Page 82 of Leading the Blind
Into the well.Correct! Correct, dammit.
Five.
Eyes open.
Six.
Hold on, you asshole!
Seven.
Jason heard the buzzer, and he let go, knowing that he was going to have a bad get off. He could hear it in Dillon’s panicked voice, shouting at him to cover his head. He put his arms up around his helmet, which meant he landed hard on his tailbone, jarring his whole body, stealing his breath.
“Get up, Jase! Move!”
“I’m trying!” He tried to clear his head, keep it down. The jolt as the bull’s hoof clipped his helmet and rang his damn bell.
His bell.
Sammy.
Lord, that was funny.
Except it wasn’t, and he rolled, but he chose the wrong way and a horn clipped his shoulder.
“Hey! Hey, bull. Hey!” Coke was just bellowing, and someone not a bull kicked him in the ribs, so he knew one of the bullfighters was actually clinging to the bull.
“Jason! Listen to me, goddammit!” Dillon’s voice was sharp as a knife. “Crawl forward. Fast. I’ll grab you.”
Whoa.It must be bad if the clown was risking himself and Coke’s fury.
Jason got to his knees, getting a swift kick in the hip for his trouble. That spun him in a half circle to his left, and he tried to correct, scrambling as Dillon shouted more directions.
Please God. Please. I need to get out.
He felt Dillon’s hands straightening him up, dragging him to the camera cage in the center of the arena.
He belly flopped on it, catching his thighs on the metal, and he grunted when Dillon yanked him the rest of the way up. He felt the breeze as the bull went by, the cursing and whomp of a twirling rope from Adam Taggart as the pick-up man went flying past.
Fuck, he was dizzy and queasy, and he wanted to go back to the hotel and hide. Now. He wasn’t sure how he was going to get down, much less how he was going to get out.
“We got this, Jase. Don’t panic.” Dillon’s voice echoed in his ear and around him, the whisper there and gone as Dillon stood up and turned on his arena mic. “Safe!”
Don’t panic. Right. He felt wetness on his face, and he reached up, finding it sticky. That wasn’t syrup. Jesus. His ears rang for a minute, and he thought he might puke.
Then Bax and AJ were there.
“Let’s cheer Jason on!” yelled David Donaldson, the arena announcer for the crowd behind him as Bax and AJ half carried him out.Guess that’s the way to go, so I look injured and not blind.
“Don’t let Doc get a hold of me.”
“Too late!” Jonesy was so damn perky. “Let me get the bleeding stopped.”
“You ain’t Doc,” he teased, relieved. Then he sat back and let Jonesy work on him. If he sat real still and was super quiet, maybe he could stop wanting to hurl.
“You pass out at all?”
“Nope.” Not even a second. That might have been a blessing.
