The Relic Runner Origin Story Box Set by Ernest Dempsey (non fiction books to read TXT) 📕

Dak looked to his friend and saw the wounds.

"Luis?" Dak said.

"I'm fine, Dak," Luis replied. "I'll be okay."

Dak's face tightened against the flood of emotion. He came here to kill this man, to right the wrong done to him. Now, all he could feel was sadness and regret.

"Don't look at me like that," Luis said. "It's okay. I'm getting what I deserve."

"We can get you to a hospital," Dak said, trying to convince himself as much as the man next to him.

Luis coughed a laugh and turned his head. "You always were stubborn, Dak. It's one of the things I liked about you." He swallowed hard and his eyes started to roll back, but he fought off the darkness for a few more breaths. "Find Billy and Nathaniel. You get them for what they did to you. Okay? One of them might know where Bo is." The words came stammering out as the mortal wounds continued to do their deadly work.

"Billy is in… Colorado."

"You told me," Dak said.

Luis coughed again. "Get to the… to the escape tunnel. You… you can make it."

"We can make it," Dak insisted.

The dying man shook his head. "Tell me what your… crazy plan was."

Dak looked down at the grenade on his vest and plucked it from its nest.

"I shot out the gas valve on the fireplace," he answered.

Realization glimmered in his friend's dark eyes. "That's a good plan." His eyes lingered on the grenade. "Let me do it."

"No," Dak said. "I can't—"

"Shut up, Dak. We both know I'm a goner. I'd rather go out fighting than lying here like a coward."

Dak hadn't been prepared for this. Again, the plan ran through his mind of coming here to avenge the wrong Luis helped perpetrate. Now, he wished he could save the man's life. That wish could never come to fruition.

He nodded and placed the grenade into his friend's palm.

"Thank you," Dak said.

Luis offered a feeble smile and coughed. "Does that mean you forgive me?"

Dak snorted weakly. "Yeah, amigo. You're forgiven."

"Cool." Luis pulled the pin and gripped the explosive device to prevent it from detonating too soon. He struggled to turn around and then gave one last look at Dak. "See you on the other side, amigo."

Dak nodded. "See you on the other side."

Luis struggled to stand. Using a chair off to the side as both a brace and a shield, he turned and started toward the door. The gunmen outside fired again, dumping hot metal into the study. Bullets sailed by, whizzing past Luis' ears. Several struck the back of the chair. A few made it through and struck him in the torso. He shuddered at the impact but kept going, sliding the chair forward as he made for the door.

Dak slid under the desk and stayed as low as he could, knowing what was coming. He jerked one of the drawers out and used it to cover his head. Then… he waited.

The gunfire slowed as the shooters changed out their empty magazines for full ones. Another bullet struck Luis in the leg and he yelped. The new wound slowed him, but Luis wouldn't be denied this last effort at salvation. He tasted iron in his mouth from the blood he coughed up.

When he was fifteen feet from the door, another shot echoed through the study. The round hit him in the shin, shattering the bone. He fell forward, his leg screaming in agonizing pain. The world around him moved in dizzying slow motion. He was so close. As he toppled forward, Luis summoned every scrap of energy he had left and shoved his left hand forward, shuffling the grenade toward the door.

He slumped down onto the seat, watching the explosive hit the floor and tumble toward the doorway. It rolled to a stop mere feet from the threshold. Luis exhaled one last time and smiled in satisfaction.

The hard shell of the grenade erupted in fire and shrapnel, blasting the doors to shreds and seriously injuring two guards beyond. That was just the appetizer. The blast shook the entire mansion as it ignited the gas that now filled the room and flowed out of the tattered windows.

A ball of fire seared through the open doorway, scorching two more guards who'd been standing by the wall in ambush. The flames leaped out of the windows and blinded several more guards. Shards of glass and chunks of debris smashed into the gunmen, injuring some, killing two with blunt force trauma to the head.

Dak huddled under the desk as the explosion rocked the study. He pressed his forearms against his ears with the drawer pinched tight in his fingers. Flames coursed over the desk and climbed to the ceiling for all of two seconds. The searing heat licked at the drawer over his head, but didn't touch his skin. The front side of the desk absorbed the concussion from the blast as well as the deadly debris it flung across the room.

Then everything went eerily still.

Strips of torn paper and ash fluttered to the floor. Dak dropped the drawer and scrambled to his feet. He peered through the smoke and dust. Much of the outer wall was gone, reduced to rubble. Half of the ceiling had collapsed. The doors to the left, leading back into the mansion, looked little more than chunks of charred, splintered wood somehow still clinging to their hinges.

Dak's eyes fell to a pile near the door. Huge pieces of ceiling covered the chair Luis had used, but Dak could see the man's legs protruding from under the debris. The rest of his body was covered. Dak actually appreciated that. He came here to kill Luis, one of the five who'd betrayed him. Now that Luis was dead, Dak felt conflicted.

That emotion would have to be sorted at another time.

Sixteen

Uruapan

Dak detected movement through one of the wide openings in the exterior wall created by the explosion. Turning, he hurried over the piles of hulking pieces of the demolished study.