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.Something sizzled across his collar where his neck and shoulder met, followed by a throbbing burn along the path the initial sharp pain had taken.As he yelled, Rosie dropped to the floor as if she’d been shot, though there was no sound.The coffee flew from both mugs in an almost graceful, slo-mo arc as he whirled to face whatever had struck him from behind.Which was when another shriek followed Niles’s own.“Fuck! Fuck! My eyes!” Patrick’s stepbrother toppled over, clutching his coffee-scalded face.A forgotten knife fell from his hands, but before Niles could reach for it, he saw the cousin standing on a desk within one of the cubicles, holding.Was that a crossbow?The anti-cybertech terrorists who attacked Grace and Chino had used bows and knives, his brain supplied uselessly.“Shut the fuck up, Charlie.It’s just coffee.It’ll cool down,” Mike snarled, sneering at his cousin.He kept the bow trained on Niles.“You.Don’t fucking move, queer.”Niles felt the back of his shirt growing cool and wet, and reached for where the junction of his shoulder and neck burned.His hand came away drenched in blood, and looking down, he could see crimson streaks rapidly soaking through the front of his shirt.Fuck, had a crossbow bolt skimmed his shoulder? Was that what hit Rosie?No.The knife at his feet was bloody.Charlie had cut him.But why had Rosie fallen?Or had she dived?“Get up where I can see you, you spic bitch!” Mike called.“Or I’ll slit this fag’s throat.”Pressing his hand against his wound, Niles watched Rosie rise from behind her desk, her hands in the air.“I’m here.There’s no reason to hurt him.”Mike sneered.“Fucking cunt.Diving for cover, hiding under the desk.You talk like you think you can fight, but when you have to stand up to a real man, you hide like the pussy you are.”Rosie blinked slowly.“Spic.Bitch.Cunt.Pussy.Do you have a single original insult in your vocabulary?” She brought her hands down, lifting her chin as she faced him.Fuck.Niles could feel the blood slick between his fingers, growing tacky where it had been sitting for a while.How bad had they cut him?He clenched his jaw and waited for the crossbow bolt to find him.“There was something in that shit, man! It wasn’t just coffee!” Charlie was moaning, huddled on the floor and rubbing his eyes frantically.“Fuck, it burns!”“I said shut up, you fucktard!” Mike hefted the crossbow up, narrowing his eyes to take aim at Niles.Rosie scoffed.“These are the guys who have killed four people, maybe five? Seriously? This is what you’re bringing? You’re a pair of fucking cliché buffoons.”“Fuck you, bitch.I gave you a chance to show me some respect.Now I’m gonna make you fuckin’ respect me.”“Oh God.Are you honestly going to monologue at me? Just fucking shoot me already.” Niles tried to shut her up with the power of his mind, but it wasn’t working.Just like the warrior tank she played, she would taunt them and try to draw their fire away from him.But he wasn’t an acolyte with healing spells to close her wounds when she began to bleed.All he could do was slump here uselessly against the wall while he bled out.And he was.He could feel the numbness, the tingling, the darkening of his vision that said he was losing too much blood.“Get your hands where I can fucking see them!” Mike snapped, and Niles realized he’d actually lost a moment of awareness.“What? You think I have a Taser stashed in my handbag under my desk?” God.No one did derision like Rosie when she was pissed off.But her eyes cut to Niles quickly, and then back to Mike.“I remember you now.You were in the autograph line at the convention.You tried to make me look at your artwork while you pitched me a game idea.I knew I recognized the style of those drawings.”Jesus, fuck, Rosie, shut up! Niles let himself slip down the wall a little further, moaning.He should have been frightened.Niles knew he should have been frightened, facing what would no doubt be his final seconds.But instead, he was just fucking pissed off.For the first time in his life, he wanted to commit violence, wanted to smash these fucking losers’ heads in for all the ridiculous waste of lives, for the grieving families, for the pain and fear those young women must have felt before they died.For Rosie, facing off against them so bravely like she did every day of her life, and for Jordie who would lose the other half of himself, and for Tim who would never know Niles was already well on his way to falling in love with him again.And for what? It made no fucking sense, and he just wanted to scream his rage and bludgeon these two punks to death [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]