Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91636 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91636 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
He’s passionate, and he’s right. We got ourselves into this. We did absolutely nothing to find out who we were dealing with. We assumed she was just another smuggler who could be taken and go missing without anybody really noticing or caring.
“Taking that much responsibility is just another way she avoids submitting to us,” Tailor says. “I want her to trust us with everything. I want her to let us deal with things. Look what happens when she deals with it. I want to be in charge of this girl. I want her to feel safe with me. With us. And that means taking her in hand.”
Damon and I smirk at one another. Tailor is mild mannered and slow to act, but when he does start acting, he doesn’t stop until his objective is well and truly achieved. Kita better watch her ass from here on out. He won’t let her think the wrong thing, let alone do it.
Damon taps the front of the safe, and the door swings open. He starts handing out the cloth bags containing our gold reserves. Tailor takes a couple. I take one. Out of the corner of my eye, I see something shift in the rubble.
I figure it’s an animal.
Pew!
Until it starts shooting.
We are not armed.
We run.
Kita
I wake to speed, wind, and bullets singing all around. They sound like heavy rain on the exterior of the vehicle, which is mercifully dense, having been designed to repel stupidity.
Rat-a-tat-a-tat!
Tailor is returning fire from the passenger seat. Conroy is driving. Damon is next to me, slumped down, his arm around me, pulling me close.
“What happened?” I shout the question to be heard over the chaos.
“Ambush,” Damon grunts.
I am pressed tight against him as if he is trying to protect me from the gunfire, which is sweet of course. But there’s something in his voice, even just that one word that sounds like pain.
He’s always quiet and he’s always pale, but there’s an extra quietness and a paleness that concerns me.
“Are you okay?”
As I ask the question, I become aware that there’s something warm between Damon and me. I push up a little and see that I am covered in red liquid. Blood. It’s not mine. He’s been shot. In the gut.
“Fuck!”
I press the blanket that was wrapped around me against Damon’s stomach, putting pressure on it, hoping it will help him survive. It feels immediately hopeless.
“He’s been hit! Damon’s been hit!”
A bullet whips past the back of my head. Tailor swings his gun around and I see the awful but satisfying sight of the driver of the vehicle behind us stopping being an alive person in a very short period of time.
Conroy
I hear Kita yelling. Her cry is panicked.
Dammit, Damon. He didn’t say a thing. He just jumped in the car and covered her with his body.
I’m not surprised he has been hit. I’m not surprised he managed to get to the car with the reserves anyway. The footwells of the vehicle are full of gold coins sliding around on top of one another.
I am surprised we were this fucking stupid.
Middle of the day. No vampires. No obvious traps. We thought it was safe. We thought so incredibly fucking wrong. Raiders came out of the fucking woodwork, what was left of it anyway. They must have been staking out the safe, assuming we would come back to open it. And we did just that, walking right into their ambush.
Stupid.
We are getting fucking stupid. And slow. And distracted. We did not run a smuggler’s port for years by being this unaware of what was happening. The place was constantly full of those with villainous intentions and yet we maintained perfect order. Now we’ve been routed from our home. Twice.
Getting Damon somewhere safe is the main priority.
There are so few places to go now. There’s Coastwood, a small town in the middle of the desert toward the ocean, but we are known there. Could be a good thing. Could be a bad thing. Doesn’t really matter because it’s the only thing.
“Keep the pressure on!”
“There’s more than enough pressure!” Kita shouts back. I can hear her panic. It echoes mine, though I manage to refrain from screaming it.
This all happened so quickly. Getting shot takes hardly any time at all. If Damon dies, I do not know what I will do. He is a brother to me. The three of us have depended on one another for years. We trust each other in ways we’ve never trusted anyone else. And we are bonded, not just as friends, but as mates.
“Just keep it on there, sweetie,” I call back over my shoulder.
“Sweetie?” she shouts back. “Since when am I sweetie?”
“Tailor, do you want to crawl back and help her? I’m going to keep this on track to Coastwood.”
Tailor places the weapon on the seat and goes back over to try to help. I have not felt this helpless in a long time. It feels as though our power is being stripped away from us one terrible event at a time.