Page 286 of Dragon Slayer

Vlad letting go of Ranger, turning to movetowardthe bear.

Ranger screaming, gathering himself to rear.

Val and Mia out of their saddles, Val reaching for Adela’s reins.

But it was too late. Ranger reared, and his rear hooves slipped on the wet rocks.

Adela scrambled at his neck, throwing her weight forward, trying to force him back down onto all four legs. But with only one foot in the stirrup, she was off balance, and she slipped to the left.

No, no, no.

It happened in the span of a heartbeat. The horse toppled backward. She tried to throw herself free, but it was too late.

The last thing she saw, before they landed, was Vlad standing nose-to-nose with the bear, bent forward at the waist, shoulders jacked up around his ears. He was snarling like an animal.

And then her helmet cracked open on the rocks.

~*~

Mia hadn’t seen someone take a spill like this in a long time; it wasn’t something that ever got easier to watch. She didn’t really like Sergeant Ramirez, but that didn’t mean she’d wanted anything like this to happen.

The bay gelding scrambled up immediately, shaking off water, snorting, blowing, still panicking about the bear – the bear that was slowly slinking backward, head lowered, cowering in the face of Vlad’s panther roar. Ramirez didn’t get up, though. In fact, she didn’t move. She lay limp as a doll in the first shallow inches of the stream, eyes shut, limbs sprawled out to the side.

“Here.” Val shoved Gin’s reins into her hand, and went for the bay.

Gin, and Mia’s horse Astrid, were both nervous, blowing and dancing, but so far hadn’t set so much as a hoof out of place. A few paces away, Vlad’s big black stood stoic, reins dangling. Mia wondered if the vampires had put some sort of enchantment on them, and if so, decided she was glad for it.

The mother bear finally turned tail and ran, her cubs at her heels. Thank God.

Val snagged the bay’s dangling reins and reeled him in, murmuring soothingly, pulling his flashing hooves away from Ramirez.

Who still hadn’t moved.

Mia, horses in tow, walked over to the edge of the streambed to join Val, who’d managed to quiet the bay with some gentle words and pats to his neck. The black gelding joined them, nosing at his nervous friends, and that left Vlad with his hands free to see to Ramirez.

When the bear was gone for good, he turned and viewed the situation, made his way over to the fallen agent.

Closer now, Mia could see that her helmet hadn’t survived the fall, cracked down the middle; a thin trickle of blood had slid out of her hairline and trailed across her cheek. And her right leg–

Mia glimpsed the slick white of bone protruding and looked away, swallowing hard. “Compound fracture,” she said, and felt shock pulse hot and then cold under her skin.

There was a quiet splash, and she dared a look back to see that Vlad was on his knees in the water, lifting Ramirez’s upper body into his lap. “Oh, you shouldn’t move her,” Mia said, startled into forward motion. Val’s free hand landed on her shoulder. “She could have a spinal injury. She–”

“I know how to handle the injured, girl,” he said, gaze trained on the sergeant’s slack face. With a quick, but careful, movement, he unsnapped her ruined helmet and drew it off. There was a gash at her hairline, oozing bright red blood. It wasn’t bad – but the head trauma beneath probably was.

Vlad cupped a hand around the back of her head, and leaned over her; for one sick moment, Mia thought he meant to put his mouth to her wound. But instead he thumbed open her eyelids with his fee hand and examined them closely.

“A concussion,” he announced, sitting back on his heels. “At the very least.” Then his gaze swept down to her leg, and he frowned. “She won’t be able to keep the leg.”

Mia said, “What?”

Vlad sent her an unreadable look.

“That – that kind of break is bad, I know. She’ll need surgery. But usually doctors can save the leg.”

He shook his head. “That leg isn’t hers. It’s a dead woman’s. The vampire blood concoction your father gives her is all that’s allowed her to keep it thus far.”

A woman lost a foot, Dad had said. “Holy shit.”

“We have to get her back to the manor,” Val said, voice strained. He stared fixedly at the place where her leg was bent the wrong way, the bone jutting through.

Mia looked down, and saw thin little trails of crimson go swirling along with the stream’s current.

“I’ll carry her,” Vlad said, lifting her into her arms without effort. “The two of you ride ahead. Tell them to make preparations.”

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