Second Grave on the Left - Darynda Jones Page 0,86

I tried to stand.

“Charley, damn it.” He jerked me back down behind the broken and rusted bed. “We have to figure out what to do first.”

“We could, I don’t know, take Mr. Chao and get the f**k outta Dodge.” The spike in adrenaline must have de-fuzzed my tongue. I was suddenly having no problem articulating my opinion.

Garrett wasn’t even paying attention to me. For real? We were pulling this shit again? “If we wait it out, the cops will be here any minute,” he said.

“If we grab Mr. Chao and head for that back window, we could get the f**k outta Dodge and wait for the cops out there.”

Another round of gunfire blared around us. “Son of a bitch,” Garrett said as bullets ricocheted in every direction. “Who the f**k is that, anyway?”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that he told me his name. It’s Let’s-Get-the-Fuck-Outta-Dodge Redenbacher.”

“Here, take this.” He reached behind his back.

“Is it a get-the-fuck-outta-Dodge-free card?”

He placed a small pistol in the palm of my left hand.

“Dude, I’m totally a righty.”

“Charley,” he said, exasperation filling his voice.

“I’m just sayin’.”

“You stay here,” he ordered. He climbed onto his knees, apparently readying himself to do something heroic.

The first bullet that found its mark inside Garrett’s body sent me into a state of shock. The world slowed as the sound of metal meeting flesh hit my ears. He stared at me, his face a mask of disbelief. When a second bullet convulsed through him, he looked down at his side, trying to find the entry point. By the time the third bullet hit him, I knew what I had to do.

As a line of rounds paraded across the wall behind us, the gunman’s spray stopped and reversed, careening back in my direction as he did a standard sweep pattern.

So, I climbed to my feet, locked my knees, and waited.

Garrett collapsed against the wall, his jaw clenched in agony as each incoming round ripped chunks of Sheetrock out of the threadbare walls, ricocheted against the metal sink, and slashed through the rickety furniture as though it were paper. The room looked like the hapless victim of a Friday-night pillow fight.

Where was a son of Satan when you needed one? Maybe he was still mad at me. Maybe he wouldn’t be there this time—he didn’t show up when the parolee intent on cutting out my heart attacked, a first—but it was a risk I was willing to take, for Garrett.

I waited for one of two things to happen. I would either be shot dead right then and there, or Reyes would come. He would save the day. Again. And all of this, all the noise and chaos, would end. I felt the concussion of gunfire ripple over my skin, the heat of an object moving faster than the speed of sound vibrate along my nerve endings.

I closed my eyes and whispered softly, unable to hear myself over the gunfire. “Rey’aziel, I summon you.”

The reverberation of a round thundered past me. And another. They were getting closer. The next one would hit me in the neck, possibly severing my jugular.

I opened my eyes, braced myself for the impact, and watched in astonishment as the world slowed even more. The debris hung in midair like ticker tape frozen in time as a line of bullets pushed slowly through the atmosphere toward me. I studied the one closest. The one that had my name on it. The metal was white hot, the friction of traveling so fast heating the metal instantaneously. Then the world came crashing back as a powerful force threw me to the ground, knocking the breath out of me. The bullets I’d been watching sank into the wall over my head with popping sounds.

And everything darkened, starting with my periphery and closing in around me until I fell into a beautiful black oblivion.

What seemed like seconds later, my eyes fluttered open and I found myself floating toward a crumbling ceiling I didn’t recognize. I looked back at my body, at the pool of blood growing in an arc around my head. Then I looked up at the dark figure lifting me toward the heavens and I ground my teeth together, curled my hands into fists.

Freaking Death. I was so going to kick his ass.

I jerked my arm out of his grip and fell back to Earth. Reyes was in front of me at once, his dark robe undulating around him. But I had already been in full swing and clipped him on the