(...continued)
The air in the ventilation shaft turned thick. It was no longer just stale…it was charged…negativity charged to be exact…heavy with the ozone smell of an illusion about to break.
Dante's hands moved first.
They shot out, not with the fluid grace of a warrior, but with the jerking, spastic violence of a man whose last tether had just snapped.
His fingers…almost pale, trembling at the tips…closed around the fabric of Theodora's tunic, just below her shoulders.
Then he pulled.
It wasn't a pull to bring her closer. It was a pull to snap her, break her, get something out.
He yanked her forward, completely taking her off balance, her head lolling for a terrifying fraction of a second before his momentum reversed. He slammed her back against the metal wall of the shaft, almost oblivious to the noise it would make or the attention it would garner.
Thud!!!
The sound was dull, wet, final. A body meeting immovable force.
Thud!!! Thud!!!
