Edie Spence (Book 5): Bloodshifted Read Online Free PDF

wasn’t fighting a she; there were huge muscles underneath the cotton in my hands. The man I was wrestling with took advantage of my half second of surprise and grabbed me, whirling me down, and I knew he was trying to hold me against the stone while reaching out for the weapon he’d dropped.
    I punched him with my free hand, in the chest exposed below his reaching arm, and was horrified to feel ribs break. The man groaned but didn’t stop reaching. I knew I couldn’t take the chance of him grabbing it, whatever it was—I punched again, and the same ribs that I’d just broken cracked fresh under my fist.
    I wasn’t the only one who was at least a little invulnerable. I punched again, and again in the same spot, remembering when I’d watched Lucas’s hand pierce a werewolf’s chest with his own supernatural strength. With each blow I could feel the man shudder over me as if he’d been shot, but he didn’t let go of me or guard himself; he just kept straining out. It made me even more afraid of him reaching the weapon—whatever it was had to be bad.
    Our stalemate couldn’t last forever—and I’d rather it ended on my terms than his. I used the force of one more punch and the leveraging of a leg to get him up and hurl him away from me, and from the thing he was reaching for, and then I went for it. I grabbed a handle, snatched it up, and fell into another soundless crouch. My feet were on top of the zebra skin now. I instantly knew where in the room I was, and from the feel of the handle and the weight of one end, the thing I was holding was a hammer.
    My eyes widened in the dark. A hammer wasn’t a joke. Whoever I was fighting had meant to kill me. And if I died, so would my baby. My first instinct was to scream, and I bit my lips to keep it back. I was supposed to have eight months and then get home safe, not be murdered on my first day here. It wasn’t fair—but nothing had been fair for a while now, had it? My baby and I still weren’t safe.
    Something cold and angry flowed through my veins. I felt as though a tap had been turned on inside myself; it had that feeling you get after certain shots or drugs, where your body knows that what is entering isn’t right. It felt like liquid death—like I imagined embalming fluid would feel if someone held me down and plugged it into my carotids. I forced myself to breathe in and out silently and listened with ears that were eerily good for my attacker. I was standing between him and the door, and he had to know that I had the hammer—he was probably trying to figure out if I was willing to use it.
    Half of me was. I could see myself cracking his skull like an eggshell, and while the thought of his brains spilling out made part of me recoil in disgust, this new dark part of me was completely fine with him getting what he deserved. I shivered in the darkness, trying not to listen to it.
    A true daytimer wouldn’t think twice about mayhem, and neither did this new part of me. I could feel muscles bunching up without thought, as half of me readied like a hunting cat.
    But I wasn’t one of them yet, and I didn’t even want to be one. I hadn’t gotten a choice in being changed—and I didn’t want anyone’s brains on my hands. Maybe I’d feel differently later, or I’d invest in gloves, but not today.
    I took the hammer in both hands and snapped the head of it off at the top of the handle before I could do anything else.
    The man ran past me at the sound, rushing for the door. I swung the shaft of the hammer up like a club, catching him in his chest and taking him down to the ground on instinct, and then, holding the head of the hammer in my hand like a roll of quarters, I knelt down and punched his stomach, hard. I felt the infirmity of flesh as he gasped, all the air knocked out of him.
    Just because I didn’t want to kill him didn’t mean I wanted him to escape.
    I knew whatever advantage I had could be temporary, so I didn’t stop. I was scared to set