My hands came free and dropped to my sides as the wall came up on us.
Stone. Dark glass. The last of the run resolving into a surface that would not give. His teeth went deeper — the pull bright and continuous along the side of my throat, warmth leaving in a thin steady run.
Both hands locked on the back of my neck now, and I wasn't carrying him anymore. He was holding on to me, and his weight grew with every second because mine was going out of me into him.
I drove him into the stone.
Hard. Everything I had left and the last of the run behind it. Shoulder and hip and the locked arms and the full momentum of fifty metres of broken road. His mouth tore off my neck — teeth leaving, the wound opening to the air — and he came down on the ground with his feet still under him and his back arched wrong against the face of the building.
Dust shook out of the joints in the stone. A crack ran sideways from the point of impact and stopped.
A space opened between us.
