Chapter 45 Halo
Chapter forty-five
Halo
“No Angels”
I should’ve been dead hours ago. Every heartbeat was a borrowed one.
I was bleeding from… somewhere. Maybe the two gunshot wounds had opened back up.
The rifle weighed heavy in my arms. It wasn’t just metal anymore; it was every choice that had brought me to this place: a ledger, the weight I’d earned.
Across the dockyard, the meeting was underway. Matteo, smug and slick in his fitted coat, surrounded by his dogs: men with steel in their eyes and blood on their hands. I couldn’t pick them off clean, not from this range, not with that many.
But I didn’t come here to survive; I came here to end this.
I could start the fire. I could take out several of them from here, then go down and do the rest close up.
I fire once, then again. Two bodies dropped like their souls had been sucked out of their bodies.
Panic exploded, the men screamed and scattered, shouts broke out, bullets whined, and I moved.
I wasn’t hiding, I wasn’t ducking. I was advancing.
I was both numb and overstimulated by feeling everything.
The edge of euphoria sharpened against cold method.
It was beautiful, in a way, how pure the world became when death was certain. No choices left, just follow-through.
I had five more men dropped before they even saw me.
Then six.
Seven.
Matteo was gone: slipped behind a stack of shipping crates like the rat he was.
The echo of my boots on concrete was drowned out by the staccato of gunfire.
These men were untrained, scrambling, caught off guard, firing at every shadow on the ground.
I was moving like death didn’t matter, though… because it didn’t.
I dropped two more guards.
Then three more.
Bullets screamed past me, tore through rusted metal, and sparked against walls. I never flinched, never blinked.
Twelve rounds left.
Nine.
Five.
Matteo was ahead, flanked by two men, scrambling toward a back stairwell. He was cornered now, desperate. His panic and fear was intoxicating, even at this distance. I followed with even steps, unhurried.
I slowed as he approached the corridor, my hand steady, eyes burning. This was what I was made for. This was it. This was the moment, the end of the line. The world had funneled me into this corridor, through every choice, act, and transgression, toward a single inevitability
I stepped forward to cross the street where Matteo was, and I saw her.
At first, I thought it was a memory. A flicker in the shadows or a trick my dying mind played to make the end easier. Maybe I wasn’t the angel of death here… maybe it was this woman who had me halting in my tracks.
But it was her.
It was Eden.
Standing there, dirt-smudged, breathless, terrified, and real.
“What the hell—” I choked, breath catching in my throat. “What are you—no—”
A figure moved behind her. One of Matteo’s men, raising his weapon. Instinct kicked in before thought. I emptied the rest of the magazine into the bastard without blinking. The man jerked and fell, blood spattering the ground at Eden’s feet.
That was my mistake. I had given in to the one thing I hadn’t planned for: fear. Not for myself, but for her. I disregarded my rationale and logic. The handgun’s slide locked open: it was empty.
I ran to her and grabbed her, eyes searching hers because I didn’t believe they were real.
“What are you doing here?” I rasped. “How—how are you here?”
“I couldn’t let you die alone,” she said, voice cracking. “I don’t care what happens after. I want to be with you. Whatever time you have left, it’s mine too.”
I cupped her face like the world was crumbling… and it was.
“You shouldn’t have come,” I whispered, torn between awe and agony.
Before I could say more, the gunfire rose again.
Matteo’s voice screamed over the chaos. “Kill him! Kill them both!”
I turned, shielding her with my body as bullets ricocheted off metal and screamed overhead.
Empty gun. This was it. I felt the heaviness of the realization that I had been walking towards this my entire life. I would meet the end the way I was always meant to: protecting her.
The world narrowed into white heat and thunder: muzzle flashes and a burning ache in my chest that spread like frostbite. I was still on my feet, but barely.
Eden clung to me, small and strong and crying silently, her arms around my ribs like they could keep me standing by will alone. I wanted to tell her to run, but the words didn’t come. I wanted to be brave for her, but something inside me had already started to shut down.
A bullet clipped the wall near my head, and concrete dust rained down. The next one would hit, I knew it… and in some ways I welcomed it like a long-delayed visitor.
Because I was tired. Tired in a way I’d never let myself admit.
My knees buckled, and Eden pulled at me, trying to hold me up, but I was sinking.
The blood loss was catching up to me all at once.
I had never planned on having to make it this long.
I collapsed onto my knees, then my side, my cheek pressed to the cold concrete like it was the only real thing left.
My hand was still outstretched toward her, fingers twitching, trying to hold onto the last thing that had ever made this life worth crawling through.
My body was trembling, but inside? Inside, I was calm. Not peace, not exactly. More like surrender, acceptance. This was how it ended: not in glory, not in triumph. Just a man with an empty gun and a girl who should’ve never followed him here.
The pain blurred, dulling into distance. My ears rang, and my vision pulsed at the edges. My breath came slow and ragged. It felt almost euphoric, like slipping into a hot bath. Like floating.
And beneath that warmth… the cold, the knowing.
I had always been meant for this. This was the card fate had drawn.
Even before the blood and guns and gangs, long before Matteo, before even Eden, something in me had always known how this ended.
It was tattooed across my chest, right over the heart that wouldn’t stop bleeding: Memento Mori. Remember you must die.
A whisper, a promise. A prophecy I’d written into my skin like I was trying to warn myself. And now it was here. The curtain was falling. I turned my head, eyes straining to keep her in focus.
Eden.
She was screaming something I couldn’t hear anymore. Holding my face, cradling it like it mattered. Her lips moved. Her tears hit my skin, warm and useless.
“I’m sorry,” I said. Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe I only thought it. It was hard to tell what was real now, because the light was dimming and all that was left was her face and the sound of my heartbeat counting down to zero.
This is how it ends, I thought.
Not with fear, not even with courage. Just with love and loss all at once. And the silence that waits for all of us.
I don’t know how I stood. Maybe it was her voice, pleading with me not to give up.
Maybe it was the last spark of whatever soul I had left.
I pushed against the ground with blood-slick hands, vision doubling.
My legs buckled again, then locked, and I swayed as the world tilted and spun in a cruel carousel of rust and moonlight… but I got to my feet.
Because she was still behind me, still in the line of fire, still alive.
I pulled her in close. “You have to go. You can still go.”
She shook her head at me, eyes wide with that fucking defiance and hopefulness that I loved so much.
I started dragging her, one step at a time, shielding her with my body and praying that if I could just get her far enough, I could give her time.
If I could buy her twenty seconds, that would be enough. That would have to be.