Chapter 61
vera
He’d already taken everything away. He killed my mother, turned my father into a monster, pulled me into the Blackbirds and watched it break my soul away to nothing, and now, Quayle shot Elaine.
The rest of the world disappeared—the complex, the others upstairs, the assault, the Horizon project, everything.
The only thing I could see was Quayle, the only thing I knew was the moment that crack filled the air and Elaine took the bullet for me.
Her gasp was so small and delicate, like a baby bird being crushed, and time dragged to a standstill as she fell, Quayle moving his gun.
Not fast enough, though.
The rage was icy in my veins as it awakened something terrible, the demon inside me exploding to the surface, and I acted before I could think, the muscle memory of a killer taking over.
I fired a shot, and it hit Quayle’s hand, sending the gun from his hand, flying back into the room and over the railing into the archive as he escaped, leaping back through the doorway and out of view.
As much as I wanted to chase him down and finish him, to kill him slowly and watch the light drain from his eyes like it had mine, I had something more important here.
“Elaine!” I threw myself to the floor, my hand on her shoulder, turning her to look at the bloody mess in her side.
“I’m okay,” she coughed, grimacing hard. “Just go! We won’t get another opportunity!”
An opportunity. She’d leaped in front to take a bullet just to buy me an opportunity.
Dammit. I’d sworn to protect her. And I was failing.
“We’ll get out safely,” I said, and I kissed her quickly. “I love you.”
I sprinted into the room, and I threw the door shut behind me, closing off the barrier between us and Elaine.
The archives. Even I’d only been allowed in here twice.
It was a massive room that opened up below us, a railing in front of me and two stairways down into the towering stacks, tens of thousands of documents and old books, every strategic advantage the Blackbirds had ever had.
Insider information on the city networks, logistics routes, passwords secretly stored away waiting to be used, secret names lists…
Information was power. And this was the Blackbirds’ power.
And I was going to burn it to the fucking ground.
Quayle had already disappeared down into the archive, and I didn’t doubt he was reclaiming his gun and waiting to ambush me—I’d hit his good hand, and he was ambidextrous, but he’d trained shooting more with his left hand, and forcing him to use his right would give me the slightest advantage.
He’d be waiting to get the drop on me when I went after him.
Instead, I reached into my jacket, and I pulled out the first incendiary grenade, pulling the pin and throwing it down into the stacks.
I moved along to the next right away, and I’d just thrown the last of the six when the first went off, erupting into a fireball below me, and the others went off in sequence, fireworks turning the archive into an inferno.
Old wood and old books made perfect kindling. The incendiary cocktail from the grenades doused whole sections before they erupted into flame, and the heat wave battered me as I held my gun firmly, scanning the archives.
He’d be coming out from hiding with the fires starting. I just had to keep watch, and…
“Vera!”
Elaine’s voice called out from behind me, and I whipped back to where I saw Quayle dropping down from the ceiling scaffolding, a combat knife gleaming in the light of the flames as he lunged for me.
I deflected the blow, but he knocked the gun out of my hands, sending it down into the fire.
I grabbed his arm, twisted it to shove him into the railing, but he went along with it willingly, jumping up onto the railing and leaping—not into the growing inferno below, but up onto the scaffolding hanging from the ceiling.
He landed on one beam and grabbed me, wrenching me after him, and I let out a curse as he ripped me off my feet and dangled me below the scaffolding, holding me over the drop into the flames.
The sensation of it—a drop below me, the ground giving out under my feet—stabbed into my gut with primal panic, threatening to overwhelm my senses, but I thought of Elaine, back in the doorway. Elaine, bleeding out for me. For us.
I kicked my feet hard, swinging up and catching the beam behind him just as he released me, and I held on and flipped myself up onto the scaffolding with him. He whipped back around and lunged with the knife as I stood up, and I stepped back out of the way.
“What’s wrong, Wolf?” he spat as he lunged again, driving me further back, deeper into the archive, further along the metal tightrope, his knife gleaming in the firelight closer and closer to me with each swing.
“All your bravado gone now? Thought you’d do more than just run away once it was finally time for this! ”
I ducked unexpectedly under his next swing, drawing my own knife and lunging for him.
I hit him in the waist, driving the knife into solid flesh just as his slashed my shoulder, and we grappled there before he shoved me off of him, backwards, both of us stopping.
We braced against one another, balanced on the beam, both of us bloody—I’d gotten a deep wound on his side, but he’d hit my shoulder harder than I’d realized. I felt myself getting faint already.
But I couldn’t die here. I’d promised her.
The fire burned higher below us, the archives nothing but flame now, and my back was against the wall—literally in this case, the beam ending just one step behind me, the scaffolding beam wrapped in chains that hung from the ceiling.
I almost missed it until one step found only open air, and I balanced on the very edge of the beam.
But this feeling wasn’t fear. This was cold, hard resolution.
This thing that had awakened inside me wasn’t the demon that came out to kill people. This was something different, something more resolute… something that felt emotions, but was stronger for them instead of weaker.
This wasn’t the part of me that came out to kill people.
This was the part of me that came out to protect people.
And this one, as it happened, was much stronger.
“Well, Quayle, old friend,” I said, “here we are. I always dreamed of the day I’d be face-to-face with the one who killed my parents.”
He snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself, Wolf. You’ve lost.”
“I can see why you’d think so. But I’m afraid in this case, you’ve made two very painful miscalculations.”
I flicked my glance across the room, at where Elaine, clutching her side, was doubled over the railing back at the entrance to the archive, watching us with fear in her eyes.
With one hand, I gestured to her, giving the signal and pointing behind me.
Her lips parted, eyes wide, before they settled into resolution.
“Miscalculations?” Quayle scoffed. “You’re cornered.”
“No,” I laughed. “We have you surrounded. The first miscalculation was assuming you were fighting the old me. I have a family now, Quayle. A real family.”
“They can’t reach you here. It’s over.”
He lunged towards me, knife out, and two blades gleamed in the light of the fire before they connected—both of them, mine plunged down into his shoulder, his driven deep into my stomach.
Icy pain coursed through me, my senses flashing once before the fading sensation came in at the edges. Grimacing, Quayle’s eyes gleamed at me.
“You’ve lost,” he said. I laughed thickly.
“I didn’t tell you… the second miscalculation,” I said, and I reached back behind me, grabbing the chains from the ceiling. “You... hurt… my wife.”
His expression changed when a gunshot rang, Elaine’s shot striking true.
Not to hit him. To hit the scaffolding supports.
The metal buckled, and parts flew as it gave way, the beam dropping out from under us. Quayle reached to grab me with a snarled shout, but I fell backwards away from him, just out of his reach as he fell, silhouetted by firelight, reaching up towards me, before he disappeared into the flames.
Falling, screaming as he went, just like my mother had.
Full circle.
The fear of falling wasn’t there as I dropped, catching myself on the chains, dangling over the fire. The chain was getting too hot to hold, but I clutched onto it anyway, hanging over the flames, the pain from the stab wound filling my senses.
It was a bad hit. I didn’t have long, especially to climb across the ceiling. Part of me wanted to let go, to drop into the fire, to let it all come full circle—that everyone who had been there that fateful day would finally be gone, that I could finally fall.
But Elaine was waiting for me.
Elaine, who loved me. Elaine, who wasn’t afraid of me.
Elaine, my wife.
I gritted my teeth as I climbed higher up the chain, up to the network of pipes on the ceiling, rattling empty now with only a few drops of water coming out, useless against the flames.
I felt like my strength was coming the same way, but I squeezed out every last drop of strength, and I forced myself onwards.
Back to safety.
Back to Elaine.
It took me what felt like a lifetime to make my way across the room, and I was almost fully faded by the time I made it back—enough that when I was so close I could see the fear and the hope in Elaine’s eyes and I felt the pipes buckling as one of the supports gave, I couldn’t figure out how to gather the strength to catch myself.
The pipes gave way, and at last, after all these years, I dropped.