Page 81 of Prince of Tides
“It’s going to hurt,” I said, wincing. Someone out there had a particularly nasty weapon, and it really hurt when it struck. “But the bullets won’t penetrate my scales or wings. You’re safe.”
As the cascade of automatic weapons fire began to die out, I could hear bewildered shouts as they tried to figure out just what the hell they were dealing with.
“Time to make a run for it?” Laurie asked, twisting around to peer through my wings.
“I’m not sure that would work,” I remarked a little more calmly than I felt.
Getting out of the warehouse would have been easy if it were just me. I could walk out, fly off into the night, and leave the people wondering if they’d seen what they thought they had or if their eyes were deceiving them. Even now, I could probably carry Laurie with me. However, the gunshots were loud enough to blind my hearing. I had no idea what was on the far side of the other three walls. It could easily be another small army. Putting my mateandmy unborn child into harm's way like that was unconscionable.
“What do we do, then?” Laurie asked, burrowing into me as the gunfire took up a more organized pattern, with only a portion firing at any given time, to ensure there was constant gunfire slamming into me.
“Icanget us out of here,” I surmised. “But it’ll be messy.”
“How messy?” she asked.
“Like, lots of dead bodies messy. Could be rather hard to explain it away, given it’s your ex-fiancé in here.”
“You have to kill him, too?” Laurie frowned. “Do I really care?”
“It would be easiest that way,” I said.
“Does it not bother you to kill so easily?” she asked non-judgmentally.
“You’re carrying mychild,” I growled possessively. “They are trying tokillyou. I could snuff the life from every last one of them while staring into their eyes and go straight to sleep after if you both emerge from here without a scratch. But I won’t do it if you’re not comfortable with it.”
“That’s a lot of dead people, who may or may not actually deserve such a fate,” she said.
I stiffened as a new source of gunfire reached my ears. Surprised shouts followed, and a firefight erupted between our original attackers and new sources to our left.
“What the hell is going on now?” Laurie hissed.
“If I had to hazard a guess, I would say your father’s men have arrived.”
I heard Alex barking commands between the bangs of bullet fire.
“Oh.”
“They’re good people,” I said, “but they’re probably outnumbered and maybe even outgunned. I … don’t want them to get around the building and see me and lose someone in the panic.”
“What are you saying?” Laurie asked.
“Nothing. I’maskingyour permission to end this before any of your father’s men get hurt on our behalf.”
Laurie’s eyes went flat. “You want to get messy.”
I nodded. “For their sake.”
She sighed, thinking for a moment. “Do it. You’re right. None of Alex’s people should get hurt over this if there’s a way around it.”
I nodded, standing up to my full height, partially shifting into dragon form to better harness my powers. My wings spread wide throughout the warehouse as I turned to look at our attackers.
Most of them were focused off to the side, fighting a foe invisible behind the outer wall of the warehouse. I had to be careful not to hurt any of them as I reached out to the water in their bodies and began to tug. Fine motor control was easy up close. A hundred yards away, I could easily mistake an undefined mass of water for one of Alex’s men if they were too close to our attackers. It wasn’t like they had IDs written in my mind. I just felt the water itself.
I judged it close, and then with a roar, Iyankedon it all.
Water surged through the air, wrapping around me like an outer layer of armor. Bodies fell to the floor, cracking open like dried food shells. Several rifles barked a few times as fingers tightened over triggers, but they quickly ran dry.
“Ahhhhh,” I exhaled in a deep throaty sigh.
