52. Laszlo
Five Minutes Earlier
He shot me in the fucking back!
That was the kind of man he’d always been.
The chest rig I wore under the Russian costume spared me, but the impact was bruising.
My grip tightened on the gilded hilt of my sword, his footsteps nearing behind me.
Rurik’s gun was levelled at my head. An inglorious end. I’d abandoned Lilien, abandoned Lyn, all for fucking nothing. The strange glow of the moon played on the wet grass, the skeletal trees blowing in the wind.
My heart wanted to stop, that mangled muscle reluctantly thumping in my chest.
What was Rurik waiting for?
I spat out blood, rolling onto my back, and stared up at him.
He wasn’t looking at me anymore.
He was looking at the eclipse, his mouth slack. There wasn’t time to question what he saw in the bloody craters. I didn’t want to know.
I sprung up from the ground, and with all my might, I pulled the sharp sword down through Rurik’s shoulder, and down. His arm landed with a meaty thud. Before he could react through the shock, I bolted forward and grabbed his gun, firing a shot through his throat, then into his head.
He fell to the ground, a strange expression contorting his face, as if he were looking up at god.
My path was taking me right over the mine tunnel. Right over the trap. If it all blew now, I’d be nothing but a mist of blood and flesh.
I never had a lot of brawn, but I was lanky. I ran. I ran faster than I had in my life.
For the first time in since I was thirteen-years-old, I forgot about Lilien.
Please be alive. Please hear me. Please don’t let me have fucked this all up. Please let my angel be okay.
The forest was painted in oranges and reds. Not of the leaves, not any longer. Now it was the moon. The eclipse. I felt it, refused to look at it. If I did, it would look back at me, and I couldn’t bear the scrutiny.
That was what Rurik saw.
I hit the forest line as the world shook.
Flames shot out from the gothic mansion behind me and I sprinted faster into the dark. There wasn’t time for my nightvision goggles. I needed to be further away before the second explosion. Autumn had been dry, and though it rained recently, there was a risk of a forest fire.
Leaves crackled beneath me, gnarled roots threatening my already mangled ankle. My chest ached, my leg burned, and when the rumble began, I dropped to the ground, covering my head.
The chamber beneath the mansion screamed when that second explosion went off.
Not just the sound of metal and people. It was primordial, something that set me off balance, itching my tattoos, clawing for life. The air was thin, like I might fall through it.
Maybe it was my pain, my past, stolen once more. The folder on the drive, the truth about my sister. I’d sacrificed my mission to save Lyn.
There were two things I worried that could have brought Lyn off route.
Her family.
Or Jimmy.
“Angel…” I croaked. There was no response.
I looked at my phone, at the GPS sticker I put on the bottom of her foot.
It had been in the same location since I left the house.
Putting on my night vision goggles, I pushed through the pain, swiping branches out of my way as the forest swallowed me.
In the near distance was a scream.
I ignored the GPS, trusted my gut. The goggles helped, but the forest floor was an endless trap of roots and brush and in the distance a wolf howled, so I moved faster. There was a small clearing, and I came to a dead halt.
Lyn had her back to me, her long hair having struggled free of her bun, and it blew around her. She was cackling, an unsettled thing, a sound I’d never heard before. I grabbed for my sword, found it was no longer at my hip, and instead unsheathed my dagger from my boot.
“Lyn?”
She didn’t respond to me. Her hands were both in the air and she knelt, as if in prayer. No. No! She was tied up.
I rushed to her, and when she spun to face me, there was mania in her wide, blue eyes. The night vision gave her an eerie glow, like a banshee, and I tossed them off, taking a moment to adjust to the darkest part of night.
She slumped forward.
I caught her in my arms, just as I noticed the body beneath her.
And it was definitely a body.
There was no way the man had survived what she had done to him.
His face was peeled off.
His throat a gory mess.
His chest. Oh fuck, his chest.
I’d been terrified, rushing to save her, but I should have known.
My girl didn’t need saving anymore.
I smiled, and instead of regret, or pain, there was contentment. Peace.
We’d come out of the womb, kicking, screaming, covered in blood, and we were going to start our new life the same way.
“We did it, Lyn. We did it.”