Authors: Dean Murray
The other two
guys spun back around and charged us. It was probably the sheer
volume of Ash's fire that made them pick us over Kristin. Ash got two
shots into one of them and then they were on us.
I'd shifted
less than a second after the ball dropped and my beast was raring and
ready to go. I stepped into the uninjured hybrid, blocking his claws
by slashing at his arm a split second before I put my shoulder into
his chest.
It was the kind
of tactic that wasn't supposed to work, which was why he hadn't been
more prepared for it, but I didn't hit him directly in the center of
his mass, I hit him a little left of center. That, combined with the
fact that I had both sets of talons burrowed deep into the surface of
the road, was just enough to allow me not to be leveled by the force
of his charge.
His momentum
was converted to a spin as he ricocheted off of me, but I managed a
deep raking attack across his stomach as he sailed past. I dropped my
right hand down to the ground and used the extra traction provided by
my claws to regain my balance in the split second before the second
hybrid reached me.
More shots rang
out, some from behind me, some from Kristin up ahead, but I didn't
have time for that. I'd succeeded in giving Ash a target that was off
balance and flailing, but it had come at a cost. I was going into the
matchup with the second hybrid without the momentum I would have
needed to meet him on equal terms.
I darted back
to the right and managed to get just far enough to the side to deny
my opponent the clinch that he'd been seeking, but he still tore big,
long gashes in my left arm. I spun around in an attempt at latching
onto his back before he could turn and come at me again, but he was
just too fast.
We exchanged
blows, each trying for something vital on the other guy while trying
to deflect incoming attacks. More shots went off around me as Kristin
and Ash both emptied their magazines in a last-ditch attempt to stop
the hybrids charging them.
Something heavy
hit the ground behind me, and I took a gamble that I wouldn't have
taken with too many other people. I went for a clinch with my
enforcer before there was anything remotely resembling the kind of
opening that I'd need to survive for more than a couple of seconds.
It was suicide,
but it was the last thing he'd been expecting me to do given that he
had more than an inch of height on me. I made like I was going to
feint to the left at the last second, and then just went in full
speed. I didn't manage to hit him hard enough to take him to the
ground, but I knocked him back on his heels, which let me get inside
of his reach and fasten my jaws on his shoulder.
I had control
of his hands too, at least for the initial clinch. He'd managed to
bury one set of claws into my side, but I wrapped up his wrist,
immobilizing him before he could really go to town on me.
It wasn't
something I could maintain for long; he was stronger than me and
eventually he'd either break free or succeed in sinking his teeth
into me, but I was hoping I wasn't going to need to hold him off for
more than a second or so.
A heartbeat
later I felt the impact of a hundred and eighty pounds of lean badass
as Ash literally ran up my back. I was going to have a set of
boot-shaped bruises to go along with the gashes and punctures that
the enforcer had inflicted on me, but that didn't matter.
Moving faster
than any human could have followed, Ash knelt on my shoulders and
pressed the barrel of his gun up against the enforcer's forehead. I
had just enough presence of mind to close my eyes before Ash's gun
went off with what felt like the force of a cannon.
The other
hybrid collapsed as Ash leaped off of me and hit the ground running.
His gun went off again and again each time his feet left the
pavement. In anyone else they would have been wildly uncontrolled
shots, but Ash was scoring on the last hybrid with what looked like
half of them.
I'd started to
fall with the hybrid I'd been tangled up with, but I freed myself
from him and started forward still acting on reflex. A distant
portion of my mind wondered why Ash was shooting so wildly when each
missed shot had a chance of hitting Kristin, but I couldn't dwell on
the question, not with how close the other hybrid was.
Ash had a head
start on me, but merely human legs could never hope to outrun a
hybrid. I was less than half a step behind him now, close enough that
I could feel the shockwaves rippling through the air with each shot.
We were less than ten feet from the enforcer when Ash squeezed off
his last two rounds in such close succession that they almost sounded
like one long shot.
The slide on
Ash's gun locked back, and the other hybrid dropped his arms now that
he no longer needed them to shield his face. Ash's empty magazine was
already falling away from his gun as he reached for a fresh magazine.
The enforcer
was bleeding from more than a dozen spots, but Ash and Kristin hadn't
hit anything vital enough to put that massive body down permanently.
Given enough time it was still possible that he'd bleed out, but the
fight was going to be over—one way or the other—before
that happened.
I saw a set of
five claws go slicing through the air and knew that I wasn't going to
be close enough to stop the enforcer from slicing Ash in half. I
reached forward anyway, hoping my judgment as to Ash's chances of
survival were off, but knowing that wasn't the case.
I took one last
step forward; I was perfectly positioned now to stop those deadly
claws a foot
after
they cut into Ash's chest, but suddenly Ash
wasn't where I'd been expecting him to be. Rather than barreling into
the enforcer, he threw himself forward, turning mid fall so that he
landed on his back as he skidded head-first between our opponent's
legs.
It shouldn't
have worked, wouldn't have worked if not for the fact that I was just
behind him. Normally the other hybrid would have still opened Ash up
from one end to the other, but I got my claws in place just in time
to save Ash.
I punched my
free hand into the side of the enforcer's chest as Ash went skidding
across the pavement, his slick leather jacket simultaneously saving
his skin and making it possible for him to continue sliding long
after he normally would have stopped. The other hybrid dodged to the
side just enough that I missed his heart, but it didn't matter. Ash
had a new magazine in his pistol and I heard the slide on his gun
slam home with a finality that told me he wasn't going to wait for me
to get out of the way.
I used my grip
to shove the enforcer up and back onto his heels, and then dropped
down so that his chest was interposed between my head and Ash. Half a
second later the muted hiss of two more silenced shots put an end to
the last threat on the road with us.
I dropped the
corpse that I'd been supporting and opened my mouth to tell Ash that
his last two shots had been unacceptably reckless, but the words
never made it past my tongue. Ash's pistol was lying forgotten on the
road and he already had both hands inside of Kristin's chest in an
attempt to keep her from bleeding to death.
"Get the
first-aid kit out of the car!"
I shifted back
to human form as I reached the SUV, ripped Ash's bag open, and was
back at his side within three seconds. I wasn't as experienced of a
surgeon as Donovan or Dominic, but I knew my way around the inside of
the human body and what I saw as I knelt down next to Kristin made my
stomach knot up.
I wouldn't have
bet on anyone surviving those kinds of wounds for more than two or
three minutes, not any amount of money, not for any odds.
Isaac Nazir
Fifteen miles off of I-55
Eastern Louisiana
I'd never seen
Ash lose control like that. He'd always been the one guy you could
count on to keep his eye on the big picture, but his hands were
shaking as he tried to pull out the first roll of gauze from the
first-aid kit.
I shouldered
him to one side and started working as quickly as I could. The damage
wasn't quite as bad as I'd initially thought, but it was still
incredibly bad. Somehow the claws that had opened up her chest cavity
had managed to miss any of the really major arteries, but she'd
already lost a ton of blood.
"Hold
pressure there and there, Ash, or she'll bleed out before I can get
enough of the smaller arteries sewn shut for her to have any kind of
chance."
"This is
all my fault. I should have gone with a different plan, should have
kept us together instead of splitting us up like that."
There wasn't
time for Ash to fall apart on me. I finished tying off the artery I
was working on and then backhanded him hard enough to knock him to
the pavement.
"Pull
yourself together or she's as good as dead. It was a decent plan, a
good plan even. She knew the risks. All it would have taken is one or
two shots hitting the right spot and that guy never would have even
gotten within ten feet of her."
With someone
else I probably would have angered their beast enough that they
wouldn't have been able to stop themselves from attacking me, but
Ash's beast was weaker than most. He rolled back to his knees and
then crammed his hands inside her chest exactly as I'd ordered him
to.
"That was
risky."
I could hear
the anger in his voice, but for once my beast didn't rise to the
implied challenge. I couldn't help but smile as I tied off a second
blood vessel.
"More
dangerous than sliding between someone's feet and then shooting the
bad guy while your buddy is still in the line of fire?"
"I knew
you'd be there, just like you knew that I'd be there when you knocked
that first guy off balance and then locked up the second guy. It was
the last threat, you didn't have anything else to worry about but
him. I knew you were right behind me and it only made sense that
you'd deflect his attack away from me."
I wasn't good
at the tiny, delicate stitches you needed to hold broken arteries
together, but it was too late to do anything but keep going. A normal
person wouldn't even have been able to see well enough to have
operated under these circumstances, but my vision seemed just barely
up to the task. I hadn't ever realized before how much brighter the
life-glow was to fresh-spilled blood. It was faint when I was in
normal human form, but it still served as a softly glowing beacon
that told me exactly where I needed to go to find each torn vein or
artery.
"I'm just
glad that you didn't hit me with those last two shots."
"There was
almost no chance of that. I held the shot until you ducked and then I
took him in the head. Do you want me to try to tie up one of these?"
"No,
there's only the one needle that was pre-threaded. You'd need both
hands to thread it and get started. I'm not sure she can take that
much blood loss. I'm just about done here, keep the pressure on her
for a few more seconds and then I'll start on one of those. You have
any miracles in one of those packs?"
"We've got
a couple of saline bags, but that isn't going to do anything to keep
her blood oxygen level from crashing."
"No, but
it may be enough to keep her heart from stopping. Okay, move your
right hand now."
Under normal
circumstances the hole revealed as Ash got out of my way would have
gushed blood. It was the worst rip I'd tried to repair yet, but her
blood pressure was dropping to the point where there wasn't a whole
lot left for her to lose.
I got the first
stitch in place and started swearing under my breath as I realized
that I should have put an IV into her before we started on these last
two tears. It was too late to reverse course now; if we put pressure
back on the tear now we might rip the stitch out and make things even
worse. I had to just finish stitching her up quickly.
The
second-to-last stitch went in with less fuss than usual and I started
the last stitch with hands that had started to shake a little.
"As soon
as I get this tied off you need to run and grab those bags of
saline."
"No, you
should do it so I don't have to take pressure off of her."
"I suck at
running an IV, Ash. Always have, probably always will. Besides, I
don't know where you guys have that stuff squirreled away."
"Fine,
I'll get it, but we move her first. I'll hold pressure on her, you
pick her up, and then I'll run the IV as soon as we have somewhere to
hang it from."
I grunted an
agreement as I cut the thread and then it was time to lift her into
the car. There was so much blood that I almost couldn't believe she
was still alive. The fading glow painted across her as red blood
cells started dying was beyond eerie. It wasn't until my shaking got
worse that I realized that a lot of the blood was mine.
Ash set what I
was pretty sure was a world record and had the IV run and a bag of
saline hanging from the passenger seat in seconds.
"I'm not
sure I can do this last one, Ash. I'm starting to get lightheaded."
"It's just
one more set of stitches, Isaac, you can do it and then you can stop
and tape yourself up. I'll be back in a minute."
I wanted to
argue with him, wanted to tell him that I was too far gone, but I
couldn't seem to bring myself to say the words. I must have taken
more damage in the fight than I'd realized, even this much blood loss
shouldn't have impacted me this quickly.
My whole world
narrowed down to the needle, thread, and the hole that I needed to
close up. The tremble in my hands made things worse, but Ash had left
the interior light on and the better visibility helped compensate for
the shake.