When Earth is conquered by the sinister Greys and the alien who killed Evie's husband returns seeking her help, she must find a way to enact her revenge and fight the growing feelings for the creature who is an exact replica of the man she loved.
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Without another word, Jace gestured ahead with his free hand, his other deftly holstering his pistol and reaching for the SA80 on his back. In an instant, he'd gone from witty conversationalist to highly-skilled-soldier mode, the look in his eyes like an impermeable wall of iron and steel. Light-hearted Jace was only ever a disguise for the man he really was underneath. This was who he was now. This was what the Greys had turned him into. A self-trained warrior of the New World. Cold. Merciless. Lethal.
Anyone else would have walked away from this. Hell, they would have run. But not Jace.
And not me, because I recognised the sound and knew instinctively that it wasn't just a Grey.
It was a Grey in pain.
I'd heard it enough by now to know what it was. From the very first time two years ago, to just a few weeks before today, when Jace and I had managed to turn the tide on one which had given chase and had unwittingly gotten itself separated from its patrol unit. Its end had been violent and bloody and, if truth be told, I think we'd both enjoyed it a little too much.
Sometimes I couldn't help but wonder if we brought out the best in each other, or the worst.
It was darker in this part of the Gallery and I did the same as Jace, choosing my own rifle over the pistol so that we could use the torchlight to guide us.
I moved to the doorway on the right, Jace heading to the one on the left, covering me as I shifted my back against the doorframe. I quickly scanned the room beyond, finding it empty apart from a couple of Vemeer and Schalcken portraits that had been hacked at until the canvas hung from the frames in garish, intestinal ribbons. Shaking my head at Jace, we both instantly moved to the large rectangular-shaped room on the left, which housed mostly 16thcentury Venetian paintings and which also led through to the Salisbury Wing on the right-hand side.
The beams from the torches picked up an alarming streak of blood which swept half the length of the room, as if someone had been dragged across the tiles and through the doorway at the opposite end.
I tightened my grip on my SA80, a knot twisting in my stomach. I knew that room and it was a room full of memories and ghosts, and now, it seemed, something else.
A nightmare, maybe. A monster.
Creeping stealthily inside the entrance, we separated, Jace covering one side, me on the other as we made our way through. I stopped briefly to scan where the bloodied pathway began – a platter-sized pool of blood beneath where The Adoration of the Kings by Paolo Veronese hung on the wall. Fresh handprints plastered the base of the canvas, almost as if someone had tried to desperately cling on to the frame to stop themselves from being dragged away. Leaning closer, I studied the prints and looked over at Jace, motioning with two fingers and mouthing silently on my findings.
