Page 7 of Born Reckless
“Just hand it over, and no one gets hurt,” he says, his voice dripping with venom.
“Juliet,” Elena growls in warning again. “Don’t. I can handle this.”
But I don’t listen. I need this man in his place. I need there to be no fear inside of me because I lived with it for far too long.
I take a swing at him.
And at the same time, I see something flash, brilliant and silver.
And then something hot rips through my stomach.
I stagger back one step, and my hands go to my stomach. There’s warm liquid there. There’s something hard and unbendable.
A loud snarl rips through the night. I stagger back, and in an instant, Elena is in front of me, colliding with the man.
It doesn’t make sense. She… she bites his neck. And with a yank, she pulls back, blood spraying through the night. She spits something out, and it hits the ground with a wet smack. At the same time, I fall back. My head smacks against the concrete as the man hits the ground in a heap.
I feel… lighter. Humans are made of mostly liquid, and right now, it’s pouring out of me like a tap turned on. With every second, I feel it draining out of me.
“Juliet,” Elena says as she turns. And she’s a nightmare. Her eyes are glowing brilliant red. Black veins sprout from them, darkening her normally beautiful face.
And blood drips from her mouth. From her elongated, pointed teeth.
“Juliet,” she breathes again, and one second, she’s staring at me in horror, the next she’s kneeling beside me, her hands hovering over me, unsure what to do. “No, no, no. Not yet.”
Suddenly, the blade buried in my stomach is pulled out, and the pain draws a scream from me.
Elena’s hand instantly covers my mouth, stifling my scream. My eyes go wide, and I can’t breathe. Where are my lungs? Where did all the oxygen go? And what is Elena doing?
I feel her hand press into my stomach, hard. Too hard. I think she’s trying to stop the bleeding, but I feel two of my lower ribs crack.
What is happening? Why…why are her eyes glowing? Why is she moving so fast? Why am I suddenly lying on the ground, a knife wound in my stomach?
“Juliet,” my best friend says, despair and grief in her voice. But she looks like a nightmare. The blood. The red. The black. The fangs. “I’m so sorry. I should have reacted faster. I didn’t think you’d really go after him.”
“He…” I gasp for air, “threatened you.”
“I told you I could handle him,” she says. I watch as her elongated teeth retract. “I…” She shakes her head. “I’m so sorry. It…it will be over soon.”
Why isn’t she calling an ambulance? Why isn’t she calling the police?
But I can barely keep two thoughts together. Everything is getting fuzzier. It’s getting darker.
I hear someone yell out. I hear worry creeping into the voices of others.
“Elena?”
A familiar voice calls from down the sidewalk. And then footsteps are running. “Elena! Juliet!”
Mason’s face comes into my field of vision. He doesn’t look at his nightmare of a sister. His eyes go straight to my face, down to my stomach.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen this way,” Elena says in shocked horror. But her words are getting quieter. I feel like I weigh a million pounds now, instead of the lightness of a few moments ago. “I had a plan. It was all supposed to be easy. And now…”
“We have to get her out of here,” Mason says, and I feel his arms slide under me. No more is he the charming man I was having a great time with, but a man who doesn’t seem alarmed that his sister is a monster. “We have to get out of here before the cops show up.”
Deeper. Heavier. Darker.
Elena sobs, and suddenly it’s not Mason’s arms supporting me, but her thin ones. She cradles me to her chest like I weigh nothing at all. “I’m so sorry, Juliet. I’m so sorry.”