by Ruby Ryan
I'd never had a gun pointed at my face before. It wasn't an experience you could explain until it happened to you. I froze with primal fear, my brain screaming holy shit I'm one second away from this man killing me. My knees wobbled, actually wobbled, it wasn't just some stupid saying, and I felt so light-headed that I feared I would faint.
Terrance kept the gun trained on me, but spoke to Ezra. "Your take was just a hundred bucks, huh?"
"I can explain," she said slowly, palms held out placatingly. "I didn't mention it because it's fake. Some trinket from a gift shop..."
"Bitch, fucking no," Terrance spat. "I worked in my uncle's thrift shop until I was eighteen. I know gemstones."
The totem pulsed, alive and angry. I knew Ezra could feel it too, demanding that we take it back, that this person had no right to clutch it in his hands. The desire to leap forward and fight him battled with my instincts to cower in a ball in the corner.
And again, I could see him doing the math in his head. Weighing the value of that sapphire against our lives. If we were anywhere else he could probably just make a run for it, but this was his place. We knew where it was. I doubted he would let us just walk out of here alive.
But the totem wouldn't let us go without it. Dying was preferable to leaving it. Somehow, I knew that too.
I was wondering how hard it would be for a drug dealer to get rid of two bodies when I heard the voice in my head.
I HAVE FOUND YOU, it boomed, high-pitched and nasal. YOU BOTH RAN, AND I FOLLOWED, AND NOW HERE YOU ARE.
I looked around, but nobody else could hear it. Was I going crazy?
IT ENDS NOW, SAPPHIRE.
A gunshot spoke outside.
Three sets of heads whipped toward the kitchen wall. The gunshot was distant, but not that distant. A block away? This wasn't my specialty.
"That came from--" Terrance cut off as Ezra leaped into him, shoving his arm to the side.
CRACK-BANG.
The gun firing was like a white-hot poker jabbed into my eardrum. I recoiled instinctively, and was suddenly dizzy, and then the ground came up and struck me in the face.
10
EZRA
I leaped at Terrance because I had no choice.
We couldn't let him have the totem.
The gunshot distracted him for a split second. It was more than enough time for me to close the distance and knock his arm away. The gun went off, the deafening noise I'd been preparing for, and for a moment all I could do was focus on the body I was tackling.
He went down sideways with me on top of him. I kept my right hand on the arm holding the gun, pressing it sideways against the ground. It fired again, more muted this time, as Terrance kicked and flailed around. Somehow I brought my leg around and kicked him in the arm once, twice, three times until he let go of the gun, mouth opening in a scream that I couldn't hear because of the cotton jammed in my ear. Then his hands were on me, grabbing my coat and throwing me sideways into the side of the couch. Everything flashed white, and as my vision returned I saw flecks of light across my vision, and I shook my head to make them go away.
Terrance knelt in front of me and squeezed my throat.
I grabbed his arms, but he was much stronger than me, and the fingers tightened steadily over my windpipe. My chest already heaved in false breaths, demanding oxygen. I tried to bring my feet around to kick him in the balls, but he adjusted himself and knelt on my thigh to keep me in place.
For a brief moment, staring at Terrance, I knew I was going to die.
And then, with shocking abruptness, he let go. He stood, but not with mercy for me: he raised his hands, and that's when I caught view of Sam behind him with the gun pointed at Terrance's chest.
His lips moved, but no sound came out. All I could hear was a high-pitched ringing.
I spent a moment collecting myself, urging air through my bruised windpipe, and then went to Sam. His hands were trembling, so I took the gun from him.
"Thanks," I said, barely hearing my own voice.
The ringing subsided enough for me to hear more gunshots outside.
"He's coming..." Sam said.
"Fuckin' dealers across the hall," Terrance hissed. "Not the first time this has happened. We hide in the other room, this all blows over."
"Oh, so suddenly we're buddies again?" I spat.
"Ezra..." Terrance held one palm out.
"Fuck you. Fuck you." I squeezed the gun tight, savoring the power it gave me. I knew I shouldn't trust people. I'd learned that lesson before! They always fucked you over in the end.
"We need to leave." Sam stared at the wall where the gunshots came from.
"Chill, bro."
"Don't tell me to chill!" he shouted, eyes wide. "We need to go."
"What's wrong?" I asked.
A flurry of gunshots rang out, closer than the first. Someone returning fire.
"See? The dealers across the hall," Terrance muttered.
"It's not. He's coming for me."
"He?"
Sam shook his head. "I don't know how to explain it. But he's coming for me."
I wanted to argue, to tell him he was being stupid and paranoid, but I hesitated. I could feel his panic as if it were my own, and that magnified it. Made it more real.
Voices cried out downstairs, in surprise and then pain.
"Stay there!" I yelled at Terrance, then walked backwards to the door. I popped the latch and the two locks and cracked it open enough to lean my head out.
Terrance's apartment was at the end of the hall, which extended away from me before tilting downward at the stairs. The shouting was louder out here, more frenzied. Heads leaned out of two other doors, one with a gun aimed down the hall, waiting to see what would come. Another man stood at the top of the stairs looking down, his back pressed against the wall for meager cover.
"No, don't, stop, please," a voice begged downstairs, and then cut off with horrifying swiftness.
Then the gunfire was an order of magnitude louder. The man at the top of the stairs got two pistol-shots off before his head jerked back, and he crumpled to the ground with half his face a splotch of red.
The man appeared.
He was white. Very white, with gruesomely pale skin. The sides of his head were shaved, and the strip along the top--which was dyed bright blue--extended three inches in a mohawk before curling over on one side like a tidal wave.
And his eyes. They glowed bluer than his hair, and pierced the bubble of my soul.
His lips curled into a smile when he saw me.
I fell back inside the apartment and locked the door as the others in the hall began shooting. Then I scrambled to my feet and grabbed Sam by the hand.
"You're right. Let's go."
Terrance stared with an open mouth as we opened the window and climbed onto the fire escape. I aimed my gun at the front door for cover while Sam went down the ladder first.
"Wait!" Terrance finally stammered. "You're gunna take my gun? At least leave me with somethin'..."
"Don't act like you don't have a dozen other guns in here," I said in a voice like acid, then followed Sam down.
I would have gripped the rails and slid down if I could, but the metal was thick with rust and sharp edges. We moved painfully slow, passing windows on the lower floor with people inside cowering. Sam dropped the final ten feet without lowering the ladder, and I followed a second later. He caught me with strong arms and lowered me to the ground.
God, he felt nice. If only we could have stayed in that closet for another hour, or day, or week.
Instead, we sprinted down the alley.
"Hey man..." Terrance yelled above, an edge to his voice. "They went out the window. I don't know them, and--NO!"
A single gunshot silenced him, filling me with horror. I stopped at the mouth of the alley and looked back in time to see the mohawk man peering out after us. That slow smile appeared on his pinched face, like he had us right where he wanted us.
Like we were already dead
.
"Come on!" Sam yelled.
We ran down the main street as fast as we dared without looking suspicious. I held the gun in my coat pocket, a heavy weight on my left to match the weight of the totem in the right.
"Where are we going?" I said.
"Back to the garage."
"Why?"
"Trust me!"
I did trust him, so I followed, glancing behind me every few seconds as we jogged the four blocks.
We burst into the parking garage like we were bank robbers. I slapped the elevator button but it didn't open immediately, so we abandoned it and circled the stairs, climbing up floor after dirty cement floor. Someone screamed out on the street, which was the only motivation we needed to hurry.
The stairwell ended, and Sam and I burst out into the sunlight of the roof.
A police officer stood by the door with his thumbs tucked into his belt. I panicked for a second, but he only nodded at us and said, "We have an active crime scene over there. If you're parked on that side, let us know and we can escort you to your vehicle." He returned to listening to the radio on his shoulder, which was calling all spare officers to the blocks with the gunshots.
A cluster of cops stood at the far end, where Terrance's Volvo was still parked and one police cruiser lay upside down. One officer glanced our way, returned to his clipboard, then jerked his gaze back at us.
"No worries, I'm not parked up there," Sam said.
The officer nodded, then spoke into his radio. "This is officer Johnson, do you need backup?"
"Sam..." I said as we walked away.
"Over here."
We speed-walked perpendicular to the crime scene, toward the curve in the garage leading to the next level of cars. The last thing I saw was the clipboard cop pointing us out to one of his buddies, and then the floor above us blocked our view.
"I think they recognized me."
Sam didn't listen; he jogged the last ten feet to a shiny cobalt car.
"So you weren't lying about your Honda Accord."
He knelt underneath the bumper and felt around. "Why would I lie about that?"
"Seriously though, one of the cops recognized me."
His hand stopped, then came away with a magnetic key box. He grinned as he pulled the spare key out and went to the driver's side.
"You know us thieves love those things," I muttered.
"Excuse me, sir? SIR!"
Shouts behind us. I froze with the passenger door open and saw Mr. Mohawk stepping up to the cop by the stairwell. He smiled warmly at the cop, then punched out with his arm, the base of his palm catching the officer in the throat.
Before he'd crumpled to the ground, Mohawk was already striding toward us with a wicked grin on his face.
"My brother refuses to embrace this world's weapons," he said, pulling a gun from his trench coat. "But I am not my brother. Unfortunate for you, sapphire."
"Look out!" I shouted.
We ducked inside Sam's car as the first bullets punched into the metal, vibrations that shook the frame and made me flinch in fear. Sam's fingers fumbled at the ignition, key scratching across the plastic before finding its place. He started the engine, threw it in reverse, and flew out of the parking spot.
Ducking down, I had a good view of the carnage to my right out of the passenger window. The officers at the crime scene were returning fire, unseen shots from three or four guns. Mohawk's trench coat whirled like a dress as he turned toward them, surprise and annoyance painted on his face. And then he was running back toward the stairwell, and my view was cut off as Sam drove down the ramp.
"What the fuck," Sam muttered to himself while driving down the garage, tires squealing around the turns.
"Thank goodness for those cops," I said.
But as we drove across the next level, the man popped out of the stairwell ahead of us, gun extended and firing. I screamed as a bullet hole appeared in the windshield, spiderwebs creeping across the glass. I ducked and covered my head, much good that would do against a bullet, and felt Sam steering around the corner away from the man.
I looked up at Sam as we descended to the next level.
"Gun," he said, panting.
"What?"
"Don't you have a gun?"
My fingers tightened around Terrance's gun in my pocket. "Yeah..."
"Then why aren't you shooting back?"
"I'm a thief, not a soldier!" I yelled.
We were rounding the next corner already, and at any minute the man would appear by the stairwell ahead of us. I rolled down my window and hung my arm out in preparation.
Bullets bounced off the car before I could even seen him. I fired back randomly, hitting the cement wall and then a truck, and car alarms began blaring all around us, a cacophony of chaos. I yelled while firing, hoping to at least give us some cover as Sam roared toward the stairwell, and it must have worked because the gunshots stopped.
We spun around the corner away from him, and I saw Mr. Mohawk fumbling with his gun.
"He's reloading."
Sam glanced up at the rear-view mirror. "One more level. Then we're out."
Half a dozen bullet holes marred the windshield, making it impossible to see. I leaned back in my seat and kicked at the glass with my feet, and on the third kick it broke free from the frame and blew away.
I tried to catch my breath, but the adrenaline was like acid in my veins.
"Ready?" Sam asked.
I rested my hands on the dashboard, aiming out the front. "Nope."
Everything seemed to slow down as we rounded the final corner. Mr. Mohawk stood in the stairwell at the end of the garage, legs spread in a wide stance while he aimed. His gun flashed like a camera. I pulled my trigger and the pistol jerked up against my grip. I fired again, not bothering to slow down to aim, only hoping to buy us enough time to escape. But on the third shot the chamber remained in the back position. Out of ammo.
I pulled the gun away, waiting for our doom.
But our assailant was no longer looking at us. He aimed his gun back up the stairwell, and was yelling something incoherent. He quickly turned back to us, squeezed off one shot (which bounced off the Accord's hood), and turned toward the stairs. There were commanding shouts coming from above. The police coming down the stairs and ordering him to drop the weapon.
Not slowing, our car roared past the man and smashed through the ticketing gate.
We burst into the main street. One car slammed on its brakes and slid into the front of the Accord, but only a glancing blow that knocked us sideways. Sam took that as a suggestion and floored it in that direction, going the wrong direction down the one-way street until coming to the next intersection, where he turned left.
As the chaos dimmed behind us, I finally exhaled.
11
SAM
I inhaled sharply as the chaos dimmed behind us.
I WILL FIND YOU, the strange man boomed in my head. Somehow, I knew it was him. YOU CANNOT ESCAPE THE DRAGONS.
I rounded another corner in the car, and then the voice was gone. But I could still feel him behind us, a pulsing beacon of hate that slowly began to fade.
Ezra put her hand on mine. "Hey. Relax."
I'd been gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles were white. I forced myself to loosen the grip, and Ezra smiled.
"That was... something."
"Yeah, something," I muttered. I could still feel the razor-like intensity of the adrenaline rush, all of my senses heightened. Nerves frayed like electrical wire.
And underneath it all, a vibration in my chest. The gryphon inside me raging to be let free, to fight the man behind us.
Dragons. A gang name, or something else?
"Are we going back to your place?"
"Yeah," I said.
"Then turn here. I know a safer route, away from the main roads."
I obeyed, following her instructions as we wound through back alleys and apartment parking lots. Driving slower also meant less wind blowi
ng into the missing windshield.
"I thought you said you just got to Denver."
"I did. But I always study a city before visiting, so I know my way around." She gave a nervous grin. "You know. In case we get chased by goth madmen."
I took a deep breath. "This happen to you often?"
"I wasn't joking when I said I'm a thief, not a soldier. That's actually the first time I've ever fired a gun." She shivered, which I suspected had nothing to do with the frigid air blowing through the open car.
"Could have fooled me. You looked natural with it."
She shrugged one shoulder and said, "Well, yeah. I've handled guns all my life. But I've never needed to actually use one. I prefer to avoid ever getting to that point in the first place."
Ezra glanced over, and flinched. "You're trembling!" she said, squeezing her hand on mine.
I tried to force myself to relax by sheer willpower, but that's not how these things worked. "I'm, uhh, not used to so much excitement."
"Pull over. There, by the dumpster."
"We're almost to my place..."
"Just do it."
We were in an outdoor parking lot next to a block of rich apartments. I ignored the "PARKING PERMIT REQUIRED" sign and pulled into a spot.
After I put it in park, Ezra reached over to turn off the engine.
"Give yourself a minute to relax," she said. "An adrenaline rush can have an even worse adrenaline crash. I'm feeling my own right now."
I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes, but couldn't make myself calm down. It was like every muscle in my body had contracted, and refused to loosen.
"Moving around helps."
Ezra got out of the car, and I followed.
She paced back and forth, and I tried to do the same. My legs felt numb and stiff. I sucked in the cold Colorado air and tried to steady my breathing.
I thought about her background. A thief, she called herself. I never thought of criminals as being so cute.
Just my luck, I guess.
"So what's his deal?" she said. "Mohawk-bro. Is he after this?"
She pulled the totem out long enough to show me, then hid it away again.
