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

him free until I found out who he was and why he’d attacked me. He tried to leverage his legs up, and I swung the shaft out to the side, punching at this new target as hard as I could without thought, catching him simultaneously hearing and feeling his nearest femur snap. Oh, God—
    He exhaled in a rush of pain, and then gasped, “Mercy!”
    A ploy to gain time to heal? I didn’t want to hit him a second time—but would he fight me again if I didn’t keep breaking things? He’d tried to kill me—and my baby. I let the darkness do what it wanted to in me and swatted the hammer’s handle down again, smashing the same spot on his leg between the hard wood and the stone floor, hearing a fresh crack.
    “Mercy!” he grunted.
    The obvious pain in his voice brought me back from the brink. This wasn’t me. I couldn’t torture someone who’d already surrendered. Taking in a shuddering breath, I lowered the handle to the ground. “Jackson!” I howled—hoping that the person I was using as a punching bag wasn’t him.
    The light came on in the room, momentarily blinding me. My opponent was blinded too, lying in front of me, leg mangled but healing. It was Lars. Celine—present for the whole fight, ensconced on her bed—finally intervened.
    “Why did you attack me?” I shouted down at him. I could see his loose leg pulling into place, the bone resetting. “Why?” I shouted at the top of my lungs. Soon he’d be better and I’d have to make a horrible choice—
    “Edie!” came a new voice. I whirled, and Jackson was in the doorway. “Calm down. You’re safe.”
    “No I’m not! He attacked me!” I clutched the fist with the hammerhead in it to my chest.
    “You’re winning. You’ve won.” Jackson patted the air between us to calm me as if I were a wild horse.
    “But he tried to kill me! Why?”
    Jackson spared Lars a dark look. “He fought you because he thought he had to. Because he’s a fool.”
    Time slowed back down as I did, and I realized my entire fight with Lars had taken thirty seconds. A minute, tops. I looked down at Lars, his leg slowly becoming whole, and looked at Jackson to watch his face when he answered me.
    “Will he attack me again?”
    “Probably not tonight.” He frowned, but I didn’t get the sense he was lying.
    And now that I could see I was kicking and breaking someone already down on the floor—I shook my head and quickly stood up.
    “Mercy, mercy,” Celine taunted Lars, from the safety of her bed. Now that he wasn’t in mortal peril, Lars scrabbled backward. It seemed like it was taking him longer to heal each time. Maybe injuries were cumulative? I already knew from Y4 that the healing properties of vampire blood were finite, one of many reasons why daytimers stayed close to their Masters.
    “You and Lars and Natasha share the same Master. There’s not always enough blood to go around—and blood is power,” Jackson explained, as Lars transformed from someone who looked like he’d lost a fight back to the man I’d seen earlier this morning, minus his torn clothes.
    “I was here before you,” Lars growled. “Never forget that.” He brushed by me on purpose on his way out of the room. I stood my ground as his shoulder hit mine.
    “So he thought he’d get the drop on me? By attacking me my first night out?”
    “He was hoping the blood hadn’t taken yet. Apparently, it has.” Jackson shrugged. “Plus, he’s not much for long-term planning. He’s not the lull-you-into-a-sense-of-comfortable-security type.”
    I stared at him, trying to keep my thoughts off my face.
    “Like me,” he added, with a wolfish grin. My fist tightened around the added weight of the hammerhead. “Oh, come on, you knew we were both thinking it,” he went on.
    Despite my horror, it was hard not to crack a smile. I tossed the hammer handle up and down in my left hand. It was old wood, solid. “The only thing I know for sure now is the next person who tries to wake me is going to