Read Online Covenant by Maria Rachel Hooley - Free Book Online Page A

go. I feel as though I’m being physically battered, and her
wretched crying won’t stop. It cuts through me, dropping me to my
knees. Suddenly I feel a pain in my side and look down. Blood
begins to soak through my shirt, and all I can think is that it
shouldn’t be possible.
    Angels don’t bleed. I touch
my hand to it, thinking I’ll figure out what the mistake is and
make it right. Instead, my hand becomes soaked in the warm
stickiness. Ahead of me, the world starts to get fuzzy and melt
into something else. In the distance, I hear Celia calling my name,
her voice suffused with panic and fear.
    I blink two or three times
and fall. What is happening to
me?
    “ Lev, it’s all right. Calm
down.” Celia’s voice is so distant amid the confusion of the
medical personnel witnessing a mortal death.
    “ Celia?” I finally manage,
knowing there are no words for the panic inside that perhaps even
she doesn’t recognize what is going on.
    The blurring around me
clears to reveal a moonlit classroom. In the doorway I see a man in
dress pants and a shirt, a gun clenched tightly in his fist, lifted
in my general direction but not at me. I sense movement behind me.
I look back and find Elizabeth Moon, swooping low to cradle me in
her arms. She’s screaming something. I can’t hear it because that
world is silent and strange. But her lips move frantically, and I
see terror in her eyes.
    Pain—the world isn’t
anything but pain like I’ve never felt. I look down at my hand, and
it’s completely covered in blood that seems dark and beautiful in
the night. As I stare, my hand wavers. Elizabeth reaches for it and
cradles it in her own as she presses it back against my stomach. I
want to warn her that the man is still holding the gun, but I can’t
seem to speak. In fact, I feel myself sliding against her, cold in
a way I should not be.
    Through half-lidded slits, I
see the man lift the gun, aiming for her. His hand quivers with the
weight of it as he perfects his aim. As his finger starts to pull
the trigger, another teenager appears in the doorway with a large
shovel he raises over his head and quickly slams down. The gun
falls from the man’s hand, and he collapses.
    Then darkness melts around
me.

    “ Lev? Can you hear
me?”
    The voice is male and sounds
familiar, but right now it is distant. The darkness and pain
collect around me so everything swirls together in possessive
blackness.
    “ Lev?”
    Hands jostle me. Whoever it
is isn’t going to just let me lie here. I’m actually going to have
to respond whether I want to or not.
    I open my eyes, the pain
seizing me even as the bright colors swirl about in a
blur.
    “ He’s coming around,” a
woman says. I blink even harder, trying to pull myself back from
the vortex of confusion claiming me. I’m not even sure what I just
experienced, but the weight of it still covers me like a wool
blanket, stifling me.
    Every time I blink I find
myself lost back in that classroom, staring at a gun and feeling
Elizabeth Moon cradling me against her body as the blood leaves the
mortal shell.
    “ Can you hear
me?”
    I shake my head at the
stupidity of the question and shoot off, “Yeah, I’m not deaf.” I
keep trying to bring the faces around me into focus, but I
can’t.
    “ I told you he wasn’t
ready,” the male voice says, a hint of frustration coloring
it.
    “ At this rate, he’s never
going to be ready, and you know it,” the female retorts in
kind.
    I lift my hand to remind
them I’m still lying there. “Can you two take it outside? My head
can’t take the screaming.” Granted, I started out telling them that
in hopes doing so would cut off the fight, but actually, now that
I’m trying to sit up, I’m also finding it to be true. One of them
bends low to help me, and I wave them away.
    “ I’ve got this,” I mutter,
drawing my knees up and resting my arms on them so I can clutch my
head. The other one, most likely Evan by the height, reaches for my
head,