Read Online Nobody's Hero by Bec McMaster - Free Book Online

find ‘em in mines and caves. Which means they don’t see real well. They hunt by scent. Best we go back.”
    Jimmy . She bit her lip. When he was just born, she’d been only a little girl. Mabel had let her in to see him, with his bright thatch of fine red hair and blinking, sleepy expression. He’d been the little brother she’d never had. A bit too scrawny to keep up with the other kids, he’d been mocked by the boys for his red hair. Riley had taken pity on him, teaching him the things every borderlander needed to know. How to hunt, to fight, to use a gun, knife and bow.
    Heck, she’d only recently taught him to drive.
    “How do we kill them?” she asked.
    Silence.
    “Better to ask how do we avoid getting eaten ourselves?” he said in a disgusted voice. A sigh. “We’re going after the kid, aren’t we?”
    Riley nodded, before she could change her mind. “I’m not leaving him in the hands of reivers.”
    “You’re a fool,” he said softly.
    “You’re still going to help me?”
    “Gave my word, didn’t I?”
    Another incongruity. “I wouldn’t have expected that to hold.”
    His hand slid from hers. “You know nothing about me.” He gave a jerk and his shirt tore from her grasp. Riley found herself half-reaching for him.
    Fabric rustled, and she could hear his breath near her waist. “What are you doing?” she asked.
    He rifled through her pack. “Need a torch,” he grunted. More fabric rustled. The sound of his shirt sliding over his shoulders. “Hold this.”
    He shoved the gun into her hands.
    Two seconds later, flint rasped and fire flickered, highlighting Wade’s kneeling form. Riley caught just a glimpse of burnished skin and his tight black tank before it died, leaving her retinas scarred with the image of him.
    One more flicker, and the light caught. Wade yanked a battered flask out of his hip pocket and tore his shirt into strips. He dampened the shirt, wrapped it around a stick, and lit the end. Fire bloomed. It wasn’t great, but it would do.
    Stuffing the flint into his pocket, he lifted the homemade torch high, the muscles in his shoulder straining. Both of them peered down the passage.
    “I assume you know how to shoot? Something more than a man’s foot?” he asked.
    “I hunt,” she replied. The shotgun’s weight took away some of her fear. That and Wade’s brusque tone. He moved like a man who knew what he intended to do. That was almost as reassuring as the gun.
    “Hold this,” he said, handing her the torch. Its heat scalded her skin, but she held it. Wade knelt and dragged the hem of his jeans up, revealing heavy boots and a knife sheathe strapped around his calf. The knife glided free with a steely rasp, and he spun it in his fingers as if learning the feel of it. Blue eyes met hers. “You see anything, you shoot it. Between the eyes if you can. Don’t go for a body shot. It barely slows ‘em, unless the impact knocks them down. If you can’t hit the head, go for the knees. Don’t leave one at your back, you’ll be amazed what they can survive. So a shot to the knee, then one to the head when it goes down. Stop shooting when it stops moving, not before. Don’t get within range of their hands. They’re faster than you think.”
    “You’ve come up against a revenant before?”
    “I used to hunt ‘em.” His gaze roved the corridor. Head cocked. Listening. He reached back for the torch. “Was a bounty hunter once. Out on the Rim.”
    “Is that how you got clawed up?”
    He shot her a short look. Question time over. “Only other way to kill a revenant’s by fire.” He gestured at the torch in his hand. “I don’t need to see. That’s there to make sure they stay down.”
    “Got it.”
    He gave her his back, standing lightly on his toes, peering into the darkness ahead. Tension rippled across his broad shoulders, and his grip flexed on the hilt of the heavy hunting knife. “You get bitten, and I’ll shoot you myself.”
    A terrifying thought.