Hit List - Laurell K. Hamilton [55]
Newman fired up into the roof after I did, but he kept his finger on the trigger so that the car was an echo chamber for the bullets, and the hot casings spilled on me. Most of them hit my jacket, but one found the back of my hand and there was nothing to shoot at now.
I grabbed his hand, yelling because I was too deaf to know how loud to talk to be heard. “Stop! You’re wasting ammo!”
He looked at me, eyes wild, showing too much white, like a horse about to bolt. I aimed his gun a little down. I could feel air through the holes he’d punched in the roof. “Ease down. Save your ammo.” I was probably still yelling, but he stared at me as if either he couldn’t hear me over the ringing in his own ears, or he couldn’t understand me through the fear. Sometimes when you’re afraid enough, the sound of your own blood in your ears is all you can hear. I remembered those days.
I got him to nod at me, and then I turned to look at the front seat. Edward and Tilford were driving like a team. We went through the smoking remains of the roadblock so fast I had only the barest glimpse of the charred remnants.
I saw the flashing lights in the distance, down the road, before I realized I’d been hearing sirens for a while. My hearing was not happy with all the shooting in the car. I wondered if everyone else was as deafened as I was.
I probably yelled, because I had no way to gauge my own voice, “Who called backup?”
Newman yelled back, “I did.”
It wouldn’t have occurred to Edward and me to call for help. We’d been lone wolves too damn long. For once I was very glad the rookie had done a rookie thing; he’d followed procedure and called for backup. The Harlequin were invested in remaining secret. We were safe, for now.
We began to slow down. Edward’s voice echoed thin and distant in my head, as he yelled, “Tilford, Tilford!”
Shit! I slipped my seatbelt as the car slowed to a stop and reached around the seat to Tilford’s shoulder with the sword still sticking out of him. I knew better than to try to take the sword out; that was a job for a doctor, but the bleeding, I could do something about that. I took off the Windbreaker and it was only as I slipped it over my arm that I remembered I was hurt, too. The jacket scraped over the wound, and the pain let me know I was hurt. The fact that I’d started to feel the pain let me know that the adrenaline and endorphins from the emergency were beginning to fade.
Edward brought us safely to a stop. He put the SUV in park. The cars and sirens barreled down on us, the sirens still not as loud as they should have been.
I realized that my blood was all over the jacket, though. I turned to Newman and pantomimed him giving me his jacket. I looked at my hands and they had my blood on them, too. I carried lycanthropy in my blood. I didn’t change shape, but that didn’t mean that if my blood got in Tilford’s bloodstream that he wouldn’t. I couldn’t risk it if there were other blood-free hands to hold the wound.
I changed places with Newman and managed to direct him how to hold his jacket and hands around the sword. He moved the blade by accident and Tilford passed out.
Newman mumbled/yelled apologies. I waved them away. The first cars were parked, and marshals, uniforms, detectives, emergency personnel of all kinds were spilling out toward us. There’d be an ambulance in there somewhere.
22
TILFORD CAME TO as the EMTs were trying to shift him from the car to the stretcher. He grabbed Edward’s arm. “Warrant, my warrant, it’s yours. It’s yours, Forrester.”
Edward nodded and patted his hand. “I’ll get the bastards for you, Tilford.”
“I know you will,” he said. He kept hold of Edward as they got him on the stretcher, and Edward didn’t fight it, he just stayed at his side on the way to the ambulance. Newman came to join me beside the SUV as I blinked out at the swirl of lights and police. Raborn was suddenly in front of us. “What the hell happened,