I felt remarkably comfortable with her in my personal space.
She stopped walking again, and I stopped and turned to face her.
“I’m not seeing anything. Should we hang here for a while longer or move on down the list.”
I was about to answer when her phone went off, she pulled it out and looked.
“It’s Jo. She texted my sister too, they must’ve gotten the stuff from the alpha, because she says he’s in Jackson park. She’s going to meet all four of us out front.”
I nodded, “Let’s go.”
There were still humans around, so we didn’t run, but we did walk quickly back to the El. Hopefully we’d get there before he left, or worse, killed another human…
Chapter Ten
Jackson park was on the south side of Chicago, so we had to ride the El to the loop, and then head south on a different line. We weren’t sure where Matt and Christina were when they got the text, but we only arrived a minute or two after they did.
Jo gave me an awkward glance, which made me wonder just what Christina had been telling her. Damned drama. Unless she was uncomfortable because her mom had told her about all the damned magical experimentation she’d pulled on me last week. I refused to look over at Matt and Christina, directly anyway, she was leaning back into his chest, and his hands were around her hips. Thanks for making it easier on me, assholes. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was enjoying that, or if she’d merely given in to what he wanted in that moment. Doing her duty.
Finally, I looked over, and saw Christina looked a little stiff and awkward, and she was about as far from a blushing bride as she could get. I don’t know if that pleased me or annoyed me more, I didn’t want her to be unhappy, but I didn’t want her happy in front of me either. It also meant Matt was being pushy, or she was resigned. Whatever. I turned my body so I couldn’t see them, and noticed that Serena looked more annoyed than I felt by their heartless PDA, even if there was no real affection there that I could see. Just… ownership on Matt’s part, and resignation on hers.
It was time to get this thing on the road before my head exploded.
“Hi Jo. So, is he in there somewhere?”
Jo said, “Tom, Serena, good to see you. Yeah, he’s in there.”
Christina said, “It’s likely he’s already shifted, so he’s extremely dangerous right now, we stick together as a group. Jo, you should wait in the car. It’s going to be hard enough keeping ourselves safe.”
Jo looked like she might argue, but changed her mind.
“Fine, I’ll keep an eye on the spell though, and text you all if he leaves.”
We all waited for her to get back to her car, and then the four of us walked into the park.
Matt said, “If we run into him try to keep your distance if you can, let the three of us with side arms fill him full of silver first. Even then, he’ll be cornered and wounded, and even more dangerous, but he won’t heal from the wounds either.”
I sighed and quipped, “This is where those swords would come in handy.”
My eight-inch dagger just didn’t seem long enough to face down a wounded enraged cougar fighting for its life.
Matt grunted, “Too hard to conceal.”
Serena was right, these people had no sense of humor.
“I don’t know,” I continued, “I might look stylish in a trench coat.”
Serena chuckled and bumped my shoulder with her own.
Christina snapped, “Pay attention, and be alert.”
I pondered her cutting remark for a moment, and then let it pass.
It occurred to me outside of finding me in Macy’s evil lair, the only time Christina had showed any passion in the past was when lecturing me. She was nice, sweet even at times, but she didn’t have a sense of humor either. Well, she did, but not when on patrol or in training. It was possible to pay attention, and speak at the same time. Maybe not while in a fight, but watching for the threat took a lot less concentration.
The thought made my stomach twist, but maybe Carl had done me a favor. I was starting to think it wouldn’t have worked anyway, she’d been more in love with the idea of being in passionate love, than with me I think. She was also fickle, except when it came to duty, then she was kind of a martinet.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just making excuses to try and make the pain go away. Again, I wondered why I couldn’t have fallen for Serena instead. My little internal spin on things hadn’t really helped, I still missed her and it hurt, but there were doubts swirling in the mix now as well. Progress. Still, I’d have rather found out we weren’t really compatible the other way, while dating, as opposed to the fickle and foolish betrayal.
Serena leaned into me on the next step and whispered, “You’d look great in a trench.”
I clenched my jaw to stop the laugh, and ended up coughing twice. I rest my case, definitely the wrong sister.
“Thanks.”
She winked.
Still, it was a point. Three feet of steel beat eight inches any day, especially when my opponent had claws from hell.
We stepped into the woods and moved carefully, if he was in there I couldn’t hear a thing. It was also much darker, neither the street lights nor the moon and starlight reached beneath the boughs of the trees. They pulled out their guns, so I pulled my knife. Tomorrow started my side arm boot weekend, I hoped tomorrow wouldn’t be a day too late.
It was also bullshit, the packs should be hunting their own rogues, instead of pawning it off on us.
I looked up too late, why none of us thought a cat might be up a tree I don’t know. The books and movies always talk about it, the foolish people that never look up, yet it was true. We didn’t think of it either. The creak of the branch is what had drawn my attention, and I looked up just in time to see Sam Mendelson’s cougar form launch off the branch powerfully, and he roared loudly the split second he was in the air.
It was just long enough for me to wonder at his size. He was half again the size of what a normal cougar would be.
His front paws hit Matt with over three hundred pounds of pure muscle, knocking him on his ass and making his gun go flying. Serena and Christina both got off two rounds in the amount of time it took for the cougar to bunch up its body, his back legs to land, and then extend again. The cougar ripped open Matt’s stomach as it leapt forward with a scream of pain and rage.
It didn’t look good, if he’d been standing his guts probably would have fallen out as he was disemboweled, instead he just had eight deep lacerations that ran from his sternum to right below his navel, and he was bleeding. I hoped the cat hadn’t dug deep enough to get his intestines, but it might have been a vain hope.
I dove forward while tearing off my shirt, and tried vainly to cover and compress all eight of the long wounds, but the wounds were too long. I gave up on my hands after a second or two, and I wound up half kneeling on him and using my legs to cover it all. I wasn’t sure it was even helping, my blue shirt was soaked through with blood already.
Christina barked with an edge of panic, “Serena, stay here in case it comes back, I need to get Jo, fast.”
Then she was gone.
Serena looked down and looked worried, we healed three times faster than humans, but that wasn’t going to help if he bled out. The fact she hadn’t made a wiseass remark about me being shirtless was proof enough this was deadly serious. I was sure his only hope was Jo, she could heal him, if she got here in time. My magic was worthless, I could only control death, witches controlled life.
She walked a few feet away, and picked up Matt’s gun.
“Matt, you’re fine, Jo will fix you up in a minute. I don’t think he’s coming back. My guess is he’s running for his life.”
I asked, “Are you sure, isn’t he kind of stuck as a cat until he gets that silver out?”
She nodded, “He’ll squeeze it out with his muscles, or use his claws to pop them out. It’s better to shoot them in human form, they’re weaker, and it’s harder for t
hem to get bullets out.”
I’d have thought it would be the other way around, but when she explained it, it made sense.
“Come on Matt, who’s going to grunt at me, hold on buddy.”
Matt coughed up some blood, and glared at me.
“That’s it, anger is good, pain is good, it means you’re alive.”
I wondered what was taking so long, and hoped the cat had indeed ran off with his tail between his legs, and not attacked Christina and Jo.
“You’re an asshole,” he wheezed.
“Little bit, but pot, kettle, and all that.”
I looked up at Serena, who was biting her lip while she scanned the trees around us, including up this time. It seemed like forever, but in all reality it was probably only two minutes since we were first ambushed when Christina ran toward us with a witch over her shoulder. Jo almost fell on her ass when Christina put her back on her feet, and then ran over and I felt her magic flow.
It was a good thirty seconds later when she said, “I’ve stopped the bleeding, but you need to pull out your shirt, and any of his that got shredded and put in the wounds.”
I took my knees and shins off him, and pulled my shirt off his wounds. The lacerations were still there, but they were just oozing a little and I felt relieved. It was gross, but I picked pieces of his shirt out of his wounds, until I was sure I’d gotten it all.
I glanced at Christina as I stood, but had no idea what she was thinking or feeling. Her face was stony, and it was too dark to read her eyes. I turned away and walked back to Serena, who playfully looked me over like a butcher with a new side of beef. I smiled, now I was sure Matt was out of danger, I had my wiseass partner back.
I felt a lot more magic, and looked over. Jo looked a little tired, and Matt’s chest and stomach looked like it’d never been touched. I was jealous for a moment, next to that what good was necromancy? There had to be something, some reason the Nephilim thought the power was worth saving at their passing, but I honestly couldn’t think of a thing. Sure, I could kill people and raise vampires, I was good in a fight, but there had to be more.
Or were we merely a balance to the witches’ magic of life? Light, and darkness. I didn’t feel dark, or evil. I shook it off.
“You okay Jo?”
She nodded, “Bad wounds take a lot of magic, and I’d already used up a lot tonight tracking the bastard down. He’s gone, far to the south and leaving Chicago. Based on the speed, I’d say he was going straight south and he isn’t stopping anytime soon. Who knows where he’ll go from there.”
I frowned, “The alpha said he would eventually come back.”
Jo replied, “He will, the coven will track him, when he heads back this way we’ll call.”
Matt came over and took his gun back, and then grunted at me and nodded.
I suppressed a laugh, was that a thank you and a joke at the same time? Nah, couldn’t be, he really didn’t have a sense of humor. Probably just the former, and a funny coincidence…
Chapter Eleven
“Stop, what the hell are you doing?” Timothy asked sharply.
It was Sunday morning. All day yesterday I’d memorized several types of guns, calibers, tearing them apart, cleaning them, putting them together, and basic gun safety rules like, always treating it like it was loaded, and don’t point any loaded or unloaded weapon at something living, unless you intend to kill it.
Timothy was strict as always, and a professional hard ass, but I’d managed to convince him I wouldn’t shoot myself or anyone else unless I intended to, and that I could take care of a sidearm with at least a minimal amount of expertise.
He’d also gone over shooting, pausing a breath halfway, squeeze the trigger, don’t jerk it, and aim.
We’d finally gotten to the point where he trusted me with a handful of bullets, I chose the nine millimeter. There were guns with better stopping power, but according to him that meant too big a pause between firings. He assured me a full magazine of a lower caliber weapon would be more harmful for a shifter, because the silver would be in more spots, short circuiting their body’s magic more fully, as opposed to just two or three larger slugs with a bigger kick back, which meant slower re-aiming.
Worse, the more powerful the gun the better chance the silver wouldn’t stop in the body, and would go out the other side, which would defeat the purpose in the case of shifters.
I’d loaded the magazine under his watchful eye, only to get a single grunt of approval when I loaded the magazine and then loaded the chamber. Then I lifted the gun and aimed at the target, right arm locked and firm, left arm supporting. I wasn’t sure what I did wrong.
On top of that, during his intense training I was allowed no visitors. Most of the day yesterday, and this morning, I’d been thinking about midnight black hair, and cerulean eyes. But… not Christina’s. I was still in pain from the breakup, but that wasn’t who I missed and wanted to see. I wanted to see my partner, Serena.
Which… worried me. Was I being a clingy friend in my time of pain, or was Serena starting to mean more than that to me. It was hard to deny, with Christina out of the picture I was enjoying her company even more than I had before. It was impossible to be sure though, because my head was still not on straight. I also wasn’t sure it mattered, I needed to suck it up. I pushed all that down, and tried to keep the annoyance out of my voice when I replied to Timothy’s scathing tone.
“What are you talking about Timothy, what did I do wrong?”
Timothy grunted, “Did you see the ladies aim like that when the shifter attacked?”
I thought back, and shook my head. They’d just kept their arms locked and extended for stability, but they hadn’t been looking down the sights.
“No?”
He frowned, “Do you know why we, as Blood pick up fighting so fast? Why our muscle memory is so quick to get the moves perfectly, and that what we did in a month of improvement on you would take most humans years of highly dedicated effort?”
I shook my head. Outside of being Blood, I had no clue.
He sighed, “Proprioception. It’s how a person knows how their hands are making a fist, or giving someone the finger if they’re not looking at their hand. It also has to do with pressure, and judging exertion of force. It’s why some humans are naturals at sports, boxing, or karate, or even something like playing the piano. Their proprioception is heightened, and better than the average human’s. For us, the Blood, our proprioception is off the charts.
“That’s why you can see a new move, and make your hands, fighting stance, and foot position execute the new move almost perfectly the first time. Humans have to be corrected by a master over and over again before their muscle memory kicks in and they can do it consistently. You following so far, why were better fighters? It isn’t just because we’re faster and stronger than humans, we learn things faster, including anything that take coordination or muscle memory.”
I nodded, “That makes sense.”
He grunted, “Well, our proprioception also works for holding and aiming a sidearm. You don’t need to look down the sites, just point it at the target and pull the trigger. If you try and aim down the sites like that, the shifter will tear your throat out before you can fire the first bullet. They are faster than us, have more mass than us, and are plain meaner than we are. Not to mention they have a higher stamina and pain threshold, and faster regeneration, you getting the picture? We have to fill them with bullets just to level the playing field a little, and we have to do it fast.
“When I say aim I mean move your hand to aim it, pause your breath, and squeeze the trigger. You won’t be perfect the first time, but your mind will note where the bullet went, and your proprioception will adjust. Trust me, there are humans with proprioception sensitive enough to aim from the hip as some call it, and ours is far beyond theirs.”
Without taking my eyes off him, I picked up the gun and fired five times at the center of the target. I missed the center by two inches, all five w
ere tightly grouped. It had been the first time I’d ever fired a gun.
“Not bad Tom, now do it again.”
This time I loaded a full magazine, and shot them all down range. Every single one of them were within a half a centimeter of each other, in the center ring. Wow. It almost felt like cheating, but we’d need every edge we could get when up against shifters.
“So, are we done?”
Timothy snorted in disbelief, and looked at me like I’d just pissed myself or something.
“Clean up that nine, I think you probably will wind up picking that one, you’re a natural with it. But I want you to do the same thing with the ten millimeter, forty, forty-five, and the three fifty-seven. It wouldn’t hurt to try out the AR-15 and twenty-two either. Each one will be different to your proprioception, so you might as well let your body learn them all. The shotguns too. That way if you’re in a sticky situation with a strange gun you’ll still have a chance.”
“Right, preparation and vigilance,” I muttered. I should have known better than to think it would be that easy on the second day, my hopes of seeing Serena’s smile anytime soon deflated. That was another six weapons to teach my body how to aim, plus the shotguns. And I’d have to clean them all too.
He laughed, “Don’t sound so excited about it, it will only save your miserable hide one day.”
I nodded reluctantly, he was right, there was no reason to go after my fitness and hand to hand with diligence, and then not do the same with the firearms. I wasn’t lazy, and I could and would do it. I was curious about the swords too, but not stupid enough to ask this time, or I’d be in for another weekend boot camp.
The rest of the day I did exactly that. Fired and cleaned weapon after weapon, until I could hit the center of the target every single time, with every single small arms caliber weapon, even while moving and only using my peripheral vision to locate the target.
My hand was numb, and my shoulder and wrist hurt by the end of the day. Nothing a good night’s sleep wouldn’t fix, and tomorrow was Monday. Back to classes, and back to normal workouts, where I could get my ass beat by my partner, instead of missing her most of the day.
Revealed: Necromancer's Blight: Book 2 Page 8
