Omega The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,29
coupled with paint.
I stood and finally got my head above the dust in time to see the beast of a man roar at me again and charge. I threw myself to the side, smashing into an old piece of wooden furniture as he went by. “If I ever get out of here,” I said over the noise of my enemy hitting the far wall with shattering force, “I will personally beat Clyde Clary to death with nothing but an old shoe.”
There was a sharp increase of moisture in the air, I could feel it, as though it were about to rain, the cool, clammy sense that I was sweating and chilled. “Why a shoe?” I heard from above me as the sound of someone dropping to the floor of the basement and hitting the broken lumberyard that lay across it reached my ears. “Why not something really good, like a hammer or a mallet?”
“Because I won’t be emotionally satisfied by the sound of a hammer hitting him over and over,” I said, keeping my eyes trained on the dust in front of me, even as the moisture began to pull it from the air, clearing my vision. “I think it might take a while to work out my rage on him, and I’d like to have the enjoyment of the sole of it slapping him in the face over and over again.”
“Yeah, well,” Scott said, and I saw a thin aura of moisture around his hands as he pulled it from the air and then dispersed it in front of us, “tell him yourself in a second; Kat’s getting him ready to fight again right now. Hopefully he’ll be down here in a minute.”
“Reed?” I asked, and caught a twinge of pain in Scott’s expression. “That bad, eh? I should have known.”
“He’ll be fine,” Scott said. “But Kat can’t fix him and Clary without draining herself dry, so...”
“So you’d rather have an idiot at our backs than a guy with a brain? How very thoughtful of you. It’s almost like you want the enemy to kill me.”
“Hey,” he said, looking vaguely offended. “I’m down here with you, aren’t I? Besides, in this fight, brawn seemed to be the needed thing, more than brains, at least.”
“Oh, that’s well thought out,” I said, watching the last of the mist clear to reveal a shattered, dark hole where my enemy had charged into the foundation wall of the house, now empty, “I’d be more upset with you, but I’m too busy wondering where this Omega jackass went—”
“GERONIMO!” I heard from above, then the sound of something impacting on the stairs, followed by the breaking of all manner of wood as the stairs collapsed.
“Wow,” Scott said. “Maybe you were right about that idiot bit.”
I rolled my eyes at him in the barest control of my fury. “Ya think?!” I adjusted my footing and stared into the black, gaping hole in the foundation; it was so dark in the basement I couldn’t see into the depths of it. It could be a foot deep or twelve, and I wouldn’t be able to tell. “Clary, you just destroyed our escape route, you moron.”
“What do you need to escape for?” Clary’s voice came along with the shifting of boards as he prised himself free of the wreckage of the stairs, which had dissolved about six steps down. “We got him right where we want him, now!”
“Oh, do you?” A voice came from the darkness next to the staircase, and I heard something massive shift, stone moving against skin, and then something flew through the air. I was slow in my reflexes and I felt Scott slam into me, knocking me to the floor as Clary’s rock-skinned body passed over me and hit the support beam behind us, causing the ceiling to cave in again. Panic threatened to overwhelm me as the remains of the upstairs collapsed on us. Scott took the brunt of the impact, shielding me with his body. He lay across me, trapping me in place, confined, unable to move more than a few inches.
After a moment of pause for everything to settle, I coughed and tried to move. The pressure of Scott’s body lying across me made it difficult, and I felt warm liquid run down onto my clothing, seeping through against my skin. I pushed against him, but he was limp and silent, offering no suggestion that he might be conscious. I thought about crying out for help, but I didn’t know if