Protect & Serve LotR-Lord of the Rings Fanfiction - Fan Fiction -WattyAwards2012

Chapter 2: This Sure Ain't Kansas

My eyes flew open as my arms jerked and spasmed around me. I kicked my legs and felt my back arch while pain continued to flair in my chest. As my vision began to darken, I finally realized that I wasn't getting any oxygen and forced my lungs to take a shuddering breath.

The air wheezing into my lungs was almost more painful than the lack of oxygen had been before. I pulled at the front of my vest, but my brain and hands still didn't seem to be cooperating. Eventually I was able to get the vest yanked over my head.

The freedom of not having the restrictive vest on felt better than damn near anything I could think of right now.

I rolled over onto my knees and one hand, with the other gently probing my tender ribs. I felt myself still choking and wheezing as I tried to even out my breathing but I counted myself to be lucky as hell to still be breathing. Getting shot point-blank like that could have been the end for me, but miraculously, the vest did its job and stopped the bullet. Never thought I'd be so damn thankful for having that bulky thing on.

I looked down at my right hand bracing me on the ground and noticed the blood trickling down and staining the dried, brown grass.

What the hell? Where'd this grass come from?

A hand suddenly descended onto my shoulder as I felt someone leaning over me from behind.

Covering my right hand with my left, I drove my right elbow backwards, catching my assailant in the face with my elbow and spinning him away from me with the force of my hit. I ignored the sound of his pained grunt and covered the distance between us, standing up and grasping a handful of long blond hair to wrench his head backwards and out of his hands.

I wasn't sure what had happened to my Glock, and it would take too long to grab my backup from my ankle, so instead, I easily slid a long white knife from the sheath at his side and pressed it below his chin to the white expanse of his throat now laid bare.

His struggles immediately ceased and the strange words he'd been muttering to himself as he cupped his bloody nose fell silent.

He was perhaps half a head taller than I was, but it wasn't anything I wasn't accustomed to. I was only five-foot eight-inches. Woefully average for most women. But I fisted my hand more tightly in his ridiculously long hair and pulled his head backwards, pressing my lips close to his ear.

"What the fuck do you think you're gonna do to me, Goldilocks? I'm not the kind of woman you fuck around with," I furiously whispered in his ear. Looking over his shoulder and taking in our surroundings, I became even angrier. "How the hell did I wind up out here in a forest?" I pressed, yanking his head back even further.

"Unhand me, woman. I have done you no harm, yet you cannot say the same. I was merely checking your well-being when you attacked me without provocation," he angrily bit back at me. Even angry, his voice sounded clean and light. And inhuman.

Jerking his head to tilt it to the side away from me, I craned to look at his ear. It was smoothly pointed. "Goddamned fairies," I swore as I swiftly pushed him away from me. His own knife wouldn't help me too much, not with how fast they moved and me hampered by the wound still bleeding in my arm. But I kept the long knife in my left hand as I drew my compact .40 from my ankle holster with my right.

Fear insured that even through the slickness of my bloody hand, I was able to hold the gun steadily on the fairy before me. Life—and the Marine Corp—had taught me that when fear gripped you, you had to use it to become deadlier, or fear would use you and make you dead.

I let my voice slip easily into Silva, their own language, so he'd know I wasn't ignorant of fairies. Or how to kill them. "I don't know who the hell sent you, or if you just got lucky finding me, but I won't go anywhere with you. Not over your dead body and not even over mine."