Free As Lie The Dead by Kelly Meding Page A

passed brought expectations of interruption—a car coming around the row or the elevator doors dinging open. Anything to put a crimp in this silly standoff and/or offer our attacker his choice of hostages.
    I turned the knife, blade loose in my first three fingertips, and stretched my left hand out behind me, fisted. Took a breath. Exhaled.
    The shooter laughed again—a sound like nails on a chalkboard with a shadow of lunacy—much closer than before. Shit. I flared the fingers of my left hand.
    Wyatt stood up, both hands stretched out at his sides, eyes scanning the dozens of parked cars in front of him. The air around him crackled with energy and warmed me from the outside through my own connection to the Break. I stood, heart beating so hard I thought my chest might explode, and sought my target.
    He stood in the bed of a parked, late-model pickup truck, about thirty feet away, aiming a handgun at his target. A handgun that began to shimmer, even from a distance, black to a glimmering silver. He shrieked and squeezed off a wild shot. It pinged the cement floor by Wyatt’s foot. Wyatt didn’t move, merely closed his right hand around the gun that suddenly appeared there.
    I lined the shooter up, drew back to throw, and inthat moment he saw me. Recognition slapped me in the gut, and I loosed the knife as he pulled a second gun from the back of his jeans. The knife arched down at the last second and pierced his gut a few inches above the groin. He fell, screaming as he went. But he managed another wild shot that pinged twice before it hit. Agonizing heat seared my right forearm.
    I raced toward the shrieking shooter, ignoring my wound. I had to shut him up before he caused a scene we couldn’t explain. I vaulted over the tailgate with less ease than I’d hoped—damned longer legs—and landed in a puddle of strangely colored blood. Halfie. Dead giveaway, even before I got a look at his mottled white-black hair and opalescent eyes.
    He growled and tried to kick my ankles, survival instinct firmly in place, all the while holding one hand over the oozing wound in his abdomen. He’d landed on his other hand and trapped it beneath his left side. There was no sign of the knife. He bared his measly attempt at fangs—recently infected. Halfies that managed not to go bat shit from a vampire’s infectious bite didn’t manage a set of impressive fangs for a good two weeks. My attacker’s nubs put him around five days.
    Past the fangs, I saw the face. One I’d seen two days before, in a cellar prison. I’d coined the name Jock Guy for him. Same clothes, same cocky expression. Only this time I wasn’t behind bars.
    “Miss me?” I asked, and planted my foot flat on his sternum. He hissed and snarled but was in too much pain to put up a real fuss. “Maybe you missed the memo, but Tovin’s dead. Your boss lost.”
    Even through the pain he had to be experiencing, Jock Guy sneered and then had the gall to laugh. The same maniacal laughter that had made my skin crawl earlier, as if he were enjoying a private joke at my expense. I ground my foot harder against his sternum. He squealed, still laughing.
    “Careful, Evy,” Wyatt said, his voice somewhere behind me. Still on the ground. I couldn’t turn to look.
    A car engine rumbled nearby, drawing closer. Echoing in the cavern. I held my breath. My quarry was out of sight, but my right arm had oozed enough blood to make folks stand up and notice. Then again, we were in a hospital parking garage. Maybe it wouldn’t shock anyone.
    The car moved away, up toward the next level. One close call too many. I leaned down, putting all my balance on my right foot and his chest. Rancid breath puffed into my face as he continued to giggle.
    “So before I kill you,” I said, “you wanna tell me what’s so fucking funny?”
    “You got strange ideas about who I work for, bitch,” he replied.
    Alarm bells clanged in my head, quickly silenced by logic. He was a Halfie—not prone to