Dance in Shadow and Whisper (Marionettes of Myth #1)

Chapter Fifteen

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Carmi tossed a number of weapon cases into the truck bed that Jason caught glimpses of. He looked at me with wide eyes as we crammed into the truck, Toivo in the driver's seat with Carmi squished against him, followed by Jason, and I sandwiched them. Jason tried to twist to get another look in back, but there wasn't much room to breathe, let alone shift.

"You have weapons," he said, voice as straight and stiff as an arrow. "And not just weapons, but—are there swords in those?"

Toivo took off, tires spraying gravel, and I gripped the 'oh-shit' bar. "Guns aren't all that practical in the vampire world. Guns are a finite weapon, and they're loud, even with a silencer. And guns are extra dangerous with the fact that, every bullet you fire, even if it misses, will hit something. As soon as you fire, you forfeit control of that bullet."

The color drained out of Jason's face. "And you want to give one of those to me? There's a reason why I do little of the work in dodgeball."

I produced the gun from the waistband of my jeans, the same one Solara had learned to shoot with. I loathed holding it. The hard metal was cold and unyielding in my hands, its weight as undeniable as a period stabbing the end of a sentence. It was ugly, manufactured by engineers for efficient killing.

But hadn't Toivo and Carmi and I been manufactured similarly?

"This is the safety switch. The red dot means it's live. I'm keeping the safety on until we get there, okay? You hold it like this." I modeled my hands for him. "Both arms straight out. One hand bracing your wrist to guard against recoil, both elbows locked and shoulders taut. Make sure your hips align with your shoulders and your feet are spaced apart. If you can, give yourself no less than a fifteen-foot range. Never fire out of panic—I can guarantee you'll miss your target and probably hurt yourself or someone else in exchange. Here." I flipped the gun around, barrel in hand, and offered it to him.

He shook his head. "I can't take this."

Toivo's hands fisted around the wheel. "Jason, you have to. If something goes after you—"

"I can't be changed unless I want to be." Jason looked to me for confirmation. "Right? Forcing it on me won't be beneficial to anyone, and they should know that."

'And they should know that.'

Something about those words turned my fingers to wood. "Cassius and the other Alliance lords can easily plan around that." I shocked myself. I had repeated the same words that Yuuhi had used to scare me, and so I wasn't surprised by Jason's response.

"Then why haven't they already? What are they waiting for? They could've done it when they first discovered—" He couldn't finish. He was still at odds with the entire reincarnation promise and he couldn't even try to believe it. Inside himself, he knew there was something else to what he was, but that very thing was what convinced him that he wasn't and could never be anything extraordinary.

Carmi's thumbs flew across the screen of his phone as he sent Rajy a very elaborate and detailed text message, including the address. "Don't give it to him. If he can't even try to hold it, then putting it on him essentially puts it in the hands of anyone who'll use it against us."

That was true. The vampires wouldn't hesitate to disarm Jason with little more than a blaze of shadow—or a pinky swipe, really. Jason didn't fight the suggestion either, so I reached over him to hand the gun to Carmi. "Stick it in Toivo's pants. I don't want it."