Devil's Handiwork Excerpt

Best lines I wrote tonight:

Grabbing the leather jacket on the bed frame, I slid the backpack on and,
bringing the pistol to the ready again, slowly made my way down the stairs. As I
settled my foot on the last step, my eyes adjusting to the darkness again, he
cleared his throat.

I recognized him immediately, and I still shot a hole in the
chair he was sitting in, mere millimeters from his testicles.

"God damn it, Shelby!"

I shot four more times at the chair’s seat, putting the bullets within
hair's breadths of his thighs. He recoiled violently through the tufts of
recliner stuffing floating through the air and toppled backward, chair and all.
I launched myself across the room and vaulted over the now-holey recliner. My
knees pressed into his elbow joints, and I sat hard on his chest. My left
forearm came down across his windpipe while I shoved the barrel of the
still-smoking 9MM into his left nostril. "You've got five seconds to tell me
what the fuck the Council wants with me before I wipe your nose with something a
little more dangerous than a tissue, Billy."