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Lips that curl back into a cruel smile.
I’m stunned for a moment at the sight of her, and I lose my shot. The car kicks a cloud of sand and dirt in my face as she whips it down the driveway.
“Come back, you bitch!” Antony fires his weapon at the rear tires but misses by a mile. The tires squeal and the rear end flies out as the car screams out the gates and disappears along the road in a streak of dust.
“Fuck.” Antony hurls his weapon into the dirt. “She got away.”
“How did she get away?” I’ve seen Antony in the ring at the Colosseum. He’s a monster. A killing machine. Once he tore a guy’s throat out with his teeth. There’s no way he’d have let this happen. “You had her when she was behind the tractor. You should have seen her turn this way. What happened?”
Antony picks up his weapon and looks up at me. Sweat pools on his brow. Splatters of Brutus’ blood are arced across his shirt. There’s a look in his eyes I can’t read – it almost looks like vulnerability. “Don’t tell Claudia this, but I’m having some trouble with my eyes.”
Laughter bubbles up inside me, but I gulp it down. Antony’s still holding a gun. My hand flies to my hair, and I run my fingers through the waves, streaked now with dust and drying blood. “What trouble?”
“I wear contacts, okay? To help sharpen things in the dark. Only I don’t have them in tonight because I didn’t expect this to devolve into the fucking O. K. Corral—” Antony kicks at the dirt. “This is fucked.”
I whirl around and race back toward the shack. I know this is bad, that we should be checking the whole area in case there are more ghosts lurking around to surprise us. But all I can think about is getting back to Claudia. My mind flies through everything that’s just happened. Brutus’ strange state and slurred words, his blood and brains splattering across the wall as Claudia put a bullet between his eyes. The shots ricocheting in the tiny space. Claudia lunging at Eli, the pair of them going down as I took off after the shooter…
Is either of them hit?
If either of them is hit, I will burn the world.
I reach the shack just as Eli stumbles outside, Claudia hanging limp in his arms. “We need to get her to a hospital.”
I skid to a stop. My breath rasps. I taste blood on my tongue. It’s only now that I see the dark stain spreading across Claudia’s abdomen and shoulder, and the way her head flops against Eli’s shoulder.
No.
No no no no.
My gun slides from my fingers as I run to her. I cup her face in my hands. Her skin feels clammy. Her lips part in that perfect way she smiles, but her eyes are glassy, lifeless.
Not again. Please…
Eli carries her to the house and lays her on the porch swing. He runs inside and returns with a net curtain he’s torn from one of the windows. He rips the curtain and wraps the strip around her chest, cooing soothing words to her even though she can’t hear him, even though she’s…she’s…
No.
This can’t be real. She can’t be dead.
I can’t lose another person. I can’t…
Her eyes stare at the stars, unblinking, unseeing. My heart isn’t built for this kind of pain. It batters itself against my ribs, shattering into a thousand shards that tear at my insides.
I drop to my knees. I hear a crack as I connect with the wooden porch, but I don’t feel any pain. I’m already broken, fallen pieces scattering away from her.
“Claudia.” I lean close to her lips. “Claudia, I know you can hear me. I know you’re still in there, you brave, stubborn, infuriating woman. Don’t you dare fucking die on us, you listen. Don’t you dare go away and leave us raw and bleeding and hopelessly in love with a shadow. You’re everything good about the world, and if you die right now I’ll…” fuck. I swallow the lump. I can hardly push out the words. “I’ll go on a murderous rampage and Eli will cry and Gabriel will do nothing but mope and write dark poetry until I have to kill him in a vicious murder/suicide just to be with you again, so don’t you dare fucking die—”
“Move,” Eli barks, elbowing me aside as he kneels down with an armload of random supplies. I shuffle away and watch him, which is good because I’m fucking useless right now. Waves of panic assail me. I kneel beside the swing and I stroke her cheek and I whisper words without meaning, words I wish had the power to heal.
Felix’s serene features and my mom’s blue-tinged skin stare back at me behind Claudia’s glassy eyes. I couldn’t save them. I can’t save Claudia. Everyone I love dies and it’s my fault…
“Hold this.” Eli drapes a towel over the shallow wound on Claudia’s shoulder where the bullet grazed her skin. “Apply pressure.”
I watch Eli run back to the house for more supplies, and I wonder if he’d be this together if he’d seen who drove away in our car.
Did he see who did this to our Claws?
“Fuck, cousin.” Antony stares down at Claudia, and his eyes darken and his jaw wobbles – the closest I’d ever seen him come to actual emotion. He pulls his mobile phone from his pocket and tosses it to me. “Call Galen. Tell him where the fuck we are and that we need him out here.”
