That’s where I want to be.
I caught a glimpse of Gabriel a second before he turned a corner and disappeared toward the back of the house. No doubt escaping through the back door we would have been covering if Cass hadn’t been so fucking impulsive.
That’s where I want to be too.
Instead I’m standing here, watching Zachary’s blood soak into the carpet.
And then Trinity screams, and it’s as if everyone’s minds come back from wherever they’d wandered off to.
“He’s getting away!” Cass says, but he’s running toward Trinity, not Gabriel.
Apollo falls to his knees beside me, inadvertently soaking his jeans in blood. “Is he dead?”
I don’t know.
I just don’t fucking know.
“Call an ambulance,” I tell Apollo.
But now his hands are full of blood because he was trying to stop it running out of the two holes in Zachary’s torso, and that’s freaking him out and he’s gone and frozen up.
“Apollo!”
Brown eyes snap to me. “Yes?”
He can’t be here. Not around all this blood. Like a fucking candle in a snow storm.
And I can’t let Gabriel get away either.
It shouldn’t be this easy to make crucial decisions, but it’s as if there’s no choice to make at all.
“Don’t let him get away!” My voice is too loud—it booms back to us—but maybe that’s what gets Apollo on his feet. I stab a finger down the passage. “Follow him!”
Apollo turns and runs.
“Just follow him!” I yell after Apollo’s retreating back, with no clue if he heard me or not.
Then it’s back to Zach because a glance behind me shows Cass is examining Trinity like he just got his Ph.D.
Guess neither of them is phoning the ambulance.
I fish my phone out of my pocket. There’s a part of me that’s sitting back and watching me operate, and it’s gobsmacked that I’m still functioning. That I’m lucid. That my voice is legible when the 911 operator on the other end of the line answers my call.
But that’s because they need me right now. My brothers. Trinity. They need me to be strong. I can freak out later, or not at all. I don’t need to add fuel to this fucking inferno.
“I need an ambulance.”
And then I go blank, because I guess a part of me isn’t all that focused right now.
“2192 Maude Street,” comes Trinity’s voice. It’s faint, but it’s steady.
That’s my girl.
The operator starts talking me through emergency procedures. Applying pressure to Zachary’s wounds to stop the bleeding. And I try. Fuck, I try. But his blood keeps seeping through my fingers. And it’s eating into the carpet and heading for my knees.
I shift back like it’s contagious.
Cass appears on the other side of Zach’s limp body. He moves away one of my hands, using both of his to stop the flow of blood from the wound.
I mimic him.
And slowly the blood stops trickling through my fingers. I like to think I did that. That I somehow stemmed the flow.
But it could be that Zach’s heart has stopped pumping.
Chapter Twenty-One
Apollo
Leaves and low-hanging branches whip against my face. Holy shit, did Gabriel run track or something? I’m struggling to keep up. He had less than a minute head start on me.
We’re weaving our way through the dividing line sandwiched between properties. Not all of the houses have fences, but most of them do have trees and shrubs for privacy.
Gabriel obviously knows this area very well. He’s pulling all the moves—throwing trash cans between us, rousing dogs who must have been distant offspring of Cujo.
All I can do is try and keep him in sight. Lucky for me, he’s leaving behind a path of devastation. Broken branches, rustling shrubs, gates thrown open.
I chase him over a road, and then down a cement embankment.
And then I lose him.
I’m panting, bloody hands on my bloody knees as I scan left and right. The embankment led down to a storm drain, but there’s no fucking way I’m going into that black hole.
I’m not an idiot.
I know he’s waiting in there for me.
Shit!
I could go over the top. But if he’s watching then he’ll know what I’m trying to do. So should I stay, or should I—
Something slams into the back of my head.
I land on hands and knees, fire scraping over my palms as I skid over the cement floor.
Before I can scramble up, a foot hits me square in the stomach.
God! Again? Fuck!
I kick out, manage to catch Gabriel’s shin. Not that it fucking helps—I could have been kicking a tree stump.
He takes a step back, and then surges forward again. Grabs the back of my neck. Hauls me to my feet.
I catch the crook of his arm when he goes to punch me, and that he wasn’t expecting. But he recovers so fast, I don’t even have time for some kind of counter strike.
He rips his arm free and shoves me like we’re a pair of bullies marking turf in the schoolyard.
I slam into the side of the storm drain’s massive mouth, banging my head.
There go the last of my fond childhood memories.
And that’s when Gabriel whips out his gun. Which is round about the same time I put my hands up.
Oh God, the blood. I squeeze my eyes closed and try my best to remain fixed to the earth.
“Okay! I yield!”
And he laughs. The fucker actually laughs. There’s a click from the gun, which I assume is him taking off the safety.
I’m supposed to know about these things, but I was so high when Zach took us for practice shooting. I can’t remember a damn thing.
Instead of yielding, like I asked him so damn nicely, Gabriel grabs my shirt and rams me into the concrete wall again. Then he drags me around the corner. It’s an overcast day, so there’s no sharp line in the limbo between shadow and light. Just a dark haze.
All the better to rape you in, my dear.
Jesus, fuck, no.
I tilt forward to try and push him out of the way. The icy nozzle of a gun burrows into my forehead, urging my head back and back and back until it presses against the uneven wall behind me.
Christ.
I lift my hands, close my eyes. “Just make it quick, okay? And if it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer it if you rape me after I’m dead.”
There’s another click, and that confuses the fuck out of me, because I know some guns have a hammer, but this one doesn’t.
I open one eye, then the other.
Gabriel’s lowering the gun.
But the moment I open my mouth to thank him, it’s up again.
“Stay where you are,” he says.
He wasn’t going to kill me? Fuck me? Why? I mean, I’m grateful obviously, but confused. But there’s no way in hell I’m going to antagonize him into shooting me. What good would that do anyone?
“Sure, yeah. I’ll stay right here.”
My hands are still up, and it’s taking quite a lot of my concentration to ignore the smell of copper in the air. I should be fine, long as I don’t dwell. Long as I don’t look at my hands.
Gabriel trains the gun on me as he steps back.