Marked by Dean Murray Page B

now that he wasn't actively draining them. We
still had at least a second or two before they would recover enough
to pull themselves up to their feet and be a threat, but our people
were too scattered. We needed them concentrated around the SUV's so
that they could take advantage of the small window of time during
which the enforcers were vulnerable, but if they'd stayed together
they would have been too easy for the sniper to pick off.
    All
of that went through my mind in a flash as the RV finally got up to
twenty miles per hour. I was contemplating trying to run the hybrids
over, as unlikely as that was to work considering just how fast they
were, and then I saw Mallory. She hadn't gone over to try and get
Alec out of the line of fire, but then again given how crippled Agony
had left her it was unlikely she could have done anything to save
him.
    Instead
she continued limping toward the SUV's with the same determined gait
that she'd used so far. She was less than twenty feet away from the
enforcers when she raised her handgun and sighted in on the first
hybrid.
    They
really weren't that far away in the grand scheme of things, but I
couldn't imagine a world where I could have hit someone from so far away. Luckily Mallory wasn't me;
her first shot was perfectly placed in the chest of her target and
the next one followed up a split second later.
    The
sound of the handgun was nothing more than muted pops in comparison
to the crack of the hypervelocity rounds from the rifle. As another
shot rang out from the sniper I absently wondered how I'd ever
thought that first shot had come from Mallory. This time the sniper
hit Paul. I didn't see where the shot landed, but Paul went down with
a suddenness that initially made me think that he'd just tripped.
    Mallory
was still working her way through the enforcers. The third one had
pulled himself to his knees by the time that she started in on him
and it took three shots to put him down. Vik was past the initial
shock of being shot at for the first time and he blurred into motion.
I shouldn't have been able to follow him—maybe I simply
visualized what I thought was happening, since my mind wasn't capable
of following his actual motions—but it looked like he raked his
claws across the throat of one enemy and then put his fist into the
chest of a second enforcer.
    I
felt a tiny thrill of hope that we might be able to salvage the
situation and then the sniper fired again and Vik rocked backwards as
his shoulder turned into a mess of red. Mallory swapped magazines and
resumed firing, scoring a shot on the last enforcer as he lunged
toward her.
    Mallory
was as good as dead. In her human form she was faster than I was, but
even if she hadn't been crippled she still wouldn't have been a match
for a hybrid.
    I
had a fraction of a second to begin mourning her and then Vik was
there. His left arm wasn't working, but that didn't stop him from
tackling the other hybrid like an NFL lineman. The two of them hadn't
even come down from their first bounce before Mallory put another
bullet into the enforcer's head.
    It
was the kind of risky shot that meant she and Vik were going to have
words later, but I didn't have time for worrying about that. After
what felt like forever, I was finally pulling up next to Alec and
Paul.
    I
angled the RV so that the right side was facing the sniper's
position, and then bailed out of the driver's seat into the tiny
sliver of ground that was hidden from the sniper's view. I wasn't
under any illusion that the RV was actually going to stop a bullet;
the best I could hope for was that he wouldn't hit anybody if he
couldn't see us.
    A
second later another shot rang out, punching a hole in the aluminum
skin of the RV that was bigger than both of my fists put together. I
ducked despite knowing that it wasn't going to make any kind of
difference. If the next shot had my name on it then nothing I did was
going to change the outcome.
    Somehow
Mallory had made it over to my side.