Page 133 of The Ghost and the Graveyard (Knight Games 1)
Great. No pressure or anything. If I wasn't exhausted from the run and hell-bent on revenge, I might have been terrified. As it was, fear was a luxury for the safe. I was not. This vamp had killed me once already. I pulled Nightshade from her sheath and started toward the shack. "Are you going to shift, or am I going to have to do this alone?"
"If I shift, I won't be able to fit inside." He touched my shoulder and smiled like he had a brilliant idea. "I will pull him out of his grave, and you cut off his head."
I swallowed hard. The head cutting off part didn't thrill me. Even if it was a vampire I hated, I wasn't sure I could do it.
Clearly Rick picked up on my thoughts because he frowned and narrowed his eyes. But he didn't say anything. Smart man.
I thought back to last week, before I'd moved into the new house, before I was expected to know how to sort the dead or kill vampires. My, how things had changed.
Repositioning my blade, I reached for the door.
The darkness of the shanty made me temporarily blind, but I was not deaf. I heard a shotgun cock. The back of Rick's arm slid in front of my waist, pushing me behind him before the room came into view. Curled on the dirt floor, a man rocked cross-legged, staring at us through the sight of his rifle.
"Get out," he rasped. His left side was covered in blood. A bite mark on his neck still oozed onto his shirt. Hmm. Marcus had a snack before going to sleep for the day. A bead of sweat dripped down the hunter's forehead onto his shoulders. Shaking. Sweaty. Pale. He was hypovolemic from the blood loss and close enough to going into shock to make me wonder how he was still sitting up.
"What's your name?" Rick asked.
"Shut up," the man said.
Rick held out a hand. "You've been infected. The thing that bit you has poisoned your blood. We can cure you, but you need to come with us, and we have to kill the one who's buried beneath you."
The man shook so hard I thought for sure the gun would go off in his hands. Tears streamed down his cheeks. "Just go away," he pleaded.
Marcus is controlling his mind, Rick thought into my head. The man may be as good as dead. If Marcus forced him to drink some of his blood, he might be a changeling, a servant of the damned soon to become a vampire himself.
How do we know if we can fix him or need to kill him? I asked.
Check if his heart is still beating.
And just how am I supposed to get past the gun to take his pulse?
I'll take care of the gun. Rick shot forward, lightning-fast.
Crack. The gun fired, and Rick curled over.
Something About Myself
The shell blew through Rick's chest. In the spray of blood and thicker things, I didn't stop to check if any of it was mine. After all, the bullet that passed through Rick could have struck me, standing behind him. I didn't think about myself at all or reach for the man's neck to check if his heart was still beating. None of those things crossed my mind until after the sight of Rick with a hole in his torso elicited a reflex in me. Nightshade came around and decapitated the man before Rick could hit the floor.
I stared, heart pounding as his head rolled to the side of the hunting shack. His body collapsed to the earth in a pool of his own blood.
"I wasn't sure you had it in you," Rick said.
I snapped my head toward the Rick I'd thought was dead, only to see the hole in his chest stitch itself. The wound, once clear through his torso, was now a shiny pink spot on the skin behind his mutilated shirt.
"I thought you were dead," I yelled.
Rick's heady laugh filled the room. "I'm immortal, Grateful. You know that." He reached for me, hands running down my body, checking for injuries.
"Ow," I said as he brushed over my left shoulder. I looked at the source of the pain. The shell had clipped me. Blood soaked my shirtsleeve.
Rick stepped in close to me, his eyes locked on mine, eyebrows knit together in concern. He pulled the neck of his shirt aside. "Your knife, Grateful," he said.
"What? Why?"
"My blood will heal you," he whispered. The grave look on his face made me think he wouldn't take no for an answer.
I unsheathed my blade and sliced the skin over his collarbone. I sealed my mouth over the blood that bubbled there, and the hot fluid ran down my throat. The raw taste of him reminded me of the night before, and my pulse picked up its pace. My hands found his body, my fingers dancing over his newly healed chest. The world around me melted.
