A few seconds later, two vamps crashed through the doors. Bria shot them both in the chest, and they went down screaming. She scrambled to her feet, grabbed my arm, and pulled me toward the balcony steps.
“Move!” she ordered me again. “C’mon, Gin! You don’t want to die here, do you? You know you want to come back later and kill every single one of these bastards!”
I grinned, despite the fact that my head was still spinning from my fall and my legs threatened to buckle with every step I took. She knew just what to say to motivate me.
I let Bria lead the way, while I focused on holding on to her hand and just putting one foot in front of the other without stumbling. If I fell again, the vamps would catch up to us and swarm all over us.
Bria yanked me down the steps, across another patio, and out onto the lawn. Behind us, more and more shouts rose up, as guards poured out of the mansion and gave chase. Staccato crack-crack-cracks of gunfire split the air, kicking up dirt and grass around us, but Bria didn’t hesitate, and it was all that I could do to keep up with her. A stitch throbbed in my side, sweat streamed down my face, my legs wobbled like a newborn calf’s, and my bag of knives slap-slap-slapped against my body, but I forced myself to stumble forward. If I stopped, we were done for, and I’d be damned if I was going to be the cause of Bria’s death. Not when she’d risked herself to rescue me. So I sucked down as much air as I could, ignored all my aches and pains, and staggered on.
A vamp stepped out from a cluster of trees in front of us. He raised his gun and took aim, but instead of stopping and doing the same, Bria tightened her grip on my hand and kept running straight at him. The vamp’s fingers curled around the trigger of his gun—
CRACK!
This gunshot was louder and sharper than all the rest, and the vamp went down without a sound, given the bullet that had just ripped through his neck. I grinned. Finn was working his own kind of magic with his sniper rifle.
More of those loud, booming cracks sounded, and the guards realized that someone besides Bria was shooting at them. They dived behind the benches, bushes, and trees that dotted the lawn, trying to see where the shots were coming from, but they wouldn’t find the source of the commotion. Finnegan Lane was one of the best snipers around, and he would have picked a perfect perch, someplace where Benson’s guards had no chance of shooting back at him.
While Finn took down as many of the guards as he could, Bria kept running, pulling me along behind her like a mother with a wayward child. All I could do was follow where she led me. But I didn’t care where we were going, as long as it was away from Benson and all the drug-induced horrors inside his mansion—horrors that made me shudder even now, despite the fact that we were running for our lives.
We kept moving, and I realized that we weren’t heading toward the street that fronted the mansion or to any sort of waiting vehicle. Instead, Bria was dragging me to the very back of Benson’s estate, which butted up against the Aneirin River. But I didn’t have the breath or energy to ask her where we were going.
Finally, we reached the river and the simple stone bridge that arced over it. Bria pulled me out into the middle of the span, then abruptly stopped. I stood there, swaying from side to side like a tree about to topple over, while Bria guarded our backs, taking the time to reload her gun. Above the faint click-click-clicks of her checking her weapon, I heard something else. Something low and steady and quickly coming this way. I frowned, wondering at the rumbling sound.
Was that . . . a boat?
Bria finished with her gun, then turned back to me. “Here! You have to climb over the side!”
She helped me hoist one of my legs over the railing, then the other. She hopped over too, so that we were both standing on the edge. With one hand, Bria held on to the side of the bridge, and with the other, she gripped her gun. In the distance, more guards appeared on the lawn, all of them with weapons, all of them heading in this direction.
Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!
Finn took out as many of the vamps as he could with his sniper rifle, but at this point, there were more of them than even he could shoot. Some of the guards broke off and headed away from the mansion, no doubt to try to find his sniper’s nest. But I wasn’t worried. Finn would be packed up and long gone before they ever found his location. So I focused my attention on staying upright and holding on to the side of the bridge with my weak, sweaty, trembling hands.
“Get ready!” Bria yelled at me, grinning a little. “Our ride’s almost here!”
I nodded, but she didn’t see me, since she was already turning back and firing at the guards who were racing toward our position.
That low rumbling grew louder and louder. I risked a glance back over my shoulder, looking for the source of the sound. I squinted, and something zoomed into view in the distance on the far side of the bridge, up the river, but closing fast.
A white speedboat with blue and red racing stripes.
I blinked, but the image didn’t melt or vanish into thin air, so I knew that it was real. The speedboat zipped up the river as easy as you please, and I realized that this must be Bria’s escape plan. Instead of risking getting caught on a Southtown street by Benson and his men, she’d chosen a less obvious but much quicker getaway route. I nodded in approval, even though the motion almost caused me to pitch off the bridge and fall into the water.
Bria heard the boat too, and she holstered her gun and grabbed my hand. More shouts rose up from the guards, who were sprinting toward us. And with the blood they drank and the extra speed it gave them, the vamps were closing fast. Another thirty seconds, and they’d be at the end of the bridge. They could easily shoot and kill us from there.
“Here we go,” Bria said, her voice lost in the continued cracks of gunfire, as she eyed the rippling water below us. “One . . . two . . . three!”
She yanked me off the bridge with her.
22
For a moment, the sensation was the same as the Burn drug—that airy feeling of flying, flying high. I laughed at how good it felt to just be . . . free. My head snapped back, and all I could see was the blue, blue sky, dotted here and there with marshmallow clouds, just like in my hallucinations.
But then gravity took over, the way it always did, sucking me back down to earth and reality. My head dropped, along with my body, and the rush of air tore away the rest of my crazy, cackling laughter. Instead of a pit of imaginary fire, the dark and very real surface of the Aneirin River thirty feet below zoomed up to meet me, the water ready to close over me in its cold, deadly embrace.
And then the boat popped into view.
It was the same speedboat I’d seen before, and it slowed so that it was in sync with Bria and me and our downward plummet. This time, I didn’t have to worry about falling, because someone was there to catch me—Owen.
He was standing at the back of the boat, along with Xavier. Bria’s feet hit the ledge at the very rear of the vessel, her arms windmilling as she tried to find her balance, but Xavier reached out and grabbed her before she tumbled backward into the water. I actually landed square in the center of the boat, almost right on top of Owen, who reached out and took hold of me, keeping me from slamming face-first into one of the leather seats. The impact jarred me from my bare feet all the way up to my knees, before shooting up my legs and through my hips and back. Bones crunched together in my right ankle, making me yelp, and the bag of knives hanging off my wrist slammed into my side hard enough to bruise my ribs.