgehammer elbow broke two ribs on his right side, caving them like rotten sticks, puncturing a lung. Alan opened his mouth to scream, but his tortured midsection wouldn’t let him. Maggie’s follow-through once again tore into the damaged ribs and the convulsion that followed threw her clean off.

Alan folded in around himself, blood spraying from his gaping mouth as the life left his body.

“You stinking piece of garbage!” Maggie screamed, rising to her feet and giving the body a swift kick. It flew through the air and splattered against the wall, leaving a red imprint like an all-red Matisse cutout.

Eventually the Strength leeched from her system and she began to calm, staring at the shattered remains of what was once a trusted comrade. “Aw … shit,” she moaned. “Why did you have to go and do that, you bastard?”

Her head came up as a scream of frustration split the air.

It wasn’t Maggie’s scream that filled my head at that moment, but Mike’s, I knew it. It went on and on, a deep roar of pain that shriveled my balls.

“Follow me,” I shouted, not waiting for Cain as I tore off down the hallway.

Everything blurred as my focus became diamond-hard on saving Mike, my friend. How strange was that? A friend, a comfort I’d gone the first two decades without, believed I didn’t need. Now, in an effort to save one, I stormed the ramparts of evil with equal parts fear and dread running rampant in my veins.

I rounded a corner in time to see a crash test dummy, most of the chamois flesh stripped from its metal frame, burst through a door as if it were made of tissue paper. The scream came loud through the open doorway.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Mike

I screamed and screamed into Boris’ face, screamed until my lungs burned with the effort, screamed until my throat burned with acid, scouring my vocal cords.

Boris seemed to drink it up, enjoying the spectacle immensely.

Crash! The door flew off its hinges, barely missing Boris and flying through the open space where one of the floor-to-ceiling windows had been.

We both stared in disbelief as a cross between a crash test dummy and the Terminator leaped through the doorway, metal hands outstretched for Boris’ throat.

As a former soldier, I’d had some curiosity about my Soviet counterparts, the Spetsnaz. Highly trained, brutalized until pain was just another feeling to be dismissed, they were the bogeymen of Red Army, the best (or worst) of the best.

Boris proved equal to his calling because there was no hesitation as he met the mechanical monster, grabbing a metal arm and twisting his body to throw the thing over and across his hip. The monster flew through the air, landing near the broken windows.

All I could do was watch, dumbfounded, as Boris charged the dummy. It stood there waiting, arms stretched wide while the Russian leapt. Apparently the creature didn’t have the brains to figure the odds, because the outcome of a two-hundred-fifty-pound man taking on what I took to be a one-hundred-eighty-pound mannequin head-on seemed easy to calculate.

The soles of Boris’ size twelves impacted solidly on the dummy’s midsection, sending the thing sailing out past the broken window and into the night, where it quickly dropped out of sight.

Just as the giant Russian turned back to me, I heard the most wonderful voice in the world say, “Don’t you dare move, Boris.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

Morgan

I didn’t pull the trigger. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to. The sight of Mike-battered and bloody, sitting on an ugly steel chair looking like death warmed over, face beaten into shapelessness-froze my blood, but something stayed my finger. Maybe it was the incredibly efficient, graceful way Boris had disposed of the golem, the terrible beauty of his lethality. Whatever it was, I let him live for that moment.

“Don’t you dare move, Boris.” I really, really wanted to shoot him in the worst way. It was like an itch you just had to scratch before it drove you mad. “You okay, Mike?”

My friend laughed, a sad, sick sound. “Depends on your definition, I guess.”

I wasted no time in laying Healing on him, keeping one eye on Boris, who was glaring hot death at me. I could feel Mike grow stronger, but not enough, so I laid on another and another until the bruises on his body faded and his face became recognizable again.

Fatigue pulled at me, but I didn’t care. Mike was alive. A flick of a K-bar and the zip ties holding his wrists together parted.

“So this is the infamous clergyman who causes the Sicarii to quail and quiver in their boots.” Cain stepped into the suite, smiling at Mike with what seemed to be genuine affection. “And I note the figure of a surly Russian who must be the dreaded Boris of whom such tales are spun as to unman ordinary mortals.”

“Interesting turn of phrase,” began Mike, rubbing some life back into his hands. “I vote we delay any further discussion until we are safe. Let’s get out of here now.”

“Sit, Boris,” I commanded. The Russian just glared, so I shot the cuff of his expensive slacks. “Sit, or I take out your ankles, like last time.” That put him on his butt right quick. It was then I noted we were standing on several wrestling mats. We had to be in a training suite where the guards kept their skills sharp. That meant Julian was close by.

“Hey, boss. Hey, handsome,” Maggie’s deep but very feminine voice came from behind. “Is this tall drink of cute the priest you were after? Too bad he belongs to God.”

Mike’s expression at seeing Maggie for the first time was worth the price of admission. She was a lot of woman to take in all at once.