The Black Tide (Outcast 3)

“I have every faith that Nuri will find a way to stop her.” He shrugged. “And it's not like she predicted that you were—in any way—vital in doing that.”

It was so rationally said, and yet so very insane. “No matter where you go, Branna, Nuri and Jonas will find you, and they’ll most certainly kill you.”

“Oh, they can try,” he said, unperturbed. “But I know their network far too well to ever be caught by it.”

“So what the hell are you waiting for?” I tightened my grip on the gun and tried to do the same with the pain. “Why don't you just kill me and be done with it?”

“Because I want to watch you suffer. I want you to feel the agony and utter uselessness that I did when your kind erased my entire clan. And when I finally see fear rather than defiance in your eyes, only then will I kill you.”

“Don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.”

Even as I said it, I whipped out the gun and fired. He was fast—faster by far than me—and the bullets smashed into his right knee and his left shin rather than his black heart. The rest missed completely, disappearing into the gelatinous shadows.

But Branna was at least down, and cursing, his knee and his leg a bloody, broken mess. It gave me time. Time to gather strength; time to get the damn bullet out of my shoulder. I switched the gun to my left hand, but my fingers were numb and unresponsive, and simply wouldn't grip it.

Fear surged anew. I let the weapon drop, unclipped my knife, and with my eyes on Branna, I plunged the blade into my shot shoulder. The wave of new pain that hit was so fierce that for a moment I feared I was going to black out, but I fought the sensation with everything I had.

Branna rolled onto his stomach and pushed upright. Thankfully, the gun he'd been holding lay between us. Part of my brain was screaming at me to pick up my weapon and fire every last bullet into his traitorous flesh, to take him out before he could reach that gun and finish what he’d started. But the other part was just as fiercely warning I needed to remove the thing in my shoulder before it killed me.

And that prospect was frighteningly close. The waves of heated agony washing from the epicenter of my shoulder were increasing in strength and volume, and I had a bad, bad feeling I only had minutes left.

I dropped the knife and dug my fingers into the wound. A scream escaped and sweat poured down my face, stinging my eyes and blurring my vision. I gritted my teeth and pushed my fingers deeper into my flesh, until I felt something solid. Simply touching it sent another wave of cold sweat and agony crashing though me—how in Rhea was I ever going to move it?

A grunt of pain had my gaze leaping upwards. Branna had begun to drag himself toward his gun. Why he wasn’t shifting shape to heal himself I couldn’t say. All shifter’s cells had a set point—an optimum level of health and strength that they always reverted back to—which meant the only wounds they couldn’t heal by moving from one form to another was silver.

But perhaps he didn’t want to waste the few minutes it would take. Perhaps he simply wanted to kill me while I was still incapacitated.

Energy and determination surged. I bit down on my lip, using one pain to counter the other, then gripped the bullet with two fingers and pulled it out.

It wasn't metal. It was wood.

Like most déchet, I’d been warned both before and during the war that my vampire genes might make me vulnerable to wood. But I’d never had such a weapon used against me, not during the war and certainly not after it. The shifters obviously hadn’t been aware of the inbuilt design fault, or they would have used wood against us.

The fact that Branna had shot me with such a bullet could only mean one thing—Dream had been a part of the déchet program. There was no other way she could have known about the vulnerability.

I dropped the bullet to the ground and tried to force my body upright. I didn't succeed. My head swam, pain pulsed through me, and my vision shifted in and out of focus. But if I collapsed now, Branna would win.

I forced bloody fingers to pick up the gun and then shot him. Not once, not twice, but four times. I put one bullet through each forearm, waited until he collapsed onto his face, and then shot out each shoulder. Blood sprayed and he roared, but it was a sound of fury and frustration rather than pain.

I felt no satisfaction. I barely felt relief.

Despite the fact it would have undoubtedly been safer to simply kill him outright, I needed to question him. But there was some deeper, darker part of me that also wanted him to suffer.

I crawled forward and knocked his weapon well away from us both. He might be broken but I wasn’t about to take any chances.

But the effort of moving had taken what little strength I had left and the buzzing in my thoughts—the desire to just let go and slip away—was so damn strong that I actually did close my eyes. I quickly forced them open again and sucked in several deep breaths, fighting for control over both my

body and the pain. When the latter had eased just a little, I called to the healing trance and slipped just far enough into it to keep awareness.

Animals were at their most dangerous when cornered, and Branna would not be the exception.

He watched me, emanating a rage that was so raw, so deep and furious, that it burned across my skin like flame.

“Tell me about the black woman you met at the café on Tenth,” I said. “The one who handed you a small leather bag.”

Surprise briefly lifted the anger and hatred from his expression. “I’d rather die than give someone like you any sort of information.”

“That woman,” I ground out, “was Dream in her true form. If we can find her, we can put a stop to her mad schemes, Branna. Surely even you cannot want to live in a world that is controlled by the wraiths and the vampires.”