Rogue Descendant (Nikki Glass) - By Jenna Black Page 0,107

found any evidence of it opening onto this first basement anywhere.

“We might as well check it out while we’re here,” Anderson whispered, though why he was bothering to whisper when the flashlight was giving us away, I don’t know.

He went first down the stairs, and I followed reluctantly. It was so tight and claustrophobic, even with the flashlight, that I had a hard time forcing myself to take each step. The wooden steps seemed rickety, and they creaked, further removing any hope we might have of keeping the element of surprise. Not that I thought we had it in the first place.

I was about halfway down the stairs, and Anderson was about two thirds of the way down, when suddenly, the pitch-black staircase was flooded with blinding white light, so bright I couldn’t possibly keep my eyes open. I heard Anderson’s cry of dismay, and heard what I presumed was my cell phone thunking to the floor. I tried to force my eyes open in search of something to shoot, but the light was overpowering after the heavy darkness.

A step creaked behind me, and a gunshot nearly shattered my eardrums. Anderson made a strangled sound, which I could barely hear through the sudden ringing in my ears. I felt the vibration under my feet as he fell. The light hurt, stabbing through my head like ice picks, and there was no way I could open my eyes. I turned, meaning to shoot blindly up the staircase behind me. I didn’t know if my supernatural aim could work if I had no idea what my target was, but it was worth a try.

Whoever was behind me moved faster than I did, and something hard and heavy smashed into the side of my face. Pain short-circuited my brain, and I tried to take a step backward to steady myself. Not such a great idea on a staircase. My foot came down on empty air, and I plummeted downward. My reflexes tried to save me, but there was nothing to grab on to, and all I could do was drop the gun. The light dimmed, and I managed to squint my eyes open just a tiny bit.

Enough to see Cyrus, wearing wraparound sunglasses and holding a gun, standing on the stairs and watching me fall.

TWENTY-FIVE

I went down the last of the stairs in a painful and undignified tumble. My ears were still ringing from the gunshot in the enclosed space, and I felt more than I heard the ominous crack a fraction of a second before white-hot pain stabbed through my chest.

There’s nothing that hurts quite so much as a broken rib, and if I’d had any air in my lungs I’d have screamed at the pain. The rib jolted again when I landed in a heap at the base of the stairs, my body piled atop Anderson’s. The light was no longer blindingly bright, but it was as if I’d stared directly at the sun, the afterimage burned into my retinas. Cyrus was nothing more than a shadowy form descending the stairs toward me.

The pain got the better of me and I blacked out.

I don’t think it was for very long. Only enough for Cyrus to reach the bottom of the stairs and crouch over me. He tucked his gun into a holster on his belt, then grabbed mine from where it had landed on the basement floor. He was smart enough to unload it before sticking it in his pocket, though in the state I was in, I wasn’t wrestling it away from him anytime soon. My rib screamed with every breath I took, my exposed skin seemed to have gotten a serious sunburn from the bright light, and my face throbbed where Cyrus had hit me. I probably had a bunch of other injuries, too, but my rib and face hurt the worst. My head was a little woozy, and it took me a heartbeat or two to realize I was no longer lying atop Anderson’s body.

“I’m sorry about this, Nikki,” Cyrus said, flashing me a sad and sympathetic smile. He took off the wraparound glasses and stuck them into his shirt pocket. I guess the light had been so bright that even the descendant of a sun god needed protection from it.

Before I could tell him what to do with his apology—before, in fact, I was conscious and coherent enough to do or say much of anything—he had turned me over onto my stomach. My rib didn’t appreciate the