Chapter 55 Battle
Rayne's POV
I turned. The figure in the corridor was young. Seventeen at most. Lean...the kind of lean that came from not enough food for too long. Holding a pulse weapon too large for his frame with hands steadier than they had any right to be.
Behind me I heard Taren and Mace enter from the left access point. The boy didn't look at me when they entered. He looked at them. He moved first.
Taren exploded into motion, his form fracturing into a dark streak as he closed the distance in a heartbeat. The air itself seemed to tear around him
The boy dropped completely under the lunge, letting Taren's momentum carry him past, and as Taren's body crossed over him he drove both palms upward into Taren's ribcage from below.
The impact carried a dark current running up through his hands into Taren's chest on contact..
It found Taren's Energy and grabbed it. His own power folded inward against itself. Taren hit the wall and stayed there.
Mace adjusted immediately reading the situation, changing his angle, coming in lower and from the side.
The boy read it before it arrived. He caught Mace's leading arm at the wrist, redirected the force rather than stopping it spinning inside the attack, coming up behind Mace's shoulder and locking his arm across his throat.
He drove his knee into the back of Mace's knee simultaneously. Mace went down on both knees.
The boy pressed his free hand flat against the side of Mace's skull.
The dark current ran again. Longer this time. More deliberate.
Mace's eyes went blank. His body went completely unconscious as he slumped forward.
The boy stepped back. Looked at both of them on the floor. Then looked at me.
"Taren." The word tore out of me before anything else. I was already moving not thinking, not calculating, just moving.
I crossed the corridor in vampire speed and hit the boy with everything I had.
He went into the wall hard enough to crack the concrete.
"You..." The rage came out as sound before it came out as words. My hand was at his throat before he finished sliding down the wall, lifting him, his feet leaving the ground.
"You killed them." He grabbed my wrist with both hands and drove the dark current directly into my grip.
My hand became involuntary. The current finding the nerve cluster and firing it. He dropped and rolled and came up with blood on his face and the weapon back in his hand.
"Primary target confirmed," he said into his comm. Breathing hard now. First sign of strain. "Squad interference neutralized. Proceeding."
I looked at Mace face down on the floor. At Taren locked against the wall, still fighting something inside himself that wasn't letting him move.
The light started building behind my eyes. I went at him again. He was good. Genuinely, terrifyingly good for something the Enclave had built in a years.
He went under my first strike, over my second, redirected my third with that current running through his hands every contact point carrying that dark charge that disrupted vampire energy on impact.
He drove his knee into my solar plexus and I caught it. Flipped him. He hit the floor and came back up slower.
He drove a blade into my forearm. Drew silver blood from my jaw with an elbow I didn't block fast enough.
I hit him back. Hard. The grief at Mace and Taren on the floor behind me getting into my hands despite everything I did to keep it out.
He hit the wall and came off it slower. Came at me one last time.
I caught him. My fingers locked around his narrow chest, palm pressed flat against his sternum.
In that exact instant, the air directly in front of the boy shimmered violently.
Brea appeared suddenly standing right between us, exactly where my hand was already driving forward.
My hands were already in motion. There was no chance to stop. No time to pull back. The strike was unstoppable.
My palm slammed into her chest with brutal vampire force.
A sickening thud cracked through the corridor.
Brea’s eyes flew wide. A small, surprised gasp tore from her throat.
Right behind her, her brother’s face twisted in raw horror.
“Nooo—!” he screamed, the sound ripping out of him.
The impact hurled Brea backward into her brother. They both crashed hard against the wall. She slid down slowly, one trembling hand clutching the center of her sternum where my hand had struck.
Her breathing turned shallow and wrong, blood already flecking the corner of her lips.
I dropped to my knees beside her before she finished falling.
“Brea…” My voice came out broken. “Brea, look at me.”
Her eyes found mine, still sharp but quickly dimming.
“Don’t feel guilty,” she whispered, her voice thin and fading. She almost smiled. Then her eyes closed.
And she didn’t open them again. “No…” I choked out, my tears falling onto her cheek.
“Brea...no. Stay with me. You can’t you can’t do this. Not like this.”