Damien’s gun went off and pulled my attention to the grunts tearing across the outer edge of the lake to circle around and get tous.
Roger’s landing was rough, rocks and dust kicking up as his big hooves landed just to the left of where we were, in an open clearing. To the right, a few grunts and a sentry were booking it around the lake to meet us head on. The other sentry must behiding.
“That’s our ride!” I shouted to Damien, then pulled one of my swords. I couldn’t move the arm the sentry had bitten, though I was hoping that was just because my body had been duplicated in my injured state, and when I woke up I would feel hunky-dory.
A girl can dream.I tried not to think of the fact that these two bodies were somehow connected.Nope. Don’t think about that. I’m going to wake upfine.
Damien holstered one of his guns and came over to scoop me up with one arm. I hooked my bad arm around his neck and winced as he roughly stuck an arm under my legs and hauled me up. The motion put weight on my bad arm, making it throb. Throbbing was good though, meant it wasn’t completely nervedamaged.
“You okay?” he yelled over the sound of his gun, which he was firing behindme.
“Fine,” I lied. Sweat beaded my brow and dizziness washed over me. If my ankle started bleeding again in here, would it bleed on the operating table? I had noidea.
Damien started running and my pain level skyrocketed. I was also feeling more alert, like the anesthesia was wearing off. I hoped that meant Ronnie would be waking ussoon.
We’d reached Roger and Damien slowed, trying to mount him carefully, presumably so as not to injure me. But slowing meant the ghouls had reachedus.
“Look out!” Ishouted.
Damien tossed me haphazardly onto the animal and then turned to shoot. I straddled the beast awkwardly, very aware that blood was dripping from my ankle again.Sorry, Ronnie.Craning my neck around, I saw Damien shooting double-handed. He was backed against me and three grunts were an arm’s reach away. The grunts didn’t bother me. It was the sentry, helmet off and mouth open—ready to sprint, and make a Damien sandwich—that worried me. I reached down to Damien’s belt and grabbed the grenade that was stuck there. Pulling the pin out with my teeth, I chucked it in the direction of the sentry. He saw it coming and swerved, running to the side, but it bought us enough time for Damien to crawl onto Roger just behindme.
‘Roger,go!’
With that, the large green beast’s wings flared out and suddenly we were skyborne, ascending to heights the sentry couldn’t reach. Their lift off was incredible. They went from being on the earth to ten feet in the sky instantly. Now we were thirty feet high, and the bullets from the sentry didn’t reachus.
Damien looked down at my leg. “Shit, you’re bleeding again!” He reached down and pulled off his black Kevlar shirt in a one-handed move, giving me a glorious side view of his bare chest and abs. He was chiseled perfection in every way. Every magazine cover, romance novel, sexy movie, that was Damien Striker. Far too good looking for me. Guys like that slept with girls like me and married girls like Ronnie—doctors with status, or at least general knowledge of classyshit.
He wound the shirt around my upper ankle and tied it off tight into atourniquet.
I looked up at him. “I’m supposed to be the one protectingyou.”
“And you have. Allow me to return the favor,” he stated over thewind.
I just nodded. This whole thing was screwed up. Me protecting him, his ghoul attraction, our messed-up date. I wondered what it felt like to be normal in times likethese.
‘Thank you, Roger. You saved our lives.’I stroked the greenish white furry scales of the beautifulGaladria.
‘Good. That makes Rogerhappy.’
‘Did you name yourself Roger?’I askedcuriously.
His large head swayed side to side as his wings cut through the night.‘No, Benjamin named meRoger.’
My eyebrows shot up.‘Benjamin?’
‘Small human, youngling, can hive speak likeKit.’
Small human meant child. Hive speak meant mental communication. There was another like me? I guess that wasn’t toosurprising.
‘Benjamin gave Roger full name: Roger Marshmallow Cotton Candy the Great,’ he told me with perfectseriousness.
I chuckled and Damien looked at me like I wascrazy.
‘He must be a very smallhuman.’
Roger’s head bobbed up and down.‘Benjamin’s five Earthcycles.’
It was cute. I imagined Benjamin thought Roger was his pet or something like that. In a way, the Galadrias were very loyal like a pet would be, but were far too superior in my mind for me to think of them that way. They were wild, deadly, and intelligent. I’d never be foolish enough to think of a tiger as a pet, but Dawn was my friend. Now more than ever I was sure ofthat.
