Page 88

Jasper

Enemies are just frenemies in waiting.

We fall back from the bridge, bullets slamming in around us. Caught by the darkness and the dizzying speed, I lift my rifle up to fire back at them.

Only to see Buck fall hard off the bridge and onto the pikes.

The group of Reapers tears through several Sinners, pushing toward the bridge, and Pete staggers out, staring at the moat.

“Buck!”

It’s a broken, plaintive cry.

“Fuck,” Lucien breathes, then shouts. “Jasper, up!”

Reacting like his instincts are mine—his instincts are far better than mine will ever be—I snap my rifle around and shoot. Two Sinners collapse in front of the bridge, and I shudder at the clunky, unanimated way they fall.

Sawyer jumps over their bodies, his men right behind him.

“Fall back!” Beaumont barks behind us. “To me! Fall back.”

“Bristlebrook, hold!” Dominic roars as they approach the bridge. “Hold fire! Do not shoot our guys!”

Katherine shoots twice, then grabs Shelby’s arm, forcing her into a run as our group falls back to Beaumont. Jaykob walks backward quickly, his rifle up as he covers us all, and Ava hurries him along.

Lucien is still firing off fast, neat shots beside me, and a bullet slashes flinchingly close to his ear. I grab the back of his collar, yanking him.

“Jasper, stop! They’re almost there,” he snaps.

“Beaumont and Dominic are covering us and them. Fall back, Lucien,” I snap back, and he curses as he obeys.

Beaumont and two civilians have flipped one of the other heavy bridges, and we slide in beside Jaykob seconds later, helping him lift the final bridge onto its side for some cover, breathing hard.

“Jayk, get up on the defenses. You can’t call the fight from here,” Beaumont argues with him.

When I get my rifle back up, I see Sawyer’s group rounding the edge of the bridge. He and Cole stand on either side of it, holding back the Sinners, as Reaper after Reaper pounds boots over the bridge to safety.

Three, five, until more than a dozen have crossed. Pete and Akira and more faces I know but don’t have names for.

Not nearly enough.

“Dom can call the fight,” Jaykob argues, sniping a crawling Sinner between the eyes. “I’m better down here.”

“Argue with him about it, fucker.” Beaumont lets off another shot, then stops, panting. “Jayk, these people might have been in some tussles, but this is something else. They need to see you. They trust you.”

Jaykob stops, looking at him, then he curses and peels back.

Reapers stream past us, wild-eyed and frightened, and Jaykob directs them toward Bristlebrook before he falls back with them.

“Go. To the house, go!”

Over my shoulder, I see Eden on the porch, pointing men inside, shouting something I can’t make out through the noise.

Lucien shoots again. Then again and again. Each shot shudders through me.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang .

I loathe this. I loathe the unhinged storm of my pulse, and the flinch of bullets by my face. I loathe the spurting death, and the glassy, staring eyes. I loathe the fear.

Most of all, I loathe that I’m not better at it. For all I’ve been practicing—sparring and shooting and re-honing the skills these men have taught me—I don’t have Jaykob’s ferocity or Lucien’s pinpoint accuracy. I’m a psychologist. I dissect minds, not brains.

Damn it, I’m not made for this.

I know he was just trying to land a blow, but Jaykob was right. I might be the man who comforts Eden, but I’m not the man to protect her.

I release another shot anyway, right as Cole takes a hit to his thigh that immediately buckles his leg, and his pained cry splits the air.

Lucien takes out the gangly Sinner who shot him, and Sawyer collects his friend in the next instant, dragging him over the narrow bridge with wide, terrified eyes.

“Shit,” Beau curses, and he slings his rifle, pulling around his med bag. “Lucky, you?—”

“Yep. Got you. Go,” Lucien says distractedly.

“What are we? Decoration?” Katherine mutters tartly, and Ava snorts beside her, sending off a blistering round of shots that wipes out four Sinners just as they tear out of the trees.

Beau helps lift Cole, and he and Sawyer drag him behind us. Moving fast, Beau pulls out a tourniquet. Bandages. Pain relief. Antiseptic.

More Reapers storm past us.

“Shit! No, no, no! Help !”

The shriek comes from across the moat, sharp and distinctly feminine.

My gut wrenches sideways.

“ Jen ?” Ava snaps, panicked.

It takes a moment to spot her, limping toward the bridge as a small group of Reapers stream past her, her gunshot wound slowing her badly. A blunt-featured Sinner takes out a fleeing Reaper in the back, and Jennifer’s sob rips the air as she drops down to crawl over the body.

The Reapers are on the run now. There’s less than a dozen left alive on that side of the moat, and every one of them is making a break for the bridge.

And so, the Sinners grow bolder. More and more start encroaching from the trees.

Jennifer is fodder.

She’s going to die without help.

Jaykob is back with Dominic, Beaumont is busy saving Cole, and Lucien...

“I’m going for her.” I sling my rifle, and Lucien catches my arm.

“The hell you are!” he protests, alarmed, paling under his tan. He shoots a look at Jennifer, and the anxiety deepens on his face. “Shit, okay. I’ll go.”

I soften, looking at his fierce, beautiful face. “You’re the better shot, love.” I smile, though every impulse in me tells me to stop and think. To step back. To stay safe. “Just a quick trip. It will take two moments.”

I might not be as skilled, but I can be as brave as my Lucien. I won’t forgive myself if she dies.

Recognition sparks in his eyes—swiftly followed by panic. He said something similar to me, many years ago, on the night our world changed forever.

He said it right before he did something very, very stupid.

Indecision wars on his face for a moment as impatience wars within me—and I try not to be offended at how much of an argument he’s putting up. I know he’s been fighting with this.

Then Lucien releases me. “Go. Fuck. Go fast.”

Katherine’s face is set as she lines up her next shot. “These assholes won’t touch you.”

I nod, then jump over the shelter of our bridge, ignoring how much my body dislikes that particular motion.

“Jasper?” I hear Beaumont say behind me, alarmed, but I don’t stop.

It’s still so dark, but the hellish conflagrations puncturing the night cast it all in infernal shades. A Reaper slams into my shoulder as he flees past me.

Sinners are swarming from the trees now, and another stocky Reaper sobs as he backs away from Mateo, who shoots him clean through the eye.

Okay. I swallow dryly. Okay.

Perhaps I won’t look. I’ll... I’ll just focus on myself.

The others will cover me.

I don’t stop to look down at the pikes spearing Buck’s body in a half-dozen places. I don’t stop when my loafers rattle the bridge or their unfit soles slip in blood as I hit the grass on the other side.

“Down, Jasper!” Jayk shouts in the distance, and I duck low, throwing myself to the side.

I land beside a body... and its face is largely missing a cheek. The body smells like released feces, and I press my lips together.

Repulsive.

“Now!” Dom calls, and another deafening round of gunfire fells more than a dozen Sinners.

Jennifer looks up from perhaps ten yards away, tears streaking her filthy cheeks. She has a pistol in her hand as she crawls. I get up, keeping low, and hurry over to her.

To my left, a Sinner I didn’t even see drops hard.

“Come, Jennifer. I have you,” I murmur, reaching out a shaking hand.

Determination crushes the fear in her face, and her hand slaps into mine.

As I drag her up, she chokes, “Is this covered by your session fee?”

“I’m afraid this will be extra,” I tell her, and she huffs a laugh that’s full of the same barely contained panic I’m feeling.

A bullet whistles through the air in front of us, then another behind, and I try not to imagine myself skewered by the pikes beside us as I drag her forward, taking most of her weight. The bandage on her leg is soaked in bright, fresh blood.

Glancing back at Bristlebrook, I realize that from this angle, it’s completely cast in depthless, black night. Only the bare glow of the porch and windows to say there’s a house there at all. I have to squint to make out the towering platforms.

The torch light has decimated my night vision.

Shouts and screams, gunshots and pleas for help crash in on me from all sides, but I can’t do anything for them right now. We’re still getting shot at.

A bullet skids by my foot, and I flinch to the side, only to slip on the edge of the moat.

My stomach flies into my throat. I take in the drop, the sharpened pikes as they stare up at me in lethal promise—only for Jennifer to slam her weight to the other side, onto her injured leg, dragging us back with a piercing, agonized scream.

We collapse onto the grass, and she sobs again, her eyes flick behind my shoulder, then sink closed.

I look up, and a large, tattooed Sinner licks his teeth, his gun already at my temple.

Then his face explodes.

Hot, thick blood sprays me, and he teeters forward, but I shove him into the moat.

As he falls away, I see Heather run forward, shooting another Sinner through the throat, then spinning to catch another behind her between the eyes. She has a large military pack over her shoulders, but it doesn’t seem to be slowing her down.

What on earth is the she-dragon doing here?

My mind is glitching, caught by the flickering firelight and the storm of death around me.

Heather dispatches another Sinner behind us, and a fierce, unholy gratitude strikes me with stunning force as I pant, my lungs on fire.

I think the she-dragon just saved my life.

Her gaze flicks to Jennifer, then she meets my eyes and nods.

Humbled, I nod back.

“Who let the whore out?” the large bald Sinner from earlier sneers, zeroing in on Heather.