The Reckoning Read Online Free PDF Page B

patrolman’s body, making him feel alive and tingly.
    I reached for the thought bubble, extracting the memory at the moment we came into it, making sure I took it all. Pulling it toward me, it vanished. I had no idea where the memories went after I extracted them, but it really didn’t matter. I looked around briefly, hoping to discover secrets, but he was a low-level Emporium soldier, prevented by his fierce sense of loyalty from becoming too curious.
    “We’ll need to put them beyond those trees,” I said before reaching into the other man’s mind. “Just where the van comes into view. If we’re lucky, they’ll think the Hunters jumped them at that point and won’t guess that I took away their last memories.”
    “We’ll leave something behind from the Hunters,” Stella said. “Not something too obvious. I’m tempted to leave a couple of the Hunters themselves, but we don’t want to be responsible for their deaths. I don’t know what the Emporium will think of why the Hunters didn’t take the guards, though. If the Hunters had knocked them out, they would have taken them prisoner.”
    Ritter shook his head. “As long as the Emporium doesn’t suspect anyone was ever inside the house, it really doesn’t matter now. We can’t change things.”
    By the time I’d finished with the second man, most of the Hunters had been thrown into their van, and Ritter was carrying the first Emporium patrolman to the location I’d indicated. “Tell him to go about ten feet to the left,” I said to Mari when Ritter stopped. She nodded and shifted next to him.
    Stella grabbed the shoulders of the second man as Mari reappeared to help her. Ritter passed them at the halfway point, unfazed by their rejection of his offer to help. “Go get yourself some curequick,” Stella told him. “Or at least a little morphine.”
    Since we weren’t in any impending danger and we didn’t have any other jobs to accomplish right away, I knew Ritter would let his body heal at its naturally speeded-up rate without using the addictive curequick.
    Ritter grunted, but instead of going to the car, he came to where I had staggered to my feet. “We’d better get going. We may still run into more trouble.” He hesitated a second before asking, “Are you okay?”
    “Me?” I forced a laughed. “Last I checked, you’re the one bleeding. Who was it that said not to get shot? You’re lucky he didn’t blow your brains out.”
    “Next time I’ll move faster.” As he put an arm around me and led me in the direction of the car, practically supporting my weight, his presence hit me like a punch to the gut. In a normal life I wouldn’t have been able to break into someone’s mind, the bullet would have hit Ritter straight on, and he would have died. Really died. Because in a normal life he wouldn’t have the Unbounded gene. I wanted to weep with the tragedy of mortality.
    Almost at once, the emotion passed. In my old life, I wouldn’t live the way I did now. Or fight. Or love—with the knowledge that we had two thousand years ahead of us.
    “You’re not going to let me forget this, are you?” he asked, his voice the gentle mixture of amusement and determination that he reserved only for me.
    “Not on your life.” He might still look gory, but that only made him more attractive. What’s more, I didn’t care what my attraction said about me.
    Stella was to drive the Hunters’ van with Ritter riding shotgun, while Mari and I followed in the rental car. As Mari started the engine, a glimpse of white drew my attention to the trees near the unconscious Unbounded. I concentrated on it. Definitely a life force. A face moved into view, peering at us from behind a tree. If my impression wasn’t mistaken, it was Walker, the blond guard from the security room. He hadn’t been out earlier because I’d been checking, and I didn’t think he’d seen us get into the vehicles, so he wouldn’t be able to identify us. Hopefully, whoever he