Page 64 of Worse Fates

“Piss off you bellend!” My knee comes up and when it connects—hard—Jace gags. Blood drains from his face as he drops down, curling in on himself and whining like a dog.

Air saws out my lungs, and my mind flashes back to when I was a sobbing mess, bruised and beaten and on the fucking floor like I didn’t matter.

And before I can even stop myself, not that I would, I swing my foot into his unprotected stomach.

“Fuck you!” I’m screaming. “I FUCKING HATE YOU!” My voice comes out shredded, ripped into pieces and hurled at him with each damn kick.

Reeling my foot back, I strike him in the head with a brute force I didn’t think I had in me, knocking the fucker out cold.

“Bitch.” And spit on him.

Breathing hard, I turn, stumbling towards Kai and Ramy. But before I can get far a sphere of blood collides into my stomach with the force of a bowling ball. Wind is beaten out of my lungs as I’m knocked back, crumbling into a heap next to Jace.

Then a shining bloody spear hurtles in my direction. Sucking in a cry, I dart my hands up to protect myself.

The sound of something sharp slices into flesh and I wait for pain. But when none comes, I drop my hands to find a muscular chest—a bloody spear lodged deep inside him as he shields me.

“Lucero!”

Teeth gritted, Lucero jerks forward as a volley of spears stab into him. A shuddering shout leaves him each time he’s impaled.

“Stop! God, Lucero, stop! Run, you have to run. You’ll be killed!” But through my tears I see his face as if carved from stone—no force on this world, or any other, could make my vampire move.

He might be covered in blood, but he’s not defeated.

“I have you,” he breathes, reassuring me even as grimaces in pain. Blood staining his clenched teeth.

“Run!” I scream, grabbing fistfalls of his tattered shirt. “Please just run, just run!”

In all this chaos, his blue eyes hold me captive, and he looks at me like he always does—as if I’ve given him something precious.

“I have you, Golden.”

Shaking my head, my hands now soaked, I try to push him, tears streaming down my face.

“No, no, no!”

“What did I tell you before? I’ll be fine—” A gleaming point pierces through his heart.

His eyes go round, and he chokes up a stricken cry. The noise that leaves me is from somewhere so deep I didn’t even know it existed. Fear beyond my bones and marrow, like my soul yawned open and told the universe ‘no’.

“I’m….” Lucero spits out a shout of pain. “Not. Leaving. You!”

Ramy speeds past us—hair trailing behind him. I hear a voice cry out, thankfully not his, and manage to see over Lucero’s shoulder. Ramy darts around the whips, his arm slashed—but a laceration is cut across the blood mage’s arm and she drops onto a knee. The whips somehow still thrashing.

Ramy zigzags to her, but an engine roars to life, and a car shoots towards him like lightning down the asphalt, and Ramy has to throw himself out of its path before it crashes into him.

“Get in, Emma, we need to get out of here!” Jace shouts to the woman with dark hair, flinging a spear at Ramy to keep him back to give the blood mage time to scramble inside.

When the car accelerates away—leaving only a burning tire stink behind—Lucero finally drops.

I bolt up and attempt to help him into a more comfortable position. My trembling hands hover over his ravaged chest.

“Need to stop the bleeding.” My voice is far away, quivering. Lucero is groaning something, then Kai is dropping next to me.

Ignoring them, I shove my hands over Lucero’s heart to apply pressure.

Ramy collapses on the other side of Lucero, looking like he’s barely holding it together with a phone pressed to his ear. Speaking into it even as he coughs up blood.