Page 80 of Ghost’s Awakening

The stairs at the east end of the mezzanine were steel, short flights that turned back on themselves every eight steps. Grit lay on every tread, and my bare feet slid on it. The smoke was thicker up here, leaning in off the corner where the rocket had hit, and heat came down through it. Halfway up, I heard the quiet.

The fighting had stopped. I could still hear men, but they were groans now, and boots on concrete instead of fists on faces. I looked down once, fast, through the rail.

Phoenixes stood in the settling dust with their guns out and pointed down at men on their knees. Some of ours were on the floor too. One of ours lay on his side by the bar with a brother crouched over him, holding a shirt to his head. At the near corner of the ring, Mateo, Trenza, Cuervo, and Norte sat in a row against the platform, and Mateo's head hung forward onto his chest. Out cold, or close to it. Renzo hadn't moved off the apron. One arm still hung off the edge, and somebody in a cut stood over him, and that was all I could give him.

"How many of ours are down?" It came out of my throat in pieces, and I asked it to Ghost's back.

"Don't count yet." He didn't turn around.

"I count everything."

"I know you do." One step. "Count them when it's done."

Behind us, Reaper's voice, low, into his earpiece. "Kai. It's clear enough. Bring your table in."

The heat came up my legs again, and I climbed faster.

Sharp turn. Eight steps. Sharp turn. Hawk was ahead of Ghost, moving with the shotgun up, and his voice came back down the stairs to me. "Blade. Status."

Ghost's hand went up to his ear, and he listened, and the waiting was worse than any hit I'd taken all night. As if he knew, he looked back over his shoulder without breaking stride, the Glock steady in his other hand.

"Blade says nothing's come out of the back door." His eyes held mine for one step. "He has to be in there."

For half a second I saw it. Me coming through that door first, the big man turning, and my whole body leaving the ground, the spin coming around with everything I had, and my shin going through the side of his skull and his brains going across the wall behind him. Half a second. Then I put it away, because I wanted my eyes on the stairs.

Boots hit the steel behind me, more than one pair. I looked back. Reaper was two steps below me, then Irish behind him with blood running from his lip down over his chin, then Declan, with the rifle and no expression at all.

"—told you, the lip's fine, I've had worse off a barstool, it's a lip, Declan, I've got two of them—" Irish, a torrent of it, between breaths.

"Irish." Reaper, without turning his head.

"Shutting up."

Gravedigger and whoever he kept up there weren't going to walk through all of us.

The last turn. Then the door.

It stood at the top of the last flight, black steel, shut. Hawk stopped in front of it and turned to the rest of us, and his voice came out low and even, with no room in it for anybody to argue.

"Everybody behind me. All the way behind." His hand came up off the shotgun's grip and tapped the barrel once. "This is a scattergun. I'm going to empty it through that door, and everything in there gets at least one hole. Stay behind me and stay low." Then he leaned toward me, and his voice dropped to almost nothing. "Do the honors, Caleb. Kick this door down."

I didn't need to be told twice. Holes from Hawk's shotgun all through Gravedigger's body sounded as good as anything my shin could do.

I moved past Ghost, and his hand caught the back of my neck.

His fingers closed there and held, warm, his thumb against the side of my throat where the bruise was, and I looked back at him. My back loosened. The hate went down an inch with it, and what came up under it was steadier than hate. I still wanted the man, with a clear head now instead of a head full of noise. And under all of it, I was grateful. My hand came up and closed on his wrist, once, before I let it go.

To Ghost. To every person on those stairs behind him, who'd come through a wall for me.

"End it." Ghost, low, his eyes on mine.

I nodded once and went to the door. My right foot came back. "On three, Hawk."

"Then you duck and fall back. Immediately." Hawk already had the shotgun at his shoulder with the muzzle on the door.

"One. Two." I loaded the front kick. "Three."

I slammed my heel into the door beside the lock with everything I had left, and it went in, the whole thing swinging wide and banging off the wall inside. I dropped into a crouch, and Hawk went past me through the gap.