Page 8 of Tainted Gifts
“Damn it, Commander, please go away. My head hurts bad-”
My words are cut short as bullets ring, rattle, and bounce all over vehicles. I scream as they slice through our tent, and Simone’s blood barely avoids my mouth as a bullet rips through her arm.
“Fuck,” she squeals while grabbing her guns.
I jerk my gun belt together and then start scrambling around. We both crash out of the tent, blindly running through the storm of raining bullets before diving to the ground to escape a deadly grenade blast.
I feel cool hands jerking me to an incredible masterpiece body as Jase covers me.
“You’re the one who needs covering. I’m just a tracker,” I growl while forcing him off me and to the ground.
“Damn it, Aria, don’t fight me on this,” he scolds while jerking me back to him.
We both roll under a vehicle as the United fleet we're with tries to find out where the hell the shots are coming from.
“They’re coming in from the east,” Jase yells, apparently reading the direction of these vultures' minds.
“Do they have savages?” I worry.
“They have hybrids, I don’t know if they’re savage or not. We need to get you out of here in case this is an attack on you,” he says while rolling out from underneath the vehicle and jerking me to his body as chaos erupts around us.
Uranium fueled explosions rip through the air, and men scream out as the blood truck scatters the blood supply to the ground.
“Simone!” I scream.
“I’ve got it! Get the hell out of here!” she yells back, and I see the rapid swirls of the spilled packs of diluted blood leaving the ground and spiraling through the air to find the open mouths of our wounded men.
Their uranium filled veins detoxify, and then their wounds close up just as another explosion bellows through the air. Jase nearly rips my arms off, jerking me away just in time, as the disgusting scent of burning uranium fills my nose.
I follow him blindly through the hailing cloud of bullets we keep dodging based on sound alone.
Just as we reach a car, the ground rips up between us. I scream when I nearly fall into the gaping abyss that has formed, and I fall backwards before scrambling away on my hands and knees.
“Damn it! You’ll have to jump!” he urges, and then the ground splits more as the savage eyes of a hybrid shine through and find mine.
He’s stalking toward me very deliberately, and then I see the scorpion mark on his shoulder. My eyes flash to Jase just as he runs to dive over the crater between us. I gasp as he rolls to the ground in front of me, and he fires wildly at the man whose skin just deflects the bullets.
Phase three savage. Get out!
Jase ignores my silent demand, and I use all the strength I have to force my gift to launch him. He yelps as it throws him out of the path of my stalker and into the distant fields. I’m so fucking thrilled it finally worked, and I use what’s left to pin him down.
“Aria, let me go!” he calls out frantically, panic in his voice as I keep him safely distanced from the savage and the bloodbath of a battle at hand.
“You’re full blood. It’ll be worse on you,” I almost whisper as I await my fate too willingly.
Then the man collapses to the ground as the blood draws free from his eyes, mouth, nose, ears… everything. I gasp as I scramble backwards, and I look to Simone as she holds her focus on the savage man her sane frame mind is defeating.
Holy shit. She’s stronger than I thought.
“Go now, Aria!” she commands, and I scurry to my feet while whipping my guns out.
“Keep the commander away,” I scream to my aunt as she joins the battle.
“Where is he?”
“I’m holding him in the fields, but I can’t do it much longer.”
She nods, and then I see her eyes dart in that direction to use a much stronger hold than I could.
