Page 31 of Bullseye
Of course, Seth doesn’t. I can feel the energy of the guys filling in behind me, and Seth seems to be getting bigger, feeding off of it.
“Seth…” Nick admonishes.
Still nothing.
“No, no, please, no. No one die here tonight...” Seneca’s mumbling some mantra about no one dying, and I close my eyes for the briefest second…
“Move!”
“No way, man! No freaking way!”
“No!”
Opening my eyes, I look into Seth’s. She’s right. No more killing.
“Seth, please, let’s just call this—”
Suddenly, he’s leaning forward. Looking down, I see his weight has rolled forward onto the balls of his feet as he draws his arm back. The bastard’s going for a jab. Moving fast, I come up on his right, grab his arm with the knife, and snap it down, trying to force the knife out of his hand. But he holds tight.
“Give it… up… Seth.” My words are coming in spurts as I keep him in a chokehold with my left arm, and holding his right wrist, I snap his hand downward, trying to break the knife free. “No one needs to die tonight.”
The bastard’s strong; way stronger than I’d thought, and at that one moment when I lessen my hold on his wrist, he lifts it across his body to stab at me.
I drop him and duck out of the way just in time, but the momentum of his arm can’t be stopped, and with a gruesome “popping” sound, the knife lodges deep into his shoulder.
“Ugh!” Seth drops to his knees, clutching the knife that’s stuck in his shoulder.
I can barely process what I’m seeing—it looks more like a bad Halloween costume than it does something that’s happening in real life. The knife went clear through the thin T-shirt he’s wearing, creating a hole so perfect, it looks like part of the T-shirt design. A ring of red is forming around the entry point of the knife, and blood rushes down his arm and chest. The damned blade has almost completely disappeared in his bulk of muscle, and only the wooden handle is visible.
“Seth.”
Dropping down on the ground next to him, he nods to me, but I can see terror in his eyes. His teeth begin chattering as additional streams of blood rush from the injury, and his body starts trembling. With his rapid breathing and the color rushing from his face, I’m worried he’s going into shock. I know from my years of training with my father that thanks to the major arteries, a shot to the shoulder is almost always deadly. I really hope it’s not the same for a knife wound. Taking Seth’s wrist, I feel for his pulse—it’s weak. Fuck.
“Someone get some towels,” I instruct, and a couple of the guys rush into the Taphouse. Looking at Seth’s shoulder—the way the knife pierced him, the damned force he used, and the momentum he had—I know better than to try to yank it out.
Harry tosses towels at my feet, and I wrap up his shoulder as best I can.
“We need to call an ambulance,” Seneca yells.
“No,” Nick instructs. “Ambulance takes too long. We’ll get him to the hospital. My truck’s around back. Here.” He tosses his keys to Harry who takes off.
Seth’s face contorts with pain, and he draws his legs up beneath him. Looking up at me, he shakes his head. “W-why?”
“Why the hell don’t I kill you or just leave you here to die?”
“Y-yes.” His teeth are chattering so bad, he can barely form words.
“Because we’re a brotherhood. And the Steel Knights stick together.”
“B-but I’m an a-asshole, m-man.”
“Yeah, you are.”
I don’t freaking know why, but I smile at the little shit, and he smiles back.
Harry comes peeling up in the truck and with the engine still running, he hops out to help us carry Seth, and lifts him into the flatbed.
“I’ll ride with him here,” Harry says.
