Chapter 31 #2
For a moment it seems as though he might be the one to call a ceasefire, perhaps he has finally come to his senses.
The way he is looking at his daughter tells me that he is finally thinking of the consequences.
My hopes are quickly shot down when he looks to his leader and doesn’t recant orders.
“Let them come,” he confirms, not daring to look back at his daughter.
Lillian bolsters herself and pushes away from me. “So be it,” she says solemnly.
My eyes widen as the woman I love turns from a woman looking to right wrongs into a warrior summoning her army.
“Avan?ar!” she commands.
The horde of the dead rise again, only a handful of yards down the hall, and start their march. She’d given our enemy a chance at survival, and their leader had refused.
“You are cruel!” Margaret hisses. She’s found her feet again, this time with sights set on the monsters converging down on them. Lillian ignores the girl, but I know it irks her to hear someone say such things, even a traitor.
One of the surviving Germans seizes his moment and fires a shot.
Whether it's a diversion or he’s wanted to start the battle earlier, it’s enough to send everything into chaos.
Everything happens far too quickly after that.
Margaret and Ivo lunge for their weapons, the Germans open fire, and I tackle Lillian to the side.
As shots ring out overhead, Lillian and I crawl to the nearest alcove and take cover. She presses close to me as the army of her own creation collides with the dwindling German forces. “Are the others safe?” she asks over the sounds of battle.
The Germans are torn apart. Screams of the dying mix with Ivo’s roaring fight for survival. Our own watch from the outskirts. “Yes,” I answer. Even James has managed to find himself back in a suitable position.
“I hope that you will see to it that they remain so.” I don’t like the way she’s talking. An uneasiness overtakes me when I notice the way her eyes are plotting a course through the carnage to the arch.
“Lillian—”
“I love you, Ben Reed,” she says plainly.
Turning quickly, she twists her hands in my shirt and brings her lips to mine.
The kiss leaves me reaching for her, but she’s running away from me within seconds.
Caught in the daze of the lingering kiss, I reach for her and manage to catch her by the hand.
Her fingers slip right through mine, and then she’s completely out of our cover.
I don’t make it two steps in chase before a bullet whizzes by my ear and ricochets off the wall behind me. Another buries itself into the stone, and I’m forced to drop back behind cover.
Scanning the next two divots in the wall I find Bruno and Oliver huddled close together behind a small column. Oliver is ducked with his hands over his ears, but it seems that Bruno is tracking Lillian also. His eyes scan the room as she runs through the battle unscathed.
“Bruno!” I yell in desperation. He finds me immediately and nods me forward. Together we dart from out of cover. He covers me, and I run to the next barrier.
When I surface again, the room is different. The dead have seemed to dull; skeletal limbs swing and slash with no energy. They stand in place, many collapsing at the feeling of one hit.
Lillian must have made it quite a long way already for her power to be severed so quickly.
No matter, the army has done its job, because even though its intensity collapses, there are only three of our enemies left.
None of which are Ivo or Archibald. My gut twists as I search the dead bodies for them to no avail. They’ve surely followed after her.
As the last skeleton falls back to the earth from which it came, I’m given a view of its killer.
Margaret had taken down the final monster, and now there is nothing barring her from me.
From behind her, Ivo is searching through the remains for his bag.
A bag full of items that I’m sure Lillian has stolen.
“You’ve ruined everything,” Margaret says through frustrated tears. Her gun has long disappeared. She now brandishes a sword that she must have picked off one of the undead guards lying in heaps on the ground. “Must you Americans get everything you want? Greedy, don’t you th—”
A final shot rips through the air, and Margaret collapses, holding her stomach. I expect James to have made the shot, but nothing could have prepared me for Diederick stepping beside me with a smoking gun in hand.
He says nothing, only looks over the carnage. Dropping the gun at his feet, uncontrollable shaking overtakes him.
“Go, Ben,” James urges as he drops to Margaret’s side. At first she coughs in protest and tries to pull herself away from him, but her energy plummets on the third try. Getting shot in the stomach is a very slow and painful death, one that even Margaret Williams might not deserve.
“Go,” James says again. “Take Diederick with you, and put an end to all this. We’ll loop back to checkpoint C on the river when all of this is over if we’re separated.”
“No one is escaping this, you fools.” Margaret laughs coldly from where she rests on her deathbed.
“All this ends the same way it started. This cycle will start all over again until the dagger is destroyed.” She laughs through whatever pain she’s feeling.
“But we won’t see the dagger destroyed without another sacrifice.
” Margaret’s eyes find mine, and just for a moment, I see just a pinprick of empathy.
“It ends in sacrifice or another round of this.” She gestures to the death around her and then shakes her head.
“What are you going to choose, Ben? I deserve to know if I’m going to miss it all. ”
“Don’t listen to this witch,” James growls. His voice is full of stabbing betrayal and notes of all that could have been between them. “You go and you do what’s right.”
I’m already moving toward the arch. Somewhere behind me Diederick follows, but I’d face it alone if I had to. I’d face everything we’ve ever encountered all over again if it meant there was a sliver of a chance to get Lillian free of all of this.
I only hope there’s a way I can end the bloody cycle without losing Lillian in the process.