This Side of the Grave (#5 Night Huntress)

silver knives in his eye sockets. He should have never taken the time to taunt me before he fired. I had plenty of other weapons aside from my
sword.
He reached for the knives—another mistake. I wrenched the gun from his hands and used it to shoot my way right through his neck, letting out a
scream of deadly triumph. Then I yanked my sword free, whirling around to defend against the next attack.
None came. Although I still heard spates of gunfire, they were far less frequent than before. The cemetery was littered with bodies, and those still
standing looked like they were trying to run more than attempting to fight. For a split second, I was surprised. Yeah, I knew our group was tough, but
. . .
A flash of yellow and black caught my eye, moving with the speed of some sort of cartoon Tasmanian devil. It plowed into two ghouls who had
been firing at Ian. In the next blink, there was nothing more than a crimson pile of body parts on the ground, a lithe blonde with two swords standing
over them.
Veritas? I didn’t have a chance to goggle at her before she was off in another crazily fast blur, heading for an eruption of gunfire over the hill.
Within moments, that gunfire stopped.
“Am I the only one who has wood over that little vixen?” Ian asked cheerfully even as he cleaved his sword right through the center of a ghoul. That
shook me out of my momentary stupor and I started chasing down the next spate of gunfire I heard. My side still felt like it had been set on fire, but I
pushed it back. I didn’t have time to dig the bullets out, and nothing else would make the burning stop.
I continued to run toward the sounds of gunfire, clearing the crest of a small hill. At the bottom was a large memorial fountain, but that’s not what
made my body seize with a fresh spurt of adrenaline. It was the sight of the short, expensively clad ghoul backed up against the fountain, three
guards surrounding him in protective formation as they fired at the vampires who cut off their escape.
“Apollyon!” I yelled, running down the hill in a straight line toward him. “You remember me, don’t you?”
Even with the distance, I saw his eyes widen. “Reaper,” he mouthed. Then louder, in a scream at the ghouls protecting him, “That’s her, that’s the
Reaper!”
The gunfire changed direction, but I’d expected that. I dove to my right, all but one bullet missing me. It slammed into my side with the impact of a
torpedo, but I kept rolling, knowing the gunfire wouldn’t cease. Unlike the movies, in real life, the bad guys didn’t quit shooting to check and see if
you were dead. Those bullets chased me, but I scrambled up and kept moving, headstones exploding around me as those were struck instead of
me.
A scream preceded one of the guns going quiet. Then another one. Even as I kept running, I smiled. I knew Vlad, Spade, and Gorgon had only
needed a few moments of distraction to pounce. Apollyon and his guards should have known that, too, and never focused all three of their guns on
me.
I whirled around, heading back toward the bottom of the hill. Vlad had one of the gunmen in a merciless grip, flames erupting all over the ghoul.
Spade wrestled with another ghoul, but I wasn’t worried about him, because at some point, he’d managed to knock the gun away. That left Ed and
Gorgon fighting with two more ghouls who’d joined the battle, but my attention wasn’t focused on them. It was on the stocky ghoul running flat-out for
the gate bordering the cemetery. On the other side of that gate was a small business district, mostly deserted this time of night, but with lots of
buildings and apartments that Apollyon could hide in.
“Oh no you don’t,” I growled, running faster. That sickening pain increased, the burning in my side feeling like acid eating all through me, but I
couldn’t concentrate on that now. I had to focus on the air around me, picturing it as something with form that I could mold and bend to my will.
Bones’s words echoed in my mind. You have the ability. You just need to sharpen it.
My feet lifted off the ground, but I didn’t fall. I flew, leaning into the air, letting it take me faster than I could run before. Wind rushed through my hair,
streaming along my body, lifting me as though it understood my need and wanted to help. The distance between me and Apollyon grew shorter, his
steps seeming so slow and clumsy in comparison to the way I arced above the ground. I streamlined my body, my hands out in front of me, aiming
for the back of his Armani jacket like it was a bull’s-eye and I was an arrow. Thirty feet. Twenty. Ten . . .
When I barreled into him, my velocity plowing him to the ground hard enough to tear up the dirt, I was smiling even though a fresh deluge of pain
blasted through my side. And when I came up, twisting so Apollyon was in front of me, relief made me almost immune to the strikes he got in before
I had his neck locked in an iron chokehold.
“You move and I’ll rip your head right the fuck off,” I told him, meaning every deadly word.
Apollyon was either smarter than I gave him credit for, or he really did fear me, because he stopped struggling at once.
“What are you going to do with me?” he hissed, the words garbled from the grip I had around his throat.
I let out a pained laugh.
“I’m so glad you asked.”
Chapter Thirty-six