The Deadliest Bite by Jennifer Rardin

Author:Jennifer Rardin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2011-09-14T10:31:39+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Sunday, June 17, 12:15 a.m.

No other motion feels quite as exhilarating as flying, whether you’re parachuting from a Cessna Caravan at thirteen thousand feet or hang gliding off the cliffs at Mission Beach. However, in those cases you know that you have at least a decent chance of landing softly enough to maintain the integrity of your skeletal structure. Not so much when a blemuth has tossed you high into the cosmos and you’re not even sure your landing site is solid. So, while part of me grooved on defying gravity to the point that I felt like I was thumbing my nose at Mother Nature, the rest was trying desperately to figure out what I was hurtling toward.

I ruled out hot lava, just because our landing site wasn’t particularly glowing. I couldn’t hear surf, so we probably wouldn’t be swimming for it. Which left sharp, spiky rocks that could impale us in the most ghastly, gut-wrenching ways. Or some guy’s roof, in which case only a couple of us would have to worry about taking a furnace chimney up the ass while the rest of us could enjoy more typical crash-related injuries. Or—

“Trees!” Raoul cal ed out. “Get ready for a beating!”

Oh. Goody.

They were pines. So besides the abuse we took from smashing through at least half a dozen treetops whose branches tried their hardest to whip us off our perches, we also sustained slashes, cuts, and bruises that would take days to heal. But we didn’t die. I decided that was a plus.

When we final y dropped to the ground we lay there for a few minutes, gasping and sore, trying to convince ourselves we’d survived. Vayl was the first to decide he should ask the rest of us just to be sure.

“Jasmine.” He reached out to touch my bare shoulder where a piece of my shirt had ripped away. I shivered, laughed lightly. Only he could get a rise out of me after I’d nearly been stoned to death by a fal ing ceiling and then thrashed soundly by a forest. “Are you al right?” he asked.

“Yuh,” I answered. I touched my tongue, which was so sore it hadn’t wanted to make the S sound so I could reply to Vayl with a “Yes.” It was bleeding and slightly swol en. I must’ve bitten it during the landing.

Vayl sighed with relief. Then he said, “Aaron? Raoul? Did you make it?”

“We’re fine,” said Raoul.

“I need a knife!” Aaron replied. He’d already made it to his feet and was scouting for rips in his father’s cel . Though some of the bones that formed its structure had broken in the fal , the membrane itself remained horribly intact.

“Let us do this,” Vayl said as he helped me to my feet.

When Aaron started to protest I added, “We’re pretty handy with weapons. It would be a shame if you sliced half of your fingers off and bled to death at your moment of triumph, now, wouldn’t it?” First, however—“I’ve gotta talk to Aaron Senior.

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