Battle Bond: An Urban Fantasy Dragon Series (Death Before Dragons #2) - Lindsay Buroker Page 0,42
stout wooden lamppost peppered with flyers, and their wheels wobbled as they dropped back down into the street.
I cut the corner closer and caught up with the van. The men leaned out the side door to fire again, but I sprinted and leaped onto the back fender before they could target me. As the van picked up speed on the straightaway, I pulled myself onto the roof.
When the driver zigzagged in his lane, trying to hurl me off, I plunged Chopper through the metal roof to create a handhold. Someone inside shouted.
Realizing I was vulnerable if they fired through the roof, I started to crawl to the right so I could swing down through the open side door. But the driver veered again, taking us up on another sidewalk and knocking over a trash bin. The roof tipped as the wheels on the right side ran along the curb. The van shuddered as it crunched into a newspaper vending machine. Metal squealed, and if not for my grip on Chopper, I would have flown off the roof.
Before I could pull the blade out and swing down into the van, a low-hanging tree branch almost took my head off. Swearing, I flattened myself in time to avoid being clubbed. My enemies chose that second to open fire at the roof.
Hot fiery pain blasted my side as a bullet sank in. I swore, pulled out Chopper, and rolled sideways, flipping down and through the open door. My boots entered first, and I adjusted my swing to ram each of the sturdy gunmen in the chest. My momentum knocked them backward against the far side of the van—the seats had been removed so we had an open arena.
Good. My side hurt like the fiery circles of hell, and I wanted to take it out on someone.
Using the pain to fuel me, I plowed into the gunmen. There wasn’t room to swing Chopper, but I punched and kicked and bashed skulls with the weapon’s hilt. And my enemies had thick skulls. No matter how hard I hit, the masked beings didn’t cry out in pain, only grunted and snarled. Orcs, I guessed, though the driver was masked, too, and I couldn’t tell for sure.
When I stunned one of them with an uppercut, Chopper’s hilt cracking his teeth, I almost threw my back out hurling my foe out of the van. Three hundred pounds of solid muscle.
The other one leaped toward the back of the van, trying to give himself room to aim his rifle at my chest. But I didn’t cooperate. I found the room to slash Chopper into the weapon before the gunman could fire. The blade cut through the barrel as easily as it had the roof, and it almost shaved his knuckles off with it.
The orc cried out and threw the destroyed rifle at me as I lunged in, the point of my sword leading. I dodged, and the weapon sailed past, cracking against the back of the front seat. The driver grunted and veered down an alley, the van going up on two wheels as it turned too fast.
My opponent was hurled against the side. I sank low, keeping my balance, and used the opportunity to grab him and throw him out the door as we veered onto another street.
He swore, twisting in the air and catching the edge of the door. I launched a side kick at his fingers. He let go and bounced three times before landing in a heap on the sidewalk.
I was alone with the driver. He kept glancing back, kept swerving as if doing it hard enough would also hurl me out of the van. It didn’t. I lunged up to his seat and pressed Chopper into the side of his neck.
“Park it.”
Cursing, he tried to jerk away from the cold kiss of my blade and managed to run the van up on the sidewalk again. It clipped a telephone pole before slamming into a tree. I grabbed the seat with my free hand, sinking low for balance. The van pitched sideways and landed on its side in the street. Keeping my feet under me was like staying up on a surfboard in a tsunami. We had been heading down a hill, so the momentum carried the van half a block, metal squealing and smoke pouring from the hood, before it slowed to a stop.
I sliced the driver’s seatbelt strap, grabbed him, and tried to haul him out of the van, but even with the