Read Online Regret (Lady of Toryn Trilogy) by Charity Santiago - Free Book Online Page B

vampire looked up and met her
eyes.
    “Get him out of here!” she called.
Drake nodded and turned, picking up Lord Li easily in his arms. Too late,
Ashlyn saw two ninjas running for Drake with their swords drawn. She grabbed
her shuriken, slicing her hand open in her haste, and flung it sideways. The
hira arced gracefully, slicing across one soldier’s throat and glancing off the
other’s shoulder. Ashlyn turned and vaulted into her saddle, and her horse was
only too happy to run. She urged the animal towards the ninja who was now
raising his sword to strike at Drake, but before she could get there, Drake
pivoted out of the way, awkwardly supporting her dad on one arm and drawing his
pistol with the other. He shot the ninja point blank.
    Ashlyn drew her horse to a halt
next to Drake, and the animal skittered sideways, too nervous to stand still.
Ashlyn leaned down, hooking one knee over her horse’s neck as she came out of
the saddle, made a swipe and managed to yank her shuriken from where it was
embedded in the ground.
    “Take him,” Drake shouted as she
straightened up in the saddle, and before she could object, he was moving
towards her, lifting her dad across the saddle in front of her just before her
horse danced aside again. Even though she hadn’t been strong enough to pick him
up, Lord Li was still surprisingly easy to support, and Ashlyn curled one arm
across his torso, hooking the fingers of her bleeding hand over his shoulder to
try to anchor him against her. Drake turned away and shot five times in quick
succession, dropping five ninjas who were advancing on him, and used the butt
of his gun to slam a sixth ninja in the face.
    There was an explosion right behind
her- pretty much the worst luck anyone
could have EVER, Ashlyn thought later- and her stupid horse bolted. Ashlyn
struggled to keep control, wishing with all her might that she had her own
horse, Suki, back right now, and somehow managed to turn the animal back
towards Drake just in time to see him duck under a swing from Kou’s katana.
    Ashlyn screamed Skye’s name,
searching for the swordsman amidst the flames and smoke and rain of earth.
Drake was driven back by blow after blow from Kou and two other ninjas,
blocking as best he could with his silver glove. Ashlyn tried to concentrate to
cast fire on Kou, but her horse was
moving too much and she was struggling too hard to keep her dad in the saddle
with her.
    Terrifyingly, Ashlyn glimpsed a
strike from Kou that landed true- slicing diagonally across Drake’s chest even
as the vampire jumped backwards. Drake fell to his knees, and for one horrible
moment Ashlyn thought that it had been a severe wound, but then her horse spun
angrily, trying to escape from the pressure of the reins, and she lost sight of
Drake for just a moment.
    When she managed to quiet the horse
and saw Drake again, he was on his feet, and his eyes were glowing brighter
than she’d ever seen them. His lips curved in a snarl, and he was hunched over,
fingers curled like claws. He stalked around Kou like a wolf circling its prey.
There was something animalistic and feral about him, something she’d never seen
before.
    It was then that she realized Kou
had cut the cord that held the resist stane.
    She’d never seen Drake without resist, but she’d heard enough stories
about vampires to know that her situation had just become infinitely more dangerous.
    Skye emerged from a cloud of
smoke to her right exactly at that moment, dragging a soldier who had
apparently tried to strike him using a whip, and Ashlyn shrieked his name.
Without looking up, Skye opened a cavern in the ground directly beneath the
soldier and sliced through the whip with his sword in the same moment. The
falling ninja’s screams somehow reached Ashlyn’s ears through the din. Skye
urged his horse towards her.
    “What’s wrong? Get out of here!”
he told her, using earth to ripple
the ground by the cavern he’d just created, sending several other