Nightstruck - Jenna Black Page 0,78

I had to make every shot count.

The goat rammed my dad again, this time in the opposite shoulder. His scream almost made me pull the trigger again by reflex, but I fought the need, fought to steady my hands and to breathe evenly. It was a fight I was doomed to lose.

My third shot was better, winging the homeless guy in the shoulder. His only reaction to the hit was a mild flinch, and he remained parked exactly where he was.

The goat backed up and took yet another shot at my dad, this time at his exposed leg. There was no scream this time, just a groan. Blood soaked both his shirt and his pants and pooled in the gutter. If I didn’t stop this soon, he wasn’t going to make it.

“I have to go down there,” I said. “I have to be able to move to get a clear shot.”

“No way,” Luke said, looming behind me. “That’s exactly what they want.”

Intellectually, I knew that. And I knew giving them what they wanted was a terrible idea. But I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing while they killed my father.

“Come on, Becks,” Piper called. “It doesn’t have to be like this. Just come out and talk to me. I won’t hurt you. I promise.”

Like the promise of this stranger meant anything!

I tore my eyes away from the horror outside my window and turned my most imploring look on Luke. “You have to let me go out there. I can’t stop them from here.”

I tried to step around him, but he moved to block me, grabbing my shoulders and giving them a little shake. His eyes were glassy, and his every muscle was clenched with strain. But he didn’t budge.

“You can’t stop them out there, either,” he said hoarsely. “I’m not going to let you throw your life away.”

There was a horrible, cracking sound of impact, and I whirled around to look out the window once more. The goat had taken another shot at my dad’s exposed leg, which now lay bent at a crooked angle.

Dad wasn’t moving, and Luke wasn’t about to let me go outside. Even if I could convince him to let me go, by the time I talked him into it, ran downstairs, got all the locks open, and went outside, the goat and the Nightstruck would have finished Dad off.

There was nothing constructive I could do. And so I started shooting again, even though it was hopeless.

I finally took down the homeless guy with a shot that was aimed for his torso but that hit him in the neck. His blood splashed all over Piper, streaking her too-blond hair, and he fell to the pavement, clutching his throat as blood spilled out from between his fingers.

Another of the Nightstruck stepped forward to shield Piper.

I emptied my clip as the goat continued to brutalize my dad, until his entire body was bloody and torn and broken and there was no way he was still alive.

With my eight shots, I managed to kill one Nightstruck and wound two more, which is better shooting than it sounds like. But it wasn’t enough.

When the bullets ran out, the Nightstruck calmly collected the unconscious—or maybe even dead—girl they’d been tormenting earlier. It took two of them to extract my dad’s body from the drain. I fell to my knees and made some horrible choking sound when I realized they were going to take him away. Luke knelt beside me and wrapped his arms around me. He tried to turn my face away from the window, but I resisted. I didn’t want to see, and yet I couldn’t stop myself from looking.

Piper continued to stare at me the whole time, and there was no hint of regret or apology on her face.

“Come with me, and all the pain will go away,” she called, but she didn’t sound like she expected me to take her up on it. She shook her head. “We’ll talk again when you’ve had time to think about the situation.”

My whole body shook with a sob, and though I knew the gun was empty, I kept pulling the trigger anyway, over and over again, as the Nightstruck took my father’s body away.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I don’t want to talk about the next few days. I don’t remember them all that well anyway, which is a blessing. There was a lot of crying involved, of course, interspersed with periods of dull numbness and disbelief. The worst part was having to tell