Bone Rider (37 page)

“Are those grenade launchers?”

Kolya cracked his neck. “Shit.”

Car
, McClane said.

Car?

McClane nudged Riley around and his head down and to the left and focused their vision. Right. Car. The rental limousine was bouncing up the slope like a thoroughbred tackling a burro path. He could make out Misha’s sister behind the wheel, white-knuckled and hard-eyed. The sunroof was open and as Riley watched in disbelief, Misha’s father popped up through the opening with an AK-47 in his hands. He aimed at the nearest helicopter and squeezed the trigger. It certainly drew their attention. It just didn’t do anything else.

Turned out, though, it wasn’t supposed to do anything else. The helicopter crew had barely begun to return fire when a sharp pop-hiss made Riley’s head snap to the right just in time to see the Tokarevs’ scary bodyguard lean back on his dirt bike and lower something that looked like a homemade grenade launcher.

The Black Hawk swerved and started to trail smoke.

“Yes!” Andrej yelled. “Way to go, Anton!”

Anton slung the grenade launcher over his shoulder, spun the bike around in a spray of dirt and gravel, and took off before anyone could draw a bead on him. One of the Black Hawks zoomed after him, but it wouldn’t take long for the fuckers to remember their primary target and come back. Riley turned to face the door again and studied the lock. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a chain and a padlock, both of which could’ve been sturdier.

McClane?
he thought.

McClane tightened his grip on Riley’s right leg and hip, claws digging deep, and adjusted their stance.
Go for it
.

Riley’s boot hit the door right where McClane aimed them, hard enough to break the padlock with a bang. The three hit men had been emptying their clips at a helicopter as it swooped by in an attempt to avoid another salvo from the machine guns. They jumped at the sudden crash to see the gate swing open, hinges screeching. Kolya’s eyes widened.

“What the fuck—?”

“Later,” Misha snapped, already moving forward. “C’mon.”

He ushered his friends into the tunnel and followed them, trusting Riley to bring up the rear and be their shield. Riley was grateful for it.

It spared Misha the sight of his father catching five bullets to the chest.

T
HEY
made it into the freight elevator and halfway down before something came screaming through the entrance tunnel and detonated above them. Whatever it was, it took out a good part of the wall and the elevator pulley. Rocks and debris struck the metal grating on top of the cab and pelted the passengers with a stinging shower of dirt. The elevator groaned and tilted, but thankfully came to an abrupt stop instead of plummeting into the dark. For a few precious minutes it hung suspended from frayed cables jammed between the broken pulley and a busted support beam.

Down in the elevator shaft, the four passengers hacked and wheezed out the dust and tried to get their bearings. Blind and half-deaf, they checked on each other with shaking, clumsy hands. Andrej breathed a hitching sigh of relief when he found Misha, coughing but alive and curled around Riley like a living shield.

“Are you all right?” Andrej yelled over the high-pitched ringing in his ears. He could sort of hear Kolya curse between coughs to his left. The only one whose status he couldn’t verify was Riley, because Riley was the only one who was quiet.
Shit
, Andrej thought wildly. If Riley was hurt or dead, they were fucked. There was no way Misha would leave him behind. They’d have to hunker down and make a dramatic last stand. Andrej would’ve preferred to avoid that. The thing about last stands was that they didn’t usually end well. He felt Misha move and leaned back a bit to give him more room.

“We’re okay,” a voice said right by Andrej’s ear, making him jump and reach for his gun reflexively before he recognized the deep drawl.

“Fuck, Riley,” he gasped, “don’t
do
that, you fucker.”

Riley said something, but Andrej couldn’t make it out. It’d been a while since he’d had his bell rung so thoroughly. Jesus. The bullet graze in his arm hurt like the devil, but all things considered, it didn’t feel much worse than before. He could’ve sworn the whole world was swaying around him, though. Or maybe that was the elevator. Not a nice thought.

“
Andrej
.”

Misha—and he sounded so strained Andrej could make out the tension in his tone even through the persistent noise in his ears.

“Yeah,” he rasped, shaking his head to try and clear it. “What?”

“I think we’re about to go down.”

Go down? As far as Andrej could tell, the sturdy metal cage was stuck like a cork in a bottle, but with the rubble scattered all over the ceiling grate, it was too damn dark to distinguish much of anything. Then something above them shifted and the entire cab lurched. Andrej could feel his eyes widen as a bolt of panic stabbed through him. It didn’t help him see any better, but the burst of adrenaline at least took care of the ringing in his ears.

He knew his hearing was back to normal levels because he caught Riley’s muttered, “Shit. You sure?” just fine.

“Sure about what?” Kolya asked from his corner of the cab, his tone so carefully controlled Andrej knew their Mr. Frosty was every bit as unnerved as the rest of them. Who would’ve thought? Kolya was human. It was an oddly comforting discovery. It was also goddamn terrifying. If Kolya was losing his cool, they were in deep shit indeed.

“Hold on,” was all Riley said in reply.

Andrej had time to wonder hysterically what the fuck they were supposed to hold on to in this empty metal cage, and then, with a hair-raising, wailing screech, whatever had held them in position gave and gravity took over. For an endless second, it felt as though they were in free fall. Andrej might’ve screamed. Or maybe that had been Kolya. Or Misha. It sure hadn’t been Riley, because when
Riley
screamed, it was a howl of agony accompanied by the most god-awful tearing, ripping sound Andrej had ever heard.

The cab jerked like someone had slammed an anchor into the solid rock wall of the elevator shaft. It didn’t stop their descent, but it slowed them down considerably. Dirt and small rocks sprayed Andrej’s skin and he turned away to protect his face. Riley was still screaming behind him and so was Misha, though Misha sounded mostly panicked whereas Riley was definitely in pain. And he just

did

not

stop.

Every hair on Andrej’s body stood on end as they slid into the darkness inch by inch in fits and starts to the sound of something scraping and splintering and Riley shrieking as though he was being flayed alive.

By the time they hit the bottom with a heavy
thunk
, Misha’s voice was every bit as shredded as Riley’s and Andrej had sworn off horror movies for the rest of his life. He never wanted to hear anything even close to that ever again. When they came to a halt, Riley finally stopped screaming. Andrej could hear the muffled sound of two bodies colliding, probably Misha catching Riley as he fell, and a hoarse sob that could’ve come from either one of them. Andrej immediately began to feel his way toward them in the dark. Kolya brushed past him, going the other way. Something clinked and then there was a rattle and a somewhat less dramatic squeal of metal as the lock disengaged and the elevator gate slid open.

“Stay put,” Kolya ordered, and shuffled out of the cab carefully.

Andrej turned back toward the sound of Riley’s shuddering breaths and was about to ask what the hell had happened when Kolya found the light switch. It took Andrej’s eyes a few seconds to readjust, but then….

“Jesus Christ.”

Of course he’d noticed that Riley’s clothes had been pretty tattered after that first helicopter charge, and he knew Kolya had too. There hadn’t been time to question it, no opportunity to process, but of course they’d known how unlikely it was that both Riley and Misha had made it out of that shit storm without a scratch. They’d both been out in the open and the main target of the gunners. They should’ve been shot to pieces. Of course Andrej had wondered how the fuck Riley had managed to bring down combat helicopters like they were clay pigeons, and he had seen Riley take a high-velocity bullet for Misha out there before he had turned around and kicked in the door as though it was nothing. Andrej had registered all that, and yet it hadn’t prepared him for the sight before him.

There were gashes in the rock wall where Riley had stood. Deep, narrow furrows, as if a cat had caught a curtain with its claws and slid down. A big cat. Andrej looked from the marks to Riley’s hands, clawed and coated in silver, resting uselessly at his sides at painfully unnatural angles. Both of his shoulders and elbows looked dislocated and his skin was chalk white and covered in sweat and dirt. Misha hovered, pale as a ghost himself, trembling hands reaching out and stopping short of making contact with Riley’s body time and again. He didn’t know where it was safe to touch. Andrej wouldn’t have known where to touch, either. Riley looked
broken
. As if he’d almost torn himself apart slowing down that elevator. Which, Andrej thought wildly, was apparently
exactly what he’d done
.

“Fuck. Me.” Kolya took a step closer, but stopped at the gate, unwilling to set foot into the metal cage again. Andrej couldn’t blame him. “He gonna be all right?”

He’d barely gotten the words out when Riley arched off the floor with a guttural groan. His shoulders and elbows snapped back into place with a nauseating crunch. He shuddered and twitched, eyes squeezed firmly shut, but the tears leaked out anyway.

“Fuck,” he whimpered eventually. “Oh, my God. You fucker. I think I’m gonna puke.”

He didn’t, though; just gulped heavily and panted like a sick dog while Misha slumped down next to him like his strings had been cut, fingers clenched in Riley’s torn shirt.

“Don’t ever do that again,” he demanded hoarsely.

“Never ever,
ever
,” Riley swore breathlessly. “Next time, we take the stairs.”

T
HE
pain was.

No adjective. It just was.

For what felt like forever, there was only pain and Riley dissolved in it, everything gone, nothing left. No Riley no more. No McClane. Just blinding, pulsing agony. Every single nerve ending on fire. Every cell dipped in acid. Every neuron screaming. If Riley had still been able to think, he’d have wished for death.

T
HE
pleasure was.

The pleasure was new.

Rising out of the pain with the beauty of butterfly wings unfurling; a delicate flutter that hesitantly emerged from somewhere deep at their core, then surged up to bury what little was left of Riley under an avalanche of sensation. Something soared up through the torrent, jubilant, triumphant, so happy it made him hurt all over again. He reached out to it and it wrapped around him and swept him along with a trill of delight, higher and higher, a dizzying spin.

T
HEN
something sort of
popped
in his brain, like pressure equalizing, and from one breath to another, everything dialed down to manageable levels. There was an ache in their shoulders and along their arms, their collarbones felt broken, and they were shaking with the memory of what had to have been the most intense joining in the history of… no, no history, they were the first, there’d never been anything like it before and there probably wouldn’t ever be again. They were… they were….

Hurt.

Ow.

Joints separated, muscles torn, nerves pinched, tendons stretched almost to the point of breaking, bleeding inside, and the rest of them pulsing and sore from where human tissue had been penetrated and taken, twined and fused with alien matter.

Oh, for fuck’s sake
, McClane whimpered, and then they twisted up and off the hard metal floor, shifted and snapped their dislocated joints back into place and—

Fuckity fuck. Fucking
ow
.

“Fuck,” Riley whined, struggling to figure out which parts of them were him and what was McClane. “Oh, my God. You fucker. I think I’m gonna puke.”

Don’t even kid about it
. McClane sounded distinctly queasy. Felt queasy. Or was that Riley? Didn’t seem to matter much anymore, the line between them was more than a little blurred now. This was more than a “basic hook-up.” The heaviness that had been McClane was gone, or rather,
Doesn’t feel heavy anymore, I think we—

—
just fucking
bonded, Riley thought.
Permanently. The whole enchilada. I’m going to be sick and then I’m going to kick your alien ass. And stop starting my sentences.

Stop thinking, then
, McClane shot back.
Better yet, stop thinking about puking or we’ll throw up all over Misha’s lap and that’d be a shame
.

“Don’t ever do that again,” Misha told him with impeccable timing, and they blinked, and yes, there he was, looking rough, sounding worse. Not a broken mess of shattered bone and scrambled brains.

Alive.

Their heart jumped at the sight. They wanted to kiss Misha, grab him and pull him down, taste him, make him theirs, but they couldn’t quite lift their arms.

Don’t do what?
McClane asked, absentmindedly, already assessing the damage they’d taken. Riley thought about the elevator, about the explosion, about punching their fingers into the rock wall and the metal edge of the cab slamming into their shoulders and chest as they used their body to break the fall. Yeah, no argument about that.

“Never ever,
ever
,” Riley promised them both. “Next time, we take the stairs.”

How about we avoid a “next time” completely, huh?

Good plan.

W
HILE
Misha tried to figure out the extent of Riley’s injuries and Andrej checked their weapons and consulted J.C.’s map, Kolya located the equipment room and found them flashlights and a sturdy-looking camping lantern he promptly kept for himself. They didn’t discuss what had happened. There was a time and a place, and right then was the time to shut up and get going. Somebody was already working on clearing the elevator shaft. Many somebodies; and they sounded military.