Dying Light
Authors: Kory M. Shrum
Tags: #urban fantasy, #espionage, #angel, #heroines, #contemporary fantasy, #superpowers, #secret agents, #lgbtq, #evil and good
dying light
by
Kory M. Shrum
This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events,
or locales is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 Kory M.
Shrum
Distributed by Smashwords.
All rights reserved.
ISBN-10: 0-9912158-9-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-9912158-9-8
Chapter 1
Jesse
“C
ome on,” I wail. “Jumping out of a burning building is not
the craziest thing we’ve ever done!”
“
If you hadn’t panicked,
the building wouldn’t be on fire,” Ally snaps back. She tucks the
bundled laptop under her arm and starts yanking open desk drawers.
Post-it notes of every color fly through the air, followed by pens,
a stapler, paperclips and a Kleenex box.
I search the open office space for
another door. Nada. Only one way in and out.
“
I had to do something.” I
thought firebombing the bad guy was my one good idea on this
mission to retrieve a laptop for Jeremiah. “If I hadn’t, we’d still
be stuck with
him
.”
We both turn our gaze to the locked
door twenty feet away. A row of unoccupied desks rests between us
and where we entered. The office is spacious, with rows of silver
tabletops running the length of the room. Spacious—but not spacious
enough with a homicidal maniac just on the other side of the
door.
Something large slams into
the locked office door,
rattling
the walls. Ominous black smoke seeps through the
cracks and the smell of campfire wafts in. That smell is surely
going to cling to my hair until I wash it.
“
Just because we’ve been
reckless before doesn’t excuse it now.” Ally slams a desk drawer
shut and yanks another open. Her disheveled blonde hair hides most
of her face, revealing only terrified eyes. She gives up trying to
find a weapon in the desk drawer and hurries to the window. Her
gaze falls on the street below. “God, Jesse.
No
. We’ll never survive a fall from
this height.”
I shrug and pucker my lips. “It’s
fine. I’ve fallen from higher. We’ll be fine.”
She blinks at me.
“
You’re forgetting about
my shield thingy.” I’m talking out of my ass here, but there is no
way I’m letting him come in here and hurt her. He can trade punches
with me all day if he wants, but not with Ally. I’ll have to find a
way to break the window, jump out, and shield her on the way
down.
The door
shakes
for the fourth
time and a thick crack appears to the left of the jamb. A thicker
plume of black smoke rolls through the crack and floats to the
ceiling. The white popcorn tiles disappear beneath the black
fog.
I go to the window and look through
the glass beside her. The glass is cold under my palms and my
breath fogs on the surface despite the growing heat of the room.
Down below, tiny cars cut corners around buildings. One could
easily be mistaken for a child’s toy.
Shit, it really
is
far down.
I meet Ally’s eyes and shrug. “We
don’t have a lot of options.”
Sweat forms at my hairline
and in the folds where my coat sits snug against my body.
Chicago
shines
brightly around us, each pinpoint of light from the buildings
and streets illuminating the dark sky.
My gaze flits from building to
building, from illuminated window to illuminated window, but I
don’t see salvation. We aren’t close enough to another skyscraper
to signal for help. No scaffolding or window-washer platform is
available to carry us to the safety of solid ground or to the roof
above, where we were supposed to meet Jeremiah.
The coms in our ears buzz
incoherently for the billionth time. Ally sighs in irritation. As
the coms stop crackling she mashes the speak button flat with her
thumb. “For the thousandth time, we can’t understand you. Something
is wrong with our signal. If you can hear us, we are on the
34
th
floor of the Jensen building and we’re trapped. Send help.” A
look of resolution solidifies on Ally’s face. “Jason’s going to
kill us.”
“
No.” I squeeze her arm.
“So what if he’s like a hell-bent terminator with unlimited healing
ability.” I snort, trying to hide my panic. “I’ve got
this.”
She cocks her head. “It’s great you
have firebombs and shields but we have to be careful. We don’t know
the repercussions of your powers yet.”
“
And getting ourselves
locked in burning buildings with
raging
madmen is playing it
so
safe.”
“
You know what I mean.”
She steps away from the window and shifts the laptop in her arms.
She yanks open more office drawers.
I arch an eyebrow. “A paper cut isn’t
going to hurt him.”
“
Paper cuts hurt.” She
forces a smile. “But we need something to slow him down. And you’re
not helping.”
I throw my hands up and pick an aisle
of desks. After uselessly searching two drawers, I lift one of the
office chairs and immediately know this flimsy, ergonomic piece of
crap won’t be able to break a window. I throw it anyway. It bounces
off the glass and comes back at me with a vengeance, clipping my
knee.
“
Fuckity fuck! Ow.
Ow
.”
Ally looks up from the drawer and
scowls at me. “Injuring yourself before he even breaks into the
room is not what I had in mind.”
I give her a hard stare, rubbing my
throbbing knee and stumbling to another desk.
I have half a mind to
remind her that it wasn’t
my
idea to come to Chicago. I was happy in
Nashville. Sure, my boyfriend Lane—ex-boyfriend—wasn’t talking to
me, but everything else was okay. The first time Jason, the
insta-healing terminator tried to rip my head off, Ally had a fit.
Jeremiah capitalized on it, of course.
Come to Chicago where it’s
safer. We have more people and more power there. And Caldwell is up
to something in the city. We could really use the extra
hands.
I just wanted to stay in bed and mourn
Brinkley, the man who’d given his life trying to kill Caldwell.
Everyone else keeps acting like I’m supposed to be working
here.
The crack in the door widens and I see
an angry eye fix on me. Jason screams as if the very sight of me
enrages him.
Gabriel appears at a desk two rows up
from the one I’m searching. He flickers in and out, unable to hold
his form with another partis—a weirdo with powers like me—nearby.
He’s crystal clear when I’m alone, but when there’s two or more
partis, I’m lucky if Gabriel can materialize at all. This is real
inconvenient given that I need him most when the others show up
looking for a fight.
“
Here.” Gabriel points at
a giant rock sitting on top of one of the desks. “Use
this.”
No, not a rock, I realize.
I place my hands on the massive stone. It’s an amethyst the size of
a grapefruit. Beside it sits a little note:
Don’t touch me. Please. You’ll change my energy.
I look up, but Gabriel’s
gone.
I lift the rock off the desktop. It
sinks into my palms like dead weight, the purple spikes poking my
flesh. “Sorry, but I need your energy to club this
fucker.”
I meet eyes with Jason again as he
inches his fingers through the crack and starts swiping at the
locking mechanism we latched behind us.
“
Get over here,” I shout
to Ally.
Ally makes it halfway across the room
before the door explodes. Splinters the size of my leg fly at my
face. I duck behind the desk, clutching the gigantic stone to my
chest.