Chapter 30 Gedeon
GEDEON
“Like this?” She clicked the safety on a handgun off and back on.
“Exactly.” Ezra wiped his face with a small towel and tossed it on the ragged bench I was sitting on. “Your turn,” he said to Eislyn as she fumbled with her own firearm.
Slumped on the bench in a corner of the booth in the middle of our shooting range, I gulped down the cool water from a steel bottle.
Autumn had begun a couple of weeks ago, yet the sun had not released its hold on us, drenching the gravel-filled field in sunshine and everyone training in sweat.
The targets and dummies at the end of the range shimmered as the air around them blurred.
The rows of tables used for classes on taking care of weapons, from disassembly to putting them back together, stood abandoned.
Besides the four of us, not a single person hung around in the space.
Zion was off with Eli, running our established teams through more gruesome and complicated scenarios in the uninhabited or dilapidated buildings on the outskirts of our compound.
We had no idea what would await us in the city and had to be prepared for whatever their despicable leaders would think of.
“See, you can do it.” Kali nudged Eislyn’s hip for having figured out how to work the safety.
“I still don’t understand your interest in this.” Her delicate face scrunched up, Eislyn lifted the handgun higher, holding it pinched between two fingers, as if it reeked. “Knives are easier. And more precise.”
“No!” Ezra snatched the weapon from her and checked that the safety was on. “Irresponsibility with firearms will get you killed,” he scolded. “You don’t ever act with them as toys. Especially not when you’re learning.”
“It’s not even loaded.” Kali rolled her eyes at him and demonstrated to Eislyn how to go through the motions more easily. “Do it a couple of times and you’ll get it.”
She was a natural, going through Ezra’s instructed motions effortlessly. No wonder her mind contained so many ideas about death.
So I had figured she might be interested in learning a cleaner way to do it and how to avoid falling into a fit of shock at taking a life.
The vibration from the bullet leaving the shaft of a gun and rattling your bones could be calming.
And with the storm bubbling up inside her, we had to simmer it down a notch.
Instead, she had found a friend to join her. Now she and Eislyn nagged Ezra, whose patience was obviously wearing thin as he guided them through the essentials of handling a weapon.
I could have done it myself, but I also wanted to give her some space to interact with others. And seeing her team up with Eislyn to exasperate Ezra had become truly enjoyable.
“Hey! Shoot anyone yet?” Jayla dropped her bag on the ground and perched on the bench beside me.
“They won’t let us,” Eislyn complained. Ezra gave her a pointed look, and she swiftly schooled her expression into an innocent one. “What?”
“Are you not supposed to be in training with Ava right now?” I asked Jayla. My palms were damp from the water bottle’s condensation, and I dabbed them over my nape, savoring the chill.
Behind us, in a large field full of withering grass destroyed by many feet, Ava yelled at someone to get in line for breaking loose and leaving their partner’s back exposed.
The man was about to experience her tearing him a new one for going rogue.
A group of newcomers had fallen under her wing as she was teaching them group formations, a buddy system for having each other’s backs, and strategies for working in unknown environments.
“I am.” Jayla kicked off her sandals, pulled a pair of socks and boots from her leather backpack, and stuffed her feet into both of them. “Got stuck at Vice. A new shipment from a local distillery. They messed up our order.”
“You’re late. Get your ass over here now,” Ava shouted from the field behind us. It was impossible to slip through her unnoticed.
“Calm down. I’ll be there in a minute,” Jayla yelled back as she tied the laces of her steel-toed boots. Re-securing her high ponytail, she rose to glare at Ava. She took a single step toward us, and Jayla rushed off. “I said fine! I’m coming for gods’ sake.”
I highly valued the certain aura of authority Ava carried.
It was useful in leading the newcomers’ group training, half of them not understanding the basic directions and the others thinking they could do better than her and that they should head Zion’s catch-and-play team, the one with no moral limitations.
Or the creative one. Depending on how you looked at it.
Eislyn whispered something to Kali, and they giggled, disregarding Ezra’s attempts to bring them back to the lesson. After a few minutes, he gave up and resorted to lingering on the side and waiting for them to finish their conspiring.
I prowled over to them. “Something funny?”
“No. But good luck to you.” Snickering, Eislyn hurried to join Ezra.
I raised my eyebrows at Kali. “I asked a question.”
“I know,” she stated, and not a word more.
I plucked a dark strand out of her bun, silky and smooth, like water or sand. “Do you need additional motivation to listen to what Ezra is trying to drill into that beautiful head of yours?”
“Perhaps.” She angled her head. “What’s the offer?”
Stepping into her, I trapped her between the table littered with weapons at her back, me pressing into her front. “If you sit through Ezra’s lesson like a good girl and manage to hit a target, any target, at the end of it today, I will allow you to join us tomorrow.”
“Join you tomorrow? And you don’t allow me anything. Say something like that again and that target you’ve mentioned will become you.”
Chuckling, I brushed my knuckles along her collarbone, half exposed by her t-shirt. “Do we have a deal?”
“This is a terrible offer,” she huffed, and then, a tad suspicious, added, “Where would we go?”
I pulled her flush with me. “Fill your end of the bargain, and we will explain over dinner.”
Gears spun in her head as she mulled over my proposal, studying my face with a slight frown, her hands resting on my chest, the warmth from her palms seeping through my shirt. I wanted them to trail lower, down my abdomen—
“Fine. But”—she raised a finger between us—“you have to hit every target with any gun I pick out and then we have a deal. I’m tired of you only sitting there and staring at us.”
We had not left her alone since last night. We were not risking another soldier coming and her not having any protection. Zion had spent this morning with her until she had threatened to slice his dick off if he attempted to tickle her one more time.
Pinching her chin, I leaned in. “I have stalked you for months before I stole you, and I will stalk you for the rest of your life.” I flicked her chin and let her go, motioning to the plethora of guns spread out over the wooden surface. “Lady’s choice.”
“A minute,” she said, and hauled Eislyn to the corner of the booth, their backs turned to us and voices hushed to conceal their scheming, interrupted only by their furtive glances at me, Ezra, and the table with firearms.
If it was not the heat, then it was her scarce giggles melting me into a godsdamn puddle, a pool of liquid idiocy.
Ezra came to my side and leaned against the post of the booth. “I heard you were attacked last night. Ilasall sent a soldier?”
“Unsuccessfully.” We had not shared the information with many, but rumors traveled fast. “He got his neck snapped before he came close to any of us.”
“And her? How is she doing?” He pried the hair tie out of his brown strands and secured the bun low on his nape anew.
“Coping.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s—”
I cut off as she sauntered over to us from hers and Eislyn’s hiding spot and handed me a black semi-automatic handgun. “This one.”
“Are you sure?” There were guns on that table requiring a far more experienced shooter than the ordinary option she had chosen.
“Ezra mentioned the reliable range for a precise hit with this one is about fifty yards, and that dummy”—she pointed to the target at the end of the range, beaming with wickedness—“is about seventy yards away.”
“Let’s see.” I checked the handgun’s magazine, finding it fully loaded.
Taking my position behind the table, I started from the right, pulling the trigger and shooting the closest target about five yards away and moving on to the others.
Soon a bullet had reached every dummy in the range except the one she had indicated.
Her choice was smart and thought through. But she did not know I had trained in our shooting range since my teenage years and had been running our people through training scenarios involving firearms before Ezra and Ava had joined us.
And today the weather was perfect for this, only a barely-there breeze tousling my hair and messing up her high bun.
“You meant this one?” I asked and observed the bullet fly true to the final target. The wood splintered where the dummy’s forehead was supposed to be.
“Oh, come on!” she grumbled, blowing upward to get her hair away from her face.
I returned the gun to its previous location on the table. “Now keep your end of the deal, and go finish your lesson with Ezra. You still have to hit a target.”
She listened intently throughout the rest of the lesson, spending the breaks conspiring with Eislyn on the other side of the booth from Ezra and me.
When the evening came and Ava released the tired and grumbling groups of newcomers from her lesson, Ezra relented and allowed them to practice on the targets.
Eislyn was the first to hit a dummy, and they dropped their guns, jumping animatedly, embracing each other with delighted squeals, much to Ezra’s displeasure at their lack of seriousness.
A few tries later, Kali hit a target herself and slowly lowered her gun, clicking the safety and discarding it on the table at the front of the booth.
She approached me with a sly smile. “I guess you’re bringing me with you tomorrow then, kitten.”
I was going to kill Zion.