Bloodshot: Kingdom of Shadows (Kindle Worlds) Read online

  It was the one crouching and preparing to fire at him, Lazarus realized. The man was hunkering down as if atop an invisible toilet. The irony of it would’ve made Lazarus laugh had the man not been about to shoot him.

  Lazarus fired, but at the same moment something struck him in the elbow, throwing his shot high and wide. Lazarus jerked his head around and saw Eddie Maza grinning at him, the man having just shot Lazarus in the elbow. Lazarus swung his Desert Eagle around, meaning to blow Maza’s grinning face off, but much faster than Lazarus would’ve thought possible, Maza hooked the museum director Kelly Carr around the throat and pressed the Kahr E9 to her temple. Lazarus knew he could likely shoot Maza’s gun out of his hand and thus save the cute blonde’s life, but at this range—less than fifteen feet—he’d almost certainly injure that pretty face of hers in the process. And a girl like that, she’d rather be dead than disfigured.

  A dozen wasps stung Lazarus’s left side and the flesh of his neck. He stumbled sideways, realizing the two remaining Uzis were firing on him. Gritting his teeth in pain and anger, he caught himself before he fell, braced on the leg that hadn’t been shot, and swung the gun up left-handed to fire at the men. He put two slugs in the first shooter’s chest, the one that had been laughing, and the laughter mercifully ceased. Lazarus brought the .357 to rest on Crapper’s forehead, but there was only a dull click. Lazarus growled in frustration. How had he neglected to count his shots? But yes, he realized, dropping to the bloody vinyl of the platform, he had fired nine times. Crapper should be dead; if Eddie Maza hadn’t shot Lazarus in the elbow with his little Kahr handgun, Crapper would be dead.

  But he wasn’t. He was rising to his feet and marching toward Lazarus with a look of triumph on his face. A cloud of feces attended him, infuriating Lazarus further. If the guy was going to kill Lazarus, he should at least have the decency to clean himself up first. But Crapper was loading a fresh clip into his Uzi, and Lazarus was reeling from being shot so many times. Lazarus sank to the platform and lay on his side, realizing for the first time how serious the damage was. He estimated that Maza and the Uzi men had shot him in at least a dozen places, perhaps more. Lazarus’s left side was peppered with slugs, his elbow shattered at the joint. He could feel the nanites in there doing their best to repair him, but what about the meantime? How was he to make his trembling fingers reload, aim through his blurry vision, and manage to hit both Eddie Maza—without killing his hostage—and Crapper? He couldn’t, he realized.

  Lazarus rolled onto his back, watched Crapper climb up onto the stage, the Uzi extended like an old-fashioned gentleman offering a bouquet of flowers to a lady. Only Crapper wasn’t a gentleman, and the fragrance that attended him was anything but flowery.

  “You ain’t so much,” Crapper said in his thick Brooklyn accent. “They said you was hot stuff. Eddie and the Snip and Lou. They told us we’d die here today if we didn’t look out, but look at you now. You ain’t so tough.” Crapper brought the Uzi to rest on Lazarus’s face. “Eat this, you big son of a—”

  The last word was lost in a storm of concussive blasts. Crapper’s body jigged and jagged like the world’s worst breakdancer. He landed slumped over and facedown on Neville’s wheelchair, his face coming to rest in the indentation of the scientist’s right butt cheek, one final indignity for an idiot who deserved no better.

  Lazarus pushed up on his elbows and looked groggily around to see who’d saved his life.

  The NYPD cop who hadn’t been killed, Lazarus saw. The cop was a little overweight, but he’d shot true. His cap had tumbled off his head, revealing a thick brown head of hair that matched his bushy brown mustache. Lazarus felt an unaccustomed twinge of gratitude. He wasn’t used to being helped.

  The cop wasn’t waiting for Lazarus to thank him, however. Bushy Mustache Cop was treading slowly up the platform steps, his gun and his free hand both extended toward Eddie Maza, who’d retreated to the rear of the stage, the tip of his Kahr E9 still boring into Kelly Carr’s right temple. The blond museum director was weeping silently, the face grinning from over her shoulder seeming to enjoy her terror.

  “Now hold it a second, buddy,” Bushy Mustache said. “There’s no need to kill an innocent civilian.”

  Bushy Mustache crept nearer, and as his feet came down Lazarus heard something click. He realized the same moment what it was, though he knew it was too late to do anything about it. Lazarus’s strength was already returning, the nanites steadily expelling the slugs from his body and healing the wounds he’d sustained. But he still wasn’t fast enough to save the cop.

  Lazarus shouted, “Get off the stage!” to Bushy Mustache, hoping the man would get the message fast enough. As Lazarus yelled, he thrust a hand into his trench coat pocket, found another clip, expelled the old one from his .357, and jammed it in.

  But before he could get a shot off, the floor of the stage exploded beneath the cop in three, four, five places, the cop’s body ramrod straight, scraps of blue vinyl twirling in the air around his dying body like cheap Fourth of July fireworks.

  The bastard is under the stage, Lazarus thought. He’d completely forgotten about the man down there, the one who’d cut the mike cord. How could Lazarus have been so careless, so forgetful?

  Because you were worried about Neville. That’s how.

  But the cop who’d saved Lazarus’s life was toppling over now, the bullets from the shooter below having nailed him in the crotch, the gut, the underjaw. Bushy Mustache pitched lifelessly onto the platform, adding to the carnage already strewn there. Eddie Maza took the opportunity to drag Kelly Carr off the stage and in the direction of the ramp that led up to wherever Neville was being held hostage.

  Lazarus planned to save Neville—no, he thought angrily, he would save Neville—and he wanted to kill Eddie Maza. But he needed to take care of something first. He felt he owed it to Bushy Mustache, the fallen NYPD officer who’d saved his life.

  Climbing to his feet, Lazarus heard the gunman under the stage scuttling around, no doubt trying to draw a bead on Lazarus by the sound of Lazarus’s footfalls. But Lazarus knew the gunman’s hearing wasn’t as acute as his, nor was his aim as lethal. He imagined the gunman down there like a mole, sightless and sneaky, the man wriggling his way toward Lazarus in the near darkness.

  Lazarus grinned viciously, listened. He sidestepped until he’d lured the Mole to the edge of the platform. He tracked the Mole’s progress with his Desert Eagle. When he had the Mole dead to rights, he changed his mind and adjusted his aim. The man would be on his stomach, crawling forward like a soldier in the jungle. Only this man had no honor. This man was a Mole. One who murdered innocent people. Lazarus squeezed the trigger.

  A strident yowl of pain erupted from under the platform.

  Lazarus hopped down, shot a long arm under the blue tarp, and dragged the screaming Mole out from under the platform.

  The Mole was on his back, clutching his thigh. The Mole’s femoral artery was hemorrhaging, the blood bubbling up between his clutching fingers. Lazarus had meant to shoot him in the kneecap, but this was just as well. He’d bleed out soon, but Lazarus didn’t intend to let him live that long. The Mole stared up at him in anguish and fear, the man’s pockmarked face large and egg-shaped.

  “That cop deserved better,” Lazarus said.

  The Mole’s eyes fluttered wide.

  Lazarus raised his big boot, stomped down on the Mole’s face and smashed it like an egg.

  Turning, Lazarus sprinted for the ramp that would lead him to Neville.

  CHAPTER THREE

  * * *

  He’d intended to save Kelly Carr—would’ve saved Kelly Carr—had the thugs on the fourth level not shouted at him and dangled Neville Alcott over the wall. At sight of the old paraplegic, his arms flailing over the slick white wall for some sort of purchase, Lazarus decided Kelly Carr would have to wait. After all, he knew Neville Alcott, had worked for him several times. Neville was a good man and a key cog in the machinery of anti-terrorism. />
  More importantly, he was Jillian’s father.

  At thought of Jillian Alcott, Lazarus’s footfalls quickened, his feet becoming a blur. Bystanders who’d paused to rubberneck at the bloodbath below now scattered like windblown dandelion spoors, and the ones who didn’t move got knocked down hard. One guy who looked fresh out of some fashion magazine merely froze in the middle of the walkway, while the two pretty women he was with followed his lead. Lazarus plowed the man over, the women tripping over themselves to avoid being trampled too.

  Lazarus didn’t give the male fashion model a backwards glance. Lazarus hadn’t killed him, but the guy might have a concussion from rapping his head on the thin carpet.

  Guess he’ll get out of the way next time, Lazarus thought.

  “Down here!” a voice shouted from below.

  Lazarus glanced down, and when he did he knew what would happen even before Eddie Maza grinned up at him and shouted, “You forgot the girl!”

  Maza was standing at the base of the upward curving ramp, one arm clutching a handful of Kelly Carr’s blond hair, the other pressing the Kahr E9 to her temple.

  The pretty museum director was weeping and staring hopelessly up at Lazarus. Bystanders were backing away, seeing plainly what was about to happen. Eddie Maza was merely grinning. To Lazarus, the man’s toothy grin and black eyes made him look very much like a killer shark.

  Lazarus extended a hand in their direction. “Wait a second, Maza, she’s got nothing to do with—”

  Maza’s finger whitened on the trigger.

  “No, don’t!” Lazarus bellowed.

  Maza squeezed the trigger.

  Executed, Kelly Carr sagged to the floor at Maza’s feet.

  “You bastard,” Lazarus growled.

  “You want some?” Maza called up to him.

  Later, Lazarus told himself. Deal with him later.

  Jaw clenched, Lazarus whirled and pounded around the looping incline, now moving from the second level of the museum to the third. He’d barely taken note of the Dadaism on the walls, but the black-and-white nudes were difficult to miss.

  So were the guys with guns.

  They’d been stationed up here by whomever was in charge, lying in wait for Lazarus’s arrival. Now they opened up on him with all manner of weapons—revolvers, shotguns, at least three more Uzis. The bullets and buckshot were spraying from gunmen on this level, the third ring on the ever-rising ramp; on the next, Neville was being hauled back away from the wall, thank goodness for that; and on the fifth level, where Elizabeth Austin’s huge orbs had been parked, Lazarus could make out more gunmen.

  Three slugs tore into Lazarus before he tumbled toward the wall to attain some cover from the upper-level gunmen. His back against the wall, Lazarus came up firing at the shooters. The first three shots were true, a skinny guy in a jogging suit, a heavyset guy in tattered jeans, and another Uzi in a dark suit all went down in quick succession. Two of the shots had been lethal, Lazarus knew, and though the guy in the jogging suit wasn’t dead, he sure wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon. Lazarus had blown the man’s left foot off.

  Above the man’s wails of pain, Lazarus made out the whine of gunfire, the shrieks of terrified museum patrons. Got more than they bargained for, Lazarus thought. Wanted nudes and orbs and instead got blood-drenched carpeting.

  But what the hell, Lazarus thought, moving hunched over around the curving wall and up the ramp, couldn’t blood-spattered floors be considered artistic too? Wasn’t that exactly what that Jackson Pollock guy had done, slapped a bunch of paint over a canvas and called it artwork? Was Lazarus’s handiwork any less beautiful?

  A gunman in shades veered around the corner, and Lazarus added to his art collection. The spray from the exit wound in the man’s back stippled the cheek of an old lady who’d been watching from a few feet away. She wiped blood off her cheek, glanced at her crimson palm.

  As Lazarus hustled by, she blinked up at him in mute dismay.

  “Missed a little on your chin,” he told her.

  He pelted around the curving wall, and something bit the back of his neck. It had come from above. Lazarus inclined his head and spotted the gunman, the guy leaning over the white wall and aiming a revolver at him. Barely slackening his pace, Lazarus brought up the Desert Eagle and popped him in the forehead. His body instantly slack, the man tumbled off the wall and landed with a brittle crunch on the unyielding atrium floor. Lazarus kept moving.

  About sixty feet ahead he spotted a little red-haired boy and his sister, the two of them no older than eight and looking like twins. The boy was gnawing on an enormous rainbow-colored lollipop, and his sister had her back to him, probably mad about not having a lollipop. They stood right in the middle of the ramp, seemingly oblivious of the gunfire.

  When he neared the place where he’d seen the bad guys dangling Neville over the wall, he frowned. It wasn’t just that he didn’t hear Neville’s voice around the corner—it was that he did hear something else, something low and rumbling, like a rolling thunderhead approaching over a darkening prairie.

  Rolling, Lazarus thought. He glanced up at the red-haired twins, who had noticed Lazarus’s immense form and were watching him curiously.

  The rumbling grew louder.

  Oh hell, Lazarus thought.

  He bolted toward the twins just as the copper orb—eight-feet-high and weighing at least a ton—came rolling around the corner. It smashed into the white wall, the whole thing cracking but not giving way, and rebounded straight toward the kids. Lazarus took two loping strides, snatched a kid under each arm, and jumped at the roaring copper ball. His huge sneaker landed on the smooth surface, and before the orb’s momentum could steamroll all three of them, Lazarus pushed off into the air, sailing over big chunks of rubble that had tumbled out of the wrecked white wall. He landed gracefully, hardly breaking stride. The kids in his arms were bawling. Bullets pinged off the floor, the walls, and Lazarus thought, They don’t care if they shoot the children. As long as they hit me, they’re happy.

  Lazarus’s mouth became a thin white line.

  To the left he spotted a place where the winding ramp opened into a restaurant, and it was into that opening that he hurled the twins. They tumbled end over end like human bowling balls, but they were kids, and kids were resilient. At least they were alive.

  Lazarus turned away from them in time to see another orb, this one about five feet tall, come careening around the corner. This was one he hadn’t spied earlier, a nasty-looking thing with all sorts of dark rags flopping on it. Magazines, he realized in amazement. The ball within the magazines must’ve been comprised of something very heavy—Was it entirely comprised of magazines?—because when it struck a plump woman in a green sundress, it flattened her on the walkway, leaving behind a pulpy green-and-red mess that bore little resemblance to a human being. The magazine-covered orb rolled on, heedless of the woman it had obliterated, and made straight for a rich-looking woman pushing a stroller—the same woman and the same stroller Lazarus had spotted earlier outside the museum. Instead of wheeling her child to safety, the woman went rigid, her mouth agape. The monstrous magazine ball was less than thirty feet away.

  With a harsh grunt, Lazarus darted at the woman, head down, as if he meant to tackle her. When he was fifteen feet away, he leaped into the air, and as he did he reached into his trench coat, unsheathed his katana sword, and raised it above his head. He cleared the woman and her stroller by a good three feet, clutched the katana handle with both hands, and chopped down at the ball just as it thundered down on toward the stroller. The katana, extra-long and honed sharper than any blade Lazarus had ever seen, sheared through the orb, both sides of it scraping across Lazarus’s arms as it split. The still-rolling halves whirred by the woman and her stroller, missing them by six inches on either side. The halves continued forward until they smacked the wall, bounced, and came to rest on their now-flat sides. Lazarus noticed with mild fascination that the orb had indeed been made wholly of maga
zines. Must’ve cost Elizabeth Austin a lot of subscriptions to create that one, he thought.

  He realized the rich-looking mom and her baby were both gawking at him.

  “You … you saved my life,” the woman whispered. “You saved little Owen’s life too.”

  Lazarus regarded her blandly. “Keep smoking cigarettes around little Owen, and you’ll kill him anyway.”

  Shots rained down at him. “Get out of here!” he shouted at the cigarette-smoking mother. Whirling, he pelted up the ramp, and as he did he glimpsed a purple blur, heard a deep rumble. Beyond that he spotted an entourage of five men ranged around what looked like a rag doll someone was hugging. The purple blur was Elizabeth Austin. The rumble, he realized, was the sheet metal orb, the one that looked like a giant medieval mace.