Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
Against the backdrop of flames and black blood and fae faces twisting with war cries that arch over the gunfire, the guard with lilac eyes turns on us.
Those eyes, familiar before the crack of his backhand on my cheek weeks ago, flare just like they did then, an unnatural gleam of rage.
A blur, he turns his back on the siege of gunfire and drops into a crouch. His fist comes down on the road—and snow lifts up around his distorted face, a face warped with fury.
I’m curled up on the ground, arms curved over my head, as though that’ll save me from the sporadic landing of bullets, hitting the road, the arms and legs and shoulders of the fae, the doors of cars and wheels of toppled bikes.
But those lilac eyes hold every ounce of my attention—because they are aimed right at me.
The way this guard stares at me… it’s like I’m the source of the gunfire, the human in the city shooting at him, at his fellow warriors.
It’s misaimed hatred, misdirected blame.
All that rage in him, the urge to turn his back on his duty of guarding the captives and run into the fight, it bottles up—and for some reason, aims at me.
I shut my eyes, tight, like that’ll take me away from this bridge, steal me away to a safe place.
But the sounds follow me.
The song of war.
Battles I’ve been in before, I hear them in the blasts of gunfire, a never-ending siege, and so I think, distantly, this is organised.
This is planned.
The humans firing from the city have talked about this, schemed, ‘you go first, when you reload, team two takes over, we’ll cover you.’
Everything about it is orchestrated.
And I’m reminded, like a cold echo, of the road in the town we wandered into, before Emily was snared by the net; a trap designed for us.
But this time, the trap is a symphony of bullets raining down on asphalt, on the metal of cars—and right into the mangled scream behind me.
My eyes snap open.
I crane my neck and throw my wide stare as far back as I can—and I find the crimson-slicked face of a captive.
The one who reminds me of Erin.
Her scream curdles the air.
I cringe against it, teeth bared in a grimace, before I even notice the fucking hole in her face.
Burrowed right into her shattered cheekbone—a bullet is struck.
A guttural moan crawls through me.
I tug away from her, the trashing of her limbs as she struggles between cocooning herself against more bullets and grabbing her shattered face to stop the flow of blood.
The bullets are stretching too far.
We’re at the back, away from the bulk of the unit that’s charging into the city, but bullets are still reaching us.
On the bridge, the fae should be battered by them.
I watch the warriors swarm the city—before the next bullet strikes us, and it plants right into the head of the man at my boots.
“Fuuuuuck,” my throaty moan morphs into panic. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
My boots kick against the snow-packed road. I worm myself away from him, from his sagged, bleeding body.
All around us, guards are dropped onto one knee, fists pressing into the road, heads dropped—but the flare of their stares swerves around us.
The lilac set follows me as I shove myself back from the dead man, and my skull knocks into a sludge of blood.
The girl with the shattered cheekbone wails against me, her hand smacking down on my shoulder. Her cries at me to get off of her are drowned out by the sudden shouts lifting up from the captives.
I cringe against it, the rise of cries and screams, the striking of bullets—and the sudden burst of bootsteps pounding down on the road.
A gasp cuts through me.
People are rising from all over and barrelling out of the circle of guards.
Frozen, I watch as legs leap over mine, as people splinter off and race through the gaps between the kneeling guards—
Then I notice the lilac eyes again.
They lure me in, devoid of the flare, that gleam that had my toes curling in my boots.
Now, they are lifeless.
Cheek smooshed against the snow, it’s a slack face that boots jump over as people scatter.
Blood oozes from the nape of his neck.
I push up from the snow, onto my hands and knees, and from this angle, I look down at the gaping holes split along his spine.
Right down his nape, pulsations of blood spill out of him and melt the snow around his limp body.
More than one bullet hit him.
There’s no doubt about that in my stunned mind as I take in the sight of the torn flesh and a shattered spine.
The solid weight of a boot kicks into my side, and I’m knocked back down.
I almost think a fae has come to kick me, to recapture the ones running off into the woods, down the highway, over to the riverbed—but it’s a woman.
I throw a twisted look around at her, that round and blotchy face that flickers in my mind, memories of her stout and strong frame heaving pots and laundries all around camp.
Her legs writhe over my back, trying to find footing again, and I’m just in her fucking way, being trampled.
The cry ribboning out of me is hollow.
Before she can crush my fucking spine, I drag myself out from under the harsh kicks of her boots on my back.
The murderous glare I throw at her goes ignored as she scrambles to her feet, then barrels out there, into the darkness of the highway, back the way we came.
And it’s only now that I see the destruction.
Five humans hit.
Three are motionless, limp, oozing blood. Two are writhing on the snow, holding onto weeping wounds that slick their hands crimson.
The rest are boot prints heading outwards, past the guard that is doubled over, holding his midsection that spills black blood, past the lilac-eyed one who is slumped and dead, and beyond the guard who, face twisted with rage, holds a gushing hole on his chest.
And for too long, I’m stunned.
Frozen.
In all the time I’ve spent in the blackout, with fae monsters prowling in the dark, I’ve learned how fucking hard it is to kill them.
The first fae who was hit died, or it seemed like it. The slap-happy one with lilac eyes, definitely dead.
It looks like the bullets might be aimed with more purpose than I first thought.
The kill-strikes are to the neck.
But this one, with the middle of his chest pierced by the metal of a bullet, punches up from the road.
His murderous glare turns on the boot prints that spear off around him.
In a blink, he’s charging after the runaways.
But the bullets don’t stop coming.
It’s hail raining down on us.
I twist onto my front, snow spraying all around me, and lean my weight back until I’m planted on my knees.
My shoulders curve inwards, as if to protect me somehow, but these people firing at us don’t seem to give a shit that they are striking humans, too.
Maybe they intended on it.
How it must look to them, from a distance, humans banded together in a dark fae unit, maybe willing slaves, maybe to them we have made deals to save ourselves.
Sort of true in my case.
I didn’t make the deal, but either way, I’m not taking a bullet for any fae or disillusioned human.
They can all fuck off.
I scramble to my boots and, leaving behind the few captives who remain in the circle, I run.
The slam of my boots pound down on the snow. Each kick of the soles under me threatens to slip back too far.
If they were shit for walking on the snow, then they are the worst for running. I wobble and stagger and stumble with every other step, until I throw myself to the side of a van.
For a beat, I flatten my back to the door and throw my gaze around the bridge.
Two captives barrel past me—
And the van crunches.
I cry out with the sudden shudder of the door against my back and I drop to the ground, a puppet with her strings cut.
Before I can even look up at the van, at what crushed it, a loud metal groan comes—and then boots smack down in front of me.
My wide gaze lifts up the leathers, the muscle, of the fae, a guard.
He throws me a dark look for the quickest moment, then he’s off.
Chasing down the captives.
It’s not safe, not safe to go back to the circle, to the guards, the corpses and the wounded.
The gunfire hasn’t slowed.
Being out in the open is a death sentence, one that the cold warrior can’t protect me from, because he’s not fucking here.
He’s out there, somewhere in the city.
I need to save myself.
My heart is hammering in my chest, stealing my breaths, and I’m just pressed against the wheel, panting, wide-eyed, and frozen.
The van isn’t safe. Bullets are coming from the other side of the city too, raining down on the bridge from all angles.
The people who are firing at us must be sprinkled around the high-rises that overlook the river.
I’m too exposed.
My gaze swerves around for a place to hide.
The railing of the bridge runs back along into the riverbank. If I can reach the far end of the bridge, and jump down into the sloped soil, then I can take cover under the bridge.
It’s the only safe spot from this organised gunfire.
I roll my weight back onto my boots, and without wasting another breath, I’m shoving myself into a run.
I leap over a fallen bike before a man cuts ahead of me, darting out of sight behind a sedan.
I don’t let it pause me, not even the thunder of bootsteps chasing me slows me down, until whoever it is catches up to me, and something solid hits the back of my legs.
The impact knocks right into me, throws me off-balance. The road is rushing up at me, fast.
My forearms take the brunt of the fall.
The cry brewing in me is coarse, guttural, and it twists my face. I swallow it back and look down at the weight pinning my legs to the cold, wet road.
Desperate brown eyes meet mine.
A man is sprawled over my legs. And there’s a knife gleaming from the bone of his shoulder blade.
I lift my gaze from the hilt to the dark shadows lashing around the light.
Muscular legs, wrapped in leather, cut through the dusty blackness.
I drag my gaze up the leathers to the sharp face of the fae—the one who threw the knife.
The guard advances on us.