Repairer of the Breach (Stones of Fire Book 4) by Sarah Ashwood (reading eggs books .TXT) 📗
- Author: Sarah Ashwood
Book online «Repairer of the Breach (Stones of Fire Book 4) by Sarah Ashwood (reading eggs books .TXT) 📗». Author Sarah Ashwood
“Carter. Carter, where are you?” I whispered, feeling my heart sink to my feet.
I crept forward, peering anxiously at the crumbling walls and ceiling, debating how far to go. A strangled cry drew my attention. Smoke screened the person, but I heard the pain in their voice. I waved my hands in front of my face in an attempt to brush aside the smoke, the dust. Coughing, I scrambled over chunks of stone, trying to avoid injuring myself on debris.
“Hello!” I shouted in-between coughs. “Hello, who’s there? Where are you? Say something so I can follow your voice.”
“Help.” That was all the person said. I thought it was a man. “Help. Help me, please…”
The voice sounded faint. Weak. My worry increasing, I kept going, clambering over chunks of broken white stone, feeling my jeans rip and my knees and palms scrape and bleed.
“Help…”
I halted one more time to brush away smoke and dust. I saw an arm. Stone pinned it.
“I see you!” I cried. Spurred on, I scrambled over the rubble and crouched next to the arm. A hasty scan revealed a man’s body pinned beneath a beam and several hunks of stone that had fallen just so, encasing him in a tomb but not crushing him. Except for his arm. It looked bad, but I didn’t say that to him, leaning over the debris to meet his eyes, check his pulse, touch his face.
“Help me,” he pleaded. It was Charles, Mrs. Costas’ driver. It crossed my mind briefly to wonder where his employer was and what had happened, but now wasn’t the time. His eyes were large despite the gloom, and filled with pain. Terror. “I don’t want to die.”
“You’re not going to,” I reassured him, even though a bitter memory surfaced of him driving me out to that lonely spot on the country club grounds for me or Carter to die. I shoved the memory away.
Be bigger. Do the right thing.
His pulse was weak, but he was hanging in there. His arm was mangled. Blood leaked, seeping out from beneath the stone. I fumbled for my belt, sliding it out of the loops on my jeans. Pushing myself back up, I used it to snake a tourniquet around his upper arm, wrenching it as tight as I could. He might lose the arm, but hopefully not his life.
“I’m going to get someone to help you,” I said, starting to rise.
“No!” He thrashed violently. “Don’t go. Don’t leave me alone!”
“I’m not, I’m not,” I soothed, kneeling next to him again, putting my hand on his shoulder. I pressed gently to stop the thrashing. “I’m just going to find someone who can help you. I can’t get you out by myself. I can’t lift the stones. Be still for a second. I promise I won’t forget you, okay? I’ll be back.”
He didn’t look convinced. He looked half-panicked, but at least he didn’t flip out this time when I stood up. I looked left and right, all over the place, seeking desperately for someone to assist me. I would need a team of people to get the debris off Charles without hurting him. Either that, or one monstrously strong shapeshifter, like…
“Miss Ellie!”
“Javier!” I heard his heavy accent with relief, and spun to see him clambering through the mess, making his way toward me. “Javier, over here. Can you help?”
He picked his way quickly, carefully over to me.
“Charlie’s pinned,” I explained. “I need help getting him out. He needs an ambulance, a hospital, but we’ve got to get him out first.”
“Charlie.” Javier stood over the man whose ashen face practically gleamed in the dust, the smoke. His eyes had closed. He wasn’t moving. Not good. He was probably going into shock.
“You want me to help Charlie?” Javier now asked, turning to me. He was clearly puzzled. So was I, by the question.
“Yes, he needs help,” I said, dropping next to him on my knees. “We’ve got to get him out of here. Fast.”
“Mr. Charlie, he is helping Senora Costas. Senora Costas could not have done what she’s done without Charlie knowing. Assisting her. You know this, yes?”
I glanced up at him. Understanding dawned. I guess in his world, in the world of mafia-style gangs of shifters and their blood feuds, it was more understandable that I would walk away and let Charlie die than try to help him.
“I know,” I said quietly. “He was wrong. But it would be wrong to leave him here. And two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Javier still regarded me doubtfully, but he didn’t argue any further. Instead, he squatted next to me.
“I’ll move this one on his arm first,” he said. “When I pick it up, you move the arm. After his arm is free, we’ll get his body. I think I can move just a couple of stones if you can pull him out. Do you think you can?”
He looked me over. I knew I was small and slight. Carter had teased me often enough about it in the past.
“I’m tougher than I look,” I reassured him.
Javier allowed a tight smile. “Si. I think so. Okay. Here we go.”
No matter how many times I saw a human shift into their alter, it never ceased to amaze me. One second there was a perfectly normal human being in front of me. The next, a ripple fell across their face, their body, and instantly the human was gone, replaced by some creature from folklore, myth, or legend. In Javier’s case, he was a huge, hairy ape-man, much like the American stories of Bigfoot. A lot like Joab Blake, in fact, although the coloring of the fur was different.
I think I did okay at hiding my shock this time. I blinked, but my jaw didn’t drop open.
Hey, progress is progress.
Javier was huge and his power
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