Chapter 395: Stay Behind Us
Zhenlan stepped through the opening Yuche had torn through the wall and entered a hallway that smelled of blood, gunpowder, and scorched concrete.
None of which he was happy to smell near Rouxi.
Chenghai came through directly behind him, widening the broken section with one shoulder when a twisted length of metal caught against his jacket.
They found the first body less than three meters from Rouxi’s room.
The man lay face-down with his leg bent at an angle that caused the two men to shudder in sympathetic pain. Or they would have if they didn’t know who had already taken the man out.
Roots had split through the concrete beneath the dead man and wrapped around his ankle, holding the body in place even though he had stopped moving.
He probably deserved the broken leg... and the subsequent death.
Looking around, Zhenlan noticed another attacker that had been shot through the throat. A third was missing most of his face.
Zhenlan released the breath he had been holding. All these deaths pointed to just one thing... Rouxi was fine. Probably irritated, but most definitely fine.
Her voice reached them from farther down the hallway. "I said stop moving," she said, just before they could hear a man start screaming.
Zhenlan and Chenghai rounded the corner together just in time to see the woman they were looking for standing in the center of the corridor with a stolen gun in one hand and a radio in the other. Blood had sprayed across her shirt and one side of her face, although none of it appeared to belong to her.
Four bodies surrounded her, but it was the the last man, the fifth attacker, who was making all that noise.
Roots had wrapped around both his legs and one arm, stretching him against the floor while thinner strands worked their way beneath the edges of his clothing. Every time he struggled, the plants tightened.
Rouxi looked down at him with growing annoyance, her foot tapping on the floor. "You’re making this take longer," she grumbled.
The man stopped moving, his eyes going wide with fear.
The baby vine had returned to her shoulders, both leaf heads looking down on the man with disgust. One hissed at the prisoner while the other leaned down and snapped its teeth near his ear.
Chenghai looked over the bodies. "You yelled?" he said, sounding amused at the sight in front of him.
Rouxi turned toward them, already shaking her head like she had always known that they were there. Then again, knowing her, she probably had. "No, I didn’t," she countered.
"The gunshots were close enough."
"That isn’t the same thing," she replied, her bottom lip sticking out in a pout.
Chenghai took in a deep breath and closed his eyes with pain. Yeah, he was fuck in so may ways for wanted to take that lip between his teeth and bite down just enough to hear her gasping.
Fucking hell.
Zhenlan, on the other hand, didn’t seem to share his dilemma. Instead, he crossed the distance between himself and Rouxi and caught her by the chin before she could object. He turned her face toward the light, checking the blood along her cheek and the fine dust caught in her hair.
Her eyes narrowed even more. "I’m not injured," she grumbled under her breath.
"I’m checking," replied Zhenlan, his voice even and steady.
"You could have asked."
"You would have lied."
Rouxi stared at him for a second, before quietly agreeing with him. Then, she allowed him to continue his appraisal.
Her pulse remained steady beneath his fingers, and he felt his panic slowly fade away. There was no blood at her hairline, no new wound beneath the mess on her face, and the only sign of pain came when she shifted her weight away from her ankle.
Zhenlan released her chin but did not step back. "What happened to the bag of cores?"
Her expression changed just enough to confirm that something had gone wrong. "The plants heard me."
"That wasn’t what I asked."
"Ah, but it’s the answer you’re getting," she replied. "Learn to live with it."
A burst of gunfire echoed from the stairwell and Zhenlan turned before the first attacker reached the top.
Wind filled the corridor as pressure struck the lead man in the chest and threw him backward into the people climbing behind him. Bodies crashed down the stairs, taking weapons and railing sections with them.
More men shouted below, but Chenghai stepped around Rouxi and positioned himself between her and the stairwell.
Then, his radio crackled at his waist. "Chenghai, east yard is compromised. We need—"
He switched it off without a second thought. Zhenlan looked at him in surprise but didn’t say anything.
Chenghai clipped the silent radio back onto his belt with a shrug. "Yuche has the yard."
There was no hesitation in his voice. They had spent too long listening to people elsewhere that it was screwing up his present. Workers, guards, broadcasts, supply crews, warnings about the future and demands from places Rouxi had never asked them to protect. All those things that they thought were important... were keeping them away from Rouxi.
What they needed was to be where she was... and she was here.
Another attacker appeared at the top of the stairs and fired blindly into the corridor just as Zhenlan pulled the air sideways.
The bullet changed direction and struck the wall. Before the shooter could correct his aim, lightning travelled through the metal railing and entered his hand.
His body locked around the weapon and a second bolt threw him backward.
The smell of burned flesh joined the blood already filling the hallway.
Rouxi stepped beside Zhenlan, still holding the stolen gun. "Are they trying to take the whole market?"
"Apparently," the man grumbled back, clearly not impressed.
"Lingyun only owned it for an hour," Rouxi grumbled, and Zhenlan froze.
"How do you know that?" he asked.
"Because it was the only thing that makes sense," Rouxi replied with a shrug. "He wouldn’t fight that hard just for cores, not to the point where he had broken bones. What’s more important than a bag of green cores?"
"The black market," Chenghai agreed with a nod.
"And now that they don’t like that, they are trying to change something that Lingyun put his blood, sweat, and tears into. That’s just rude."
The attacker pinned to the floor made the mistake of laughing. Rouxi looked down at him, a frown playing on her face even as the roots around the man started to tighten.
Then, his laughter became a scream.
Chenghai glanced over his shoulder. "Do you need him alive?"
"Not particularly," she answered.
The man’s face drained of color.
Rouxi considered him for another second. "He might know how many people came through this entrance."
"I can make him answer," Zhenlan added, smiling down at the man even as the prisoner’s eyes moved toward him.
Zhenlan let lightning gather around his fingers.
Rouxi smiled. "See? Now you’re being useful."
The man answered before Zhenlan could even touch him. "Twenty," he gasped. "Twenty came through the loading side. More through the tunnels."
"How many came upstairs?" Zhenlan asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Eight. Maybe ten," came the response.
Rouxi looked at the bodies around her. "That seems optimistic."
Footsteps pounded below, and it was definitely more than one person.
Zhenlan moved closer to the stairwell and felt the air moving through the building. Men crowded the lower landing, waiting for enough bodies to gather before rushing the corridor together.
They expected numbers to matter. They really didn’t.
Lightning crawled over Zhenlan’s arms, and he stared ahead. "Stay behind us," he told Rouxi, his voice flat and firm.
She raised her eyebrows. "Not a chance."
"Why did I see that coming?" snickered Chenghai. He braced one hand against the wall beside the stairwell. "Then stay between us."
Rouxi looked from him to Zhenlan before finally nodding her head.
Happy that it was settled, Zhenlan extended one hand toward the stairs.
Wind compressed inside the narrow space below. It gathered against walls, railings, weapons, and bodies until the attackers began shouting over the pressure building around them.
Then he released it upward.
Men flew into the corridor.
Chenghai caught the first by the throat and drove him into the concrete. The wall cracked around the man’s skull.
A second attacker swung a metal bar. Chenghai allowed it to strike his shoulder, took the weapon from the man’s hands, and drove the broken end through his chest.
Zhenlan sent lightning through the wet blood spreading across the floor causing three men to convulse at once.
Rouxi lifted her hand and the roots beneath the corridor erupted.
Finally, things were getting fun.