Free Nighthawks (Children of Nostradamus Book 1) by Jeremy Flagg Page A

momentum to flip him over her head and into another officer. The second cop grabbed for his weapon and looked down when he couldn’t find the grip.
    Alyssa dropped out the magazine and removed the barrel of the gun. She used the butt of the gun and slammed it into the man’s helmet. He reached up to grab her hand but found she moved faster than expected. The young girl, barely old enough to be drinking, dropped to the floor, sweeping her leg outward, hooking it on his feet and sending him to the ground. As she spun around, she swung her hand downward, smacking him in the windpipe.
    Dwayne smiled at the elegance with which she moved. She pulled the officer’s baton from his utility belt and stood up, meeting his eyes. “Are you going to start pulling your weight?”
    He pointed behind her. She turned as protestors lunged at her. She spun the baton around, cracking the jaw of one man. He fell backward as she punched with the heel of her hand into the woman’s chest. The woman collapsed to the ground, hissing at the pain radiating through her body.
    Dwayne stepped beside his comrade. He gave a slight shrug. “You seem to have things under control.”
    “No thanks to you,” she said.
    He threw out his hand, knocking her to the side as a man behind her raised a gun level with her head. Dwayne grabbed the firearm by the muzzle. Sparks jumped from his hand, passing through the gun, leaping across the skin of the man. Dwayne watched the familiar spasm as the electricity wrangled his heart, throwing it out of rhythm and sending him into cardiac arrest.
    Alyssa hit the ground in a roll and bounced back to her feet. The hair on her neck stood on end as the air began to smell like burning hairspray. A soldier with a gun strapped across his chest stepped inside the broken window. The people were fleeing the scene, screaming as they recognized the black and red patch on the man’s sleeves.
    “Corps,” she whispered.
    “Not Genesis Division,” Dwayne shouted back to her.
    Dwayne knocked the spasming man to the side just in time for the soldier to replace him. Dwayne held up his hands, sparks arcing between his fingers. The soldier reached out, the pain of the lightning burning his skin.
    “You’ve—” Dwayne said as the man’s grip tightened. The mechanics in the soldier’s arm began to take over, “—got me now.”
    A flash of light illuminated the room as a bolt of lightning jumped from Dwayne’s chest into the cyborg. The soldier’s weapon fell and the skin on his exposed chest melted away, along with the flesh of his arms.
    The soldier picked up Dwayne and threw him back along the floor as if he weighed nothing. Dwayne watched the man wince, the pain starting to register. Even with neural inhibitors working in the soldier’s head, he was beginning to feel a stinging sensation along the charred skin. The soldier turned his attention to Dwayne’s companion.
    Alyssa closed the distance between them and swung the club at the man’s head. The wood splintered as it connected with his jaw. Dwayne could hear her gasp. The amount of metal he must have inside to resist the blow was alarming. He had seen the cyborgs before, men in the military trading their flesh for synthetic parts, but this was even more than usual. He assumed the man was a casualty replacement, a wounded veteran turned into a robot to keep the military’s investment from dying.
    The man reached out for her, his reflexes faster than the police officer’s. She knocked the hand to the side and shoved the splintered club into its upper arm. The man didn’t scream. She’d be pissed, she didn’t like when they refused scream. With the speed of his movements, Dwayne had to assume there wasn’t much human left.
    She was fast. She was skilled. She wasn’t Dwayne. As the man grabbed her by the throat, she felt his strength threatening to crush her windpipe. She pulled the club from his forearm and drove it into his eye socket.
    She braced her feet against