Raven Investigation 04 - Electric Legend (27 page)

Her chest hurt.

Her lungs screamed for air.

No matter how much she wanted to run, she couldn’t seem to move.
She frantically scanned the surroundings, waiting for the sadistic doctors to
emerge like spiders crawling out of the darkness. Taggert and Durant spread out
and searched for the threat, and she wanted to scream at them to run, but
couldn’t seem to get her mouth to work.

Jackson knelt by her side, and she remembered he had some medical
training. He didn’t touch the body, just poked and prodded a bit. Without skin,
even the lightest touch of air had to be agony. “If you want him to survive,
he’ll need a lot of blood and fast. We’ll need to jumpstart the healing process
or the blood will leak out of him as fast as we put it in him.”

“What?” Raven’s head whipped up, and she fell on her
backside. “He’s still alive?”

“Vampires are by definition dead. They didn’t remove his
head or heart.” His face turned grim. “They wanted you to find him like this.”

Raven swallowed hard at the nasty task before her. “I can
cauterize his wounds.”

Her magic would basically burn him alive.

If she messed up, she could literally turn him to ash.

At Jackson’s nod, she pulled all the current toward her and
carefully wrapped the strands around the body and cooked him until the skin
scabbed over.

The smell of charred flesh stuck in her nose, coated her
mouth, and she barely resisted the urge to vomit. Sweat gathered between her
shoulder blades, and her whole body protested the prolonged use of magic, but
Raven refused to drop her hold, not until he was whole.

Then the corpse moved.

His hand clamped on her arm, blood squished between its fingers
and dripped down her arm. Raven sucked in a sharp breath, swallowing her
scream, the energy fizzling and soaking harmlessly into the ground with a nasty
snap of electricity to her hands that left her whole arms tingling and numb.

“Rylan? Can you hear me? I’m here. You’re going to be okay.”

“They took him.” The words emerged almost unintelligible without
lips and his tongue shredded to ribbons.

Everything inside her stilled.

It wasn’t Rylan.

The blood and lack of skin had obscured the scent and all
recognizable features.

It took her brain a few seconds to recognize a certain tenor
in the voice. “Nicholas?”

Nicholas had gotten on the bad side of his master, and he’d
come to her for help. He’d shown her his loyalty by risking his life to help
save her pack. In return, Raven had vouched for him, and brought him home with
her on the excuse that she needed him to guard Rylan’s back.

 It was supposed to keep him safe, not get him killed.

“Who?”

“Humans.” Blood drippled down the side of his face, coughed
up from his lungs, revealing one of his fangs was chipped.

No humans could take two vampires without training.

Her whole body chilled as the truth became starkly clear.

The labs had finally produced viable paranormal soldiers and
they were coming after her.

Their original soldier.

The world stopped spinning as the dragon roared in fury,
ready to hunt and tear the world apart and kill everyone who threatened her
pack.

She messed up, got noticed, and they tracked her back here.

She couldn’t help but wonder if the humans were the threat
that Greggory sensed.

Most shifters believed they were invincible, the top of the
food chain. More than a few shifters would never believe they could be taken
down by humans.

They would be very wrong.

She met Jackson’s concerned gaze, her lips numb as she
spoke. “The people from the labs found us.”

Durant placed his hand on her shoulder, offering comfort and
support. Then his grip tightened, as if he alone could keep her safe within his
arms. “And they set the perfect trap to lure you out.”

Stacey
Brutger lives in a small town in Minnesota with her husband and an assortment
of animals. When she’s not reading, she enjoys creating stories about exotic worlds
and grand adventures…then shoving in her characters to see how they’d survive.
She enjoys writing anything paranormal from contemporary to historical.

Other books
by this author:

BloodSworn

Coveted

A
PeaceKeeper Novel

The
Demon Within
(Book1)

A Raven
Investigations Novel

Electric
Storm
(Book 1)

Electric
Moon
(Book 2)

Electric
Heat
(Book 3)

Electric
Legend (Book 4)

Coming Soon:

Druid
Surrender

Druid
Temptation

Electric
Night (Book 4)

Citadel

Watch for her first
dystopian novel called
Citadel

or her next historical
fantasy called
Druid Surrender
.

Visit Stacey online to find out more at
www.StaceyBrutger.com

Or click here to join her
newsletter
.