46. Sebastion
SEBASTION
THE END OF DAYS
Ihear her before I see her.
I feel her before I hear the gunshots.
I slam through the stable doors and lock up at the sight of my mom on the ground, screaming and draping her body over Mav.
I catch Detective fucking Mills’ panicked spin as he gives us his back and swings a gun in Scarlett’s direction.
My legs tremble as I lock eyes with my green-skinned Uncle Bas, then my baby brother, whose cheeks glisten with tears.
Koda never cries.
Scarlett snarls like a fucking she-devil, and as though the universe wanted to ensure I would bear witness to all of my worst nightmares in one go, she runs toward Mills’ gun.
Not away.
Until six months ago, Uncle Bas was the best marksman I ever had the pleasure of trying to beat. He had the steadiest hand. The longest range. The sharpest eye. He was a fucking beast, and not once in a million years would I have doubted his skill.
But his hand shakes now, and he’s too weak to stand on his own, let alone reprise his role as Arabella Aster’s head of security.
He closes one eye like it helps his failing sight, and raises his hand, though it doesn’t come nearly as high, nearly as easily, as it used to before cancer made him weak.
He squeezes the trigger, because Cameron Mills is a threat to the people he swore to protect, but his instincts are slow, his ability to pivot, non-existent. Because the same second he lets off a shot, is the same second Scarlett runs between him and his target.
“No!” I spare just a single thought for my mom.
My brother. My heart squeezes and my entire existence flickers as gray tinges the edges of my vision.
While Scarlett darts toward Mills, I dart toward Scarlett.
While my mom cries out for help and Linc skids down beside her, slamming his knees to the side of her thigh so hard that a cry of pain escapes her throat and joins the rest of the noise inside this building, I’m not nearly as fast as Scarlett’s trim one-hundred-and-twenty-pounds, so I get a front-row seat to the way she mounts Mills’ legs and brings her elbow down over his face.
As Bas’ bullet passes through Mill’s forehead.
The first one, anyway.
The second passes through Scarlett.
Then they fall, Mills’ legs collapsing under the weight of a woman possessed and a body already beginning its postmortem breakdown.
I watch, horrified, as Scarlett bounces the side of her head off the hard ground. As blood bursts from her face and her beautiful, long, dark locks create a curtain I don’t get to look beneath.
Behind her, Bas drops to his knees, too sickly to stay up. Then to his ass, because he’s dying, too.
Mom’s keening sob rocks my entire soul and commands I spin to save her, but I dive across Mills’ corpse and scoop Scarlett into my arms instead. I whip her hair back and search her face. Her closed eyes. Her busted lip and the nasty gash Bas’ bullet dug across her fucking temple.
It pulses with blood, gushing faster than she can afford.
“Scarlett?” I lower her to the dirt and press my fingers to the side of her neck. Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead. “Wake up, Princess. Wake up.” I tap her cheek and reject the blood leaving her body. Coating mine. “Scarlett!”
“She’s sleepin’.” Bas exhales a tired groan and flops to his back. “She didn’t freeze. She didn’t even panic.”
A hundred bodies surge into the stables, led by my dad and ordered around by Koda. But in the quiet of our small space, Bas tilts his head to the side and grins. “I guess I shot her a little bit. You think she’ll forgive me?”
I hold vigil beside Scarlett’s bed in the medical wing and… stare. Remind myself to breathe. Shout a silent wake up! to the woman who hardly likes to sleep anyway.
Is she stuck in her nightmares, unable to crawl her way out?
Is she dreaming of the men who’ve hurt her, punctuated by Mills’ betrayals?
Is she grieving Mav all alone, where I can’t reach her?
“She’ll be okay.” Serena presses a hand to my shoulder, squeezes, then releases me again and makes her way to the machine that beep-beep-beeps. Thank God it beeps. “Just a couple of stitches, and a nice bit of rest. She’ll be like brand-new.”
She doesn’t like you! She won’t wake up for as long as she can hear your fucking voice!
But those are the hurtful words Scarlett would disapprove of. Even if she was thinking them, even if she felt them, she’d never say them, and she’d scowl if she knew I said them on her behalf.
I take her hand instead and glance out the door to where my mom sits with her back against the wall. Her face is splotchy and red, her fingers stained with my brother’s blood.
“How’s Uncle Bas?” I grit out. He’s here somewhere. Back in his bed. Clinging to life. “He alright?”
“Resting.” Serena plugs an IV bag into Scarlett’s tubes and casts a wary peek Linc’s way. Because it’s entirely possible he might get up and Hulk smash this whole fucking room to pieces. “These are precautionary antibiotics. She got a lot of dirt and debris in her wounds, so I figure—”
“Is my sister in a coma?” he snarls impatiently. Sat in the chair opposite mine, he strokes her hand and holds Nova’s in the other. “This isn’t normal, right?”
“Should we take her to a hospital in town?” Nova rasps. “Where they have more doctors and stuff?”
“We have the best surgeon in the state already on site. He’s very good at what he—”
“But he’s with Mav!” I snap.
In the hall, Mom jumps and whimpers, while the flat line of my father’s lips grows flatter.
“The surgeon is with Mav,” I try again, breathing through my fear and squeezing Scarlett’s hand. But not too tight. I don’t hurt her. I swear. “He’s where he should be. Not letting Mav die. But while he’s there, he’s not here. So maybe she—”
“She’s not in a coma.” Pulling a roll of white stickers from her pocket, then a pen after that, Serena slaps a sticker onto the IV bag and writes the time and her initials in steady black ink. “She’s just resting.”
“But she hit her head,” I groan. “Really fucking hard. And she—”
“Woke up when you first brought her here.” Compassion glitters in the eyes of a woman who, just days ago, suggested I kick Scarlett out of my bed so she could slide back in.
She lowered to her knees and attempted to unbuckle my belt.
She did exactly what I would’ve loved… before Scarlett.
But now she’s just a woman I used to know.
Not even a friend, because friends don’t sabotage relationships already wobbling on unstable ground.
Clicking the end of her pen, she drops it and her hand back into her pocket.
“She woke up, Sebastion. She told me her name.” Her lips tremble with half a smile, half a sob.
“She didn’t even tell me to fuck myself, though she had reason to.
” Slowly, she brings her attention around to Linc and Nova.
“Your sister is not in a coma, Mr. Castro. She’ll wake when she’s ready, so your job is to allow her the space to rest.” Lowering her chin, she crosses the room and pauses at the door, her eyes glistening with the tears she doesn’t allow to fall.
“I’m really sorry, Sebastion. For everything.
I didn’t realize this would happen when—”
“Just go.” I bring Scarlett’s knuckles to my lips. “You’ll wake up soon, won’t you, Princess? Cause you’re strong and brave, and your brother is gonna make good on all his threats soon if I don’t deliver you back to him in the condition I got you.”
“You swore she’d be safe here.” He tips his head back and groans, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and finger.
“Fuck, Jameson. You brought her to a place that’d been hidden in plain sight for thirty years.
But the one time you got a bogey scaling the walls is the same time you’ve got my sister’s life in your hands. ”
Yep. That’s a pretty fuckin’ accurate account of what happened.
“Koda.” My mom’s voice carries through from the next room to ours. “Honey, no—”
I don’t bother turning my body. I don’t even turn my head. I simply shift my eyes and find my baby brother hugging the door frame.
“Well, hello there.” Nova is the nicest of us all. The sweetest. The one who has lost the most, so I suppose all that practice dealing with grief makes her more able to function when I simply… can’t.
Crawling off Linc’s lap, she wanders across the room and lowers into a crouch by the door. “You must be Koda, huh?”
His bottom lip quivers as he nods and swipes spilled tears from his cheeks. “Yes. I’m Koda.”
“I’m Nova.” She strokes the back of his hand with just the side of her finger. “I heard you were so brave today, Koda. Your mom and Scarlett needed help, so you ran back here and got the best dang soldier you knew.”
“Uncle Bas is head of security,” he hiccups. “He’s not feeling very well right now, but still…”
“But still,” she agrees. “I think you might be the hero of the day. You did the exact right thing, even though you must’ve been very scared.
” She tips her head back and smiles as my dad stops in the doorway.
“You’ve raised three exceptionally brave sons, Mr. Jameson.
Even adults struggle sometimes. But to be five?
” Nova brings her focus back down to Koda.
She lifts one hand and shows off five elongated fingers.
“You might be the youngest hero I’ve ever met. ”
“I fell into the pool one time.” He swallows his tears and leans back against Dad’s legs. “Bas was very brave and grabbed me out again.”
Nodding, she glances my way and grins. “Very brave.”
“He told me to watch Scarlett today while he was in town. He said I was Adelita’s head of security, since Mav was busy and Uncle Bas isn’t feeling well.” He drags his wobbling bottom lip between his teeth. “He saved my life, so I tried to save Scarlett’s life.”
My heart aches and swells. I swear, it fucking shatters and malfunctions, so all I have the strength to do is hold Scarlett’s hand and breathe in the scent of her.