Lost by Dean Murray Page B

gun went off again and again each time his feet left the
pavement. In anyone else they would have been wildly uncontrolled
shots, but Ash was scoring on the last hybrid with what looked like
half of them.
    I'd started to
fall with the hybrid I'd been tangled up with, but I freed myself
from him and started forward still acting on reflex. A distant
portion of my mind wondered why Ash was shooting so wildly when each
missed shot had a chance of hitting Kristin, but I couldn't dwell on
the question, not with how close the other hybrid was.
    Ash had a head
start on me, but merely human legs could never hope to outrun a
hybrid. I was less than half a step behind him now, close enough that
I could feel the shockwaves rippling through the air with each shot.
We were less than ten feet from the enforcer when Ash squeezed off
his last two rounds in such close succession that they almost sounded
like one long shot.
    The slide on
Ash's gun locked back, and the other hybrid dropped his arms now that
he no longer needed them to shield his face. Ash's empty magazine was
already falling away from his gun as he reached for a fresh magazine.
    The enforcer
was bleeding from more than a dozen spots, but Ash and Kristin hadn't
hit anything vital enough to put that massive body down permanently.
Given enough time it was still possible that he'd bleed out, but the
fight was going to be over—one way or the other—before
that happened.
    I saw a set of
five claws go slicing through the air and knew that I wasn't going to
be close enough to stop the enforcer from slicing Ash in half. I
reached forward anyway, hoping my judgment as to Ash's chances of
survival were off, but knowing that wasn't the case.
    I took one last
step forward; I was perfectly positioned now to stop those deadly
claws a foot after they cut into Ash's chest, but suddenly Ash
wasn't where I'd been expecting him to be. Rather than barreling into
the enforcer, he threw himself forward, turning mid fall so that he
landed on his back as he skidded head-first between our opponent's
legs.
    It shouldn't
have worked, wouldn't have worked if not for the fact that I was just
behind him. Normally the other hybrid would have still opened Ash up
from one end to the other, but I got my claws in place just in time
to save Ash.
    I punched my
free hand into the side of the enforcer's chest as Ash went skidding
across the pavement, his slick leather jacket simultaneously saving
his skin and making it possible for him to continue sliding long
after he normally would have stopped. The other hybrid dodged to the
side just enough that I missed his heart, but it didn't matter. Ash
had a new magazine in his pistol and I heard the slide on his gun
slam home with a finality that told me he wasn't going to wait for me
to get out of the way.
    I used my grip
to shove the enforcer up and back onto his heels, and then dropped
down so that his chest was interposed between my head and Ash. Half a
second later the muted hiss of two more silenced shots put an end to
the last threat on the road with us.
    I dropped the
corpse that I'd been supporting and opened my mouth to tell Ash that
his last two shots had been unacceptably reckless, but the words
never made it past my tongue. Ash's pistol was lying forgotten on the
road and he already had both hands inside of Kristin's chest in an
attempt to keep her from bleeding to death.
    "Get the
first-aid kit out of the car!"
    I shifted back
to human form as I reached the SUV, ripped Ash's bag open, and was
back at his side within three seconds. I wasn't as experienced of a
surgeon as Donovan or Dominic, but I knew my way around the inside of
the human body and what I saw as I knelt down next to Kristin made my
stomach knot up.
    I wouldn't have
bet on anyone surviving those kinds of wounds for more than two or
three minutes, not any amount of money, not for any odds.
     
     

Chapter 7
    Isaac Nazir
Fifteen miles off of I-55
Eastern Louisiana
    I'd never seen
Ash lose