Chapter 29 · Wolves at the Gates

The dark hit like a fist on a drum.

Then nothing. No hum. No buzz from the ceiling lights. Just my own breath and Lucian's hand clamped around my wrist hard enough to grind bone.

"Don't move," he said.

"Let go."

"Not in the dark."

Four seconds later the backup strips kicked on. Red light. Everything in the vault turned the color of the inside of a mouth. Racks of rifles, crates of contraband, the old stain on the concrete by my boot.

He still hadn't let go.

"Lucian."

He looked at his own fingers around my wrist like he'd forgotten whose arm it was. Then he opened his hand. The marks stayed on my skin, white and then pink.

The radio on the weapons table spat static. Then a man's voice, ragged, too fast.

"Boss. Grid's gone. The whole peninsula. We've got armored trucks on the coast road, three, maybe four. North gate in six minutes."

"Numbers," Lucian said.

"Forty. Fifty.