Page 94 of The Hate We Breathe
“Of fucking course you are,” I breathe, the sarcasm covering the panic clawing its way up my throat.
Is Mads dead or just unconscious? How badly is Lex hurt? I can hear his harsh breathing behind me, but I don’t look back, not wanting to remind Roquel of his presence.
I shake my head, trying not to let those questions and unknowns distract me in the moment. “Roquel, I don’t know why you?—”
Roquel’s gaze flicks over my shoulder as I’m mid-sentence, something flashes in her eyes—panic, recognition—and before I can turn, she moves, whipping her arm to the side as she pulls the trigger.
A gunshot detonates the air.
The explosion rips through the night, so loud it swallows everything else. My ears ring. My heart stops.
For a fraction of a second, I can’t tell if I’ve been hit.
Then I hear Lex curse—raw and vicious—and I spin around.
He’s on the ground, his hand clamped to his thigh, blood spilling hot and fast through the tear in his suit pants. The smell hits me—iron, smoke, gunpowder—and bile rises in my throat.
“Fucking cunt!” Lex grits out, teeth bared as he presses his palm harder against the wound. His voice is pure fury wrapped in pain.
“Lex—”
My words die as Roquel strides forward, her ankle boots crunching against gravel. Her shadow cuts between us, gun steady, eyes alight with a kind of madness I’ve seen before—in Morpheus, in Gio, in myself.
And then I see it.
The phone near Lex’s leg—the faint blue glow of the screen illuminating the ground before it goes dark.
She sees it too.
Without hesitation, she kicks it across the rooftop, the sound sharp and final, like a coffin lid slamming shut. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Lex had been trying to warn the others.
“Do you really think I’m that stupid?!” Roquel’s tone is annoyed and still marred by an edge of hysterical pitch. She uses the gun to gesture between Lex and me. “No one is coming to fucking save you, not this time.”
Lex tries to stand, his face contorting with anger and pain for a brief second before he goes back down. He’s half up, half on his unwounded knee, with his eyes glaring at her. I try to shuffle closer to him, wedging my body in front of his as Roquel moves over to the fallen phone.
We watch as she points the gun downward and shoots at the thing. It leaps up from the force of the bullet before skittering sideways across the gritty rooftop once more, out of reach and useless.
“You’re so fucking dead,” Lex seethes, his voice low and trembling.
“Shut up,” I snap at him. Antagonizing the psycho bitch with the gun is not going to end well for either of us. I close my arms over my chest, digging my nails into either side as the icy windwhips around us. Roquel’s face falls into a carefully blank mask as she steps away from the phone and back towards us.
“Yes, Alexio,” Roquel agrees. “You should really shut up.” The smile she passes my way is more than a little off. It’s as if the muscles of her face are stretched taut over bone and nothing else.
“Not a chance,” Lex growls. “If you’re going to fucking kill me, you might as well know?—”
I take a step towards him and slap my hand to his mouth, cutting off his tirade. God, I love him, but he’s fucking so smart sometimes and dumber than a box of rocks at other times.
“Stop. It.” I bite out the words, meeting his angry look. His lips are firm against my palm and a beat passes before he opens his mouth and teeth nip at my flesh. It’ssonot the fucking time. I release him and attempt to turn my focus back to the woman threatening us. “Why are you here, Roquel?” I ask. “Why did you do all of this?”
It’s as if the question reminds her exactly what we’re doing here on this rooftop. Red creeps over her skin, invading her cheeks and flushing down to her neck. Whereas before, she’d held the gun with obvious comfort, now her hand begins to shake. Not in fear, not in uncertainty, but in pure, undiluted rage.
“Don’t act like you don’t already know!” she yells. “I know they showed you the recording. You must think you have it all figured out.”
The recording? How does she know about the…It hits me. The woman that was with Morpheus in the hotel the night he raped me. We’d never seen her face and I hadn’t recognized her voice. She’d sounded younger, almost childlike. I’d thought it was because she was trying to play a part for him.
No. Shewasa child.
She must have been fifteen or sixteen. It’s only been a few years, but now that I hear her voice and think back on the recording, I can hear the similarities.
