Page 100 of Map of Pain
Luka’s features were a mask ofbarelycontained rage, but he remained still. His dark gaze flicked between the gun at Nick’s temple and Nick’s face, reading the tactical calculation happening behind Nick’s eyes.
Nick felt fury surge through him—pure, clean rage at seeing Luka trapped and threatened. Every instinct screamed at him to attack, to drive his knife into Owen’s throat and end this. But the hunter spoke with crystalline clarity:Gun changes everything.Range weapon.No margin for error.Reassess.
Nick’s eyes found Luka’s across the room. The vampire was shaking his head minutely, his eyes wide with desperate warning:Don’t do it. Don’t give them what they want.
But Nick looked back at Owen’s smug features, that self-satisfied mouth that said he’d won again, that Nick was still the same broken toy he’d always been. The anger that flooded through him was clean and pure and his.
He dropped the knife.
Owen’s eyes tracked the bladeas it clattered to the floor, and Nick used that split second of distraction to drop low and drive forward. His fist connected with Owen’s sideexactlywhere he’d stabbed him at the hospital, driving into the still-healing wound with vicious satisfaction.
Nick slammed into Owen, taking them both to the ground as the gunshot rang through the apartment. Behind him, he heard a wet, gurgling sound from where Luka had been, but he couldn’t look, couldn’t think about anything except getting the gun away from Owen.
Owen’s elbow came up toward his face. Nick blocked with his handless forearm, hissing as bone met bone, then drove his elbow down into Owen’s injured side again.
“Enough!” Owen snarled.
A strange pneumatic sound cut through the ringing in his ears—fwump—followed by a loud thud that he felt through the floorboards.
Hands grabbed him from behind, hauling him away from Owen with brutal efficiency. The operative he’d hit with the tea mug—bloodied but very much alive—held Nick in an arm lock.
“Stop fucking fighting!”the man barked in his ear.
Nick kept strugglinganyway, thrashing against the grip as Owen staggered to his feet, breathless and glaring.
The operative’s grip tightened, holding Nick still as Owen stepped forward and drove his fist into Nick’s stomach. Air exploded from Nick’s lungs, doubling him over as much as the restraint allowed. Owen spat blood onto the floor, then grabbed a handful of Nick’s hair and jerked his head up as he cocked his other arm back.
The punch to his face made stars explode behind Nick’s eyes.
“That’s for the hospital,”Owen panted, cracking his knuckles.“And this—”
He stepped aside, allowing Nick to see what had caused the pneumatic sound.
Anotherfwumpechoed through the apartment.
Luka lay face-down on the hardwood, one arm outstretched, his fingers twitching. The last Society operative stood over him, holding what looked like a pneumatic nail gun—the kind usedfor construction, but modified withlonger, thicker nails. Two long steel spikes protruded from Luka’s spine along his neck, driven deep enough to sever the nerve pathways controlling his movement.
“No!”Nick shouted, struggling against his captor with renewed desperation.“Get away from him! GET AWAY FROM HIM!”
The operative with the nail gun looked up at Owen.“How many more you want me to put in him, boss?”
Owen studied Nick’s desperate expression with calculating cruelty.“That depends on Nick here.”He turned back to his captive with a businesslike tone.“Shaw still wants you back, you know. My orders are strict recovery this time. This can be easy, or it can be very, very hard.”
“Go fuck yourself,”Nick snarled, struggling against the operative’s grip.“I’m going to kill you.”
Owen shrugged with casual indifference.“Kill it.”
The nail gun operator raised his weapon toward Luka’s prone form.
“No!” Nick’s breath came in sharp gasps as he searchedfranticallyfor options, for some way to save them both. “Stop! Wait!”
The operative paused, nail gun still aimed at Luka’s back.
Nick felt the familiar sensation of walls closing in, the dread of no escape rising in his throat. He tried to pull free again, earning another brutal punch from Owen that left him gasping and tasting blood.
“I’ll go with you,”Nick said between ragged breaths.“Just leave Luka alone. Let him live.”
Owen shook his head with mock sympathy.“Oh, so he can have time to recover and hunt us down? Hell no.”
