Page 23 of Twice Bitten
And the bikers made their move. One of them came up behind me, gunning his engine and right on my bumper, while the other moved up and pulled alongside.
“He’s got a gun!” Jack said, and I glanced over—yeah, he did have a gun, and he was aiming it right at my head. “Behind us, too,” Jack said, turning around and peering out the back.
I had a split-second to make up my mind. I could sideswipe and try to get rid of the asshole to my left, hoping the one behind me would get caught in the crash, or I could slam the brakes and cream the one behind me, hoping the same would happen to the one next to the car. One impact would mostly affect me, while the other would mostly affect Hendler.
Easy choice.
“Hold on tight!” I called, and stomped on the brake pedal.
Everything happened at once. The biker at my window fired with a deafening report and a shatter, glass peppering my face and filling the air. The tires screeched and we all flew forward as the Harley behind us slammed into the back of the car, the roof jolting and bowing as the rider hit it hard and then catapulted down over the hood.
And then the pain hit, right where the bullet had hit me a second before.
Over all my years of working for Fenwick and all the decades before that, I’d never been shot. Not too surprising, really, since most of the time I much preferred to avoid fights like that. And I wasn’t reckless. At least, not in the forest-car-chase sense of reckless.
Well, first time for everything.
I slumped down, my forehead banging into the steering wheel and the seatbelt a painful ache across my chest.
But it barely registered over the searing, wrenching agony in my side. I couldn’t get a breath. Blood flowed out of my mouth, dripping down, metallic and salty. That bullet had punctured a lung at the very least. I wasn’t a goddamn doctor, but I knew that much.
Probably hit at least another organ or two on the way in, or after. Lucky shot for that bastard, because one bullet nearly anywhere else wouldn’t have slowed me down.
Shouts, and another gunshot, and screams, and a tearing of metal, the smell of smoke.
My suit would be ruined after all.
I tried to laugh, and it hurt so much I thought I moaned, but I couldn’t hear it.
Then I tried to open my eyes, and I got a blurry picture of glass-flecked blood and something dark on top of the cracked windshield.
More blood, more pain, more shouting. My breath gurgled and bubbled in my throat.
And then everything went black.
Chapter 8
If It Was That Easy
When my eyes popped open, I was trying to suck in air in deep, heavy gasps, and I wasn’t in the car anymore. I lay on my back, half propped up, and above me whirled a sickening kaleidoscope of gray sky, tree branches, and a dark, frowning thing, with two points of glowing gold in the middle.
I blinked. Eyes. Glowing alpha eyes. Jack.
My lungs rattled and bubbled, but I got an almost-full breath and focused. It hurt like hell, but I could feel myself healing.
Not fast enough to keep up with the damage, though. I hadn’t fed in a while.
The noise had died down. I could hear a few moans, and some voices raised in what sounded like an argument, but the lack of shouting and gunshots helped me a little in my efforts to get my senses under control.
“Angelo, come on, look at me,” said one of the voices. “Come on, heal, look at me. Fuck, I promised you wouldn’t get hurt. I can’t…what do you need?”
That deep, frantic rumble couldn’t be anyone but Jack.
And the arms around me, supporting my back, the shoulder my head rested on…also Jack. I tried to turn a little and bury my face in his chest, inhale him, absorb his warmth, because I felt so fucking cold. My neck didn’t want to work. It hurt like hell too.
“I’m looking,” I tried to say. It came out an incoherent mumble.
“He’s conscious!” Jack again, but obviously speaking to someone else. Another face swam into view past Jack’s, this one pale and pretty, framed by blond hair. I wanted to snarl, but then it sank in that it wasn’t Brent. “You’re the healer, right? The fuck aren’t you healing him?”
