Page 78 of Ghost’s Awakening

"We got them." His face had set hard. "Go!"

I turned my head from the two of them back to Caleb. He wasn't where he'd been. He was already at the ropes, ahead of all of us. "Caleb, wait for—" I gave it to his back, and he was already gone.

Something in him was pushing him ahead of everybody, and I ran upright to catch him, no crouch, the bullet that had gone over us be damned. I hit the top rope with both hands and went over it, and landed on my boots on the concrete a step behind him, Glock up and sweeping, Caleb on my right.

The first one came out of the fog screaming.

From the right, a man in black, and the kick he threw at Caleb's head came around high and fast off the hip. It was Caleb's own kick, the one I'd watched him throw at a heavy bag a hundred times. Caleb ducked it flat. In the same half second a battle cry came from my left, and a second man came in with a knife, and the knife wasn't going for my body. It was going for my hands. For the gun in them.

I turned right, out of the line, and the knife went through air. He came again. Knife, then a kick, then the knife on the way back from the kick, everything in combinations, and every one of them was a move I'd eaten off Blade on a training floor for years. I wasn't where any of it landed. One step ahead, one turn early, the blade going by a hand's width from my jacket every time, and at the edge of my eye, Caleb's shape moving through the other fight.

"Stand still, you little—" It came through the knife man's teeth, and he swung it backhand. The blade came around in a reverse arc with the point aimed straight at my neck.

That was the one I'd been waiting on.

My left hand went up and slammed into the inside of his wrist and closed on it. The blade stopped six inches from my throat. My right hand came up underneath my own left arm, the Glock in it, and I put the muzzle against the middle of him and fired.

The shot went into him with a crack I felt in my elbow. Fire came out around the muzzle and lit his shirt for a second. The force of it threw him backward out of my grip, and he stumbled, three fast steps, and went down flat on his back. He didn't move after that.

I looked for Caleb.

He was in front of me now. The fights had turned everybody around, and I caught him throwing a right roundhouse into his man's left side, the shin landing flush, high on the body. Where his heart was. The man folded over onto his left and went down face-first onto the concrete.

Best case for him, his ribs were shattered. Worst case, Caleb had just kicked a man's heart still.

Caleb stood over him. His chest went in and out fast. His eyes were on the body and his hands were open at his sides, and there was no drill running behind his face, no four-count, nothing. It was gone.

"Caleb. Control it." I kept it low, and I kept it firm. His head came around to me. The look was different aimed at me. Still dark. Still burning. But listening, and careful.

Then he sprinted straight at me. "Woah woah WOAH!" My left hand went out flat, my right hand and the Glock swinging out of the way, and he didn't slow down. He jumped. I saw the line of the jump as it left the ground, and it was off. It wasn't aimed at me. It was aimed a foot to my left. I moved right and turned with it, enough to see both of his feet come down together, square in the chest of the man walking up behind me with something in his hand.

The man went back fast, off his feet, and hit the corner of the ring, his back slamming into the post with the whole platform shaking under it. I brought the Glock up and shot him in the chest. He groaned, deep, and slid sideways off the post and over the low back edge of the ring, and dropped out of sight on the other side.

Four or five guns went off at once somewhere in the building, and Caleb and I hit the floor in a crouch at the same moment without either of us deciding to.

"It's still me." Caleb, breathing hard, his eyes on mine from a foot away. "I'm not crazy. Just…"

"You need to end this. I get it. We all do." I held his eyes. "Let's do it, Caleb. Together." Something set in his face. Harder than before, and pointed somewhere.

We came up fast and turned our backs to each other. His shoulder blades pressed into mine. His hands hung open at his sides, and I put the Glock out in front of me in both hands, and we started to move.

We spun. Slow, feet crossing, his back to mine, and whatever came into my half of the circle got a bullet, and whatever came into his got a leg. A man ran at me from the bar side with a chair leg. I shot him in the stomach and he sat down where he was. Behind me a bone broke, and a scream went with it, and the weight against my back shifted and came back.

"Left!" Caleb, rasping it over his shoulder. "Jake, your left!"

"Seen." I turned us a quarter and shot the man reaching for a fallen pistol on the concrete. At my back Caleb's leg went out and something met it, and a body slid past my boot face-down. Eleven rounds left, then ten. Sweat ran into my eyes. I could feel his breathing through his back, fast, and I could feel him find the rhythm of my turns and match it, so that we came around as one shape with two fronts and no back at all.

"North door's still dead." Blade, in my ear, low. "Ghost. Report."

"Busy." I said it to the fog with a man in my sights. "Winning."

"Don't get shot, chico."

"Wasn't planning on it."

"Caleb, low!" Two of them came at us together, one high on Caleb's side and one low on mine, and Caleb dropped into a crouch without asking why. I shot over the top of his head and took the high man in the knee, and he went down screaming. Caleb came up out of the crouch already turning, and the man who'd been coming for me made a wet cracking sound and went limp against my back before he slid off it.

I'd fought beside Blade for years. Beside Irish, beside Tank. I had never once in my life fought with a man's back against mine, and I understood in about four turns why nobody who'd done it ever wanted it any other way.