Something else hit me from the side, and I ended up plastered on the floor. The pain came in a huge

tsunami wave, my shoulder grinding and screaming. Hands on me, and a familiar wave of apple-pie

scent, drenched with copper wetness.

It hurt. It hurt so much, the spot at the back of my throat where the bloodhunger lives slammed shut,

closing the aspect away from me.

What? I thrashed, caught between August and Christophe. Augie lay on the floor, head tipped back,

throat working as he tried to move. Christophe crouched over me, his arms steel bands. “No!” he

yelled, almost in my ear. A long string of vile-sounding syllables I guessed were curses in another

language before the pain hit again, swallowing me, and the world went a funny gray color, color

bleeding away.

Shouts. Screaming. More gunfire. Cover. Get under cover. I tried to move, succeeded only in flailing a little bit. Christophe was still crouched over me, ranting, and I realized he was protecting me.

More chips of stone flew, and the gunfire reached a crescendo. Christophe’s body jerked, and he

hissed.

August suddenly jerked back into motion. He rolled to the side, and my head was tipped the right

way to see the aspect boil over him. White streaks slid through his dirty hair, his fangs came out,

and his eyes suddenly blazed, clear yellow instead of dark. I could see that through the haze coming

down over me, though the rest of the world was slowly draining of its color, turning into a charcoal

sketch.

He curled himself up like a pill bug, then was somehow kneeling, the gun yanked free of its shoulder holster and pointed up as he took his time with the shot. He exhaled, squeezed the trigger, and

the gun spoke, its voice lost inside the cacophony.

Everything stopped. The gray curtain came down, and I heard a thudding.

Boom. Boom.

Feathered wings beat frantically. They brushed me all over, little feather kisses, except for the ball

of agony high up in my left shoulder. I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes, and when I tried to get up,

to scramble somewhere to find cover because, duh, someone was shooting, I couldn’t. A hot egg of

agony broke in my chest again, and I whimpered.

Boom . . . boom . . .

A long silent moment, the gunshots fading. Was it over? I tried moving again and whimpered silently. It hurt to even try.

The throbbing in my ears was my heartbeat, I realized. Each thud was a brush of feathered wings,

and I heard an owl’s soft who? who?

The numbness crept up my hands. What just happened? What was that?

I was still trying to figure it out when the world went white all over. A sound like the whine of a

thousand speakers set on feedback filled my head. My heartbeat stuttered, the spaces between each

throb growing wider and wider until my overloaded heart . . .

. . . stopped.

Jealousy