Page 45 of Sinister Red
“Ye not drinking tonight, are ye lad?” Tank asks as he plops down into the chair next to me.
I shake my head. “Not yet.”
“Surveying yer kingdom, den?”
He opens his arms wide then motions to the common room of the clubhouse and I smirk. “Something like that.”
“No… I tink it might be somting more that’s on yer mind right now.”
“That so?”
Tank nods and sinks back into his seat as I turn to face him. “I tink yer mind be wandering to a lass dat neither of us have seen in quite a few years.”
“How do you figure?” Because I was trying to hide the fact that I’ve done nothing but think about Sofie since I saw her yesterday, but I guess I’m failing at it.
“I know da look.”
“The look?”
“Aye. It’s not like when da missus gives meher look, but I know it all da same.” Tank kicks his feet out in front of him and crosses his legs at the ankles. “Tis da look of a lad in love, but full of fury.”
I blink at the older version of Spider, then shake my head again with a chuckle. “So you do know the look, since you’ve said yourself you love Nadine but want to throttle her most of the time.”
“Bah.” He scoffs. “Da old lady and me haven’t loved each other in years. And I don tink we ever had what ye and Sofie girl have.”
“Had.” I turn back to the common room with a grunt. “We don’t have shit anymore.”
“Ye still following her and her new eejit around?”
I don’t answer, but I couldn’t stop the small smile from forming on my face if I tried.
“Den ye still have it, laddie. Never lost it and…”
“And never what?” When I face Tank again, I physically feel all of the color drain from my face.
He’s looking down at his chest, his hazel-green eyes wide, Tank’s hands covered in blood.
And the second I shoot to my feet and start yelling for help, a bullet comes flying through his left shoulder and tears into my right bicep.
“Hailstorm!” I scream as I start to move. “Everybody down. Take cover!” But it’s too late.
Once I have Tank off the chair and sitting on the floor, crouching while I pull furniture around us to protect him, I glance around the room and see that it’s too fucking late.
Gunner is laid out about ten feet away, his head in Jackal’s lap and what is clearly a bullet hole right between our VP’s eyes. Cy is trying like hell to get them to move, but he’s carrying Trudy, who is bleeding heavily from her gut. I look for the rest of the EC—or what will be the EC if we make it out of this—only to find damn near everyone in the same kind of situation.
A situation caused by dozens of Demon Seed bastards who are coming in through the back door and up through the basement, judging by the direction.
How the fuck could this even happen?
I fucking know how.
The chainlink fence outside is topped with barbed wire, and Spider just electrified the thing, but just last week while he was hooking it up, a couple of curious teenagers cut a hole big enough to crawl through and that section of the fence hasn’t worked right since. Spider even ordered a new one, but it hasn’t come in yet, and apparently that was enough for the Seeds to get in and start wreaking havoc on shit.
But how…
I spin back toward the window Tank and I were sitting in front of to see that it’s open about four inches, just enough to get the muzzle of a gun through, one equipped with a silencer.
“Fuck,” I grunt as I look at Tank. “I gotta— “
