The Beast (Black Dagger Brotherhood #14) - J. R. Ward Page 0,5
of meat, and gunned for his next one. Identifying a blond slayer about fifteen feet to the left, he quick-checked the peripheral to make sure the Brotherhood wasn’t getting wagon-wheeled. Then, using his glove-covered trigger finger, he picked off the guy who looked like Rod Stewart, ca. 1980.
On to numbers three to infinity. V hit whatever was safe to take out, making sure that he didn’t cross-hair or impair friendly fire while still remaining effective. Some hundred and fifty yards of video game later and he’d reached both cover and danger: the first of the dorms, which they had originally planned to ambush. The damn thing was a hollowed-out shell with plenty of hidey-holes only a fool would assume were empty, and he was careful to monitor his six as he back-flatted down the side of the brick building, ducking under windows, jumping over low bushes.
The cotton-candy/rancid-meat stench of lessers leaking everywhere swirled around in the cold gusts, mixing into a war salad with the echoes of gunshots and the shouts of the enemy. Anger in his gut drove him forward and kept him focused at the same time as he tried to drop targets without getting shot himself.
As soon as he got to Rhage, he was going to fat-lip that goddamn beauty queen.
Assuming destiny didn’t black-shroud the SOB first.
The good news? With the Fore-lesser gone, the Lessening Society’s response was no more coordinated than the Brotherhood’s attack had been, and the fact that the enemy was poorly armed and pathetically untrained was another bene. There seemed to be a five-to-one slayer-to-gun ratio, and a one-in-ten competent fighter rate—and given the numbers? That might just save their asses.
Left, pop! Right, pop! Dodge. Drop and roll. Spring up and keep running. Over two downed slayers—thank you, Assail, you crazy sonofabitch—pop! right in front of him.
The magic happened about five minutes and fifty thousand years into the fight. Without warning, he separated from his body, peeling free of the flesh that was working so hard and with such accuracy, his spirit floating above the adrenaline that forest-fired his arms and legs, his essence witnessing himself pumping off rounds and pressing forward from a position over his own right shoulder.
It was the zone, and usually something that took him over pretty much as soon as he started fighting. But with Rhage under his skin, up his ass, and fucking his head, the shit was late to the party.
It was because of his above-the-fray perspective that he noticed the catch-22 first.
Sometimes the counter-intuitive, the WTF, the against-the-grain, was as important as all the things you expected to see in a battle.
Like, for example, three figures running laterally across the theater of engagement for the exit. Yeah, sure, it could be lessers who’d pissed their pants and were deserting—except for one thing: The Omega’s blood in their bodies was one fuck of a GPS locator, and having to tell that kind of boss that you’d pantywaisted out of an engagement like this would guarantee the sort of torture that made Hell look like a couch surf.
Goddamn it, he couldn’t let them go. Not when they could end up calling cops and adding another layer of FUBAR to this funhouse.
Assuming they hadn’t already done that.
With a curse, Vishous took after the three free-thinkers, dematerializing out in front of where the trio seemed to be heading. As he re-formed, he knew they were fucking humans even before he saw that the one in the rear was running backward with what was no doubt a cocksucking Apple, iConformist POS front and center and on video record.
He fricking iHated anything with a goddamn Macintosh trademark.
V jumped out into the guy’s path, which of course J. J. Abrams didn’t notice, because, hello, he was too busy getting footage.
Vishous extended his shitkicker, and as the human went into gravity shock, the phone airborned and V caught the thing and shoved it into his leather jacket.
Next move was to stomp the guy’s sternum and put a gun in his face. Staring down at the holy shit and sputter that was going on, it took all of V’s self-control not to slit the guy’s throat, then go Jason Voorhees all over the pair who were still on the run. He’d beyond had it with humans. He had real work to do, but noooo, he was once again wiping the asses of these rats without tails so that the rest of them didn’t get upset that vampires walked among them.