Valentine's Resolve (Vampire Earth 6)

"Same here", Valentine said, trying to remember not to reach for

the flare gun until all the Big Mouths were out of the water and hopping toward the entrances the way they'd been trained. He adjusted his rifle sling around his neck - the Chinese carbine had a hell of a kick and he wanted it tight against his shoulder...

She peeked over the lip of the riverbank. "You know there's a tradition in the OXFs. If a commander falls, and the second still wins a victory, all the spoils go to him. Or her".

The gun flashed toward him and fired.

Valentine lurched away as the muzzle turned toward him - over a decade of being around guns taught one to keep out of the way of barrels - but even Cat reflexes weren't faster than a bullet. At first he felt a hard thump at the bottom of his right rib cage. Then he discovered he was in the water, bobbing toward the falls, blood warming the interior of his suit.

He saw a Big Mouth turn toward him. Its jaws opened and Valentine instinctively pulled his feet away, oddly calm.

The last thing he remembered before the jaws engulfed him was Nageezi's face in the dark, as she gestured, lifting a chemical light of her own.

She was smiling.

Bearfire: Ask twenty different Bears to describe the feeling of Bearfire running through their bodies and you will get twenty different answers. Some speak in terms of space and time, everything slowed down and yet compressed. Others describe it mentally, as a determined form of psychosis, where every obstacle, from a minor vexation to a hail of machine-gun fire, is overcome by boundless violence. Most describe physiological changes: heat, euphoria, a terrible driving energy.

Ask the same number of doctors to describe the injuries they've seen Bears survive, fighting on to victory and recovery or toppling only once what's left of their bodies falls apart, and be prepared to have a short book's worth of incredible stories.

This is one of them.

* * *

You fueling cunt!

Valentine realized he couldn't breathe or see, and all he felt was a horrible, slimy mess surrounding him, seeping into hairline and nostril, lip and ear hole.

Can't breathe, wet cold panic

And flipped around again, violently jostled.

Wet hot fear

--turning into

White-hot anger.

Valentine wriggled a hand up, closed fingers around the corded knife hilt.

Red!

He lashed out, hand and foot, head and arm. Stabbed hard with the knife handle, punctured, punched through resistance, then with a long backhanded sweep opened up the voluminous gullet of the Big Mouth.

It vomited him out before he could fight his way free, rolled away, stricken and thrashing.

Valentine broke the surface of the hard-flowing river, hurt as he sucked air, found himself bouncing, got his toes pointed downstream, fetched up against a rock, lost it, slid against another, caught it, losing his knife in his desperation to get a grip.

He pulled himself half out of the rushing river, saw a long leg flail as the wounded Big Mouth went over the falls.

He climbed up onto the rock, thought about his wound, reached, and felt the hot wet blood against his palm. The bullet had plowed one long furrow along his rib cage.

You'll live.

She won't.

He jumped to another rock, sucked a deep breath of air, felt pain again, realized his rifle was still bouncing against his chest.

He removed the weapon's final proof against liquid infiltration, a heavy-duty condom over the barrel, and found a stone to crouch where he could watch events at the Outlook.