31. Baby’s got a gun – Aurora
31
BABY’S GOT A GUN
AURORA
T he shot echoes around us, ringing in my ears as the people on the street rush in every direction, trying to get away from the shooter, but most don’t seem to know who it was or where the danger is.
Someone knocks hard into my shoulder and my hand comes away from Elijah’s. Another hit and I’m on the damp ground, trying to get back to my feet as bodies move in waves of chaos all around us.
“Aurora!” Elijah shouts through the cacophony of noise, but it sounds like he’s looking in the wrong direction. His voice moves farther away as he calls for me again, “ Aurora !”
The heel of a boot comes down on my little finger and I curse, sucking in air through my teeth as I push to my feet and swivel my head, trying to catch sight of Elijah or Seven amid the throng of people.
In the distance, sirens pierce through the raucous sounds of stamping feet, panicked voices, and screams. The lights paint the tops of the ancient buildings in flashing blue as they draw nearer, angling to try to push through the traffic that’s at a dead stop now as people abandon their cars in favor of running away on foot.
“ Elijah !”
I grab his arm, but the man who spins to face me with wide, fear-filled eyes isn’t him. “Sorry,” I mutter as he jerks his arm away from me and makes a beeline for the intersection.
I dodge out of the path of a couple running straight for me and almost trip over the dead guy in the street. He’s face down, with a hooked blade jutting from his back. Seven’s blade. Quickly, I drop to a knee and grip the handle to pry it from the guy’s back.
He jerks and lets out a wet, weak groan. “Shit!” I fall backward onto my ass, dropping the gun and scraping my palms against the pavement.
The guy gasps and splutters.
Oh god.
I’ve seen dead people before. Once on the street when I was a sixteen-year-old runaway. And once when Jesse showed me the severed head of a double-crossing drug dealer to get me to cooperate with his demands. But I’d never seen someone actually dying.
The noises coming from his throat are making my own thick, causing my stomach to roll.
Swallowing, I fight a gag, feeling the sticky blood now coating my palm where it holds Seven’s blade.
Oh god, what am I doing?
I look around, but as the last handful of people bolt for literally anywhere else, I don’t see him. It feels wrong to just leave it, so I give one good tug and jerk it free.
Ugh. So gross. I pocket it and look up and down the street, struggling to see through the still thinning crowd. An older woman muttering something that sounds like a prayer shrieks when she sees me, and I realize I forgot to re-conceal Seven’s gun when I picked it back up.
“Fuck,” I tuck it into Elijah’s coat and grit my teeth, kicking off my heels to abandon in the street, hissing when the cold cement kisses my toes. Where the hell are th?—
There!
I rush for the narrow alley where I saw the flash of movement, following the sounds of muted thuds and grunts to find Seven brawling with one of the guys who was chasing us.
He ducks to avoid a blow to the face, catching sight of me with wide eyes as I bounce on my feet, trying to amp myself up to help him. The gun he gave me won’t be any good here, I might hit Seven, and I’m not even one hundred percent sure I can make myself pull that trigger.
“No!” Seven grunts, landing a hard blow to the guy’s stomach before taking one to his ribs. “E-Elijah,” he gasps out between punches. “Go. Up the street.”
Something zaps in my veins, and I shift to turn around with fresh ice in my blood. The panic in his voice is contagious, and it grips my heart in a vise.
“I got this. Go!”
Remembering the blade in my pocket, I draw it out. “Seven! Catch!”
The hooked blade catches the light, and he smirks as I throw it. He catches it easily and I don’t stay to watch what happens next even though I’m worried he could be hurt.
I trust him. He’s got this. He said go , so I’m going.
I race back the way I came, veering to follow the sidewalk farther up the street where we’d been headed.
Elijah, where the hell are you?
My heart pounds hard in my ears, beating like a drum in my chest as I race faster, the torn shreds at the hem of my dress snapping around my legs like violent whips.
The people who’d been in the street rush down the block to the right. My eyes dart through the crowd, trying to find a familiar head of rich brown hair, but I don’t see him.
Down the opposite street ahead to my left, there’s the clatter of metal on cement and I gasp, rushing forward, gripping the rough edge of the wall to slingshot myself around it.
Elijah stands in the middle of the vacant street with his hands raised, palms out, his gun on the sidewalk far out of reach. The suited bastard standing in front of him has his weapon raised, his back to me.
Far beyond Elijah, Seven barrels into the street from an alleyway. He sees the threat at the same time I do and starts to run, shouting, his voice raw and scraping and stabbing straight into my chest as he calls Elijah’s name.
He won’t make it in time.
“I won’t beg,” Elijah says as I slip the gun from inside the coat, and my throat goes dry.
My hand trembles as I lift it, needing to wrap my other hand around the grip to steady it enough so I don’t miss and accidentally hit Elijah or Seven.
A wave of soul-twisting dread floods into my heart like acid, but worse than that is the rush of power as I realize that I can fire.
“Eli!” Seven roars.
Oh god.
Goosebumps flare up my arms as if electrified by the gun. I blow out a shaky breath, forcing them to steady as I rush forward on bare feet, flick off the safety, and take aim.
I can’t miss .
Just a little closer. If I could just get within twenty feet, I could?—
The guy with his back to me laughs at Elijah, his shoulders square off, and his arms tense.
I run.
“No!” Seven howls, and it’s the gut-wrenching fear and rage in his voice that makes me ready.
The fucker adjusts his grip. “Courtesy of Ambrose De La Ro?—”
Finally, he hears me, shifting on his feet, but he’s too late and I’m more than close enough.
He spins to face me, and I don’t hesitate.
The gun kicks in my hands and I feel the rattle of it down to my toes as a back spatter of red mists over my chin and chest. The echo of the shot rebounding from the stone buildings all around us.
My heart stops.
Everything stops as his body pitches forward, the hole in the back of his head a garish crater of burgundy.
He falls onto his face, and Elijah’s eyes go wide as he takes me in. “Aurora?”
He says my name like he isn’t sure it’s really me, and, to be honest, I’m not sure it is, either. I just killed…
I’ve seen and done and been through a lot of shit, but I’ve never…
The gun in my hands is suddenly heavy and I let it fall to my side, remembering to breathe.
Seven’s erratic footfalls silence as he skids to a stop next to Elijah, gripping him hard around his shoulders. He pants loudly as he looks Elijah up and down before roughly pulling him in for a hard embrace.
I can’t say why, but watching them makes my throat burn. Makes my eyes sting.
“I’m okay, Sev. I’m good. I’m good.”
I feel like a spectator at a show I didn’t order tickets for. A ghost on the sidelines of the living. A statue unable to move.
When Seven releases Elijah and his eyes meet mine, my solid stone exterior cracks. And when he strides over to me, every one of his steps echoes the beating of my heart.
As his hand comes up to tightly grip the back of my neck, drawing my forehead to his, I feel more than I have ever felt in my entire miserable life.
“ Thank you ,” he says through his teeth, and I don’t think anyone will ever be more grateful. It comes off him like a wave of energy with no place to go, hitting me in the chest like an iron fist.
As our foreheads come apart, he gives me a tight nod, and his gaze falls to the gun still gripped in my hand. He reaches for it, taking its weight, allowing me the precious seconds I need to let it go. Once I do, he nods again, and I force myself to relax my shoulders, fighting the shifting tides in my stomach. Hating how my hands feel empty and my feet unsteady once the weapon is out of my reach.
Elijah comes to stand next to Seven, shoulder to shoulder, his warm gaze tracking every minuscule shift in my expression. “My guardian angel,” he says on a breath, his lips quirking at the corners into a sad version of a smile. “I owe you my life.”
“You would’ve done the same,” I find myself saying.
“Yes,” he replies as if it were obvious. “I would’ve.”
“We need to get off the streets.”
Seven glances up at the blue lights still flashing overhead, the sirens getting nearer. They’re coming from the opposite direction now too—the way they said the metro was. I assume Atticus’s contact can only do so much to stop his officers from getting involved when there’s an all-out gunfight happening right in the streets of the 18th arrondissement.
“This way,” I say, remembering the flood of people headed down that way. “If we go quickly, we can blend in with the crowd.”
“Wait.” Elijah rushes to grab the toppled shopping bag from the ground, snatching a black T-shirt from inside of it before throwing the strap over his shoulder.
“May I?” he asks, holding the shirt to my face, and I remember the blood. I let him clean it as best he can, wiping the soft fabric over my chin, neck, and the tops of my breasts. When he’s finished, he reaches up to get rid of one final drop near the corner of my mouth, brushing it away with his thumb. The warmth of his touch draws a shiver from my bones.
Seven holsters his gun and zips his jacket up over the mess of red on his shirt. “Hate to break this up, but we need to move.” He indicates the street ahead. “We’ll follow you, Ro.”
I nod, and lead them the way I saw all the people go. We rush across the street, keeping our heads down to avoid being seen by the police officers still trying and failing to get through the standstill. But by the jarring beams of white light flicking across the cars, I think some are now on foot, which means we’ll have company soon if we don’t hurry.
It feels good to move, even better once we clear the intersection and I can push myself into a run, feeling the chill night air wash over my skin.
The stampede of people I saw are all but gone now, and I curse to myself until I spot a party bus down the next street. It begins to pull slowly away from the curb, and I rush to catch it, banging on the door to make the driver stop.
I have no idea where it’s going, but it’ll get us away from here, and that’s a start.
The doors open, and the driver asks me something in French that I don’t understand. Elijah squeezes past me to answer him and steps inside, towing me behind him.
“Fucking psychos out there, man,” Seven says to the driver as we pass him and head straight for the back of the cramped bus. Whispers follow us and people dressed for a night of dancing clear a path as if they can sense the danger emanating from us in radioactive waves. Maybe they can.
We grip the overhead handles, standing in a tight circle as the bus begins to move. Each of us looks at the other, something passing between the three of us that makes me stupidly giddy, to the point where I think I might actually laugh, but I swallow the sound and give them a knowing smile instead.
When Seven takes my hand, I let him, and without thinking, I reach for Elijah’s. He looks at it a second before slipping his fingers down my palm, twining his fingers with mine.
“I’m sorry,” he mutters, and I frown.
“For what?” I whisper back.
“For bringing you into this. We never should’ve put you in danger.”
I squeeze his hand in mine lightly, conscious of his injury. I don’t know what to say to that, because, truthfully, I don’t know how I feel. My whole worldview has been shaken, and I’m not sure how everything fits back together anymore. But I’m finding myself hoping that my broken pieces somehow fit with theirs.
Yes, if they hadn’t brought me here and we hadn’t stolen that artwork, none of this would’ve happened but…I don’t blame him. And I don’t blame Seven, either.
As I lean into Elijah’s side and he takes my weight, letting his chin fall on top of my head, I hope he knows that I’ve already forgiven him.