One Grave at a Time (Night Huntress #6)(84)
After what felt like a thousand years, I realized I could see again. I was tucked into the fetal position, still rolling blindly across the fields. I used my blurry vision to spot the few remaining patches of fire on my feet where my boots had melted around them, then slapped at them. The movement sent riptides of anguish on top of what was already more pain than I could ever remember feeling, but I kept swatting at the flames until they were out and all the shoe remains were off my feet.
For a dazed moment as I looked down at myself, I thought I was somehow still wearing my black jeans and blouse. But then I realized the dark tatters hanging over me weren’t clothes—it was my own charred skin. In the midst of the searing pain, I wanted to vomit and scream out of sheer horror, but Francine and Lisa were still fighting for their lives against a maniac determined to murder them. No matter what I looked like or how much it hurt, I didn’t have the option of panicking over the fire’s ravages or waiting until I finished healing to move. I had to act now, or burning myself to crisp by running into that fiery projectile had been for nothing.
I got up, unable to stuff back my gasp at what moving did to my blackened and cracking skin. You’ll heal, I repeated ruthlessly, then tried to force myself into the air. At the first attempt, I flopped back down immediately, cornhusks tearing into my still-partially-charred skin when I crashed. With another pained gasp, I got back up and tried again, flinging myself forward.
This time, I made it about thirty yards before I crashed, but it was enough for me to pinpoint where the deadly amber glow was. I ran in that direction, giving up on flying, the pain slowly starting to ease. Normally vampire injuries healed almost instantly, but with the extent of the damage the flames had caused both to skin and muscle, the healing was taking several minutes. Or it hurt so badly that it felt that way.
I burst into the triangular clearing right as flames licked the dry vegetation at the base of Lisa’s pole. Without slowing down, I barreled into her and lifted upward at the same time. The pole stayed in the ground, but the impact ripped Lisa free of the metal bindings. When the gasoline ignited and shot up the pole, she was already several feet above it, safely free of the flames.
That didn’t make her muffled screams decrease. Right before we crashed down, I saw that she stared at me with abject terror. Then I flipped so I’d take the bulk of the landing, stuffing back a shout as the impact reverberated through me, and the husks felt like they ripped all the new skin off my back.
Lisa expressed her gratitude for me sheltering her against the worst of the crash by punching and kicking me as soon as we skidded to a halt. The rough fall had knocked her gag loose, so she screamed between huge gasps of breath. Normally a human smacking and kicking me would have laughably little effect, but I fought the urge to crawl back into the fetal position and concentrated on catching her hands instead.
“Don’t hit me, that really hurts right now!”
My voice was hoarse to the point of being unrecognizable. Breathing in a lungful of fire will do that to a person, even if that person is a vampire. Lisa stopped fighting me, but she still had fear reeking from her pores even over the stench of gasoline.
“Cat?” she managed, sounding like she didn’t believe it.
“Who the hell else would it be?”
To make up for my sharp words, I tried to smile, but then stopped when that made her recoil. A glance at my arm showed I had a layer of soot over mostly healed skin, but there were still some grisly patches of charred flesh. Okay, so I looked like a crispy demon fresh from the pit, but it was still me.
A fresh river of tears spilled onto her cheeks. “B-but I saw you burn.”
“As Bones would say, right you are,” I told her with a shudder of remembrance. “I healed. Mostly.”
She still looked too shocked to believe me. “But . . . but . . .”
“No time for chatting, we need to get you out of here, and I have to find Francine,” I muttered, grasping her again. This time, she didn’t try to fight me off, but she did yelp when I lifted her and ran toward where my last aerial glimpse showed me the nearest stretch of road was. She’d be safer in the street, away from the fire that might start to spread even more if it wasn’t put out soon.
As soon as I saw pavement, I let her go, dashing back into the cornfield. The pain was almost gone now, to my vast relief. That allowed me to run faster, trying to listen for any sounds that would lead me to Francine. But just like when I walked in here with Sarah, the natural sounds of the drying husks rubbing together combined with the crackles from the nearby fire and the confusion in the other section of the fields as people started to notice the orange lights, my senses were effectively blanketed.
I was about to propel myself over the field and try flying again when a sharp crack rang out, and the stalk next to me exploded. I whirled in time to avoid the next bullet aimed at me, charging toward Kramer with vicious intentness. He’d landed those shots before because I was walking very slowly with Sarah bracing herself on my shoulder, but he wouldn’t get that lucky again.
I wrenched the gun away from him, taking ruthless pleasure in sending it sailing off as far as I could throw it. Silver bullets wouldn’t hurt him, so the gun was useless to me. He snarled as he tried to force me to the ground, but I used his wide stance against him by ramming my knee into his groin with enough force to pulverize his parts.
“Who’s crying now, motherf*cker?” I spat, using that same knee to blast into his face when he doubled over. Those impacts hurt me, but not as much as they did him, and knowing that made my pain sweet. I sent another brutal hammer into his side, then another one, and another one.