Blood of Dragons by Jack Campbell

Author:Jack Campbell [Campbell, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9781625672926
Publisher: Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
Published: 2017-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Kira’s pistol was still in her holster. Aunt Bev had acted out moments like this for Kira, demonstrating that if someone already had a weapon pointed in your general direction, they could get off a few shots at you before you had a chance to draw your own. And even if Kira avoided getting shot before she had her own weapon out, she’d be facing three more sailors awakened by the noise, and forced to fire multiple times herself. Even if she escaped getting hit, everyone in earshot would know what the sound of a gun battle meant.

Her thoughts took only a fraction of a second before Kira bolted over Nik’s body and along the trail to the northwest, shoving Jason into motion before her. She heard a babble of noise behind them as the other sailors awoke, but between the twists and turns of the trail and the darkness, Kira knew that she and Jason were already out of sight.

“The others went this way!” Jason whispered fiercely to Kira as they ran. A shot sounded behind them, closely followed by a second shot. “And they’re going to be coming back!”

“I know!” Kira said. “They left over half an hour ago. Keep running for another several minutes and keep your eyes out for somewhere to hide!”

“What if the ones behind us chase us?”

“I don’t think they’ll do that, especially if they wake up Nik and ask him who knocked him out.”

“What do you mean? He saw you! And what was that stuff about the night of his life?”

“I was pretending to be Mara’s daughter! A blood-sucking young male-seducing monster! That’s why he was too scared to shout a warning. And you are never to tell anyone about it! Aside from it having been extremely embarrassing, my mother will kill me if she hears I did that! Mother would never have pretended to be Mara, no matter how bad things were. Not in a million years would she have done that!”

Kira saw a place where the land fell off steeply into a series of small ridges beside the trail. “Here. Down here.”

They dropped down to one of the ridges, standing on it with their heads about half a lance beneath the edge of the trail, hugging the rock before them. Kira hoped they would be almost invisible in the darkness even if someone looked down this way. Jason had his knife out again. She drew her pistol, clicked off the safety, and waited.

The sound of pounding feet came from the northwest, followed by a rush of movement on the trail above them. Kira tried to count, deciding that it was the entire group that had gone on ahead.

Once they were past, she set the safety and holstered her weapon again, and she and Jason helped each other back up onto the trail. They set off at a trot, trying to maintain a pace that they could sustain. “We’re ahead of them again,” Jason said.

“We hope,” Kira said. “Those guys were already really tired.

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