Page 65 of Bite of Passage
Screams.The sounds of a scuffle.More screams.
Mira disappeared.
Gemma peeked up over the stone seating.She slapped her hand over her mouth to keep from shrieking at the gory scene.Blood everywhere.Body parts angled in abnormal directions, some still moving, and Cade barely visible as he moved quickly, annihilating another two people.
In an instant Cade cut Skarde free.Skarde fell on his side, hard onto the floor.Cade unwrapped the chains around him and commenced swiping off bugs.Skarde was dressed beneath the bugs, but he wasn’t moving.Gemma saw him blink.Guess a zillion bug bites slowed even a vampire.
Petra wasn’t frozen, as she should be if Mira had done her job.Where was that girl?Instead, Petra chanted something under her breath while sauntering toward Skarde.
Skarde shot to a stand and pushed his brother behind him.He chanted something himself and threw a sandy substance at Petra.
The witch began screaming and clawing at her skin where the sand struck her.
VanFliet appeared.He raised his arm in preparation to throw a knife that would hit one of the brothers.Probably a death blow.
The moment Gemma was about to throw herself into the action, Mira caught her arm in a brutal grip.
“What are you doing?I need to help them.”Gemma tugged against the witch’s grip.
“I’m sorry about this, but I made a blood vow, which supersedes even my promise to you.I like you.I didn’t believe it possible you’d show, even though Serina said you would one day, but then you did.I did ask you to not take me to get the vampire, but now there’s no other way to force him to act.”
Mira rammed a huge knife deep into Gemma’s side.“So bloody sorry, but the future,ourfuture, has to happen now.You need to be stronger for the next phase.”
Gemma moaned and fell to her knees.
On instinct she yanked out the knife.Bad move.Blood flowed from the wound.She applied pressure, but there was too much, too fast.Something critical had been hit.A quick anatomy review in her head indicated her intestines were at risk, maybe her spleen.Crap, not the spleen.Please, oh, please no spleen.That was a fast death.
She pressed against the flow of blood.
Mira was gone.
“Skarde,” she whispered.“I don’t want to die here.”
Blood streamed around her hand.The world went woozy.
ChapterTwenty-Seven
“I’ve got you,”Skarde whispered as he protected Gemma against falling snow and the horse’s jerky motions on the slippery road.”
His body, still weak from venom, had jolted into action the moment she’d been stabbed.When the scent of her blood hit him, adrenaline surged with purpose and the need for vengeance.Cade managed to wound Petra, which distracted everyone in her compound enough that they could escape.Perhaps, it hadn’t gone that way.He’d been hellbent on killing everything there, but Cade stopped him.With Gemma over a shoulder, Cade convinced him if they didn’t get her out, they’d all die.
She still bled.Which was bad on several levels.Foremost was the blood hunger, which consumed his mind to the point he wanted to dip a finger and taste.He wouldn’t.The smallest taste might trigger the mind-numbing need for more.
The stab wound was killing her.No reason to sugarcoat it in his mind.He followed the slowing of her heart.She surged toward death.No point in stopping to do wound care right now.And no time.They’d traveled a few miles from the witch’s palace on stolen horses, ones he didn’t trust had been cared for well enough to get them all the way back to his place at the speed necessary to avoid pursuers.
He directed his horse alongside Cade’s.“How did they lure you in?”
“I was invited with a letter embossed in gold.It said they had the prophesied problem and, as the punisher assigned to the task, I’d better come get her.Then that teenage witch cast a spell on me.”
“Did you wear the wristband I gave you a few years ago?”
“If I got caught wearing a magic talisman?—”
“It would’ve saved your ass.Never go anywhere near a witch without it.Even Gemma is wearing one.”He held up her wrist.
“That’s why the witch’s spell didn’t work on her.”
“They baited me in too.I thought they had Gemma.Did they tell you what they wanted from you?”
