Page 36 of Toxic Vengeance

She crept forward slowly now, rocking her weight from heel to the ball of each foot as she searched her side of the main floor. Streetlamps cast a faint glow through the windows on either side of the front door, spilling over the hardwood floor.

A sound captured her attention. Something moving just out of sight in the room closest to the front door.

She and Zack both stopped. Eden whipped her weapon around the corner and peered into a small sitting room. Then froze.

A woman lay sprawled out on her stomach on the floor. Still alive, hands weakly moving over the hardwood as if she was trying to pull herself forward, a dark trail of blood marking her slow, painful progress. The killer could have gone out the front door while Zack was kicking the back one open.

“Sweep the rest,” she said to Zack, then holstered her weapon and rushed over to kneel beside the woman.

Her head was turned toward Eden. There was just enough light coming through the edges of the blind covering the window to allow her to see the woman’s face.

Eden’s heart sank.No…“Penny?”

The woman’s eyes lifted to hers, the labored sound of her shattered breaths filling the room. Strawberry-blond hair, brown eyes, freckles. Right build. A pistol lay just out of reach of her right hand, and she held what looked like a go bag in her left.

Jesus, no.“It’s Penny,” she told Trinity and Zack. “She’s hit bad.”

“I’m pursuing the shooter,” Trinity said, her voice uneven as she ran. “Thirty-ish male, dark hoodie and jeans, heading west.”

“Copy,” she answered, already doing an assessment on Penny. She’d been shot twice, center mass. Both rounds had gone out through her back, leaving larger exit wounds. Eden grabbed the bag in Penny’s hand and rummaged through it, finding some bandages and pressure dressings they always took with them on missions. “Just stay still,” she told Penny, keeping her voice calm even though her heart rate was elevated.

“G-gone,” Penny wheezed.

“The shooter?”

“Place is clear,” Zack said, coming up behind her. “Where’s she hit?”

“Chest. Call an ambulance.”

“Already did.” He knelt beside Penny and helped Eden turn her over onto her back. But there was so much blood already.

She leaned over Penny, held that shocked, anguished gaze. “Penny, we’re here to help you. I’m Eden, and this is Zack.”

Penny opened her mouth. Blood spilled from the corner of it, dripping onto the floor. Eden pulled on a pair of latex gloves in the go bag and pressed down harder on the entry wounds, letting Penny’s weight and gravity press on the exit wounds. She’d lost too much blood. The bullets had hit her lungs, and probably her heart.

“Penny, who shot you?” she asked, leaning close, willing the other woman to hold on. She needed an IV immediately to keep her blood volume up before her heart gave out. The ambulance was Penny’s only chance. “Did you see him?”

Penny’s eyelids fluttered. Her lips moved, then she grimaced and choked on her own blood.

Shit. Immediately they rolled her onto her side to try and make it easier for her to breathe. “Who shot you, Penny?” Eden said urgently. “Who came after you?”

Penny jerked, a terrible rasping sound locking in her throat, then convulsed, her body desperately fighting for oxygen.

No, no, no… “Penny, stay with me. The ambulance is almost here.” Anything to get Penny to hold on. “I need you to fight, Valkyrie.”

Even as the convulsions grew weaker, those brown eyes lifted to lock with Eden’s, a heartbreaking flare of recognition there.

Eden bent to cup Penny’s face in her hands. “That’s right, sister. I’m one of us. Loyal Unto Death. I’m not leaving you.”

Through the agony and fear, surprise filled those wide brown eyes. And then tears. Penny stopped struggling, her chest barely moving now. But she held Eden’s gaze, the hope and relief there heartbreaking as it mixed with something else. Resignation.

She knew she was about to die, with a fellow Valkyrie beside her.

Too late. Too fuckinglate!

“We’ve found you,” Eden said, putting on a reassuring smile. If that was the last thing Penny saw on this earth, hopefully it would bring some measure of peace. “You’re not alone anymore.”

That stare remained locked with Eden’s, but then the light in Penny’s eyes changed. Dimmed. Her features went slack, her lids half-closing, eyes staring at nothing as the life drained out of her.

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