Twice Bitten (Chicagoland Vampires 3)

Maybe because of that last dose of training, my mouth and body were moving before my brain had a chance to catch up.

"Get down!" I ordered, taking the necessary steps forward, my hands at their shoulders, pressing them down, and when they didn't budge, I yelled it again. They hit the ground just as the hammer clicked outside, milliseconds before bullets shattered the glass in the picture window. Adam had dropped on top of Gabriel, his arms a protective cocoon over Gabriel's head. Ethan had done the same thing to me. His body was over mine, his arms over my head, his lips at my ear. The contact made me shudder with desire, even as chaos broke out around us. And I wasn't thrilled about the role reversal; I was his guard, after all. I was supposed to protect him. But my rank as Sentinel didn't stop him from surrounding me with his body and from yelling, "Be still!"

even as I struggled beneath him, trying to reverse our positions to keep him out of harm's way.

Be still, he silently repeated, as I huddled on the floor, enveloped by the feel and warmth and smell of him.

"What the f**k is this?" Gabe yelled out, his voice thick with fury, magic peppering the smoke-and-glass-filled air.

"Everyone behind the bar!" Jason said, glancing up, equal menace in his eyes. I'd only ever seen two shifters angry - Nick Breckenridge and his father, Michael. At the time, they'd been pissed at me and Ethan, thinking we'd leveled a threat against them. They'd been protecting family, a shifter instinct. Now I saw the same ferocity in Jason's eyes - the anger at being threatened, the need to protect family.

I nodded at Jason, pulled one of Ethan's hands into mine, and gave his body an instructional shove.

"Bar," I yelled at him as bullets continued raining around us, a hailstorm of steel. The vicinity of it prickled my instincts further, making me want to fight and give chase - and not just because my Master, the one who'd made me, was in the line of fire.

No - I wanted to fight because I was a predator, two months past the first time I'd felt the tug of flight-or-fight. I'd tempered my steel with my own blood . . . and I was ready to feed that steel with someone else's.

Ethan maneuvered his body off mine, then let me tug him to his feet. We did a half run, half crawl to the bar, then dropped behind it, moving to the end to give the shifters room to join us. They crawled in behind, then turned to put their backs to the bar, whipping out weapons to respond to the cavalcade of bullets.

"Put the guns away!" Gabriel said over the din. "This is going to be enough of a police clusterfuck. We don't need our bullets being analyzed, too."

Guns were dutifully lowered, but cell phones quickly replaced them; calls were made, I assumed, to the alphas' respective Packs. I turned back to Ethan, giving his body a once-over. You're all right? I silently asked him, then raised my gaze to his eyes. They'd gone silver.

My stomach sank, my first thought that one of the shifters had been shot and Ethan was vamping out.

There could hardly have been a worse time for biting. But then he lifted a hand to my cheek, his silvered pupils tracking across my face, as if assuring himself that I was okay. I'm fine, I told him.

That was when Gabriel, on my other side, let out a string of curses. I immediately looked to the left and offered my own swear - Berna had just emerged from a door on the other side of the bar, shock in her expression.

"What in the sam - "

Someone called out, "Berna - get down! Go back!"

She looked toward us, but she was too surprised to process the order, even as bullets flew through the air. Someone had to get to her.

Someone with speed.

I was up and moving before Ethan could stop me, vaulting over alphas on my way to her side. Bullets still rushed around us - the perpetrator well armed and apparently prepped for a prolonged assault - but I ignored them.

After all, I was immortal.

She was not.

I felt the tear of bullets as I ran toward her, knife-hot pain ripping through skin and muscle. There was panic in her eyes when I reached her, a cloud of astringent fear marking her spot in the bar. I'm sure my eyes had silvered - not from hunger, but from adrenaline - and the sight of it must have frightened her.

But we needed to move, and I didn't have time for comforting.

I also had less than a second to make the decision whether to move her back into the room she'd come from, or take her away to the bar. I had no clue what - or whom else - that door led to. The kitchen?

The back exit? If so, a secondary assault on the building?

No, thanks. I opted for the bar and the devils I already knew. I put myself between Berna's body and the window, then used the speed and strength I'd been gifted with to half run, half tow her back to the bar.

When we were tucked behind the barricade, I situated her in the corner, which I thought offered the most protection from still-flying bullets. She looked up at me, her face pale, but her expression just this side of pissed off. Blood blossomed across her shoulder. "Shots!" she said, jerking her chin toward her wound. "At me!"

I ignored the internal prick of interest, the sudden pang of hunger that tightened my stomach. This wasn't just blood - it was shifter blood. Like the difference between tomato juice and a Bloody Mary, the smell carried an extra tang of something - something animal. Something intoxicating.

I shook my head to clear the thought. Now was definitely not the time. . . .

Focusing on the task at hand, I pulled the T-shirt away from her shoulder and found a gouge at the edge of her collarbone. She was bleeding and the skin was torn, but it didn't look like the bullet had actually penetrated.

"I think it just grazed your shoulder," I told her.

"Meh," she said. "Flesh wound."

I looked around the shelves beneath the bar, then grabbed a stack of folded white towels. I pulled off one towel from the wad, lifted her arm (and got a hiss of pain for my effort) and pressed the rest of the stack to the gash. I used the loose towel to hold the make-do bandage around her arm, pulling it tight enough to keep pressure on her wound, but not so tight that I cut off her circulation. She was a waitress, after all; she was probably going to need that arm.

"I've seen worse," she petulantly said, but sat still while I knotted the ends.

"I don't care," I told her, then pointed a finger in her face when she opened her mouth to retort. "You're bleeding, and I have fangs. Don't push me."

She snapped her mouth closed with an audible click.

I sat down again, the sting of the shots I'd taken now beginning to echo through my body as the world began to slow again. Before I could blink, Ethan was in front of me, checking my body for wounds. I heard the plink of metal on the floor beside me and looked down. A bullet rolled across the floor, its end flattened. There was a corresponding hole in the thigh of my pants, the skin beneath it bloodstained, but healthy and pink. Score one for quick-speed vampire healing.