clear. If I hadn’t moved, he would have embedded his sword in my skull. Instead, it caught the end of my coat, just barely tearing the thick leather.
“Thomas!” I shouted, coming to my feet. “Stop!”
He spun, snarled at me, and came again.
I waited until the last possible moment before moving. He came at me, his motions surprisingly fluid for someone who was supposed to be a mindless beast, and as I reached out to catch him by the bicep, his sword nicked me in the shoulder. An inch more and he might have cut me.
I yanked on his arm hard, jerking him off balance. I used his momentum to throw him to the ground, hoping to jar the weapon from his hand.
The sudden movement brought agonizing pain as something in my back ripped. I dropped to one knee as Thomas hit the ground. He kept hold of his sword as he went down. He blinked once as if the impact had stunned him, but before I could recover from my own pain, he growled low in his throat and was in motion again.
He rolled to his feet, swinging his blade in a low, wide are as he came for me. I leaped over the swing and crashed to the ground as my knees buckled upon landing. Tears stung my eyes and my breath was coming in ragged gasps.
I couldn’t fight him. Not like this. The pain in my back where the creature had torn into me was a screaming agony unlike anything I had ever felt. He had to have hit more than a nerve. The muscle was damaged, and if he had hit one of my internal organs, the bleeding could end up paralyzing me just as easily as silver. Just because I was a vampire didn’t mean I could go on indefinitely with wounds like that.
At least Thomas’s sword wasn’t silver. It looked a lot like the blade he had used when we hunted together as Purebloods. As far as I knew, it very well might be.
I glanced at my weapons laying a few yards away but doubted I could bring myself to use them even if I got to them. This was Thomas. I couldn’t hurt my brother like that, and I sure as hell couldn’t kill him. It would be like killing myself.
Thomas came at me again, eyes wild. I avoided his swing, but he anticipated me this time and swung at me with his clawed hand. I managed to twist out of the way just as his claws tore into the leather of my coat and into my flesh. Stabbing pain shot through my arm and blood splattered the ground at our feet.
I spun to face him, grimacing at the pain coursing through my body. He was already swinging again, a blow meant to behead me and end the fight all at once. I ducked under the swing and swept my leg around, catching him in the calves. He crashed to the ground as I regained my feet and staggered back.
I winced at the pain, trying to think through both it and my confusion. Thomas shouldn’t be here, especially not with others like him. It was impossible.
But as impossible as it was, he was back on his feet again, moving much faster than I could manage in my wounded state. While he looked as wild and mindless as every other mixed-blood creature I had ever seen, there was something more to him. He wasn’t acting like the crazed beast he was supposed to be.
I dodged his attack but lost my footing when I tried to spin to keep him in front of me. I hit the ground hard and instinctively rolled out of the way. Thomas’s sword missed me by inches. He snarled in rage and kept coming, swinging at me, keeping me from regaining my feet again.
With every jerk, my wounds seemed to get worse. I was wearing out fast, and I wasn’t so sure I wouldn’t bleed out if I didn’t do something about my current predicament and do it fast.
Thomas howled as he swung at my head, missing me by scant millimeters.
“Thomas,” I gasped, pushing away from him. My finger bumped into one of my knives and I grasped it like it was the last thing on earth that could save me. It probably was. “Please,” I begged. “It’s me, Kat.”
He didn’t seem to hear. He feigned to the left and I fell for it, jerking to the right. His clawed fingers