Crack! Crack!
A vamp appeared at the opposite end of the hall. Silvio hunkered down, but the bullets went wild. Bria stepped forward and raised her own gun.
Pfft. Pfft.
She dropped the vamp with two shots to the chest, but shouts rose up from deeper in the mansion, growing louder and louder as more and more guards headed in our direction.
Bria looked at Silvio. “Can she walk?”
“She’s going to have to,” he said.
He set me down on my feet and passed me over to Bria, who grabbed onto my waist with her left hand. I sagged against her, but I managed to stay upright, even though the bag of knives still dangling from my wrist swung and rattled every which way, making it hard to keep my balance. Bria started dragging me toward the doors, but Silvio didn’t move to follow us.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “You have to come with us—or you’re dead.”
He shook his head. “There are too many guards. You need someone to lead them away from your location if you have any chance of escaping.”
His mouth pinched, his shoulders slumped, and sorrow sparked in his gray eyes. “Take care of Catalina for me, okay?”
“Silvio!” I hissed. “Silvio!”
But he had already started running in the other direction, back into the heart of the mansion, toward Benson and the rest of his men.
“Come on, Gin,” Bria said. “He made his choice. Let’s make sure that it counts.”
I nodded, and we headed toward the open patio door. I managed to stay upright, but my legs were weak, my steps slow and clumsy, so Bria ended up doing most of the work. She maneuvered herself outside through the opening, but my bare foot caught on the the dead vamp’s leg, and I did a header through the door and onto the balcony. My skull cracked against the ground hard enough to cause white stars to flash before my eyes, while the knives in my bag clank-clank-clanked together, sounding as loud as gongs to my aching mind. All I wanted to do was lie there and kiss the cool, smooth stones under my face, but Bria wasn’t about to let me give up.
“Move!” my sister ordered, reaching forward and hoisting me to my feet again.
Crack! Crack!
Gunshots zinged outside after us, shattering the glass in the other door. I staggered to my left, out of sight of the hallway, and clutched a stone column for support. Bria threw herself down, then rolled over onto her back, aimed her gun, and waited—just waited.
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 then 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.