by Dean Murray
Kristin motioned me out of the way so that she could go sit next to Ash. "We'll just have to be careful and move quickly. As long as we ditch this car before they realize they lost us, we have a decent chance of making a clean getaway. What were you guys thinking coming down here, by the way?"
I felt like banging my head against the window. All the work trying to keep our location a secret from Kristin and we'd just told her exactly where we were. Even worse, if she realized that we had a compelling reason to be down here then we were completely screwed. Dream Stealer would have an ambush waiting for us the next time we came down to talk to the lamias.
"We just thought it was the last place that anyone would look for us."
Ash said it without any change to his expression. There was a tiny blip in his heart rate, but I might have missed it if I hadn't been paying attention. I mentally added another entry to the list of things that I knew Ash could do. I hadn't realized that he was that good of a liar.
Kristin leaned back in the passenger's seat, rolling her eyes at the way the leather squeaked. "Well, it was a stupid idea. You should have headed to whatever safe house you've got in mind for us. The sooner we can climb into a hole and pull it closed behind us the happier I'll be."
Ash started to respond and then frowned as he looked at the rearview mirror for the third time in as many seconds. Kristin noticed too.
"What's going on, Ash?"
"There's a vehicle back there that got close to us like they were planning on passing, but they just backed way off. It was hard to tell, but it looked like something big, maybe a van or another SUV."
"Crap, they found us; can you lose them?"
He shook his head and then looked back at me. "Please pass my bug-out bag up to Kristin. We need to put silencers on our guns. Trying to run is almost guaranteed to fail. The car behind us will stay just far enough back to radio our position to the rest of the hunters and they'll just slowly tighten the noose around us. If we were in the city maybe we could lose them, but it's too open here, too few places to disappear."
Kristin screwed a silencer onto her gun and then handed it back to me to hold while she reached around Ash so that she could unholster his weapon.
"How are we going to do this?"
Ash looked back at me as if to see whether I wanted to weigh in, but I just waved for him to proceed. This kind of spy stuff was more his bag of tea than mine. If I thought his plan wouldn't work then I could always make my case once he was done explaining his idea.
"If there was any way to be sure those are bad guys back there I'd just drive up next to them and start shooting while they're still in the car and unable to shift. Instead Kristin and I are going to swap seats and then Isaac and I will pile out of the SUV while it's still moving. With any luck we can do it without them seeing. Kristin pulls to a stop fifty yards later and then Isaac and I wait for these guys to stop and get out of their vehicle.
"If they drive on by then we jump back in the car and drive back the way we came. If not, that's a bad sign. If they give off any kind of shape shifter vibe, or anyone recognizes one of them as being a known agent for the Coun'hij, we open fire on them and Isaac intercepts whoever tries to rush either of the shooters."
It wasn't a great plan, but it gave us a chance of taking them by surprise and I didn't have anything better to offer. I gave Ash a nod of agreement as I started stripping out of my clothes, and then he and Kristin swapped places with a smoothness that would have been impossible without cruise control.
"There, the road bends and those cypress trees will partially hide us from view."
Ash and I threw ourselves out of the SUV and hit the ground rolling. I was tempted to shift then and there, but there was too much chance that someone would feel me changing, even through the metal and glass of the other vehicle, and then we'd lose the element of surprise.
Instead I took deep breaths as I crouched behind the tree that Ash had pointed out. The air was full of smells that I'd never encountered before, mostly plant life, but I could smell some animals on the wind too.
"Anything out here I should be worried about?"
"Nothing from downwind of us, but that's not the most reassuring fact since we won't be able to smell if anything comes out of the vegetation behind us."
A smile tugged at my lips despite my best efforts. "You're just a rousing ball of non-stop fun. Remind me again what it is that Kristin sees in you."
"I'm great fun at a party."
"I'd like to see that."
"Isn't that what we're about to do?"
The following car, another black SUV, came even with us and we both hunkered down and shut up in case they had a window down. Kristin had already started slowing down, which caused the other guys to follow suit.
Her timing wasn't perfect, but she managed to bring them to a stop less than twenty yards from us. Ash and I both stood and crept forward, only to freeze as soon as the first door swung open.
"Remember, there's only three of them. Kill Nazir and the girl, but take Hunt alive if at all possible. Onyx wants him to use as leverage against his sister and the boss owes Onyx a favor."
Kristin was already out of our car. She'd angled it slightly so that it would provide her with a little cover, but even from here I could tell that she was nervous.
"Hey, wait a second! She's by herself."
We were out of time. Even if they hadn't been able to see that our vehicle was empty they would have still known something was up when they stopped to count heartbeats.
Ash opened fire and he was every bit as deadly as I'd hoped he would be. There were four of them. Ash put two rounds in the first guy, dropping him before he could change forms.
Kristin got her gun in play before Ash could get his third shot off. There was too much going on for me to be sure who hit the next enforcer, but he was mid-change when the bullets started slamming into him. A fraction of a second sooner and they probably would have put him down as easily as the first guy, but his hybrid body was just too big and damage-resistant to be taken out of action that quickly. He staggered back behind the side of the car, which sheltered him from Ash's shots, and then broke into a fast run towards Kristin.
The other two guys spun back around and charged us. It was probably the sheer volume of Ash's fire that made them pick us over Kristin. Ash got two shots into one of them and then they were on us.
I'd shifted less than a second after the ball dropped and my beast was raring and ready to go. I stepped into the uninjured hybrid, blocking his claws by slashing at his arm a split second before I put my shoulder into his chest.
It was the kind of tactic that wasn't supposed to work, which was why he hadn't been more prepared for it, but I didn't hit him directly in the center of his mass, I hit him a little left of center. That, combined with the fact that I had both sets of talons burrowed deep into the surface of the road, was just enough to allow me not to be leveled by the force of his charge.
His momentum was converted to a spin as he ricocheted off of me, but I managed a deep raking attack across his stomach as he sailed past. I dropped my right hand down to the ground and used the extra traction provided by my claws to regain my balance in the split second before the second hybrid reached me.
More shots rang out, some from behind me, some from Kristin up ahead, but I didn't have time for that. I'd succeeded in giving Ash a target that was off balance and flailing, but it had come at a cost. I was going into the matchup with the second hybrid without the momentum I would have needed to meet him on equal terms.
I darted back to the right and managed to get just far enough to the side to deny my opponent the clinch that he'd been seeking, but he still tore big, long gashes in my left arm. I spun around in an attempt at latching onto his back before he could turn and come at me again, but he was just too fast.
We exchanged blows, each trying for something vital on the other guy while trying to deflect incoming attacks. More shots went off around me as Kristin and Ash
both emptied their magazines in a last-ditch attempt to stop the hybrids charging them.
Something heavy hit the ground behind me, and I took a gamble that I wouldn't have taken with too many other people. I went for a clinch with my enforcer before there was anything remotely resembling the kind of opening that I'd need to survive for more than a couple of seconds.
It was suicide, but it was the last thing he'd been expecting me to do given that he had more than an inch of height on me. I made like I was going to feint to the left at the last second, and then just went in full speed. I didn't manage to hit him hard enough to take him to the ground, but I knocked him back on his heels, which let me get inside of his reach and fasten my jaws on his shoulder.
I had control of his hands too, at least for the initial clinch. He'd managed to bury one set of claws into my side, but I wrapped up his wrist, immobilizing him before he could really go to town on me.
It wasn't something I could maintain for long; he was stronger than me and eventually he'd either break free or succeed in sinking his teeth into me, but I was hoping I wasn't going to need to hold him off for more than a second or so.
A heartbeat later I felt the impact of a hundred and eighty pounds of lean badass as Ash literally ran up my back. I was going to have a set of boot-shaped bruises to go along with the gashes and punctures that the enforcer had inflicted on me, but that didn't matter.
Moving faster than any human could have followed, Ash knelt on my shoulders and pressed the barrel of his gun up against the enforcer's forehead. I had just enough presence of mind to close my eyes before Ash's gun went off with what felt like the force of a cannon.
The other hybrid collapsed as Ash leaped off of me and hit the ground running. His gun went off again and again each time his feet left the pavement. In anyone else they would have been wildly uncontrolled shots, but Ash was scoring on the last hybrid with what looked like half of them.
I'd started to fall with the hybrid I'd been tangled up with, but I freed myself from him and started forward still acting on reflex. A distant portion of my mind wondered why Ash was shooting so wildly when each missed shot had a chance of hitting Kristin, but I couldn't dwell on the question, not with how close the other hybrid was.
Ash had a head start on me, but merely human legs could never hope to outrun a hybrid. I was less than half a step behind him now, close enough that I could feel the shockwaves rippling through the air with each shot. We were less than ten feet from the enforcer when Ash squeezed off his last two rounds in such close succession that they almost sounded like one long shot.
The slide on Ash's gun locked back, and the other hybrid dropped his arms now that he no longer needed them to shield his face. Ash's empty magazine was already falling away from his gun as he reached for a fresh magazine.
The enforcer was bleeding from more than a dozen spots, but Ash and Kristin hadn't hit anything vital enough to put that massive body down permanently. Given enough time it was still possible that he'd bleed out, but the fight was going to be over—one way or the other—before that happened.
I saw a set of five claws go slicing through the air and knew that I wasn't going to be close enough to stop the enforcer from slicing Ash in half. I reached forward anyway, hoping my judgment as to Ash's chances of survival were off, but knowing that wasn't the case.
I took one last step forward; I was perfectly positioned now to stop those deadly claws a foot after they cut into Ash's chest, but suddenly Ash wasn't where I'd been expecting him to be. Rather than barreling into the enforcer, he threw himself forward, turning mid fall so that he landed on his back as he skidded head-first between our opponent's legs.
It shouldn't have worked, wouldn't have worked if not for the fact that I was just behind him. Normally the other hybrid would have still opened Ash up from one end to the other, but I got my claws in place just in time to save Ash.
I punched my free hand into the side of the enforcer's chest as Ash went skidding across the pavement, his slick leather jacket simultaneously saving his skin and making it possible for him to continue sliding long after he normally would have stopped. The other hybrid dodged to the side just enough that I missed his heart, but it didn't matter. Ash had a new magazine in his pistol and I heard the slide on his gun slam home with a finality that told me he wasn't going to wait for me to get out of the way.
I used my grip to shove the enforcer up and back onto his heels, and then dropped down so that his chest was interposed between my head and Ash. Half a second later the muted hiss of two more silenced shots put an end to the last threat on the road with us.
I dropped the corpse that I'd been supporting and opened my mouth to tell Ash that his last two shots had been unacceptably reckless, but the words never made it past my tongue. Ash's pistol was lying forgotten on the road and he already had both hands inside of Kristin's chest in an attempt to keep her from bleeding to death.
"Get the first-aid kit out of the car!"
I shifted back to human form as I reached the SUV, ripped Ash's bag open, and was back at his side within three seconds. I wasn't as experienced of a surgeon as Donovan or Dominic, but I knew my way around the inside of the human body and what I saw as I knelt down next to Kristin made my stomach knot up.
I wouldn't have bet on anyone surviving those kinds of wounds for more than two or three minutes, not any amount of money, not for any odds.
Chapter 7
Isaac Nazir
Fifteen miles off of I-55
Eastern Louisiana
I'd never seen Ash lose control like that. He'd always been the one guy you could count on to keep his eye on the big picture, but his hands were shaking as he tried to pull out the first roll of gauze from the first-aid kit.
I shouldered him to one side and started working as quickly as I could. The damage wasn't quite as bad as I'd initially thought, but it was still incredibly bad. Somehow the claws that had opened up her chest cavity had managed to miss any of the really major arteries, but she'd already lost a ton of blood.
"Hold pressure there and there, Ash, or she'll bleed out before I can get enough of the smaller arteries sewn shut for her to have any kind of chance."
"This is all my fault. I should have gone with a different plan, should have kept us together instead of splitting us up like that."
There wasn't time for Ash to fall apart on me. I finished tying off the artery I was working on and then backhanded him hard enough to knock him to the pavement.
"Pull yourself together or she's as good as dead. It was a decent plan, a good plan even. She knew the risks. All it would have taken is one or two shots hitting the right spot and that guy never would have even gotten within ten feet of her."
With someone else I probably would have angered their beast enough that they wouldn't have been able to stop themselves from attacking me, but Ash's beast was weaker than most. He rolled back to his knees and then crammed his hands inside her chest exactly as I'd ordered him to.
"That was risky."
I could hear the anger in his voice, but for once my beast didn't rise to the implied challenge. I couldn't help but smile as I tied off a second blood vessel.
"More dangerous than sliding between someone's feet and then shooting the bad guy while your buddy is still in the line of fire?"
"I knew you'd be there, just like you knew that I'd be there when you knocked that first guy off balance and then locked up the second guy. It was the last threat, you didn't have anything else to worry about but him. I knew you were right behind me and it only made sense that you'd deflect his attack away from me."
I wasn't good at the tiny, delicate stitches you needed to hold broken arteries together, but it was too late to do anything but keep going. A normal person wouldn't even have been able to see well enough to have operated under these circumstances, but my vision seemed just barely up to the task. I hadn't ever realized before how much brighter the life-glow was to fresh-spilled blood. It was faint when I was in
normal human form, but it still served as a softly glowing beacon that told me exactly where I needed to go to find each torn vein or artery.
"I'm just glad that you didn't hit me with those last two shots."
"There was almost no chance of that. I held the shot until you ducked and then I took him in the head. Do you want me to try to tie up one of these?"
"No, there's only the one needle that was pre-threaded. You'd need both hands to thread it and get started. I'm not sure she can take that much blood loss. I'm just about done here, keep the pressure on her for a few more seconds and then I'll start on one of those. You have any miracles in one of those packs?"
"We've got a couple of saline bags, but that isn't going to do anything to keep her blood oxygen level from crashing."
"No, but it may be enough to keep her heart from stopping. Okay, move your right hand now."
Under normal circumstances the hole revealed as Ash got out of my way would have gushed blood. It was the worst rip I'd tried to repair yet, but her blood pressure was dropping to the point where there wasn't a whole lot left for her to lose.
I got the first stitch in place and started swearing under my breath as I realized that I should have put an IV into her before we started on these last two tears. It was too late to reverse course now; if we put pressure back on the tear now we might rip the stitch out and make things even worse. I had to just finish stitching her up quickly.
The second-to-last stitch went in with less fuss than usual and I started the last stitch with hands that had started to shake a little.
"As soon as I get this tied off you need to run and grab those bags of saline."
"No, you should do it so I don't have to take pressure off of her."
"I suck at running an IV, Ash. Always have, probably always will. Besides, I don't know where you guys have that stuff squirreled away."
