Free Blood Kiss by J.R. Ward Page A

right, she thought. I can’t do this. What was I thinking—
    And that was when all hell broke loose.
    From up above and all around, explosions erupted as if the gymnasium had been wired to detonate, the sounds so loud her ears registered them as pain, not noise, the flashes of light so bright she went from one version of blind to another.
    Screaming into the maelstrom, she put her hands up to the sides of her head and crouched to the ground, ducking for cover.
    Ahead of her, she saw people on the floor, some who were in a defensive curl like she was, others who were vomiting, still more by those doors who writhed and curled their arms in tight as if the pain were too great for them to stand.
    There was only one person who was up and moving.
    Craeg.
    In the intermittent flashes, she tracked his movement to the far, far corner. Sure enough, there appeared to be an opening, a door that offered nothing save more blackness—but that had to be better than getting blown up.
    She took a couple of steps forward, and then realized that was bullshit. Run. She needed to run—there was nothing holding her back, and she didn’t want to get hit with falling debris.
    Don’t touch the exercise equipment.
    Considering what had happened when those people had tried to get out those metal doors? No shit.
    It was a great relief to bolt forward, but she toggled back on her speed because her vision couldn’t keep up; she had to wait for the flashes. It was the only way to be safe.
    Talk about an ugly stride. Tripping, scrambling, slipping, she began to fight her way through stinging noise and light, the threat to her life, the terror that gripped her.
    She had just entered the maze of athletic equipment when she came to the first person on the ground. It was a male and he was moaning and clutching his stomach. Her instinct was to try and help him, but she stopped herself.
    This is about survival.
    Something whizzed by her ear—a bullet? They were
shooting
at them?
    Throwing herself down, she skidded across the slick floor on her stomach and then crab-walked through the overwhelming chaos.
    She was fine until she came up to the next male who was down and writhing, his arms locked around his abdomen.
    It was Peyton.
    Keep going, she told herself. Get yourself to safety.
    As another explosion went off, right by her head, she belly-flatted to the floor and yelled into the maelstrom, “Shit!”
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    As Craeg, son of Brahl the Younger, started across the gym, he was surprised that the idea of leaving that female behind bothered him as much as it did. He didn’t know her; he didn’t owe her—she was Paradise, the receptionist from the King’s audience house, the one who had given him a printed application weeks ago.
    Which he’d needed because he was too poor to have Internet access, much less a computer or a printer.
    Back in that parlor, she had been . . . too stunning to look at. And then when he’d heard about her wanting totry out for this program? The only thing that had gone through his mind had been what humans could do to her if they caught her. Or
lessers
. Or the wrong kind of vampire male.
    Someone as beautiful as her was not safe in this world.
    Yet she seemed naive about the crucible they were all facing as trainees. The Brothers had engineered every part of this environment. Nothing had been left to chance, and nothing was going to work in favor of the candidates. Telling her what she should have already known had seemed like the only way he could help her at all—but he couldn’t waste even a moment wondering what happened to her.
    What he needed to focus on was the flashes.
    Although on the surface they seemed random, in fact there was a subtle pattern to them, and as with the beeping before the light and noise show had started, the intervals were getting shorter and shorter—so they were running out of time again.
    He