Page 126 of Black to Light

It was Lucian Rucker’s insignia.

Black’s jaw hardened. He looked at Nick, who was peering out cautiously from under his umbrella at the same symbol on the wall, his expression holding something like shock.

“What the fuck––” Dex started to say.

When the building’s glass doors exploded outward onto the street.

The shockwave hit, nearly instantaneously.

The sound and pressure temporarily blew out my ability to hear––or to think.

I more felt the rumble and crash of thunder as I stumbled back.

Debris and glass and hot wind knocked down dozens in the crowd.

For a few seconds after, I couldn’t hear anything, not even the screams.

Ringing in my ears, the labored sounds of my own breaths, booms that followed the first one like echoing firecrackers, made it hard to know which direction to run. Abruptly, my vision and my hearing began to clear.

Not entirely, of course, but enough to remember where I was.

Screams erupted on all sides as smoke billowed out of the gaping hole in the massive storefront. Before I could react to the thunderous echo of that first blast, alarms exploded from all the nearby buildings and on the street’s PA system.

I’d already hit the deck in pure reflex by then.

I’d yanked Angel’s arm down with me, and both of us landed painfully on our palms on the sidewalk. I felt that sidewalk shiver under my hands as windows cracked in a nearby storefront, raining down more glass shards.

Most of the screams still came from in front of us, on the street, but I could hear them erupting from tourists and shoppers behind us, as well.

Black and Cowboy had their guns out, and were scanning the street on both sides, half-crouched as they searched through faces in the crowd. Nick stood up straight, and stared directly into the black clouds of smoke billowing out of the wall.

I’d just started crawling towards the nearest storefront, Angel right behind me, when the second blast hit.

It shivered the sidewalk under my hands. I clenched and tensed my whole body, and bit my tongue in reflex as I ducked down my head.

It was a good thing I did.

The window close to me and Angel blew out from the stress of the second explosion. Both of us flinched and crouched lower, Angel letting out a shocked cry when glass rained down all over us. I gasped as glass flew by and sliced cuts into my neck and arms and the side of my face. I lowered my head and arms still more, protecting my head as best I could. I felt something slam into my thigh and glanced down with a flicker of worry that I’d have a glass shard sticking out of my leg, but it was a piece of concrete from the window frame.

Nothing was embedded in my leg, thank Christ, but it would leave a hell of a bruise.

It also hurt like hell, but at least I wasn’t bleeding out on the sidewalk.

“Get back!” Black bellowed at us, waving an arm. His other hand still gripped his gun.

I was confused at first.

Then I heard it.

I ducked as a bullet from a rifle ricocheted off the sidewalk somewhere up ahead.

The gun’s report echoed between the buildings a breath later, loud even with the continuing rumble of the aftermath of the two explosions. I could still hear things falling inside the store up ahead, crashes and what sounded like pops and small explosionsthat made me think of fire. Interspersed with that now were those higher-pitched cracks from the rifle, steady and somehow methodical-sounding as they broke through the noise.

I raised my head higher.

Whoever was firing, they weren’t shooting at me.

The gunshots were aiming at something further ahead.

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