Page 52 of Vows in Violence

I look beyond the men on the ground, straining to find the threat, but I don’t see anything. I ease back against the seat, struggling to control my breath, and close my eyes.

Think, damnit, think!What do I do? Drive away? But what about Ivan, inside the building? I can’t leave him behind. When I openmy eyes, looking forward through the windshield, I look straight into the eyes of another woman.

It’s the woman from the video feed, but she doesn’t look docile and unthreatening as she did in the church. She lifts her hand, the one with the gun, and fires.

Click.It doesn’t fire, something apparently wrong with it. She pulls the trigger again.Click. Clickclickclick.

An hysterical laugh wells up inside me. Salvation? She looks at it with an almost comical expression of disbelief before and throws it to the pavement.

As my heart climbs into my throat, the woman goes to the man on the ground and retrieves his weapon. She raises his gun and points it at me.

Can’t stay here. GO. NOW.This one won’t misfire…that would be too easy.

I duck just as the weapon reports and the first bullet flies. Wriggling on my stomach to the opposite side of the car, I open the opposite door.

I stumble out of the car and onto my knees, pick myself up, and run.

Behind me, beneath the sound of my thudding footsteps, I hear a low laugh and more footfalls on the pavement. A gun sounds,and a bullet strikes the pavement at my feet…once…twice. It spurs me on.

I hear a metallic clatter as the gun hits the pavement, and I’m struck by the sense that she’s playing with me, but I can’t look back.

The greenhouse.Even if that is the hornet’s nest, Ivan went to the greenhouse. He will know what to do. He will save me.

If I can get there.The woman hits me with a tackle from behind, and the scream I’ve been choking back escapes, shrill and full of panic. I tumble to the ground, and the woman descends, flipping me onto my back and straddling my torso as she pulls a knife from the vicinity of her thigh.

“Don’t…please—” The raspy plea is all I can manage.

The woman runs the knife down my cheek in response, her eyes glittering with victory.Thisis Azrael. “Even the beautiful die,” she says.

But I don’t want to die.I buck futilely against her.I’m not ready.

The knife presses against my throat, making me go still. I close my eyes, waiting for the steel to slide against my skin.I hope it’s fast… I hope it doesn’t hurt—

The weight on my stomach is suddenly gone, and my eyes spring open in time to see Eduardo dragging the woman away.

He yells, his voice thick with effort and desperation. “Run,amore! Run!”

I obey, scurrying to my feet with a strength and energy I didn’t know I had. My legs and arms pump as though slogging through mud, pushing my body with agonizing slowness toward the greenhouse.

I get to the metal door, but it is old and rusty. I tug and tug, but it won’t budge. Whatever door Ivan used, it wasn’t this one. I look back frantically and see Eduardo sprinting toward me, Azrael in pursuit. I don’t know what to do. There isn’t time. The woman is on us—

Eduardo is there. He pushes past me and rips open the door. Even in the dim light, I can see the metal flakes of rust fly into the air.

He pushes me into the greenhouse and slams the door behind me.

It is cruel how time slows down during our greatest moments of pain. Happiness is fleeting, gone in a lightning flash or a breath on the breeze. Pain is the chill that remains after a long storm, or the smoking of charred trees after a fire.

When Eduardo closed the door, he didn’t have time to turn and face his attacker.

He was looking at me, the same way he looked at me every time he picked me up from elementary school, every time I handedhim a drawing of his horses for him, every time I cried in front of him for some stupid reason. I know he’s not seeing me as I am; he’s seeing the girl I used to be, the child who was ignorant of the cruelty of this world.

Behind him, Azrael’s face is a mask of fury. I watch as her hand lifts and falls, the knife glinting in the flickering neon light of a nearby sign. Eduardo’s eyes widen, his face spasming in a moment of pained awareness.

The attack is so vicious that blood splatters on the glass as the woman draws the knife out and plunges it back in. Up and down, her arm raises and lowers, the motion accompanied by a squelching sound and Eduardo’s shuddering groan.

“No! No, stop! Damn you to hell—” I don’t even know half the words pouring from my lips. They’re all the same.

No.

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