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But he wasn’t going to get away. Not this time. I stood, pushing sweat and hair away from my face as I assessed the drop one last time.
“Wait,” the other sniper called after me. “They’ll fucking kill me if I let you—”
I jumped, managing to land on my feet. My heels dug into the loose dirt and stones, sliding down the slippery slope.
“Sparrow, stay fucking put!”
I cried out as a rock jabbed into the soft part of my foot through my boot and fell onto my side, rolling, rocks and debris scraping along my arms and across my cheeks. My body was tossed from a sharp ledge at the bottom of the slope, and I landed hard on my stomach, crouching, tasting dirt on my tongue. I lifted my hand to my ear to tell them to meet me at the northeast corner, but my earpiece wasn’t there.
It’d come out in the fall.
I reached for my phone in my back pocket. My fingers grasped at nothing but thick material and gritty dirt. I felt around me in case either landed nearby but came up empty handed.
“Godfuckingdamnit!,” I coughed, pushing to my feet, the volume of the battle happening no less than forty feet in front of me so loud now it was near deafening. My ears rang with it and my vision blurred as the earth heaved beneath my feet as I got my balance and the dizziness dissipated enough to move.
I drew two blades, ignoring how my left hand was slick with blood from where my still-fragile skin tore open in the fall, and took off after Carson. I couldn’t waste any time. We couldn’t let him get away this time. One way or another, this ended tonight.
I wouldn’t wake up to another message from him on my phone. I wouldn’t sleep with one eye open, worrying what he might have planned for my Crows. Icouldn’tdo it.
Narrowly missing running straight into a tree, the last of the dizziness burned off as my muscles pumped fire through my veins.
They know where I’m going, I told myself. I’d said northeast corner, right?
They’d be right behind me.
Fuck, maybe they were already ahead of me. Maybe they had him.
That thought made my chest vibrate with the feline purr of my darkness.
Running steps off to my right had me tucking behind a tree before I could round to the northeastern side of the building and follow Carson’s trail.
Damn.
I peered around the tree and looked down the barrel of a gun twenty paces away. It fired, and I just whipped my head back as tree bark exploded over my face. I bent low, rolling out from the cover of the tree, bullets puncturing the dirt in my wake. I threw.
His scream was abruptly cut off by a gurgle.
I leapt to my feet and ran, bending to tear my bloodied blade from his jugular to keep going. I’d never catch up with Carson if I didn’tpush.
Thecrackof another shot glanced off a tree as I ran passed it, but I kept on, altering my running steps into a messy zigzag with no pattern as bark snapped and scattered over my path with each missed shot.
Once I had a good idea where the fucker was, I mentally kissed the blade in my right and turned to throw it, knowing I didn’t have time to retrieve it. It embedded in the burly chest of a King I didn’t recognize, but I didn’t wait to make sure he was down before I whipped my head back around.
I’d be too far from his line of sight soon, anyway.
I took a sharp left, going deeper into the national park where I saw Carson enter the tree line.
He could be so far ahead by now that I’d never catch up.
No,the darkness whispered.We’ll catch him.
Yes.
I will.
I was born to run.
I took the other crow-handled blade from my chest, the one strapped over my heart. The one with the onyx eye and pushed myself even harder, feeling more than knowing that he was there. Somewhere ahead. Just out of reach.
