hands on a sidearm that had dropped to the floor.
A gunshot hit the wall next to me, and I spun on a knee, finding the Reaper entering from the kitchen, her face blistered on one side. I returned fire, catching her in the shoulder, and then the head.
Jin continued towards the front door. It was bathed in fire, but she reached out and pushed it, sending it off old hinges and thumping onto the stone steps.
Three of the Reapers had been outside. I saw them in front of her, raising rifles in her direction.
She might have been fireproof.
I didn't think she was bulletproof.
I reached into the pocket of the coat, finding the dice there. They were hotter to the touch than the flames had been. I ripped them out, cursing into them and pitching them over Jin's shoulder as hard as I could. Then I grabbed her and pulled her away from the door, feeling the tingle of the Hua's magic along my body and praying that it wouldn't turn me to ash.
It didn't. We fell backward behind the wall even as the bullets pounded against the house.
They stopped a few seconds later, replaced with familiar screams of pain. Jin squirmed against me, trying to fight her way free, to get out of the house. I held her with one arm, trying to keep my gun hand loose. I heard motion on the steps, and then Russ stumbled into the doorway. He was holding a shotgun, already pointed towards the floor.
My bullets tore into his chest, throwing him sideways and putting off his aim. The shotgun fired, and I felt the sting of buckshot skimming my leg and banging into the trench on my arm. It didn't penetrate, but it hurt like hell.
He tried to recover from his wounds, dropping the shotgun and straightening up. Jin shoved herself away from me with impossible strength, leaving the Hua on my lap and leaping at the Reaper. She wrapped herself around him and drove him down, putting a palm to his head and turning it to dust by the time they hit the floor.
Somehow, she knew when we were safe. She rolled off Russ and stood in front of me, tears in her eyes, her chest heaving. "We have to go."
My eyes traveled downward from her face. My heart began to sink.
She reached out for the Hua. It was so bright and so hot I couldn't believe I didn't have a hole through my chest. I gripped it gingerly and held it up to her. She took it, and then smiled. Her expression changed, and I could see her there again, returned from whatever state she had fallen into.
"We have to go."
I continued to stare at her in shock and fear.
Not for what she had just done. I could handle the violence.
A stream of blood ran from a gunshot wound in her abdomen, snaking down her leg and pooling at her feet.
We would go.
I didn't know if she would make it.
FORTY-SIX
Me.
I pushed myself up and approached her.
"Jin. You've been shot."
I could tell by her face she didn't know. She looked down at her naked body, her face paling when she saw the blood. I took two quick steps and grabbed her.
"No. Not yet. Conor." She was afraid. Panicked.
"Don't worry. I'm a doctor." I was trying to be comforting. I had done gunshot wounds plenty of times in the ER. This one didn't look good, but it also didn't look fatal as long as we could get her to a hospital.
It was too bad the nearest hospital was hundreds of miles away.
I scooped her up in my arms again. The house was still on fire, the smoke getting thicker with each passing second. Now that the magic was fading, I was starting to feel it slipping in with every breath, threatening to choke me. I turned and carried her to the door, ducking and lunging through the burning wooden frame.
"Just hang in there," I said. "I'll bandage it up to stop the bleeding, and we'll get to a hospital."
"No. We can't. It isn't safe."
"Why?"
"The Houses control the hospitals."
"We'll have to take our chances. You're going to die if we don't."
"Conor, no."
"Yes. I'm not letting you die."
We moved to where the bikes were resting on the lawn, the dead Reapers on the ground beside them. I lowered Jin to the grass, finding the dice resting nearby. Was it coincidence, providence, or just the demon's sense of humor that had resulted in double fire, a