Under the Eye of God Read Online Free

look. His expression said it all.
    â€œWe’ve never gotten this close to her before,” Sawyer insisted. He picked his rifle out of the broken rubble.
    Finn considered their options. His whole body hurt. He held his breath for half a second, trying to catch up to himself. Exasperated, he said, “Don’t you have a . . . a bad feeling about this, or something?”
    â€œNo. Should I? Come on, let’s go—Hey, what happened to your other gun?”
    â€œShe ate it.”
    â€œUse this,” Sawyer tossed his rifle to Finn. “I’ve got the grenades.” He started after Murdock, breaking into an eager sprint.
    Still disbelieving his brother’s enthusiasm, Finn followed, shaking his head and muttering darkly. “You know something, Sawyer?” he called. “All of a sudden, I just don’t have the same enthusiasm for this.”
    â€œThink of the money,” Sawyer called back.
    â€œOh yeah, right. Sure. The money.” Finn remained unconvinced, but he picked up his pace anyway. “I just know I’ll regret this.”
    As they hurried after the receding lights, Sawyer unclipped the hand-terminal from his belt. The display cycled through the views from each of the aerial trackers. The skyballs still followed their target. From every perspective, the screen showed Murdock the Mountain thundering down a wide ruined avenue.
    â€œDown that way,” Sawyer pointed. The lights burned brilliantly.
    â€œI can see.”
    They came around a broken colonnade. Down at the end of the avenue, the blazing animated beams of the skyballs weaved back and forth around Murdock’s lumpish, dark, ungraceful bulk.
    Finn dropped to one knee and took aim. One good shot . . . . He fired. The needle-thin beam hung in the air for just the briefest of instants, cycling up from the infra-red to the ultraviolet and disappearing even before it had finished registering on the retina. Finn couldn’t tell if he’d hit her or not. He fired again. And again. Murdock kept moving.
    Beside him, just ahead of him, Sawyer tossed a grenade. It lifted up into the dry air with a sharp whine, hesitated at the peak of its arc while it hunted, then began heading vaguely, almost uncertainly, toward its target. It screamed as it flew, its pitch rising and falling as it hunted its objective. The grenade traced an irregular path as it searched, weaving back and forth through the glittering sky like a drunken banshee. Suddenly, its note changed—turned into a sizzling, sawtoothed buzz—as it locked onto Murdock’s lumbering fury. Now it drove toward her like the vengeance of hell.
    The grenade exploded in a shattering flash of light. It crackled the air, silhouetting Murdock’s mountainous form like a hole in the sky. Crimson rays spattered all around, sending snakes of blue-white lightning sleeting through the ruins, leaving purple afterglows burning in the air and startling orange discharges writhing across the ground.
    But Murdock remained.
    â€œI don’t believe this,” said Sawyer.
    â€œOh, I do,” said Finn.
    The air burned redly overhead—a blistering shot from Murdock! Instinctively, Finn and Sawyer rolled in opposite directions, dodging the next shot and the next.
    Finn scrambled for the cover of a broken pedestal. Sawyer kept on rolling, came up swearing behind the corner of an elephant-sized block. He started swearing commands into his hand-terminal. The skyballs began darting and swooping low after Murdock, still pinning her in the light. Now they started firing—the needle-beams scorched the night, laying down a fiery net of thunder and flames.
    Somewhere in the middle of that hell, Murdock moved. Untouched.
    Sawyer took off down the ruined avenue, across the broken uneven surface, jumping over the smaller of the fallen blocks where they lay, his long black coat flying out behind him. He wove a random course around and through the colonnade.