Read Damned if I Don't (The Harker Trilogy Book 2) for Free Online Page B

my torso, his body at my back. He turns me away, shielding me from the onslaught as he roars in response to her attack.
    The girl reappears and her eyes widen at Jude’s answering challenge. It’s almost animalistic.
    In the split second their eyes are locked, I see another flash of movement behind my cousin.
    “ Carl! ” I scream.
    Carl, who isn’t blessed with Harker super powers, moves too slowly as I see an identical shape appear out of the darkness, ready to go for his throat. The girl grabs my all-too-human cousin and sinks her fangs into his neck. No glamour, no way to soften the blow. I know for a fact that being bitten like that hurts like hell.
    Blind rage fills me. Time stands still as the power pumps through my veins. Suddenly, I find the ability to communicate with my pyrokinesis. My adrenaline peaks. It would be easy let go of the power inside me and incinerate these bitches.
    Why the hell not?
    I mutter the Latin spell, to lend my power form as it leaves my body. The fire erupts and I feel it through my hand and fingertips. I manage to slip out of Jude’s grasp before I turn him to dust.
    “ Edie! ” he yells.
    I’ve got it under control.
    I catch the closest schoolgirl, the one that’s attacking Jude, in the chest, setting her on fire like a bonfire at a Girl Scout camp. Kumbayah, bitch. She screams as she crumples, and blows away into dust.
    I turn my sights onto the second one, and storm my way towards her. I see the fear in her eyes as I move towards her. Fear . When she is the one terrorizing and feeding on my cousin. For some reason, that pisses me off even more, and it apparently makes me look more fearsome, because she retracts her fangs and backs away from my cousin. She’s muttering something as she lets go of Carl, who collapses to the ground.
    She hurt him.
    I raise my hand and feel the surge of power as I aim it towards her. The flash of light from my pyrokinesis illuminates everyone’s frightened faces around me.
    “ Edie! ”
    My hand is knocked out of the way just as the blast of energy shoots off into the night sky, missing her entirely. Anyone for miles would have thought they’d seen a shooting star.
    Through my white-hot anger, I whirl on the person who stopped my attack, and Jude brings his arms around me.
    I screech, unable to think clearly, blind to anything but killing. I’m about to turn my pyrokinesis on him, when his lips brush mine, bringing me back from berserker mode. The power leaves me like a storm surge leaving the beach, and my legs lock underneath me.
    “Shhh, Edie,” he whispers in my ear. “We need her. Alive .”
    “I’m sorry,” I whisper, mortified that I’d been about to turn my power on him, as the world tilts again and I struggle with a wave of nausea.
    Jude catches me before I fall and gently places me on the ground. From the hard concrete, I watch as he takes the discarded katana and moves faster than my eyes can follow. He spears the other girl in the chest, to the right of her heart. He rams her backwards against the wall, impaling her to the brick with the sword. She screams and scrabbles at the blade, cutting her hands in her attempt to pull it out.
    But it holds fast. She’s going nowhere.
    I manage to lift my head enough to see Carl’s unconscious form, and Dean stumbling back towards us, shocked.
    And then I pass out. Which is probably a good thing.

Chapter 7
    Jude
     
    Well, fuck.
    Tonight went to hell in a handbasket pretty damn quickly. I guess that shows that everything can turn around in the blink of an eye.
    I hadn’t expected Reiko and Ryoko to follow us back to the car. And goddammit, I should have. Just because they’re bouncers for the Hive doesn’t mean they’d never leave their post. Not usually, but fuck , nothing should surprise me these days. They saw me take Dean out of the basement. They followed me here.
    And, fucking hell, they attacked, seeing us talk to the Harker. Oh God, they heard us talking about the