Chapter 48 #3
“Doll, I didn’t come here to save Legion.”
“I know there are things he’s done that are unforgivable, but he saved our son. That counts for something, doesn’t it?”
“I’ll go. You stay here with the cage and Cherry,” Dean insists. When I shake my head and he lets out a defeated sigh. “Fine. Just stay behind me, then. And Cherry?—”
“I’ll blow the horn if I see or hear anyone coming,” Cherry says, moving around to the driver’s side door. “Axel and a few of the guys should be here soon.”
I brace myself for what we might find as I follow Dean into the old structure. Viking didn’t give us many details, but if this had anything to do with the people who jumped Legion last time…
“Dean…” I whisper the moment we cautiously cross the threshold.
The atmosphere is thick with tension and strange smells.
Dust particles float through the air in the dim light cast by solar lanterns in the mostly dark.
The moon above shines through the cracks in the roof, but it’s still dark and unsettling.
Something becomes heavier the further inside we venture.
I recognize a scent mingled within the air…
something coppery that drags my memory back to the night Dean fought Jack in the cabin.
I try to swallow down my rising anxiety and reach out to touch Dean’s shoulder.
He removes one hand from the raised gun to reach back and hold my hand.
“Do you smell that?” I shakily ask.
“Blood,” he replies.
“Nobody ever made any ransom demands for Ace,” I whisper. “This was about getting to Legion.” I squeeze Dean’s hand harder and pray silently to myself… please don’t let him be dead…
Dean suddenly stops walking. “Oh shit…” he mutters under his breath.
I peek around his shoulder. There’s a taped cord running across the concrete a few steps in front of us.
Thin wires split off in different directions, disappearing into the darkness.
“This fucking place is rigged to blow. We need to get out of here. Now .” Dean instinctively shoves me behind his back, but then I hear it.
That familiar gravelly voice…
“You’re late… Too late …”
I follow the sound of Legion’s weary voice and spot him leaning against a support column on the ground, partially slumped with both arms wrapped around his stomach.
Before Dean can stop me, I rush to Legion’s side.
He tilts his head back against the column, and when our eyes meet, he tiredly smiles.
“I didn’t think I’d get to see you again,” he says on a pain-ridden sigh.
My gaze drops to his hands clutching his stomach.
I don’t need the light of a lantern to tell they’re soaked in blood.
I drop to my knees beside him, tears already stinging my eyes. I barely hear Dean’s boots skidding on the gravel on Legion’s other side.
“I’ll call 911,” Dean says, rummaging for his phone in his pocket.
“No,” Legion firmly objects. “It’s too late, and this place is rigged to implode… Get her out of here…”
“You’re still breathing, it’s not too late,” I push.
His tired gaze slides back to me. “You asked me once…after I kissed you in the cellar…what a man like me could possibly know about True Love… Do you remember what I told you?”
I peer up at my husband for a brief moment, hesitating. If Legion is dying, he deserves to speak his piece.
Dean offers a single nod, and I know he’s bracing for whatever Legion is about to say.
I settle my teary gaze back on Legion.
“I told you that, like smoking, it will eventually kill you…” Legion slips one bloody hand into his pocket and removes his brass Zippo.
He flicks it open and runs his thumb through the flame.
“I’ve never lied to you, sweet one… Despite my shortcomings, despite the evil I’ve committed…
I’ve never lied to you.” The hinges slowly creak, and the lid claps shut as he presses it closed.
“I want you to keep this… I left it for you once…”
I nod, my throat tight, my eyes blurring as I gently take the Zippo from his bloody hand. I don’t try to pull away when his fingers squeeze mine.
He swallows hard, and I’m not sure if it’s from the pain he must be in, or the emotions swimming in his tearful gaze before he whispers, “I love you… I always will.”
A whimper escapes me, and I have to choke back a sob. I can’t even form the words. I want to say that I’m sorry … I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry I can’t save you now… I’m sorry I can’t tell you that I never expected you to be my deepest secret… but I can’t.
I squeeze his hand harder, and another weak grin pulls at the corner of his mouth as if he knows.
“I ain’t gonna tell anybody…not where I’m going.” He takes a shuddering breath and lifts his gaze to Dean. “Get her out of here, now…please… The bitch is still alive… There’s a… a detonator …if she comes to…she’s crazy enough to take us all out.”
Dean grabs my arm, hard, and hauls me to my feet. My hand slips from Legion’s, but I clutch his Zippo in my fist and hold it to my chest.
“ We can’t just leave him!” I scream as Dean drags me back the way we came. “ We can carry him out together!”
“He’s made his choice, doll,” Dean urges, a level of desperation in his tone I cannot ignore either.
“But he’s not gone yet!”
“Go!” Legion shouts, his words seeped in gut-wrenching torment as he looks past me to my husband. “ Get her out of here, Keegan! Before this fucking place comes down on us all!”
“No.” I barely hear myself cry, but I’m no longer resisting my husband. “Damien, I’m sorry…”
“ Go …sweet one…there isn’t time…” Legion’s voice cracks.
He stares at me with a tearful finality that steals the breath from my lungs, and his final words shatter my heart.
“In another life, baby…we don’t end up this way…
Somewhere…sometime…it’s you and me…and we’re sitting side by side…
watching the sun go down across the desert… You would have made it beautiful.”
T he first pop behind us isn’t loud. It’s sharp. Precise. Then another and another and another rapidly follow. I grip Vanna’s hand tighter and pull her to run faster as we bolt from the gaping mouth of the doomed structure already rumbling beneath our pounding feet.
“ Get down!” I shout to Cherry, and she ducks behind Vanna’s car door.
The roar of my crew’s motorcycles approaching in the distance mingles with the concrete rumbling behind us, and I can feel the vibrations through the soles of my boots.
Charges continue to detonate in a symphony of destruction designed to reduce the building to rubble.
I pull Vanna into my arms before taking her to the ground and shielding her with my body as the final charges go off.
Boom. Boom. Boom… like a heartbeat before it flatlines.
The shockwave washes over us, and Vanna fearfully clings to me as the structure folds in on itself with cold, deliberate intent.
Legion was right. It was rigged to implode.
The walls sink into themselves, the roof buckles, and steel curls in on steel.
We’re hit with another wave of heat and the sharp stings of small debris pelting my back, but I don’t move.
I hold onto her like maybe if I grip her tight enough, I’ll be able to keep the world from falling apart around us…
The second she bolted to the demon bleeding out against a cracked pillar, his expression riddled with pain and regret, I knew she forgave him for everything.
She looked at him like he was still something to her…
something I don’t want to name. I hate that he managed to earn even a fraction of that look in her eyes…
I tried not to let his words seep into my soul…to taint the love between us. I wanted to rip her away from him the moment she dropped to her knees beside him.
“ She still has the detonator…”
I didn’t ask questions. I grabbed my wife by the arm and pulled her back toward the exit. She fought me. Of course she did. Fucking Vanna. She always does. But I didn’t stop despite her cries to help him, despite the way she tried to twist free of my grip.
When Legion spoke again, soft, strained, and final, he’d convinced her this was the end.
For half a heartbeat, I thought she might drop to the floor and shatter.
But I held her upright, I kept her moving, I got her out, and I keep her shielded until the rumbling stops and the heavy silence is only broken by the random creak of metal.
When we sit up, everything is covered in grey. The structure is a pile of smoldering ruin, flames dancing in the ribs of broken beams, smoke rising like a funeral pyre… And I suppose it is… The final resting place of a demon.
“ He’s gone ,” she whispers, staring heartbroken at the wreckage. It feels like my own heart is imploding as their final exchange plays over in my mind. She turns to peer up at me, eyes glassy. “Are you alright?”
“I’ll survive.”
Her brows knit with concern before her expression softens with understanding.
She touches my stubbled jaw as if she needs to feel me, as if she knows I need her to need me.
“I cared about Legion. I won’t lie to you, Dean.
But that doesn’t change this .” Her hand slides to my chest, over the heart she’ll own forever.
“You’re still the one I wake up for, the one I’ve chosen to build my life with, the one I will always keep choosing. You are the one I love.”
The ache in my heart stills when she wraps her arms around my neck… But I know myself… His final words won’t leave me…
Not the warning about the detonator, not the plea to get her out…
those last ones and the way he looked at her like he still belonged somewhere inside her heart.
His last, desperate swing at the foundation of our relationship.
They were an implosive device. Measured, deliberate, personal, desperate…
aimed straight at everything Vanna and I have built together.
“ I love you, Dean ,” she whispers against my ear, full of sorrow and relief.
“I love you, too.” Enough to understand and pick up the pieces, enough to not hold her forgiving nature against her. She wouldn’t be my Vanna without it.
My crew circles around us as I hold her tighter, asking if we’re alright and what happened. I glance back at the ruins one last time. The flames are dying down. The steel beams groan as they cool.
Legion buried himself in the wreckage of his obsession. Whatever cracks he may have managed to leave in us, we’ll fill them and rebuild stronger.
I press a kiss to her temple. “Let’s go get Ace, doll, and bring our family home.”