One Book in the Grave: A Bibliophile Mystery

judge me. And he has judged me worthy.” She held the gun with both hands and pointed it right at me. “Now stop trying to distract me. Just do what I asked you to do.”
     
    “Fine, but I think you’re going about this all wrong.”
     
    She sighed. “I’m not listening to you.”
     
    “Well, you should.” I unzipped my jacket slowly, but instead of pulling it off my shoulders, I shoved my hands into the pockets, grabbed the candy kisses and flung them all at Crystal.
     
    “What?” She cringed and held one hand in front of her face to fend off whatever she thought was attacking her.
     
    Taking advantage of the moment, I rushed forward and knocked the gun out of her hand, but not before a deafening gunshot blast rattled the quiet air of the forest.
     
    I had the advantage of surprise, but Crystal was even stronger than I’d always thought she was. She punched me in the face and I saw stars.
     
    But I got a handful of her hair and yanked. She screamed and shoved me into the dirt, and we rolled around. She was slapping my face so hard, I could barely see. She got up and straddled me and started pounding. I held up my hands to protect my face from her flying fists, but they were fast and beefy.
     
    In a surge of energy, I bucked her off me and we rolled in the dirt again. I was not strong enough to do any real damage to a crazed Ogunite built like Crystal, but I did my best. I had to hold on until Derek followed those Hershey’s Kisses.
     
    I tried to wrap my arms around her, if only to trap those dangerous hands of hers, but her chest and back were too broad. So I settled for scraping my fingernails down her face until she howled in outrage. Really, as a fighter I was pretty pitiful.
     
    I was losing this fight by a mile, losing steam and consciousness. My head was spiraling from too many hard smacks. I made one last swipe at her face and raked my nails deeper across her cheek, drawing blood.
     
    “There’s your true blood, bitch,” I snapped.
     
    She grunted and slapped me again, and I knew I was close to finished. That’s when I heard what sounded like a wolf pack stomping through the trees and into the clearing. There was snapping and growling, and Crystal was suddenly yanked off me.
     
    Through blurry eyes I thought I saw the head wolf.
Derek?
     
    With one tremendous, incoherent roar, he flung Crystal away from me and pulled me close.
     
    “My God, Brooklyn,” Derek said, burying his face in my hair. “Are you all right?”
     
    “Jus’ fine,” I muttered. “I coulda taken her.”
     
    “Of course you could’ve,” he crooned, and swept me up into his arms.
     
    From the corner of my rapidly puffing eye, I saw Gabriel catch Crystal. She tried to tangle with him, but he subdued her with one hand, yanking her arm and whipping her around. He clutched both of her hands behind her back, then dragged her over to the fallen tree where he found the duct tape and managed to wrap it around her wrists. Then he shoved her down to the ground.
     
    Okay, Gabriel was back in action. Hooray!
     
    I smiled at Derek. Everything was right in my world again.
Except for a little head spinning and vision fading,
I thought. Then everything went black.
     
    When I woke up from my little nap, a female EMT was cleaning blood off my face.
    “It’s not my blood,” I murmured, wincing when she touched a tender spot on my jaw.
     
    “Yeah, it is,” she said, chuckling as she continued daubing antiseptic on my chin and neck. “She nailed you good.”
     
    “Hey, I got a few jabs in.”
     
    I tried to sit up, but she stopped me. “Easy, Sugar Ray. You barfed the last time you tried that.”
     
    “I did?” I winced. “How pleasant for you.”
     
    “I love my job.”
     
    I felt dizzy again and decided to take her advice and stay right where I was. Looking around, I saw that I was lying flat out on some kind of tarp in the clearing where Crystal had almost killed three of us in the name of her beloved Ogun. Or maybe it was for her beloved Solomon. Who cared, as long as she rotted in prison for a few hundred years?
     
    I assumed Emily and Minka were being treated by medical techs somewhere nearby. I couldn’t see them, but I did see Crystal being led away in handcuffs by two Sonoma sheriff’s deputies. She was screaming to Ogun to smite the nonbelievers. But apparently Ogun wasn’t taking her calls.
     
    I felt better already.
     
    “Emily!”
     
    I recognized Max’s bellow and turned to