WARNER #3
“My beautiful, darling Angela.” Nolan eases the gun back from where it’s still aimed at her. “It looks like our time together has run its course. Stand up, won’t you dear?”
“No! I won’t let you do this, Blaine!”
“It’s okay,” Blaine replies calmly.
“You cannot go with him!”
“Stand up, Mother. Walk to Azrael. He’s waiting for you.”
“No.” Her sobs are almost violent. “I won’t lose you again.”
“Don’t worry about me now.”
“You’re my son!” she screeches.
“That’s why I’m doing this.” Blaine casts a look over his shoulder. “Azrael? Take her.”
It takes the man himself reluctantly discarding his weapons and inching across the carpet to get her to calm. Nolan precisely tracks the mercenary’s moves. Finding some restraint, Azrael stops halfway down the hallway, his hands outstretched in a calming invitation.
“Come here,” he demands, scrutinising his woman. “It’s going to be okay.”
“No!” Angela screams without restraint.
Stooping, Blaine gently pulls her to a stand. “Just go. I’ll be alright.”
“D-Don’t make me walk away from you again.”
“Please, Mother. Do this for me.”
She caves inwards like a collapsing star, torn apart by its own gravity. Hugging her midsection while taking unsteady footsteps, Azrael captures her somewhere in the middle. He sweeps the inconsolable woman into his arms.
“Blaine!” Tears stream down Ember’s cheeks. “You can’t do this!”
He resolutely ignores her, his focus lasered in on his father. “Is that what you wanted?”
Nolan trains the gun on his son, using his other hand to dig a pair of cuffs from his suit jacket. “I would’ve preferred us ruling side by side, not this mess. You disappointed me.”
“I guess a disappointment is all I’ll ever be to you.”
“A dead one at that,” Nolan boasts disgustingly.
With a blank expression, Blaine allows the handcuffs to snap into place, the clicks acting as clock hands that tick ever closer to his doom. I can’t watch him get marched from us. I don’t give a fuck about the past and all that’s happened. Blaine is our blood. Our kin.
Shoving his shoulder, Nolan forces Blaine to turn, placing the gun at the back of his neck. One shot and the bullet will tear through his throat. Instant kill. The unspoken bargain is evident. If we act, Blaine dies.
“Now, we do have a chopper departing shortly.” Nolan spares us a smug smile that only twists the knife. “This has been nice, but my son and I must leave.”
“You aren’t taking him.” Hyland’s warning is gruff and booming.
“Quite the contrary. Unless you’d like to watch him bleed out on this rather wonderful carpet, we will be leaving together. No one is permitted to follow us.”
“Please,” Angela begs. “Don’t harm him.”
“Our son is none of your concern, darling. He’s in good hands now.”
“No!” Ember looks like she’s ready to implode.
From across the corridor, I watch Blaine meet her stare and mouth I love you. Even watching the exchange is fucking unbearable. It can’t end like this. I’m not losing anyone else.
Their first few steps back are tentative. Nolan’s testing the waters. When he sees none of us move to pursue, at least not at first, he inches farther away. I’m frantically searching around for something, anything. A single chance to attack him without guaranteeing Blaine’s demise.
Edging closer to Ember drives an anguished dagger into my chest. She’s limp in Hyland’s arms, too exhausted to fight now that no hope remains. Even his expression is shattered, while Axel watches with a hand resting on his gun’s handle.
“What do we do?” Axel whispers.
In despair, my shoulders slump. “I don’t know.”
“We can’t let them leave.”
“What else can we do?” Hyland hisses.
In his arms, Ember shifts slightly, inching a hand downward. “We don’t give up.”
“Em,” I caution.
“I told you. Everyone comes home.”
By the time I realise where she’s headed, it’s too late. Her grip fastens around the pistol tucked into Hyland’s holster. I lunge to subdue her right as she draws the weapon and drives the butt straight into his side.
The impact causes Hyland to bow, his grip slackening for a moment. Ember takes full advantage. She tucks and twists, bringing the gun up to smash into his face. I try to grab hold of her before she can flee the crimson spill created in her wake.
“Em! No!”
“I won’t lose him too!”
Everything moves in a blur. Grappling hands. Screaming. Shouting. Ember slips through my fingertips then throws herself after Blaine, the gun lifting to point at Nolan Madden. Just as his weapon pivots from the back of Blaine’s neck to train dead centre on our girl.
As slow motion hits in real time, my movements are akin to swimming through thickened tar. I can’t move quickly enough. Not to chase after her. Not to lunge for her legs, hoping to tackle her into a wall. And not to halt the blast of a fired bullet escaping its chamber with a small puff.
BLAST.
Distantly, shouts vie to outbid one another. Axel’s racing at full speed. Blaine falls towards the ground. Angela screams with the ear-piercing force of a rabid banshee. And the woman I love… she goes down. Hard.
BLAST.
A second shot flashes across the corridor, streaking towards the bastard with his maniacal grin. As carpet burns my body from a fast skid, chaos ensues. But all I’m focused on is where Ember hits the floor, a hand slapped over her chest, gun falling aside.
“EMBER!” I screech at an ungodly volume.
She’s down.
Lifeless.
Oh, please. Fucking please. Whatever God is out there, if anyone is listening… don’t take her from me. Not after all we’ve survived.
I’m only half-aware of our team streaking past to subdue Nolan. Everything revolves around Ember, quaking as I tug her limbs into my arms. My hands are fumbling, practically useless. I can’t find any blood. It must be coming from somewhere—I heard the damn gunshot.
“She’s alive!” Hyland gasps in terrified relief.
“Blaine.” Her murmur is barely audible.
Chancing a look up, I find him crawling towards our trio. “Where are you hit?”
“Ch-chest.”
“Fuck, love!” I continue prodding and poking, scouring every inch of her body.
Terror like I’ve never experienced rockets into every available nerve ending. Now I’m trembling. Almost too much to assess her body, searching for where she was hit. She won’t have long. We have to stop the bleeding.
But… there’s no blood.
Not a single drop.
Hands coasting over her chest, my index finger snags in a ragged hole torn straight through her black T-shirt and into the Kevlar hidden underneath. Somewhere nestled in the layers of protection, a lodged bullet rests, an inch away from piercing her heart.
Relief almost whites out my vision. “It didn’t penetrate your armour.”
“Really?” she grits out.
“Really. I can see the bullet.”
“Still h-hurts.”
“I know. You’re going to be okay, love.”
Ember lifts a hand to coast over my cheek. “I guess I have a lot to live for.”
“Hell yeah, you do. Never scare me like that again.”
Too overwhelmed to do more than hold her, I’m non-verbal as Hyland clatters to his knees beside us in a flurry of panicked horror. He too checks the faux wound then deflates, paler than I’ve ever seen him before.
“You fucking madwoman!”
“Blaine.” She arches her neck, searching for him. “W-Where?”
“Right here, sweetheart.”
The asshole himself reaches our location, two still-cuffed hands lowering to cup Ember’s cheeks. He plants frantic, near-frenzied kisses all over her lips and face, apparently fresh out of fucks to give.
“You promised,” Ember gasps between kisses. “Everyone comes home.”
“I had no intention of leaving you. Just didn’t expect you to beat me to the punch.”
“N-Nolan?”
“Bleeding but subdued,” Axel calls out. “You clipped his shoulder, dimples.”
“I was aiming for his head,” she groans in disappointment.
“I reckon he’ll live. For now.”
Across the carpet, Nolan Madden is barely conscious, pinned by Axel in a helpless heap. He doesn’t bother to staunch the blood pouring from his shoulder, though he does rest a foot over it. Nolan hurtling back into reality with lung-tearing howl of agony is far too satisfying.
“Finish the job?” I meet Blaine’s gaze.
His eyes tear from mine to scan his mother, still caught in Azrael’s arms. He smiles openly at her, even if she’s too distraught to return it right now. In that moment, I witness something inside him irrevocably change.
His dark gaze clears, scanning over us with more emotion than I’ve ever seen on his face before. The last pieces of The Phantom melt away, revealing someone younger hiding underneath. Someone more innocent. Hopeful, even. And a hell of a lot more whole.
Blaine shakes his head. “He deserves to answer for his crimes. All of them.”
“What?” Axel pouts at him.
“Don’t kill him.”
“You sure about this?” Hyland rubs at the blood misted on his face.
“Those victims downstairs deserve justice. Who am I to take it from them?”
“You have every right to end his life,” I argue, though it doesn’t sit well.
“That might be so, but all I really need is right here.” Blaine strains against the handcuffs to stroke Ember’s auburn locks. “Do as you please with him. He’s no longer my concern.”
“Blaine,” Ember whispers. “I l-love you.”
He peers down at her with palpable tenderness. “I love you too, Em.”
We all startle at the din of yelling advancing towards us. Hyland rises to flank me, retaking his gun and pointing it down the long corridor. At Hudson’s red-slick face appearing, both of us relax.
“You’re late!” Axel jeers down the hallway.
He sprints towards us then slows, sucking in loud gulps of air. “Damn. Did I miss all the action?”
All we can do is laugh.