Chapter 66
“ANGELEYES” BY ABBA
They were running in my direction. I took the chance to duck behind a tree and waited for a blur of curls to sprint past be before tackling Oscar to the ground.
He grunted in surprised, nearly spilling the gun in his hand off into the forest.
“Quinn?” he gasped, eyes widened in fright.
He should be afraid. He should be terrified.
“You small-dicked little prick.” I shot my already throbbing fist into his nose. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”
Oscar cried out in pain, hands shooting up to his face. “You broke my nose!”
“We’re just getting started,” I snarled down in his face, a smile taking over at the rapid flutter in my chest. “Wait till I break your legs!”
I grabbed the front of his shirt and rolled my knuckles around the fabric. My fist struck him in the face, again and again as blood flowed freely from his crooked nose.
I wanted to be sure he suffered.
“You. Worthless. Fucking. Cunt!” I grunted with each hit. “Don’t. You. Ever. Touch! Her! Again!”
Oscar desperately tried to block me, grabbing at his gun beside us when it didn’t work. I didn’t know pain. I never felt it. The adrenaline in me pumped through my veins. It made it impossible to stop when all I saw was bright red.
I reached out for his gun when he clumsily tried to hit me with it. I knocked it out of my way, but he grabbed a fist full of my hair. I punched him in the throat, kicking at him as we tumbled left and right.
Oscar brought the gun down on my head where I had already been bleeding. Blood gushed down into my eyes, metal coating my tongue. My head rocked back as he hit me a third time, followed by the feeling of the barrel digging up under my jaw.
“I am not losing my chance to a weak girl with daddy issues!” Oscar spat his blood out of his mouth onto my face. “I am a st?—”
His words cut short. A struggling, raspy breath escaped him. He weakly dropped the gun and anchored himself on the ground beside me. Oscar’s head hung, looking down at the blood dripping onto my chest.
An arrow.
An arrow had pierced his chest and jabbed between my rib cage. I gasped in surprise and stared at the engraved tip.
It was my arrow.
Oscar’s eyes glossed over as he wheezed.
He tried to take a breath but failed. His arm gave out, and he fell forward into a heap on top of me.
I shoved him aside as the metal tip cut through my shirt.
I panted, kicking away from him as Oscar stared off into the books.
His cheek squashed into the soil, exhaling entirely.
I didn’t hear Oscar try to breathe again.
“Is he dead?” a small voice asked.
I turned my head and sighed with relief.
Quinntessa.
Oh, my sweet angel.
She stood there with a bow in her hands, another arrow drawn back. Her fingers held the tension tight, her eyes not leaving Oscar, filled with a deep fear.
My poor sweet girl was shaking like a dog in the frigid cold. Her breathing was uneven and ragged. I could see each shaky exhale into the foggy hair, stirring up steam from the heat within her.
“You’re alive.” I pulled myself up from the bloody leaves and met her eyes with a soft smile. “Thank fuck. I thought I lost you.”
I took a step and paused. An arrow was trained on my head.
“Don’t come closer.” Quinntessa’s voice was hoarse, like she’d been crying for ages. Unless I had passed out for more than a few hours, she’d only been gone a little over twenty-four hours. What had Oscar done to her? “Did I kill him?”
I turned and looked down at Oscar. He laid completely still. His arms crumbled awkwardly at his sides and his right leg caught underneath him.
“No,” I lied. “He’s just injured.”
I worried she might pass out if she knew she killed him. I didn’t want Quinntessa to feel guilt, not like the names that floated around in my head, memories of the innocents who passed at the hands of my family.
A whizzing zipped through the air. Oscar’s body jerked as an arrow struck him in the back once more.
I blinked.
Darkness.
When I met Quinntessa’s eyes, all I saw was darkness.
She loaded another arrow swiftly into the trig, pulling the string back until tension wavered along her bicep.
As hot as she looked with her shoulders squared and strong arms on display, I felt a stirring nervousness in my stomach when the arrow’s tint glittered in my direction.
“When did you learn to shoot a bow?” I asked.
“I grew up hunting game with my father.” Quinntessa paused. “But I wanted to be like Katniss, so my father taught me.”
“Wouldn’t have guessed with the way you hold a bow in the end zone,” I teased, taking a step closer.
She stepped back. “He was a Boy Scout. My father.” She glared at me. “I know how to use a bow. Don’t test me.”
I chuckled, shaking my head. “Your father was a Hawk. Straight shooter,” I corrected, slowly approaching her. “You don’t know much about your family, do you?”
“I will shoot you. Stay away from me!” Quinntessa warned, her fingers shaking from holding back the strong tension of my bow’s string.
“If you wanted to shoot me, baby, you would have.” I shrugged my shoulders and ignored the ache in my right. “I’m just happy you’re alive. These past few hours have been the worst of my entire life, and I grew up under a man who believed his hand, and only his, is what guided me.”
Quinntessa took jagged breaths. She tried to toss her hair out of her face with only a small motion of her head. It fell further, covering the side of her face.
“Who are you?”
“Really?” I chuckled. “I’m just Quincy Battles.”
“He showed me your book. That blood book. Your handwriting, in blood, wrote Eleanor Harrekson.” Quinntessa raised the bow higher when her weakness showed through, exhausted eyes beating into mine. “Who are you?”
I swallowed and nodded in understanding.
“I am Eleanor Quincy Harrekson-Battles.” I stopped a few feet from her and slowly raised my hands. “It’s just me, Mustang. I’m still just Quincy.”
Quinntessa took a cautious step back, breaking my heart in the process.
“There was bl-blood,” she whimpered. “He drank it. He licked blood off me.”
Oscar was lucky he was dead. I might have killed him if not, much slower than an arrow through the spine.
“Ask me a question,” I insisted. “Ask me anything, and I will tell you the truth, Sal.”
Quinntessa scoffed. Her head tossed to the side again, her messy curls falling further into her face. I glanced down at the arrow and watched it quiver.
“You’ve lied to me before!” she reminded me. “How can I trust you? How do I know this isn’t all some big, elaborate plan to kill me? He told me your plan!”
“And you’ll believe him over me?” I raised my brows.
When Quinntessa didn’t answer, I chuckled and shook my head at how ridiculous that was.
I turned and glared at Oscar’s motionless body, taking a small turn before dropping to my knees to face her.
She eyed me as I submitted, getting in the position to offer her my truth.
I raised my hands and slowly placed them behind my head.
“Cross my heart and hope to die.” I stared into her eyes and spat blood from my mouth. “Ask me, baby. Ask me what you need to know.”
“Why did you pretend to be my friend?” she asked.
“Because I was assigned to kill you,” I answered truthfully. “But I couldn’t. No matter how many times I tried . . . I couldn’t. You are my one failure.”
“How many people have you killed?” Quinntessa gulped.
I inhaled deeply and bobbed my head. “I don’t think you’ll like my answer.”
“How many people?” she asked again, raising the bow.
“My father taught me to kill at a very young age. I grew up being pressured to do his dirty work.” I paused. “But I haven’t killed on my own until I was fighting against killing you. I could murder thousands, but never you.”
“Thousands?” Quinntessa’s eyes widened.
I chuckled.
“Four.” The corners of my lips twitched. “Until I thought they killed you. Then, I killed seven more.”
Quinntessa shuffled her feet. She looked exhausted. Her legs struggled to hold her up as she shifted her weight once again.
“Am I supposed to find that romantic?” she asked.
“Do you?” I raised my brows.
Quinntessa rolled her eyes but never answered. My heart raced, wondering what was going on inside her head.
“Why didn’t you kill me?” she asked.
“Every time I tried, you made me so maddened by love, I became sane.” I tilted my head and watched her eyes flicker to my left multiple times. I spared a quick glance into the dark forest then returned my gaze to her. “I don’t want to kill you.”
“How do I know this isn’t a trap?” Quinntessa asked.
I tried to wrack my brain for a way to prove all this to her. She was shaking—either from the cold or fear, or her exhaustion was making it hard to hold that tension much longer. I feared she’d tumble it right through my skull after seeing her shoot Oscar.
“I love you.”
Quinntessa’s breath hitched.
“I know it means nothing to you, but I do.” I slowly stood from the ground and grunted at the discomfort in my side.
“I lied to you. When I told you I couldn’t love you.
It’s not that I didn’t already. No, it’s that I worried about your life more than my own, sometimes more than my daughter, who was the alternative. ”
“If you didn’t kill me, you have to kill Estelle?” Her eyes filled with tears. “Quincy, that’s . . .”
“No. I’d lose her. My father would take her from me, and I’d never see her again,” I confessed. “But that’s not going to happen. I’m not letting him decide my life for me any longer. I want you and I want my daughter.”
Quinntessa’s head hung, the bow lowering slightly
“I . . . I’m tired. I want to go home, Quince,” she pleaded.
“Let’s go home, baby.” I walked to meet her and rolled my eyes when she raised the arrow again. “I won’t hurt you. I won’t?—”
Quinntessa raised her head, and her curls fell to the side of her face. My throat constricted. The pain in my fist throbbed as I sealed my hands so tight, they shook.
“What happened to your face?” The words shredded from my throat, heart pounding. “Who did that to you? Oscar?”