Blood Kiss by J.R. Ward Page A

something.
    Probably nothing good.
    â€œPeyton.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him over onto his back again. “Get your ass up off this floor. We’ve got to make it over to the corner.”
    â€œI can’t—it’s too—”
    Yup, she slapped him. And she wasn’t proud of it or satisfied by sharp contact, either.
“Get up.”
    His eyes popped wide. “Parry?”
    â€œWho the hell did you think you were talking to? Taylor Swift?” She pulled his upper body off the gym floor. “Get on your feet.”
    â€œI might throw up on you.”
    â€œLike we don’t have bigger problems? Have you seen this place?”
    Peyton started babbling, and that was when she decided enough was enough. Straddling his legs, she took hold under his pits and used her newfound strength to walk back and drag him upright onto his pair of Adidases.
    â€œParadise, I’m going to be—”
    Oh, fantastic.
    All down the front of her.
    And he was weaving so badly that walking in a straight line was going to be a challenge. Running? NFW.
    â€œFuck this,” she muttered, grabbing him around the waist and jerking him into a dead lift off the floor.
    Heavy. Really heavy on her shoulder.
    Now she was the one with the whoa-nellies: It was like trying to balance a piano up there—made worse by the fact that the weight was arguing with her—and barfing down the back of her right leg.
    Paradise set off, ignoring everything but the goal of getting to that godforsaken door across the way. Her head was wrenched to one side, her neck straining sobadly it burned; her shoulder was going numb from lack of circulation; and her thighs were already quivering from the stress on them.
    The temptation to get lost in all those physical sensations was strong, especially as they grew ever louder and more insistent. But she wanted to . . . well, she wanted to get to that door, to the fresh air, to the end of all this shock-and-awe business. Then she could take a deep breath, put Peyton’s whining deadweight down, and sit in a nice, clean classroom.
    Maybe share a laugh with the Brotherhood that she had made it through the worst part and now the self-defense and schoolbook training could start.
    To keep herself going, she tried to remember the classrooms she’d seen as the trainees had walked from the parking area to the gym. They’d had fluorescent lighting, and banks of tables with chairs in orderly positions facing the blackboard—
    â€œStop,” Peyton said. “I’m going to die. . . .”
    â€œWill you shut up and stay still?” she said with a grunt.
    â€œI’m going to—”
    Oh, for fuck’s sake, she thought as he lost it again.
    As she trudged along and panted from the exertion, the maze of athletic equipment was a total pain in the ass, the various stations seeming to have been spaced and angled in a way that made it incredibly awkward to get through, past, around.
    Especially with Peyton draped over her.
    And then there were people who were scattered along the ground.
    Every time she stepped by somebody or had to lift a foot over one of their hands, their feet, their leg or arm, she wanted to stop, ask if they were okay, call for help . . . do something. The fact that she couldn’t save anyone but herself and Peyton made her scream on the inside, her lungs burning in her chest, a strange anger motivating her.
    She kept looking for blood. Obsessively.
    But there was no sign of it: no red stains on clothes, no red streaks on skin, no red sweeps across the honey-yellow floorboards. There was also no scent of it that she could detect—although there were plenty of other smells, none of them pleasant.
    No blood, though. And that had to be good . . . right?
    â€œAhhh!” she screamed, as a white-hot blast of pain shocked her.
    Applecart. Over.
    The pain in her left elbow destabilized everything,