by Martha Woods
“A pretty idea Damon, a pretty idea indeed.” He raised his rifle faster than you could take a breath, firing a burst right where Damon had been standing a split second earlier before he’d thrown himself to the side. “But that’s not how this night is going to go!”
Damon landed with a groan, kicking himself along the ground for the last few inches before he was fully behind the barrier, taking a deep breath and preparing himself for what he had to do. He closed his eyes, pushing aside all thoughts of friendship and reconciliation, filling his head only with strategy and will, thinking of nothing but himself, Tristian, and the gun.
When he opened his eyes again, he was ready for a fight.
Chapter 7
The thrum of gunfire in the room was deafening, Tristian not wasting any time in emptying his magazine into the barricade that Damon was hiding behind, not giving him even a spare second to blind fire before Tristian ducked back behind cover, loading another magazine with his weak hand and resuming firing. With his shoulder injured and his offhand all but useless, he had to contend with aiming one handed, which with a rifle effectively meant that you weren’t aiming at all, the barrel kicking around in his grip and sending high velocity rounds spraying over the barricade and into the walls, about as likely to hit one of us as he was to hit Damon.
“Have you lost your goddamn mind?” Damon yelled out, taking the chance and holding his pistol over the top of the barricade, firing blindly at where he assumed Tristian to be, doing the job at least of forcing him back into cover when one of the rounds scored across his sleeve. “What made you snap huh? Was it me leaving? Was it people deciding to move on? Was that it?”
“It wasn’t people moving on, it was people giving up!” Tristian ducked back out, firing a burst and clipping Damon in his injured shoulder, sending him spinning in a circle and down towards the ground. Joseph held me back when I tried to run forward, looking at me with a look of pity and understanding but keeping his grip like iron nonetheless. As much as he didn’t like it, he was going to respect the rules of combat, and though I hated to stand by helpless to do anything I was going to have to do the same.
“Fuck,” Damon groaned, loading another magazine and grunting in pain, “How is it that you manage to hit me when you can’t even fucking hit what you’re aiming at?”
“Call it luck,” He replied, spraying the surface of the kevlar and knocking a few of the vests loose, one of the rounds punching through right next to Damon’s head and making him scramble lower for cover. Whatever he was going to do he was going to have to do fast, his cover was rapidly vanishing and sooner or later one of those bullets was going to hit him somewhere it really counted. “Come on Damon, come on out! Let’s finish this like men!”
“You don’t really think I’m dumb enough to rise to that, do you?” Damon thought for a moment, smiling as he figured out the answer. “Nah, you don’t. Surprise!”
He dove out sideways, gun at the ready and his finger squeezing the trigger before he’d even fully seen Tristian, going off of instinct and what little he’d been able to piece together from hearing his voice. Two of the rounds sank into Tristian’s shoulder and the top of his chest, missing his heart but still punching him backwards, the rifle flying from his grip and firing a shot off into the ceiling. Damon didn’t waste a breath hoping that it was enough, rising to his feet as best you could with one hand and sprinting forward, aiming and ready to put another hole in him as soon as he laid eyes on Tristian.
But even injured, you couldn’t underestimate a predator. You might kill a wolf, but it might just decide that it’s going to spend its last breath with its teeth around your throat. Something that Damon was crudely reminded of when a knife sank into his calf and he crumpled down to the ground, losing his grip on his gun as he dropped his hands to the wound in his leg and tried to stem the bleeding.
“You were always too damn sure of yourself,” Tristian taunted, rising up and flicking blood from the blade of his knife, “You have any idea how many guys got hurt and killed trying to clean up your messes? No, of course you don’t, you were always too busy going off and causing another one!”
He thrust his blade down into Damon’s stomach, driving a wet scream from his lips and a hand around his wrist, keeping the blade in place and preventing it from being pulled out or twisting. I didn’t like this, I hated it, and I could tell from the dark auras around me that my feeling was very much shared. Though Joseph and Vincent’s hold tightened around my arms, I could very much tell that they were holding themselves back from helping just as much as I was, a fact that rather than being heartwarming only worried me more. If it was dire enough that these two were considering breaking the sacred oaths of combat, what hope did we have?
“You think I didn’t know?” Damon asked, reaching up and pulling Tristian down by his lapel, “I remember all of them!”
Letting go of Tristian’s shirt and reaching down to his belt, Damon drew his knife and thrust it upwards as fast and as hard as he could, hitting with so much force that Tristian actually lifted off the ground for a moment before collapsing forward, his own hand going to the knife that Damon had stuck into him to keep it from moving. There, next to each other on the ground and covered in each other’s blood, they shook and struggled for dominance, not wanting to let go of the knife that their opponent was using but knowing they would have to, to be able to end the fight once and for all.
“Always… thinking that you’re… better…” Damon squeezed with all his might, trying to overpower Tristian and rolling them across the floor as a result, carrying them closer to the wall in their battle to the death. “Just give up! Let… just let this end!”
Tristian growled, laying on his back and staring up into Damon’s eyes with all the hate in the world burning in them, letting go of the knife in his stomach and frantically trying to reach behind himself. Damon seized the opportunity, tearing it from Tristian’s body and sinking it back in, stabbing away like any number of the serial killers that I’d studied over my career. It was a wonder that Tristian hadn’t passed out from pain, or even tried to fight him off, but the sick grin on his face was all the warning we got before he grabbed the pistol in his waistband and pressed it against Damon’s stomach.
“I win.”
The first shot tore through Damon’s stomach, exiting through his back and painting the window behind them with his blood, his eyes shooting open and his mouth dropping in a stunned scream of pain, hand letting go of the knife to reach for the gun. The second and third exited much the same way the first did, each one weakening his resolve and panicking him even more, falling to the side just as Tristian pumped two more bullets into his leg, hands shaky from blood loss and his aim almost nonexistent, but that wasn’t a problem at the range they were at.
Damon gasped and choked on blood, clutching at the ruined expanse of his skin and just knowing that there was no coming back from this, I knew there was no coming back from this, but it wasn’t going to stop me from running to his side with the other two men who cared for him.
“Ah…” Tristian struggled to stand to his feet, blood pouring from the wounds in his stomach at a rate that was the exact opposite of good. The two of them had killed each other, and they hadn’t bothered to let it sink in yet. “Told you I was better… always told you…”
He stumbled, falling against the window and barely managing to stay on his feet, bloody handprints spreading across the glass and running down onto the floor. Damon spat out a mouthful of blood, the pool around him so thick that you could see your reflection looking back at you, only getting bigger by the second when he turned over onto his front and glared up at Tristian.
“F-fuck you…” He spat, pushing himself onto one of his knees and holding himself steady with his hands. “You still lose, you kill me… but everyone else is gone, it was just you and me left behind Tristian…”
“You think… you think that I’ve lost?” Tristian chuckled, teeth clicking together unpleasantly, “I t
ook you away from her Damon, I took away one of the men that she gave everything for… I might not… I might not have been able to kill her… but I ruined her.”
I stared back at them, eyes filled with tears and my mouth unable to form the words that I wanted to say. He was right about everything, just because we’d managed to clear them all out, just because the alliance was just a little bit safer now… what did it all mean if Damon wasn’t going to be there by my side?
“Aww… look at her Damon. It’s all starting to sink in. She’s realizing that I just got what I wanted.” He grinned, expression shifting to something much darker just as he cocked the hammer on his pistol and aimed it at my chest. “But what the hell? Let’s go for broke!”
“No!” Damon threw himself forward, taking the last shot to his chest as he slammed his full weight into Tristian, using the last of his strength to wrap his arms around him while they smashed through the window, sailing through the open night into the alley below.
It had happened so quickly none of us had a chance to do anything to stop it, only realizing what was happened once we heard the dull thud on concrete and ran to the edge of the window. I screamed seeing the two of them laying in a puddle of blood in a rain filled alleyway, almost jumping down to reach them myself before Vincent wrapped me in his arms, stopping me with one foot over the darkness and pulling me back into the room.
“No! Let me go! I need to get to him!” Swatting at Vincent’s arm, I tried as best I could to struggle free before he held me tighter.
“Amy… Amy! I’ll get you down there, but you just need to be calm, please! Don’t kill yourself trying to get down there, I will get you there!”
True to his word, Vincent and Joseph took my arms, jumping out into the air and guiding me down as softly as they could. I’d always wondered how they did it, I knew they could jump really well but floating wasn’t… something that had crossed my mind. But with one of the men I loved laying crumpled in a pile below us, my mind wasn’t in the right state to ask questions of anything right now, all I wanted to know was if he was even still alive and if he was for how long.
“Damon!” I ran to him as soon as my feet touched the ground, and this time they didn’t even try to stop me. I was liable to bite their fingers off if they did, they knew better, but I suspect that Vincent needed his own space as well. Though they weren’t as open about it as I was about my feelings, they had grown so close in such a short amount of time, I would dare to say that Vincent had grown to love him just as much as I had. To see him in a state like this, with his chest barely rising and his skin so pale… I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
Collapsing to my knees and taking his hand in mine, I could barely breath seeing the state that he was in. I couldn’t even tell if he could see me, there was so much blood on his face and his eyes were so distant, he looked like the countless people that I’d seen die in an ambulance right after we got them away from the scene, he was on death’s door with one foot in the hallway, it was only a matter of time before he took that last step.
“A-Amy?” He started weakly, squeezing my hand with all of his strength and turning his head to look up at me. “Is… is that you?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here Damon, I’m here. Just… just relax ok? You’re going to be fine, everything’s going to be alright…” Looking up at Joseph and searching for something, all I got was a regretful shake of the head and a tear of blood down his cheek. If even he was crying then… then there really was nothing that could be done.
“Is… is Vincent here too?”
“Yes,” He answered, getting down on his knee and taking Damon’s other hand, so broken and crumpled that he very well may not have felt his touch at all. “I’m here Damon.”
“Oh good… good… I thought I might not be able to speak to you before… before I go…” He coughed weakly, blood spilling from between his lips while he stared upwards. “You’re… an asshole, I just… just wanted to say that.”
“Ah…” Vincent gasped, his gasp turning into a weak chuckle before he fell forward onto Damon’s chest, tears streaming from his eyes as he gave himself to laughter. “I… thought you were going to be more sentimental.”
“Nah… you know it all already. I just…” He looked between us both, eyes not quite finding us. “I’m so… so sorry…”
“Damon… please…” I clutched his hand tighter, tears falling down my cheeks and my voice cracking, “Please don’t go…”
“I’m sorry Amy…” He gasped, his heart stopping for a moment before thrumming weakly again, “I’m so sorry…”
“I’m sorry too,” Vincent said, voice strong and his eyes filled with sorrow, “But not for the reason you think.”
“Vincent?”
“I’m sorry,” He said, piercing his lip with his fang and drawing out a glistening bead of blood, “Forgive me.”
Pulling Damon up towards him, Vincent crashed his lips against him, forcing the blood into his mouth and lapping up the blood spilling from his mouth. Damon shook briefly, eyes falling shut for a moment before he realized what was happening, his gaze filled with terror and understanding all at once. I didn’t realize what was happening at first either, but the astonished look on Joseph’s face told me all I needed to know.
“You’re… you’re turning him…”
Vincent pulled back, Damon shaking and gasping on the ground while his eyes turned black, hand threatening to crush mine in its grip before I pulled away, his chest towards the sky while he screamed and shouted out. His bones cracked so loudly they were like gunshots, his back arching so severely I was deathly afraid that his spine was going to pop right from his body before he collapsed back down to the ground in his own blood as still as a rock.
I was too afraid to even move for a moment, the intensity of what I’d just seen his body go through… I’d never thought that I would see anyone go through that, but now that he wasn’t moving… I was scared that all that had happened was that he had died even faster.
“Damon?” I asked, reaching towards him slowly with all the care that I would show a wild dog, “Damon… can you hear me?”
He didn’t move at my voice, my hand getting closer and closer to him before my fingers brushed against his bicep. At the briefest of touches he shot up to sit, mouth open in a wicked snarl and a scream of pure agony tearing from his throat, his eyes completely black and his skin a pallid white, thin veins darting up the lengths of his arms and his hands clenching into tight fists. He was about to jump up and make his escape before Vincent leaped on him, pinning him down to the ground and keeping him from doing anything more than shaking violently and snarling, “What did you do to me?”
“I did what I had to do!” Vincent yelled, voice trembling with each word, “I couldn’t… I couldn’t just let you die!”
“So, you turned me into one of you? You didn’t even give me the choice!”
“Because you wouldn’t have taken it, and I wouldn’t have blamed you!” He stopped, pressing his forehead against Damon’s shoulder and all but begging him to stop moving. “I’m so sorry… I didn’t want us to lose you but… I gave this curse to you in the process… I’m so, so sorry…”
Damon stopped his struggling, blinking blankly and staring up at Vincent, his face so full of remorse and regret that it was impossible to do anything but stare, the look so unlike him that you couldn’t help but forget everything except worry. “Vincent…”
“Remarkable…” We all turned at the voice, rage replacing sorrow in all of us when we saw the two men walking towards us with their guns drawn and their shoes splashing in the bloody water. “I never thought… even now, I never thought that something like this was possible.”
“Rick,” I growled, considering for the first time using the powers I’d been using defensively tonight to tear him limb from limb. “We were wondering where you’d gone to, we’d assumed that you’d run away.”
“No… no I just knew that everyone in the building was doo
med, there was no use in dying with them. I just… I wanted to speak to you one last time…”
“You wanted to speak to me?” I grabbed the pistol off the ground, prying Tristian’s fingers off the grip before I levelled it at his chest. “What about now? Now do you want to speak to me?”
Davis raised his weapon in response, though an outstretched hand from Rick kept him from aiming it at me. “No, no don’t shoot her Davis.”
“She killed Malcolm sir,” Davis scoffed, “You’re going to let her kill you too?”
“Malcolm was an idiot, he has no one to blame for his death but himself. I’m not leaving here tonight without making sure that the air is clear once and for all. Now put. The gun. Away.” As if to illustrate his point, he holstered his pistol and turned back to me, not letting go of Davis’ arm until the weapon was back in his holster. “Now Amy, I had some things to say.”
“I’m sure you do, but why should I listen to any of it? You framed me, remember? You took all the oaths that you signed when you became a cop and you shit all over them, why should I sit here and listen to a word you say?”
“Honestly? I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t,” He laughed, so much emptier than he had only a few weeks ago, “It sounds ridiculous but… I wanted to say sorry.”
“Sorry?” I couldn’t quite believe what I’d just heard. “Sorry? You want to say sorry after everything that you’ve done?”
“Not just that, I wanted to say I’m sorry for what I thought of these two men at your side. Well, I suppose they’re not really men anymore, are they? Come to think of it I don’t know how to describe you.”
Damon scoffed, “Keep being curious, we’ll never tell you.”
“Fair enough,” He chuckled, “Fair enough. To be honest, I was planning to just leave, to let the police continue their search and try to evade the rest of you for as long as I could. I thought that you were all monsters, that you couldn’t honestly care about anything except carving out a space all for yourselves at the expense of every normal person that lives in this city. I guess Tristian really was too convincing for his own good, wasn’t he?”
