Free Jared by Sarah McCarty

finish what she had
started. Locking on Jared’s energy so she’d know if he moved, she closed her
eyes and remembered one of the few happy moments of her childhood, before the
famine had taken her father and her mother’s laughter. Before hunger had become
her companion and loss a constant. Remembered back to when she’d finally
mastered swimming after months of trying. She’d been such a slow learner, but
every day when she’d gone out, her mother had given her a hug and
encouragement, and on the day she’d finally—finally—paddled four strokes to
shore, her mother had held her face between her hands and whispered, pride in
every word, “I told you, Raisa, you can do anything if you want it badly
enough.”
    With her mother’s words echoing in her head she opened
her eyes and stared at a point over Jared’s shoulder. Courage welled with the
memory. “You’re wrong. I can do anything.”
    Before he could answer, she pulled the trigger.

5
    JARED launched himself at Raisa before the bullet hit.
For a critical spit second, incredulity that she’d pulled the trigger clouded
his realization that she’d aimed over his shoulder. Behind him there was a
thud, in front of him Rai, her face white as a sheet, horror in her eyes as he
flew at her. She dropped the gun and threw up her arms up to protect her face.
He took her down easy, twisting to absorb the shock of impact, rolling to get
her out of the way in case whatever she had shot at was still moving.
    He leapt to his feet, spinning around as he did,
talons at full length, fangs fully extended. He cast out his energy, feeling
for a threat, finding none, even though he could clearly see there before him,
in the snow, lay a man—a were—blood spilling from a wound high on his shoulder
and pooling on the frozen ground in a dark, spreading splotch. Snowflakes
drifted into the pool of blood, disintegrating in the heat. His senses should
be screaming. They weren’t. That was not good.
    Jared grabbed the rifle, levered another round into
the chamber and put it on Rai’s lap. Her fingers closed reflexively around it.
Meeting her wide gaze, he ordered, “If anything else moves, pull the trigger.”
    She blinked. “But what if—”
    He cut her off. “No what-ifs. Pull the trigger, and
I’ll sort out anything that needs sorting later.”
    Another blink and then those incredible lips firmed. A
quick nod and she got her elbows under her. Satisfied Raisa would do as he’d
told her, Jared turned back to his attacker. The attacker that shouldn’t have
gotten within a hundred feet of him without his presence being telegraphed by
his energy.
    “Did I kill him?” Rai called.
    She didn’t sound too excited by the prospect. He
remembered the horror in her eyes and the way she’d begged for the vampires
who’d attacked her. Unlike him, killing what needed killing wasn’t something
she probably did on a daily basis. “No.” He nudged the paralyzed were with his
toe. “Just winged him.”
    “Winged him? How could I just wing him from that
close?” She sounded both horrified and disgruntled in one breath.
    “Talent, sunbeam. Pure talent.”
    “What does that mean?” She had a penchant for worrying
about the wrong things at the wrong time.
    “Nothing for you to get your tail in a twist about, so
be quiet a second and let me concentrate.”
    “And what, exactly, do you need to concentrate on?”
    The edge to her voice and the nervous twitch of her
energy warned him she was going to go all soft on him again. “Nothing you need
worry about.”
    The sound she made was a ladylike version of his own
snort of disbelief.
    He gave the were another nudge. “Sucks, doesn’t it?”
he asked the chemically frozen were. “Having your own technology used against
you?”
    The were couldn’t answer, immobilized as he was by the
paralyzing agent loaded into the bullet, but the antipathy rolling off him in
waves spoke volumes. “Slade thought that Sanctuary cocktail should be