We flattened ourselves in the truck bed, pressed against metal that was suddenly full of holes, daylight showing through in places it shouldn't. Glass rained down on us in glittering pieces, cutting tiny lines across my hands, my face. The truck swerved hard as Diego took a turn onto a dirt road, and I slammed into the side of the truck bed, my bad shoulder screaming.
A bullet passed so close that the heat scorched my temple and burned a line across my skin. Another inch and I'd be dead, and Rafael would be alone.
"They're following!" Rafael shouted, looking back over the edge of the truck bed.
"I noticed!" Diego took another hard turn, and I slammed into Rafael as our bodies tangled together with blood and sweat and fear mixing until we were one mass of survival instinct.
But we were pulling away as the narrow road forced Constantine's convoy into single file behind us. Diego drove like he had the devil on his tail.
We made it to the main road. The engine groaned loudly in protest, but Diego pushed it harder.
"They're coming!" Rafael shouted, still looking back, keeping watch while I bled all over the truck bed. "The eagles are still following!"
"Fuck the birds, worry about the bullets! Hold on."
He took a hard right onto a side road I hadn't even seen, barely more than a dirt track through trees, and killed the engine. We coasted behind a line of trees at a sharp bend, momentum carrying us into shadows. Everything went silent except for our breathing.
"Don't move," Diego whispered. "Don't even breathe loudly."
I held my breath and counted seconds by the throbbing in my shoulder.
Above us, through gaps in the tree cover, the eagles still circled high up.
Headlights swept across the main road, showing three vehicles, then four. Constantine's convoy flew past at full speed.
The eagles circled once more, then broke away, following Constantine's convoy.
We waited. Thirty seconds stretched like thirty years. A minute lasted a lifetime. The sound of engines faded into nothing, swallowed by distance and trees and the blessing of dumb luck.
"Clear," Diego said quietly.
He started the engine again gently this time, and we pulled back onto the road while heading in the opposite direction.
We actually fucking escaped.
Diego pulled the truck over onto the shoulder. "You two okay back there?"
Blood covered Rafael's face like war paint, but he was alive and here and breathing.
He kissed me, different from before. His hands came up to frame my face, careful of my injuries, gentle even in his desperation.
I kissed him back and tasted blood and smoke and something like a promise neither of us was ready to make out loud. My good hand fisted in his shirt and held on.
"Don't do that again," he whispered as his fingers tightened in my jacket and in my shirt. "Don't throw yourself in front of eagles for me."
"Can't promise that." The words scraped out rough, honest, more vulnerable than I'd meant them to be.
"Lorenzo—"
"You'd do the same. You know you would."
He didn't deny it because he couldn't.
"Everyone I've ever cared about has died." The confession ripped out of me before I could stop it. "My mother. Dionysus. Everyone. You can't do this. You have to stay alive. You have to."
"So do you." His voice broke on the words. "You can't keep throwing yourself between me and death. I can't lose you. I don't know what that makes me, but I can't."
I didn't have words for what that made us. Didn't have words for whatever this was between us, huge and terrifying and absolutely undeniable. So I just held him, let him hold me, and tried to remember what it was like to be something other than alone.
