AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“He’s exaggerating,” Alaric said. “I’m perfectly capable of—” The gun in his hand went off, jolting it out of his grasp and sending it in a crazy spiral toward the ground. He whistled, then picked it back up and started banging on the rock like nothing had happened. “I can handle myself just fine.”
Lucian sighed. “What will we do?”
“Did either of you consider looking at the directions?”
The men were still poking and prodding the weapons when a truck pulled off the road in the distance and started coming our way.
“Were you two expecting someone?” I asked.
Both men looked alert.
“No,” Lucian said. “Get behind me.”
“Why? What does that mean?”
All the light-hearted carelessness of a moment ago evaporated in an instant. Alaric and Lucian looked like dogs with their hackles raised, and my stomach was suddenly ice cold.
“Get her to the trees, I’ll provide a distraction,” Alaric said.
“Why do you guys look worried? I thought the guns were just an annoyance? If those are bad guys, what are they going to do?”
Lucian ignored my question, picking me up with such a lack of effort that I felt my breath catch. He scooped me up like I was a child and started hauling his beautifully crafted vampire ass toward the trees with me in tow.
“What are we going to do? Is he going to be okay?” I asked, bouncing wildly in his arms.
“Most likely,” Lucian said. “I heal quickly. Alaric runs quickly.”
“Faster than a truck?”
“No,” he said.
I chewed my lip, watching as Alaric gave the weapon in his hand a few angry bangs on the nearest rock. I wanted to scream some advice to him, like to maybe stop smashing the guns against rocks like a caveman, but we were already too far away for him to hear me clearly.
Alaric straightened and tucked the gun behind his back when the truck stopped in front of him.
I saw Bennigan get out of the truck with the two women from before. Bennigan approached Alaric and yelled some things I couldn’t hear. Alaric spoke back, then he hurled the gun at full speed toward Bennigan’s head. The man dodged with supernatural speed, and then Alaric was running toward us.
It all happened so fast I didn’t even see the three rival vampires pull out weapons and start firing.
Alaric was fast.
It felt like my eyes were playing tricks with how fast he was eating up the distance between us. Clumps of grass were flying away from his feet with every step and his legs were practically a blur.
I flinched down when I felt something zip through the air near me.
Holy shit. That was a bullet.
My heart couldn’t beat any faster if it tried. I was going to die. I was going to get shot in the head by a vampire.
We reached the trees and Lucian started weaving between them, holding me tight. Bark exploded from a tree near us, showering me with splinters. I could hear the truck engine in the distance and the constant peppering thud of gunshots. The worst sound was the whistle when the bullets were close.
All I could do was curl up and make myself as small as I could. Every second, I felt like I was about to feel the thud of a bullet punching through me, but the impact never came.
It felt like an eternity until the shooting slowed and nearly stopped.
“They have horrible aim,” I said once I thought we were deep enough into the trees to be relatively safe.
Alaric appeared at our side, easily keeping pace with Lucian, who was ducking and weaving through the undergrowth in the thickening forest. “Give me that gun,” he said.
“Why? So you can hurl it at Bennigan’s head?” Lucian asked. His voice didn’t even sound strained despite the fact that he was probably running faster than an Olympic athlete at the moment.
“Give me the gun,” I said.
Both men hesitated, then Alaric shrugged.
“You’ll be careful?” Lucian asked.
“More careful than you two.”
He handed it to me, and I fiddled with it for a few moments, calling up every relevant scene in a movie I could think of. Eventually, I figured out how to pull the top part of the gun back until it made a clicking sound. I aimed behind us at a random tree and pulled the trigger, then realized the safety was on. The next time I tried, the weapon practically jumped out of my hand as it fired.
“Got it,” I said.
“Go see if they’re still following,” Lucian told Alaric.
Alaric nodded, planted a foot that skidded in the dead leaves, then rushed back toward the way we’d come from.
“Are you hurt?” Lucian asked.
The rational thing to do would’ve been shut up and take the craziness unfolding as deadly serious as I probably should’ve. Instead, I felt hopped up on adrenaline and nerves, which apparently just made me sassy instead of quiet. “Am I detecting concern?”
