Page 70 of Pure Killers

And I'm right. She lunges for it, and so do I, but I collapse a meter away, ending up in a puddle of paint on the floor.

"Cassandra?"

Olivia stares past me, momentarily distracted from raising the gun. I recognise the voice with a flood of relief.

He's standing on the edge of the circle of light we’re all caught in. To my surprise, the silver mask dangles from his fingertips, face exposed, staring at Olivia. Black smudges make his eyes look hollow, the smear across his mouth vaguely reminiscent of warpaint streaking up his cheek.

Olivia's face breaks into a smile, made into her very own mask on one side by the plaster. "Tris!” Her one good eye fixes on the mask. “It was you." Her brow furrows then smooths, the gun dangling from her fingertips. “It was you…”

I look between them, and I see it now; the resemblance. The blond hair, the set of the jaw. Tristan’s sister, the one supposedly killed by my husband. Tristan shakes his head once as though to dislodge something, stepping closer. "You're… you're dead."

"No," Olivia sighs, reaching a hand out for him, the smile on her face turned saccharine. "I was reborn. He taught me,showedme." Again, that shadow comes across her face, almost a twitch.Her eyes are glossy as she gazes into his. “You… you killed him.Him. Why?”

Tristan is staring at her hand, face deceptively blank against what must be going on within. “Why?” he asks, as though he’s just been asked to solve a complex equation. Then he looks around, taking everything else in. First Dirk, panting, near cocooned, the plaster, the blood, then landing on me, battered and barely holding myself up against the wall, pain pouring sweat off me.

“Why did I kill the Cocooner?” Back to her, Tristan frowns. "It’s been you, all along. Ever since."

"You didn’t know what he meant to me. You couldn’t have.” Olivia-Cassandra is consoling herself, or him, it’s hard to say which.

The whites of Tristan’s eyes stand out against the black smudging. “What he meant to you? We all thought he killed you.Ithought he did. I… I searched for you.”

“You don't understand yet. That’s okay.” Cassandra steps closer, her grip white-knuckled over his hand. “I didn’t know what had happened to you. But here we both are, alive!” Her laugh is almost a happy sob, and she touches his cheek. “I missed you. When you joined the force, we were going different ways. But look where we are now, come back together again! Like when we were kids." When she strokes his cheek, she leaves a smear of white.

Tristan only stares at her, and my chest constricts with a horrible question; where does his loyalty lie, in this moment?

The answer to that is uncertain enough that I start to edge along the wall, out of Cassandra’s peripherals, behind her. Dirk is staring, pale and too haunted to be confused. I need to get to him. When it comes time to detach from the wall, I lunge for the nearest support- an old folding chair, gasping as I crossthe space to it, my shoulders stinging as they do the work of propping me up.

I swallow the cry I want to make as my foot taps the chair leg and sends fire all the way up to my hip. Panting, I hop on my good leg to the next support beam. I’ll be halfway to him then.

"Come, help me finish this," Cassandra is saying. "With you, we can have both of them… start fresh. No one will know who we are. We can do this together."

Tristan is shaking his head, pulling back, tugging his hand from hers. "I did all this for you… everything I am, because I thought you'd been his victim. I killed because of what I thought happened to you. And all along you were this?" He looks to Dirk again, and glances at me, freezing me in place, waiting for him to stop me. He doesn't. But he glances at the knife that was hidden from my vision in the middle of the room, under the paint tray, telling me to take it.

I try to hobble to the middle of the room but end up on my hands in an awkward crawl. More painful but faster, I scoop up the old flip knife and fall towards Dirk. He blinks at me as though coming back around from wherever he went as I brace on the plaster that has hardened on his stomach.

Cassandra steps towards Tristan again, but this time he flinches, moving back. "Tris, it’s still me. I found my way, just like you. We'll show our parents now, huh? We have worth."

Dirk’s feet are bound only by thick rope, and I fall to my knees to saw at it.

Tristan turns, bringing his back to us, a barrier between us and her. "I called the cops. They're on their way."

Her expression changes, eyebrows drawing down, mouth twisting. "You choose this slut over your own family?"

The rope falls away, and Dirk starts wriggling, cracking the plaster around his legs. I don’t know how I’m going to break the chains with a knife, but as I grasp him to pull myself up, my headcoming up only to the bottom of his chest because of the way he’s elevated off the floor, I see a way. The chains tie his hands, looping around the pole and his wrist, but above, tethering them to the top is more of the same thick fibrous rope.

Reaching for that rope, the knife wavering in my hand, is one of the most excruciating things I've ever made myself do. Even standing on my good leg, my shoulder protests, but somehow, with tears streaming down my face, my breath all but stopped, I get the knife under the rope.

"You've got it, El, almost," Dirk is saying, lucid again, using his freed knee to push under my hip and give me the extra inch I need.

I cry out in pain as I saw the knife back and forth, white spots dancing in my vision. I'm convinced I'm not going to make it, that I'm going to pass out with a thread left, failing him. But then the strap gives suddenly, releasing all the weight I was pulling back from it. I almost fly back, but Dirk catches my arm with the hand I just released, and I press the knife into that hand before crumpling at his feet, panting like I've just run a marathon.

Vaguely, through the yellow, I'm aware of him sawing at the binds on his other wrist, and of words.

"I won't hurt you, Cass," Tristan is telling her, voice breaking. "But I won't let you hurt them either."

"Won’tletme?" she asks, mocking and angry. She lifts the gun, forgotten until now, and points it shakily at him. "You have no say over me. No one does!"

Blearily, I look at Dirk. He's grabbing handfuls of the plaster on his torso and flinging it off as if it burns. He's alright, he's alive, that’s all I wanted… my head lulls. Suddenly his grip is on my arm, his palm slick with fresh blood, and his cuts have opened again from the movement. He’s pulling me up and back into the world of pain, flinging my arm over his shoulder.

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