Sharpe End Read online

  That was about the time Blake came barreling out of the alley. He jumped and wrapped Greyson up, but the man was fast. He’d broken out of the hold before Blake had it secured, and had his hands up. He looked like a boxer in the center of the ring, and one solid jab sent Blake back a step.

  Raven caught up to them and drew her pistol, but Greyson was in front of her in a flash, catching her wrist with an unexpectedly deft kick. She didn’t lose her grip, but she lost her aim.

  And he was off again.

  Kyra and Axel went speeding past them both, hot on Greyson’s heels as Raven helped Blake to his feet and they followed.

  “I hate this guy,” Raven hissed.

  “Agreed,” Blake said, blood running from his nose.

  ‘He’s heading toward the industrial district, ’ Kyra reported. ‘I think we can cut him off it we take an alternate route. ’

  ‘Go ahead, ’ Raven said.

  She related this exchange to Blake, and he replied with a nod. They still had Greyson in their sights down the long straightaway, although the dim, dingy atmosphere of the roadway made it difficult. She could see Kyra and Axel veer away into a narrow side alley, though their target didn’t seem to notice.

  “This guy is fast,” Blake said, voice strained.

  “Too fast for a regular human,” Raven agreed.

  She knew it would take some sort of minor miracle for them to catch him at the rate all three humans could run, but they at least had their animal companions on their side, which would hopefully give them the edge.

  She could hope, at least.

  “He’s turning,” Blake shouted.

  He laid on what extra speed he could and slightly outpaced Raven. She took the moment to call on Kyra and let her know the shift in direction. ‘He’s turned down a side alley. ’

  ‘Yes. He’s shifted his position in the wind and we can smell him better. He’s heading toward us. We should still be able to cut him off. ’

  If she could have spent the energy, she would have grinned. As it was, Raven just put her head down and focused on running. She tried to go a little faster and she managed to catch up with Blake, but not enough to overtake Greyson. He was just barely in their view as he raced ahead.

  She inwardly consoled herself that he had illegal enhancements, which was why he was so much faster. That had to be it, right?

  With all this running, she began to weigh the options of just pulling her gun and shooting him, but she ruled that out because she didn’t think she could afford the time, nor did she think she could get a good shot while they were both running.

  Plus, the contract required he be brought back alive…although frankly at the moment, that was far down on the list of her priorities.

  Greyson turned another corner up ahead and they rushed to follow, terribly aware that at any moment, he could take a turn or jump through a door that they wouldn’t be able to see and then they would have lost him. Raven didn’t want to let that happen, although she knew that reality was not on her side.

  Blake and Raven nearly collided with one another as they took the next turn at unsafe speeds, but they didn’t let it lose them any time.

  Much to her relief, Greyson was still in sight and they were still moving in the general direction that Kyra and Axel had gone, although that “cutting him off” plan could come to fruition at any time and make her happy.

  What made her happier was when she saw Greyson skid to a stop because there was a large wall in front of him and no other places to turn before she and Blake were on top of him, which was fortunate. Her breath was starting to burn in her lungs and her muscles were protesting this overuse. She was somewhat enhanced, yes, but she still had limits and she had been pushing them.

  Their target skidded to a halt, barely avoiding crashing face-first into the wall, and then turned around. He held his hands up and they moved toward him…

  …which was when the ground began to shake, violently.

  8

  “What happened…”

  Raven’s groggy, angry words pushed their way through Blake’s hazy mind as he slowly regained consciousness. He felt like he’d been severely beaten, which seeing as how that had happened somewhat recently to him, he was painfully aware of what that felt like. He didn’t like it any better now than he had before.

  “Raven,” he managed to say as he worked to open his eyes. As he did, he realized that he was laying on a pile of rock. There also seemed to be a pile of rock laying on parts of him too.

  Oh, that couldn’t be good.

  “I’m here,” she said, her voice strained. “And I’m not happy about it.”

  “Agreed,” he grunted, gripping a large piece of rock in front of him—which he now recognized more as broken parts of pavement—and tried to pull himself forward. He wiggled his legs, an arduous process to say the least, to pull them out from whatever debris they were under.

  He could hear her doing what he assumed to be the same thing. They both grunted and groaned, and the rock and debris grated as it slid against each other, until he finally got his legs free and was able to crawl forward.

  Once he did, he was able to see that he was on top of a mound of such debris. He tried looking up and there was a vague impression of a hole, but it was mostly covered. If he had to guess, he would say they somehow…fell through the ground.

  Looking around again, he could see Raven a little further down the small pavement hill and she was just getting herself loose as well. She was covered in dirt to the point that he wouldn’t have recognized her if he didn’t already know, and he could only imagine he was about the same.

  “What the heck happened,” she repeated, this time with a little more force as she winced and tried to come up on her knees.

  “I don’t know,” he said, laboriously climbing down to where she was. Almost every movement hurt, but he was relatively sure that he hadn’t broken any bones. How he’d escaped that, though, he had no idea. “The ground tried to swallow us?”

  She groaned. “I’d smack you for the levity if I wasn’t pretty sure that you were right. I would like to know why, or how, it did that…but for now, I don’t think either question is very important. We need to figure out how to get out of here.” Putting her hands on the ground, she started to push herself up and then made an angry squawk-like sound before going back to her knees. “I think my ankle is twisted.”

  He moved to her side. “I thought that only happened to women in old horror movies,” he quipped.

  The look she gave him could have easily melted metal.

  “Sorry, sorry.”

  He sat beside her while she stretched her legs out in front of her, gingerly pulling off her boots. When the left one came off, she made that squawking sound again. He wanted to comfort her, but he knew that any sort of attempt to do so right then would likely result in him losing body parts.

  ‘Axel, where are you? ’ he called instead, staying close to her but letting her work on things in her own way.

  His focus changed pretty fully, however, when Axel didn’t get back to him.

  ‘Nyx? Are you there? ’

  Also no response.

  “Raven, can you reach Kyra or Silvanus?” he asked, trying to keep his voice from sounding as worried as he was becoming.

  “What?” she asked, blinking as she turned away from her ankle. “Oh.” Her eyes lost focus for a few moments, and then she frowned. “No, I can’t. Do you think something about being down here is interfering with the implants?”

  “It seems like it.”

  “Well, ain’t that just special,” she mumbled. Although none of the words were indeed curse words, she managed to say them all like they were. That was, he had noticed, particularly over the course of their marriage and after, a very specific skill of hers. Actually, he’d learned that more after their divorce…but still.

  Blake looked up, seeking out any sort of hole they could go back through, but it looked pretty well covered up. It was quite the bout of bad luc
k to have it happen like that, wasn’t it?

  He had to try, though.

  “Sit tight,” he said, then turned to the hill he’d just come down and started climbing up it.

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” she asked, but it didn’t sound judgmental.

  “Nope.” Since he absolutely wasn’t, but he had to try.

  It only took a few moments to realize just how loose the debris of this pile was, since it felt like a piece of rock slipped out with every step. He kept trying to grip higher and pull himself up, and he made it a little ways. Once he was a bit further up, he craned his head around to try to find the opening, but he still couldn’t see anything from where he was.

  He kept climbing, hopeful that if he could just get a little higher then he would be able to see…

  …which was when too big a chunk of rock slid out from underneath him. He couldn’t keep his footing, which meant that he lost his grip.

  Blake went tumbling back down the little debris mountain. He was briefly aware of Raven covering her head from the shower of small rocks that preceded him until he landed beside her with a hard thud and a weak groan.

  “I guess it wasn’t a good idea,” he grunted.

  9

  The moment that Kyra could no longer feel Raven in her head, she lost all trace of Greyson as a concept in the universe.

  She just didn’t care.

  Kyra had always known that her sense of Raven was different than what Raven had for her. While she imagined that the human would actually have to try to talk to her to know they were disconnected, the big cat knew it the instant it happened. She had frozen in place and hunkered down to the ground, instinctively reacting to a threat even though she had no idea what it was or that it was even near her.

  She knew instantly that Blake had also been affected, because Axel was frozen in place, his hackles raised and a low growl coming from his throat.

  The cougar and the wolf could not speak like they each could with their humans or the AIs on the ships, but that was fine. Animals had been communicating since long before some of them had been given access to the human languages. Axel swung his shaggy head toward her and their eyes met.

  There was understanding.

  She turned around and began slinking back the way they came, in that way that only cats could slink. She felt Axel right behind her as they backtracked. It didn’t matter to them what happened to the man they had been chasing. They only cared about him because their people did, but they weren’t linked to him. Raven and Blake were what was important now.

  And figuring out what had happened to them to sever the link and interfere with the implants.

  They could be dead, Kyra knew that, but she also thought it unlikely. She couldn’t explain why she thought it unlikely, but she didn’t see a need to. She trusted her instincts in a way no human ever could.

  She had watched Raven try, after all, and it was usually just a mess of talking and emotions that Kyra ended up being dragged into.

  Hurriedly, they made their way back to where all their paths had split—where Kyra and Axel had run off to the side and ahead while Raven and Blake continued on their more direct pursuit. From that junction, they began a slower pace. Noses pressed to the ground, they followed the path their humans had taken.

  They passed the occasional pedestrian, most just going about their business but a few would stop and stare at the animals. Kyra imagined there weren’t many of either kind of animal here, if any at all, but as long as the gawking pedestrians didn’t get in their way, she didn’t care if they stared.

  After a few moments, Kyra realized that they had run quite a bit further than she had thought. The scent remained strong, however, because of their exertion during the process. Although she could tell that a few people had crossed the trail here and there, she didn’t have any trouble keeping on it.

  Two turns later, they started down a narrow alley and came upon something rather unexpected.

  There was a large pile of rubble. It looked like the road had been destroyed in some way, although she didn’t have enough of a grasp on human concepts to guess what precisely had happened. She just knew that some destruction had taken place, and it was also where the trail ended. There was a wall ahead, and no doors in this section.

  Somehow, this destruction had to do with why she couldn’t communicate with Raven anymore.

  Kyra and Axel carefully padded around the pile, although they didn’t risk going over the top of it just yet. She inhaled every scent there was to be inhaled, but she didn’t pick up anything like blood or flesh. There wasn’t any visual sign of bodies or body parts. If they were dead, they weren’t dead here.

  If they weren’t here, however, then where were they?

  After she carefully circled the edges of the shallow pile, she sat down and stared at it. Axel was still pacing, but she just left him to do his thing.

  What were the possibilities? Her enhanced mind raced through what might have happened.

  It didn’t seem likely that they went up, and the scent trail said they weren’t taken through some secret door or alleyway. That left the idea that they were vaporized, or they went…

  Down.

  Kyra scrutinized the pile. It was new, that was for sure. There wasn’t any dust that spoke of age. It all smelled new. There wasn’t much to it either, and if she looked close, it did seem like the pile was inside a depression or a hole. So did they somehow end up going through…the road?

  The cougar struggled to understand how that could have happened so quickly, but it seemed like the only real option as to what did happen.

  She turned her head to Axel and nodded at the pile, pushing down with her paw. His canine eyes held hers for a long moment before he gave a single nod that he understood what she was trying to say.

  They started in on trying to dig up the rubble and get to whatever was below, but the pieces were large and rough. Within minutes, their paws were hurting and Kyra was leaving traces of blood on the stones. Even after she noticed it, she kept going for a while, but she stopped when she realized that they weren’t getting anywhere.

  Leaning back into a seat, she lifted the injured paw and licked at the pad as she tried to figure out another way around this.

  Axel sat down beside her, undoubtedly working on the same problem.

  The two animals had never really been close. Even when their humans were married, they tended to just stick with their humans. They tolerated one another and worked with one another, but weren’t much to each other otherwise.

  In that moment, however, missing their humans and wondering how to save them from whatever trouble they had gotten into this time, that changed a little. At least for the moment. Axel leaned over and rubbed his head against hers, and she rubbed back.

  10

  The last time Raven could remember feeling this horrible absolutely everywhere was when she came down with that bout of Firrellian Flu, and it took eighteen hours for the medication to take effect. At that time, she couldn’t imagine ever feeling worse, but now she was longing for those eighteen hours back.

  With her hands over her head, she waited until she heard Blake hit the floor. Then she looked up and crawled over to him.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. Her ankle screamed at her as she dragged it along the rocky ground, but there wasn’t much to do about it. She reached her ex-husband and knelt beside him, trying to check him over for any further injuries from his short-lived, ill-fated trip up debris mountain.

  “I don’t think I’m much worse off than before,” he groaned, pushing himself up to a sitting position next to her.

  “I guess that’s something,” she said.

  He wiped off his face and she took a slow breath, looking around them to try to figure out something about where they had ended up. It seemed like some sort of cave where the road could fall into somehow. It was pretty large, but several corners were heavily shadowed and it was hard to see beyond that.

  “Do you thi
nk that’s a tunnel?” she asked, pointing toward one particularly deep section of darkness.

  “It could be,” he said, lifting his head and squinting as he tried to peer that way.

  She looked for a while longer and then stifled a sigh. “It’s worth checking out, at least,” she said, turning back toward him. Before either of them said anything more, her gaze fell to the pile behind him and one rock suddenly caught her attention.

  Gritting her back teeth together against the new wave of pain about to come, she crawled toward the stone and touched it. It was large and looked to be supporting some of the pile, so she didn’t bother trying to pull it out, but she peered closely and felt the various edges with a frown.

  “This was laser-cut,” she suddenly said. “This isn’t a natural break. Someone did this on purpose.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” he said, sounding more defeated than upset.

  Raven huffed, rocking back to a seat and then immediately regretted it as pain lanced up her leg and she fell to her side with a stifled cry through gritted teeth. “Ohh,,.” she groaned, clutching the throbbing ankle. “As much as I hate to say it, I think I’m going to need your help to move.”

  Blake grunted again. “Hate having to ask for my help, huh?” He sounded bitter.

  She tried to not roll her eyes. “I hate having to ask anyone for help,” she said, pretty self-aware of this particular personality flaw. “It’s not like I have something specific against you, so don’t start moping.”

  “I don’t mope.”

  “You totally mope.”

  He didn’t reply with anything but a noise that sounded a lot like he wanted to say something. Even recognizing the sound for what it was, she didn’t ask or invite him to elaborate. They had bigger problems than his ego.

  Raven managed to sit back up with her leg stretched out in front of her.

  “Was someone gunning for us or just psychopathically hoping to catch anyone?” she posed the question, diverting the conversation back to those more important things.