Flare Gun Quotes

Help me,” said Jesper. “We need to barricade the entrance.” The man behind the desk wore gray scholar’s robes. His nostrils were flared so wide in effrontery that Jesper feared being sucked up one of them. “Young man—” Jesper pointed his gun at the scholar’s chest. “Move.” “Jesper!” his father said. “Don’t worry, Da. People point guns at each other all the time in Ketterdam. It’s basically a handshake.” “Is that true?” his father asked as the scholar grudgingly moved aside and they shoved the heavy desk in front of the door. “Absolutely,” said Wylan. “Certainly not,” said the scholar. Jesper waved them on. “Depends on the neighborhood. Let’s go.

She drove home and grabbed the things she would need to check out a book: strong rope and a grappling hook, a compass, a flare gun, matches and a can of hair spray, a sharpened wooden spear, and, of course, her library card.

The only way I can attract more attention is if I was towing a Spanish galleon full of half-naked cheerleaders with flare guns.

With time to think, the full reality of what had happened hit Thomas like a falling boulder. Ever since Thomas had entered the Maze, Newt had been there for him. Thomas hadn’t realized just how much of a friend he’d become until now. His heart hurt. He tried to remind himself that Newt wasn’t dead. But in some ways this was worse. In most ways. He’d fallen down the slope of insanity, and he was surrounded by bloodthirsty Cranks. And the prospect of never seeing him again was almost unbearable. [...] He pulled the envelope out of his pocket and ripped it open, then took out the slip of paper. The soft lights that ringed the mirror lit up the message in a warm glow. It was two short sentences: Kill me. If you’ve ever been my friend, kill me. Thomas read it over and over, wishing the words would change. To think that his friend had been so scared that he’d had the foresight to write those words made him sick to his stomach. And he remembered how angry Newt had been at Thomas specifically when they’d found him in the bowling alley. He’d just wanted to avoid the inevitable fate of becoming a Crank. And Thomas had failed him. [...] “Newt suddenly twisted around and grabbed Thomas by the hand holding the gun. He yanked it toward himself, forcing it up until the end of the pistol was pressed against his own forehead. “Now make amends! Kill me before I become one of those cannibal monsters! Kill me! I trusted you with the note! No one else. Now do it!” Thomas tried to pull his hand away, but Newt was too strong. “I can’t, Newt, I can’t.” “Make amends! Repent for what you did!” The words tore out of him, his whole body trembling. Then his voice dropped to an urgent, harsh whisper. “Kill me, you shuck coward. Prove you can do the right thing. Put me out of my misery.” The words horrified Thomas. “Newt, maybe we can—” “Shut up! Just shut up! I trusted you! Now do it!” “I can’t.” “Do it!” “I can’t!” How could Newt ask him to do something like this? How could he possibly kill one of his best friends? “Kill me or I’ll kill you. Kill me! Do it!” “Newt …” “Do it before I become one of them!” “I …” “KILL ME!” And then Newt’s eyes cleared, as if he’d gained one last trembling gasp of sanity, and his voice softened. “Please, Tommy. Please.” With his heart falling into a black abyss, Thomas pulled the trigger.

Unanswered vox hails requested medical aid and supply, but the line of Astartes at the top of the north ridge was grimly silent as the exhausted warriors of the Raven Guard and Salamanders came to within a hundred metres of their allies. A lone flare shot skyward from inside the black fortress where Horus had made his lair, exploding in a hellish red glow that lit the battlefield below like a madman’s vision of the end of the world. And the fire of betrayal roared from the barrels of a thousand guns.

Louie grabbed the flare gun, loaded it, and fired. The flare shot straight at the bomber; for a moment, the men thought that it would hit the plane. But the flare missed, passing alongside the plane, making a fountain of red that looked huge from the raft. Louie reloaded and fired again. The plane turned sharply right. Louie fired two more flares, past the tail.

Despite an unfriendly demeanor and shrewd tongue, Sister Hilde’s nose was her deadliest weapon. Same as the rest of her, it was long, pointed, and gnarled like an old tree, striking out first in one direction, then shifting midstride to head in quite another, then finally changing its mind again and heading back the way it had gone to begin with. When she was irritated, it twitched back and forth and turned red. When she was mad, it dove down and depressed her nostrils, making them flare out like crab apples. Children claimed she could even point with it, and the last thing a child wanted was to look up and find Sister Hilde’s nose pointing at him. Wherever Hilde was, somewhere else was always a better place to be.

The doctor raised the gun and pointed it at what in his fear ought to have been flaring nostrils, foaming lips, and the red-rimmed eyes of a savage. Instead he saw the quiet, even serene, face of a man not to be fooled with.

On September 16, in defiance of the cease-fire, Ariel Sharon’s army circled the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, where Fatima and Falasteen slept defenselessly without Yousef. Israeli soldiers set up checkpoints, barring the exit of refugees, and allowed their Lebanese Phalange allies into the camp. Israeli soldiers, perched on rooftops, watched through their binoculars during the day and at night lit the sky with flares to guide the path of the Phalange, who went from shelter to shelter in the refugee camps. Two days later, the first western journalists entered the camp and bore witness. Robert Fisk wrote of it in Pity the Nation: They were everywhere, in the road, the laneways, in the back yards and broken rooms, beneath crumpled masonry and across the top of garbage tips. When we had seen a hundred bodies, we stopped counting. Down every alleyway, there were corpses—women, young men, babies and grandparents—lying together in lazy and terrible profusion where they had been knifed or machine-gunned to death. Each corridor through the rubble produced more bodies. The patients at the Palestinian hospital had disappeared after gunmen ordered the doctors to leave. Everywhere, we found signs of hastily dug mass graves. Even while we were there, amid the evidence of such savagery, we could see the Israelis watching us. From the top of the tower block to the west, we could see them staring at us through field-glasses, scanning back and forth across the streets of corpses, the lenses of the binoculars sometimes flashing in the sun as their gaze ranged through the camp. Loren Jenkins [of the Washington Post] cursed a lot. Jenkins immediately realized that the Israeli defense minister would have to bear some responsibility for this horror. “Sharon!” he shouted. “That fucker [Ariel] Sharon! This is Deir Yassin all over again.

Metcalf came into the room and sat down with a sigh. "Did everybody go nuts all of a sudden? It's Thursday, for Christ's sake, and you'd think it was Saturday night. Fender benders, B amp;Es, domestic disputes-and some asshole just tried to rob one of our three banks." "Unsuccessfully, I gather," Lucas said. "Yeah, but not much credit to my people. Guy had a flare gun. A flare gun. I was ready to shoot him just on general principle. And because he fucked up my morning.

O'Shaughnessy is hitting Denholt on the side of his head with his free arm, great, walloping, pile-driver blows. The two of them stagger together, like partners in a crazy dance. Glass is breaking all around them. Gray smoke from the six shots, pink-and-white dust from the chipped brick-and-plaster walls, swirl around them in a rainbow haze. Something vividly green flares up from one of the overturned retorts, goes right out again. O'Shaughnessy tears the emptied gun away, flings it off somewhere. More breaking glass, and this time a tart pungent smell that makes the nostrils sting. The crunch of pulverized tube glass underfoot makes it sound as if they were scuffling in sand or hard-packed snow. ("Jane Brown's Body")

In the West there was panic when the migrants multiplied on the highways. Men of property were terrified for their property. Men who had never been hungry saw the eyes of the hungry. Men who had never wanted anything very much saw the flare of want in the eyes of the migrants. And the men of the towns and of the soft suburban country gathered to defend themselves; and they reassured themselves that they were good and the invaders bad, as a man must do before he fights. They said, These goddamned Okies are dirty and ignorant. They’re degenerate, sexual maniacs. These goddamned Okies are thieves. They’ll steal anything. They’ve got no sense of property rights. And the latter was true, for how can a man without property know the ache of ownership? And the defending people said, They bring disease, they’re filthy. We can’t have them in the schools. They’re strangers. How’d you like to have your sister go out with one of ’em? The local people whipped themselves into a mold of cruelty. Then they formed units, squads, and armed them—armed them with clubs, with gas, with guns. We own the country. We can’t let these Okies get out of hand. And the men who were armed did not own the land, but they thought they did. And the clerks who drilled at night owned nothing, and the little storekeepers possessed only a drawerful of debts. But even a debt is something, even a job is something. The clerk thought, I get fifteen dollars a week. S’pose a goddamn Okie would work for twelve? And the little storekeeper thought, How could I compete with a debtless man?

that night she dreamed of employing an army of women cleaners who would set forth across the planet on a mission to clean up all the damage done to the environment they came from all over Africa and from North and South and South America, they came from India and China and all over Asia, they came from Europe and the Middle East, from Oceania, and from the Antarctic, too she imagined them all descending in their millions on the Niger Delta and driving out the oil companies with their mop and broom handles transformed into spears and poison-tipped swords and machine guns she imagined them demolishing al the equipment used for oil production, including the flare stacks that rose into the skies to burn the natural gas, her cleaners setting charges underneath each one, detonating from a safe distance and watching them being blown up she imagined the local people cheering and celebrating with dancing, drumming and roasted fish she imagined the international media filming it- CNN, BBC, NBC she imagined the government unable to mobilize the poorly paid local militia because they were terrified by the sheer numbers of her Worldwide Army of Women Cleaners who could vaporize them with their superhuman powers afterwards, she imagined legions of singing women sifting the rivers and creeks to remove the thick slicks of grease that had polluted them and digging up the land until they'd removed the toxic sublayers of soil she imagined the skies opening when the job was fone and the pouring of pure water from the now hygienic clouds for as long as it took for the region to be thoroughly cleansed and replenished

Have no fear!” Silver shouted, leaping onto a convenient table, bestriding a centerpiece of oysters. “The powers of my kind shall scourge these creatures back into the slime from which they crawled—” Amazing grammar in a crisis, Irene couldn’t help noticing. “Behold!” Silver raised his hand. Fire flared round his fingers dramatically, then leapt to strike the alligators in burning orange whips. It fizzled. There was no other word for it. The flames drooped and went out as if they’d been doused with cold water, leaving the alligators to rumble forward undeterred. “Damnation!” Silver swore. “They have been armored in cold iron! Johnson! My elephant gun!” Much as Irene would have enjoyed watching whatever happened next, fleeing the room before she was trampled by the crowd or eaten by alligators seemed a better idea.

...the attitude of Gorky and his paper. He had returned to Russia early in 1914, taken a pacifist line on the the outbreak of war, but had pursued it with a restraint which protected him from most of the obloquy poured on others of similar views After the February Revolution of 1917 he had regarded the Bolsheviks as merely one among a number of progressive parties, and it was not unexpected that in October he should warn about the future. Now, he not only printed the Zinoviev-Kamenev statement but also a leading article in which he said: 'Ever more persistent rumors are spreading to the effect that on 2 November a Bolshevik rising will take place; in other words, that the hideous scenes of 16 to 18 July may be repeated. That means that once more there will appear motor lorries overfilled with men with rifles and revolvers in their trembling hands, and these rifles will shoot at shop windows, at people, at random. They will shoot only because the men armed with them will try to kill their fear. All dark instincts of the crowd irritated by disorder, by the falsehood and filth of politics, will flare up and ooze forth poisonous malice, hatred, vengeance. People will be killing one another, in their inability to destroy their own bestial stupidity. The unorganized crowd will creep out into the streets, hardly understanding what it wants, while under its cover, adventurers, thieves, [and] professional assassins will set out to "create the history of the Russian revolution". In brief, there will be repeated that bloody, senseless slaughter, which we have already witnessed, and which has undermined through our whole land the moral importance of the revolution, and has shaken its cultural meaning.

Get off your horse, Jack." "Why don't you just ride outta here, missy, and I'll forget this ever happened." Willow's voice trembled with fury. "Get off your horse," she repeated. "Slow and easy." Still grinning his contempt, he did as he asked. "That's good. Now, real slow like, take your gunbelt off and toss it my way." "Like hell!" A shot rang out and nicked a chunk of leather from his boot. Cursing, he unbuckled his gun and tossed it at her mare's feet. "Now,strip them britches off, underwear, too," she ordered. "You little shi-" Bang! Jack's hat whizzed off his head. He dropped his pants in a puddle over his boots, trying his best to shelter his privates from her view. "My,my,Jack." Willow laughed humorlessly. "Is that puny thing you're trying to hide the same thing you were threatening me with?" If looks could kill, Willow would have been dead and buried ten times over, then and there. "Take them confounded boots off so's you can get your pants clear off," she ordered in mock exasperation. He wheeled around, gaining a modicum of privacy while he complied. "You're puny all over, Jack. You got the boniest bee-hind I ever did see. You sure you ain't picked up a worm somewheres?" "You're gonna pay for this,you little slut!" "Shut your filthy mouth and pick them pants off the ground and toss 'em over here at my horse's feet. Then you can put your boots back on." He gave the pants a toss, put his boots on, and turned around to face her, cuping his privates in his hands. "Okay,Jack, finish the job. You've been real generous but I'm a greedy cuss. Give me the shirt off your back, too." Cursing, he again turned around and obeyed. "Oh,ah,Jack, you better reach behind you there,and get your hat. I'll let you keep it. We wouldn't want your bald spot to get sunburned." Scofield now stood in nothing but his boots, using his hat to shield his lower half. Humiliated, the gunslinger's eyes burned with bloody intent. Willow suddenly regretted her damnable quick temper and realized the folly of her reckless retaliation. No doubt,the heinous man would seek revenge. But the damage was done and the man was so mad that backing off now would be the same as signing her death warrant. "Step away from your horse and start walking toward the ranch, Scofield." "You're out of your mind!" "Maybe,but I bet you'll think twice before threatening to poke that puny thing at another lady." "You? A lady? Ha!" Willow's temper flared anew. "Walk, Jack. Real fast. Cuz if you don't, I'm gonna use your puny thing for target practice." Her bullet kicked up the dust at his feet and started him on his way.

Who the fuck is Old Jolene?

Niall’s nostrils flared with a patience-inducing breath before he whispered, “Seriously? Are you packing today?” Duff’s overbuilt shoulders shifted as he turned to whisper a response. “Hey. You wear your glasses every day, Poindexter. I wear my gun.” “I wasn’t aware that you knew what the term Poindexter meant.” “I’m smarter than I look” was Duff’s terse response. Keir chuckled. “He’d have to be.” Duff’s muscular shoulders shifted. “So help me, baby brother, if you give me any grief today, I will lay you out flat.” “Zip it. Both of you.” Niall, Duff and Keir Watson

Clay smashed the butt of his revolver into the werewolf’s snout. It laughed again, only it wasn’t the sound of an animal trying to form human words, but a familiar cackle that chilled Clay to his bones. Intelligence cooled in black eyes, snuffing out the feral rage that had once burned brightly. Jaw muscles moved mechanically, strings pulled from an unseen place. “Hello, McNab,” the voice of a woman crooned. “It’s good to see you. Everything has become so much more interesting. Who will you fail this time, I wonder?” The werewolf dropped with a thud, wisps of gun smoke rising from its head. Clay stood over it and drove his boot into the face again and again. He didn’t stop until the body was mangled beyond recognition, a sponge to soak up the fury flaring inside his heart.

contained a suture kit, more water purification tablets, Russian aspirin, blood-clotting gauze, an Israeli-style wrap bandage, tweezers, six Russian-style Band-Aids of varying sizes, two antibacterial wipes, a small tube of antiseptic ointment, and an electrolyte drink mix. The fourth and final pouch in the ditch kit was emblazoned with words Harvath didn’t know. Opening it up, he looked inside. As soon as he saw the signal mirror, he knew exactly what this bag was—a SERE kit. In addition to the mirror, there was a compass, a whistle, more stormproof matches, more water purification tablets, a small notebook and pen, a silk scarf printed with panels containing survival instructions, more hextabs, a flint and striker, a packet of sunscreen, and some mosquito wipes. Opening the flare gun case, he examined its contents. In keeping with similar setups from the Soviet days, the kit included the pistol itself and four flares, beneath which was a conversion tube. When inserted into the barrel, it allowed for firing of .45 or .410 ammunition. Two cardboard boxes with five rounds of each

The rain pelted down, drowning the soil and turning the terrain into a devastated expanse of mud. Lightning forked across the skies, augmented by explosions and flares. Thunder roared and machine guns screamed. I

Birds of the Western Front Your mess-tin cover's lost. Kestrels hover above the shelling. They don't turn a feather when hunting-ground explodes in yellow earth, flickering star-shells and flares from the Revelation of St John. You look away from artillery lobbing roar and suck and snap against one corner of a thicket to the partridge of the war zone making its nest in shattered clods. History floods into subsoil to be blown apart. You cling to the hard dry stars of observation. How you survive. They were all at it: Orchids of the Crimea nature notes from the trench leaving everything unsaid - hell's cauldron with souls pushed in, demons stoking flames beneath - for the pink-flecked wings of a chaffinch flashed like mediaeval glass. You replace gangrene and gas mask with a dream of alchemy: language of the birds translating human earth to abstract and divine. While machine-gun tracery gutted that stricken wood you watched the chaffinch flutter to and fro through splintered branches, breaking buds and never a green bough left. Hundreds lay in there wounded. If any, you say, spotted one bird they may have wondered why a thing with wings would stay in such a place. She must have, sure, had chicks she was too terrified to feed, too loyal to desert. Like roots clutching at air you stick to the lark singing fit to burst at dawn sounding insincere above the burning bush: plough-land latticed like folds of brain with shell-ravines where nothing stirs but black rats, jittery sentries and the lice sliding across your faces every night. Where every elixir's gone wrong you hold to what you know. A little nature study. A solitary magpie blue and white spearing a strand of willow. One for sorrow. One for Babylon, Ninevah and Northern France, for mice and desolation, the burgeoning barn-owl population and never a green bough left.

Soon we were alone in the pitch dark except for the despatcher and the parachutes, four of them for us, the others for huge cylindrical containers. In these, and about our persons, were the gear for our operation: maps, pistols, bombs, commando daggers, coshes, knuckledusters, telescopic sights, silencers, a sheaf of Marlin sub-machine guns, ammunition, wire-cutters, sewn-in files for prison bars, magnetic escape devices, signal flares, disguises, gags, chloroform, rope-ladders, gold sovereigns, stealthy footwear, Bangalore torpedoes, every type of explosive from gelignite and gun-cotton to deceptive mule droppings which, they said, could blow a tank to smithereens; all the things indeed on which espionage writers dwell at such fond length; also Benzedrine, field dressings, morphine, knockout drops and suicide pills to bite under duress, if captured in the wrong clothes. I hoped we would use none of them, especially the last.

Stop it!” she hissed. He dropped the orange section into his mouth, licked his lips with a slow, languorous, circular motion, and slowly peeled off another. The heat rose in Maeve’s blood. “Would you like . . . a taste, madam?” She raised her cutlass. “I’ll give you a taste—” “No decisive battle was ever fought from afar,” he interrupted on a low murmur, still grinning. “Nay, two vessels must lie alongside of each other in order to best bring their guns to bear.” He bit into the orange, making lewd, evocative noises as the juice trailed from the succulent flesh and dribbled down his chin. There was a dimple in that chin, and Maeve felt her heart skipping, staggering, faltering. “We have a signal for such an engagement in the navy. ’Tis called close action.”  “You are no longer in the navy, and I am not a ship!” “Nay, you are not . . .” His voice grew low, dangerously seductive. “But I like the cut of your jib, the taut trim of your sails”—the dark gaze slid over her breasts, the gentle flare of her hips—“the shape of your hull.

He continued to move forward, skirting a pocket of radiation that had not died in the four years since last he had come this way. They came upon a place where the sands were fused into a glassy sea, and he slowed as he began its passage, peering ahead after the craters and chasms it contained. Three more rockfalls assailed him before the heavens split themselves open and revealed a bright-blue light, edged with violet. The dark curtains rolled back toward the Poles, and the roaring and the gunfire reports diminished. A lavender glow remained in the north, and a green sun dipped toward the horizon at his back. They had ridden it out, and he killed the infras, pushed back his goggles, and switched on the normal night lamps. The desert would be bad enough, all by itself. Something big and batlike swooped through the tunnel of his lights and was gone. He ignored its passage. Five minutes later it made a second pass, this time much closer, and he fired a magnesium flare. A black shape, perhaps forty feet across, was illuminated, and he gave it two five-second bursts from the fifty-calibers, and it fell to the ground and did not return again. To the squares, this was Damnation Alley. To Hell Tanner, this was still the parking lot.

goods we were leaving behind. I then opened several of the plastic gas containers that were stored on deck, and tossed them onto various parts of the pirate ship. Then I grabbed one of the flare guns

I'm not going anywhere! Now you and I are the only things standing between that ugly bastard and the city of ten million people. Now we have a choice here, we either sit and wait or we take these flare guns and do something really stupid!

Mary?” The sound of a grunt came from the far corner, jolting fear through him. It wasn’t feminine. “Damn,” his uncle said from across the room. “What the hell is this? We need light.” Solomon’s breaths blasted as hurried along the wall to where she kept the lantern above the fireplace. Putting his gun on the ledge, he located the matches. “Jesus,” his uncle whispered. “Don’t put on a light!” The match hissed and flared and Solomon turned just as his father flew at him and blew it out. “Something’s happened here,” his dad barely said even as Solomon stared into the returning darkness. His eyes were wide with the horror of what he’d seen in those few seconds before the light vanished. Blood. So much blood. “Christ,

He didn't realize it, but with those words he had played directly into Sabri Ramirez's hands. The scenario was now a lock. When Jack Mulhoney turned back to his radio, he only heard static.   7:47 p.m.   Vance watched as the frigate got off a warning tracer, but to no effect. The Hind ignored it, as a stream of 57mm rockets from under the chopper's stubby starboard wing flared down, while the radar-slaved machine gun beneath the nose opened fire.

A magnificent fireworks began: magnesium flares blindingly white, yellow, and then red, like dying stars; straight bright red streaks of machine-gun fire; elegant and clear lines of bullets traced like fugitive neon light; and scarlet, sinister rugged patches from antiaircraft artillery. Then the noise: after the solemn, promising silence of the flares came the mad disorderly reaction of the inhabitants of the earth to the regular, obstinate sounds of the invisible motors in the sky. The airplanes replied to the nervous coughing of the machine guns with great battering blows that shook the earth. It was a celebration in honor of death.

With an oath, one Earthman reached for the flare-gun at his belt. Captain Future’s proton-beam licked forth, and the man fell stunned. “I could kill you with this beam as easily as stun you,” Curt said pleasantly. “Don’t make me do it.” “It’s Captain Future!” exclaimed one of the men, going pale as he recognized the unique ring on Curt’s finger. “You men,” Curt told them, “are going to spend a long time out on the prison moon of Pluto for violating interplanetary law! Supplying natives with guns is risky business.

His eyes stay trained on me, knowing my crazy knows no limits. “Look at her!” I demand. “C’mon, give me a reason to take off the top of your skull.” I smirk, pointing my gun at the side of his head. I crave the fight. The abuse. The pain. It’s the only thing besides her that makes life feel tolerable. His nostrils flare as his barrel chest rumbles his frustrations in the dim crimson lights of the hallway. He’s breaking. Having a hard time allowing Bones, of all people, to come in here and make a fool out of him again.

I should be dead. But I’m not human, am I?” She swiped a tear of frustration off her face. “Whatever I am makes me stronger, faster, and scary as hell when fighting. I changed, scaled the top of a moving truck, and fought a guy shooting a gun at me.” She ran her hand across her face to wipe away the tears. “I’m a mess. The mud in that ravine got in all the cracks, even my underwear. But the injuries are already almost gone, and somehow, I know all this will heal. Based on you being all pissy, I assume your meeting didn’t go well.” “It took an unanticipated turn.” His tone was odd as he continued to stare at her. “What exactly do you do that involves secrecy and the Crown?” “I can’t tell you.” Something about how he looked at her was different. Her skin tingled like it had before she’d shifted. Survival instinct flared. “Did they order you to…kill me?” It came out of her on a fatigued exhale. Her shoulders drooped. His face remained remote as if trying to wall off emotion. He neither confirmed nor denied, which might as well have been a screaming affirmative. She dropped her chin. He said nothing, so she looked up. He stared intently at her, making her almost shrink in place under the gaze of those thunderous eyes. “Is this when you tell me to leave again?” she asked. “Would you go?” “If they ordered you to kill me, wouldn’t you be forced to come after me? To hunt me down? So, what’s the point in me running unless you like the hunt?” He pushed his hand through his dark hair and stepped away from her. Frustration oozed from him. Seeing him start to lose some of his composure made him less threatening. He wasn’t the robot assassin. She wanted to run her fingers through his thick hair and down his scruff-roughened chiseled jawline to soothe him. Would her touch, if done in comfort, affect him the way she suspected his touch would destroy her? From the way he simply stared at her, she guessed yes. The silence was killing her. “What’s going on here?” “No idea.” He muttered something under his breath that she couldn’t make out. He stepped toward her and slid a finger under her chin to tilt her face upward. Their eyes met and held. “I’m sorry someone hurt you. That you had to fight for your life and went through a windshield.” In a whisper, he added, “I should’ve been there.” The grit in his voice, the despair, as if he’d let her down, packed one hell of a punch. What was she supposed to do with that? Oh dear…God. His hold on her face, how his thumb gently stroked over the skin on her jaw… How he moved in so she could feel the hard surfaces of his body, the concrete chest and abs… All of it swirled together, turning her mind to mush, which was bad when she needed to remain alert. Death… her death was on the line. But she was about to make a very bad decision to let him do whatever the hell he wanted after that declaration. “I made a promise to erase Dom’s kiss. To make you forget. I never go back on my promises.” Like his promise to help her get answers? He didn’t lower his head, but stood there, hesitant. “You’re too hurt right now.” “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” She slid her good hand up his shoulders and neck. His muscles twitched under her touch, and his chest rose and fell more rapidly. Feeling how much just her hand on him affected him encouraged her to continue. Cradling the back of his head, she pressed her body into his. As she pulled him toward her mouth, his incredible size and power registered but didn’t intimidate. Didn’t scare her. Her mouth touched his. Warmth on warmth. Once… Twice… Three times. His lips were a lot softer than they appeared. The roughness of his facial scruff scratched her skin.

Something hit him in the back and he went forward, face on the cold floor, thinking, This is it, I’m dead, but he wasn’t dead, he could feel the dampness of the stone against his cheek and when he rolled over he saw that an explosion had brought the ceiling down: a big explosion, judging by all the rubble and the dust, and he would have expected it to make a noise, but he hadn’t heard anything, and he still couldn’t hear anything, even though quite large chunks of the roof were coming down and people were flailing about waving torches and shouting with their mouths wide open, no, there was just a whine and a whistle and a buzz going on somewhere inside his skull, and when he sneezed it made no sound, but small, hot fingers closed around his hand and tugged at him and he looked up and saw Hester, white in the sweep and flare of a torch-beam like a floodlit statue of herself except that she was mouthing something at him, tugging and tugging him and pointing towards the doorway, and he scrambled out from under the thing that had fallen on him, which turned out to be Sathya, and he wondered if she was badly hurt and if he should try to help her, but Hester was pulling him towards the door, stumbling over the bodies of men who were quite definitely dead, stooping under the remains of a heat-duct which was all twisted open and smoking as if it had exploded from inside, and as he looked back somebody fired a gun at him and he saw the flash and felt the bullet flick past his ear but he couldn’t hear that either.

Aidas trotted for the counter and jumped onto it in one graceful spring, then surveyed all of them. His blue gaze returned to Bryce at last. “Why don’t you know how to use your powers yet?” Bryce rolled her shoulders, cracking her neck, and held out a hand. A kernel of starlight flared in her palm. “I can use them.” A soft, hissing laugh. “Party tricks. I meant your real powers. Your heritage.” Hunt’s fingers tightened on his gun. Bryce challenged, “What powers?” Aidas’s eyes glowed like blue stars. “I remember the last Starborn Queen, Theia, and her powers.” He seemed to shudder. “Your light is her light. I’d recognize that luster anywhere. I’m assuming you have her other gifts as well.” “You knew the last Starborn Queen?” Ruhn asked. Starlight glinted among Ruhn’s shadows, shimmering down the length of his sword. Aidas’s eyes now flared with a strange sort of rage as he looked upon the Fae Prince. “I did. And I knew the sniveling prince whose light you bear.” A ripple of stunned silence went through the room.

For the love of God,' Harry said, struggling up. He looked down at his mud encrusted feet and filthy puttees and cursed. 'Three bloody days and look at me, I'm covered in shit again.' 'Not as much as Fred,' Williams said, laughing. Harry smiled, the previous night Fred had slipped into a shell hole that the company in front had been using as a latrine. He'd sworn so loud that the whole line had been lit up by flares and it had been ten whole minutes before the guns had stopped probing the dark.

That’s not a regular gun! What kind of weapon is that?!” “You don’t need to know what kind of gun I’m using,” Kevin said. “Do you honestly think I would tell you anyway? You think I’m just going to give away my secrets? What do you think this is? A shōnen manga? This isn’t Natsumo Shinobi, where freely giving away the information on your techniques or weapons is mandatory.” … A stiff silence followed. Kevin watched as a tumbleweed rolled in out of nowhere, blowing past them. “That’s weird. I didn’t think tumbleweeds existed in a forest.” Kevin pondered that for a moment, then decided not to let it bother him. Ten bullets flared into existence when Kevin pulled the trigger to his silver gun while charging the black one.