Author’s Note: So… I’m still not comfortable writing action sequences, but Luna did get to be the heroine for a change.
“Tynan,” Luna said, glancing over her shoulder at the guard approaching her. She swallowed, not liking the idea of facing off with a trained gunman, cursing the matron again for lying to them. They’d been set up, hadn’t they? They’d thought that they were free, but they weren’t. This was that woman’s plan all along.
“Luna, I don’t know how—”
“Do it by the numbers. There’s more over there than there is behind us, so you take them, and I’ll deal with him.”
“You are—”
“Just do it, Tynan. I’ll be all right. I didn’t live in a city all my life and learn nothing about protecting myself. I had a boyfriend who lit my hair on fire, and I’ve done crazy things in my time. One gunman doesn’t scare me.” Luna knew she was lying, since she was unarmed and if the guy did fire at her, all she could hope to do was duck, but she had a feeling that they didn’t want to shoot her, not right away. She’d have to suffer, have to die in front of Tynan, that’s what they wanted, and if all they did was shoot her while he was distracted, they wouldn’t have the satisfaction from it that they wanted, that they needed. The guard would try and grab her. She was almost certain of that.
She knew that Tynan was capable of handling the rest of them. He was a black hole, after all. If he wanted to, all he had to do was reach out, and they’d be dead. She knew he wouldn’t do that, though. He was not a killer. He’d find some way of disabling them that would leave them alive.
Her attacker, he might not be so lucky, not if she had to turn his weapon against him—if she could turn it against him. She just hoped that she could do this. She took a deep breath, watching the guard come closer. His eyes left her, jerking to the front where something had just crashed—something Tynan had touched, no doubt.
She knew that was her chance. She moved, leaping forward to knock herself into him, trying to force the weapon from his hand as she smacked him into the ground. He cursed her—she assumed that was what that word was—his breath hot and putrid near her face, but she didn’t stop.
Okay, so she’d only done this once before, when the pyro had gotten out of control and she had to steal his lighter, but she thought she had the guard where she wanted him. She pried his fingers off the gun and pointed it at his head. “You underestimated the human, didn’t you?”
He spat at her, and she looked down at the gun. “Does this have a stun, or will it just kill you? That would be good to know. I wouldn’t necessarily want to shoot you and kill you…”
“You’re gonna die. You and the monster.”
She laughed. “You know what? You’re the monster here, so…”
He frowned, and she knew she had him. He was afraid. She backed away from him, keeping the gun pointed at him as she returned to Alvin’s side. She needed to make sure that he was safe, that he was still alive.
“The others will not be harming anyone. Not for some time. I am not sure how they will be freed from that structure, and I hope that its… collapse was not too painful for them, but they should live,” Tynan said, and she frowned as she looked behind her. She’d been so focused on the guard that while she’d heard the crash and everything, she hadn’t expected that. He’d taken a column supporting the ceiling and turned it into a sort of prison, dropping it and part of the roof onto them.
“Wow.”
Tynan sat down beside her. “I do not feel good. That was more difficult than I expected. Starting the hunger, stopping the hunger, trying not to consume too much or let the wreckage fall with too much momentum… It was not easy.”
“It was worth it,” she told him, leaning over to kiss his cheek. “I managed to get him because you distracted him, so I have a gun now. We won. Yay.”
“I am not certain that is an appropriate response. If that was an ambush prepared, not by rogues but by the government, they have already reneged on their agreement, and we will not be free.”
Luna sighed. “I don’t know what it was. I know one thing, though. We’re going to get Alvin somewhere that he can get treatment.”