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Blood Reaction Saga (Book 2): Blood Distraction

Page 26

by Atha, DL


  I closed my eyes as he pulled the trigger.

  Chapter 31

  The arrow whipped through the air. I could hear it coming straight and even; the whistle the tip made in the air didn’t wobble. The shot had been good—made by someone who knew how to deliver death to an animal. That’s what I was to him, an animal. Rumsfield had exhaled with relief when the bowstring was released, and then time slowed. I could feel the milliseconds creeping by. One-one thousand, I ticked off internally. Two-one thousand. It shouldn’t take much longer than that and this will all be over.

  I heard the sucking sound of tissue being penetrated just as I felt a rush of wind from my right. My eyes flew open to Levi’s broad back standing in front of me. I blinked a few times, not understanding what I was seeing. I’d been so convinced of my own death that it had never occurred to me that help might come. Levi shouldn’t have been here. I was supposed to have met him at the camp at just before dawn. We were to leave together the next evening at dusk. How had he known? Was I that transparent?

  Then I remembered the silver. “Levi, pull it out. Quick. It’s silver tipped!” I could hear the hiss of air from a punctured lung. Maybe there was a chance he could get the arrow out before the silver did what it had done to me. Rumsfield had been holding that bow at full tension long enough that I didn’t think he could draw it back again. Not to mention that his crossbow only held four arrows and he’d used them all. Levi had a fighting chance.

  Levi looked over his shoulder at me as he shoved Sheriff Langford’s body to the side. I hadn’t noticed the sagging form until he did, but now I could see the arrow impaled through the Sheriff’s chest and out the back. It had buried up to the feathers in his chest, blood spreading outward from his heart in an oval-shaped stain before dripping onto the concrete of the porch. Like a kid making the mouth of a balloon sing, the remaining air in his lungs leaked out in a high-pitched whine. A low groan escaped the open hollow of his mouth as his body landed heavily on the porch and then not another sound came from him. I stared down at the body, still processing what had happened.

  Rumsfield was standing open-mouthed across the yard as his brain struggled to interpret what he’d just seen. What he’d just done, actually. He was a former cop, and I could see the wheels begin to turn when he realized the crap he’d got himself into tonight.

  “Nice shooting,” Levi said, leaning down to fish the dead man’s cellphone out of his jacket. “Bad news is you’re out of arrows. And I hate to break it to you, but that stake in your belt is a poor backup plan. Word to the wise, so listen up. When going after a vampire, don’t chat them up before you deliver the fatal blow. And we normally run in packs, so you may kill one, but chances are, you’re not going to get two. So what was the thought process here, Rumsfield? Did you actually think she was here unprotected?”

  Grasping the two remaining arrows that impaled me, Levi jerked them out of the wall behind me. They were hunting tips, the barbs digging in and holding tight. I screamed in pain, mainly air and blood spewing out rather than sound.

  “They’re silver tipped,” I told Levi again. If the arrow heads broke off in me coated in silver, I knew I’d be in serious trouble. He nodded at me, took my neck in his left hand, and then shoved the first arrow clean through me and out the other side. My vision went red, what was left of my voice breaking and cracking in pain. He did the same with the second one, the feathers of the shaft catching momentarily then balling up and dropping at my feet. I pointed to the blood staining his shirt, the arrow that had killed Langford must have nicked him, and started to say something, but he silenced me with a violent look.

  Stepping across Sheriff Langford’s body, Levi walked towards Rumsfield. The detective had moved farther back towards the trees bordering the forest and sunk to the ground, his head buried in his hands. The crossbow had been dropped a few feet away. His eyes were wide, his breathing rapid. One hand was holding his side and blood was oozing from the flail chest that hadn’t healed yet. Dragging a body away was not going to be easy for him.

  “This is going to be very hard to explain, Detective,” Levi said. He jerked his head towards the sheriff’s body. “Lying on the spot can be tricky. Let’s see how good you are at it.”

  Levi sat my feet on the ground and leaned me up against his chest as he lifted the sheriff’s iPhone to his mouth. Siri came alive under his cold finger. “Dial 9-1-1,” he said. I was too weak to move, and Rumsfield was still too dumbfounded to realize what was going on. He was in a state of complete shock.

  “9-1-1. What’s the nature of your emergency?” the operator asked.

  “This is Sheriff Langford. 2332 Deerwood Drive. Help me!” Levi said into Langford’s phone. He wiped it carefully on his jeans, and then tossed it at Rumsfield’s feet. Langford’s blood was on it, but Levi’s prints had been wiped away. “You’re going to be wishing these arrows weren’t so distinctive.” The two he’d pulled from me were still in his left hand and he took a moment to rub Langford’s blood from the arrow tip down the shaft before he tucked them into the waist of his jeans. “Be a real shame if these were to be found.”

  Rumsfield looked at the cellphone for a few seconds as if he didn’t realize what was happening or even less how to respond, the 9-1-1 operator getting more insistent by the second. She’d already dispatched the police when Rumsfield reached out with one shaking hand and hit the end button, silencing her many questions.

  “You were wrong about one thing, Rumsfield,” Levi said as he pulled me back into his arms. “It wasn’t personal. Now, it’s a vendetta.”

  My eyes met Rumsfield’s as Levi streaked from the property. In the distance, I could hear the sirens. Rumsfield could hear them too and he had gotten to his feet. He should have been panicked. He should have been scrambling for a getaway plan. He should have been trying to get that arrow out of Langford.

  Instead, he was calm. The shock was gone from his face and in its place was the face of a man who had undergone his own transformation. He wouldn’t be stopped. He wouldn’t be distracted. The vendetta had just begun, I realized, and I couldn’t decide who would be the most determined—Rumsfield or Levi.

 

 

 


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