[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.I cursed, pushing more will into the shield, and crouched down, letting Thomas collapse ungraciously onto the gravel parking lot.I fumbled for his gun, found it, and whipped the weapon up.I flicked off the safety with my thumb, took a half second to aim, and pulled the trigger.“No,” Thomas gasped at the last possible instant.He leaned hard against me just as the gun went off, the barrel wavered, and the shot kicked up sparks on a concrete retaining wall fifty feet away.Panicked, I lined up the weapon again, though I knew it would be a useless gesture.I might have taken her out with a surprise shot, but there was no chance at all that I could outshoot Lara Raith in a direct confrontation.But it wasn’t Lara.I couldn’t see very far in the dimness, but Inari stumbled to a halt only a few feet shy of me, her eyes wide and her mouth open.“Oh, my God,” she cried.“Thomas! What happened? What have you done to him?”“Nothing!” I said.“He’s been hurt.For the love of Pete, help me.”She hesitated for a second, her eyes wide, and then rushed forward to Thomas.“Oh, my God.There’s blood! He’s b-bleeding!”I shoved my blasting rod at her.“Hold this,” I snapped.“What did you do to him?” she demanded.She had begun weeping.“Oh, Thomas.”I felt like screaming in frustration, and I tried to look at every possible place Lara might be, all at the same time.My instincts screamed that she was getting closer, and I wanted nothing more than to run away.“I told you, nothing! Just get moving and open the doors for me.We have to get back inside and call nine-one-one.”I bent down to pick up Thomas again.Inari Raith screamed in grief and rage.Then she used my blasting rod with both hands to clout me on the back of the neck with so much force that it snapped in half.Stars exploded over my vision and I didn’t even feel it when my face hit the gravel.Everything got real confused for a minute or two, and when I finally started stirring I heard Inari crying.“Lara, I don’t know what happened.He tried to shoot me, and Thomas isn’t awake.He might be dead.”I heard footsteps on the gravel, and Lara said, “Give me the gun.”“What do we do?” Inari said.She was still crying.Lara worked the slide on the gun with a couple of quiet clicks, checking the chamber.“Get inside,” she said, her tone firm and confident.“Call emergency services and the police.Now.”Inari got up and started to run off, leaving Thomas and me alone with the woman who had already half killed him.I tried to get up, but it was difficult.Everything kept spinning around.I managed to get to one knee just as a cold, slithery feeling washed down my spine.The three vampires of the Black Court did not announce their presence.They simply appeared as though formed from the shadows.One of them was the one-eared vamp I had smacked with the holy-water balloon.On either side of him stood two more Black Court vamps, both male, both dressed in funeral finery, and both of teenage proportions.They hadn’t been living corpses for very long—there were lividity marks on the arms and fingers of the first, and their faces hardly looked skeletal at all.Like the maimed vampire, they had long, dirty fingernails.Dried blood stained their faces and throats.And their eyes were filmy, stagnant pools.Inari screamed a horror-movie scream and stumbled back to Lara.Lara sucked in a sharp breath, bringing the gun into point-down firing stance, spinning in a slow circle to watch each of the Black Court vamps in turn.“Well, well,” rasped the maimed vampire.“What luck.The wizard and three Whites to boot.This will be entertaining.”At which point I felt another, stronger slither of vile and deadly magical energy.The malocchio.It was forming again, more powerfully than before—and I sensed that the deadly spell was already near and gathering more vicious power as it headed my way.Still dazed, I couldn’t do a damned thing about it.“Kill them,” the Black Court vampire whispered.“Kill them all.”See what I mean? It’s just like I said.Things can always get worse.Chapter SeventeenI’m not hopeless at hand-to-hand, but I’m not particularly talented, either.I’ve been beaten senseless once or twice.Well.A lot.It isn’t as unlikely as it sounds—a lot of the things that started pummeling me could bench-press a professional basketball team, whereas I was only human.In my neck of the woods, that meant that I was slightly tougher than a ceramic teacup.I’d managed to survive the beatings thanks to good luck, determined friends, and an evil faerie godmother, but I figured that sooner or later my luck would run out, and I’d find myself alone, in danger, and at the limits of my endurance.Tonight had proved me right.So it was a good thing I’d planned ahead.I reached for my new belt buckle, with its carved design of a bear.The buckle was cast from silver, and the bear design was my own hand-carved work.It took me months to make it, though it wasn’t particularly beautiful or inspirational, but I hadn’t been trying for artistic accomplishment when I’d been creating it.I’d been trying to prepare myself for, in the words of Foghorn Leghorn, just such an emergency.I touched my left hand to my belt buckle and whispered, “Fortius [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

zanotowane.pl

doc.pisz.pl

pdf.pisz.pl

listy-do-eda.opx.pl