by Nicole Fox
“Leave him out of this,” I call out, even though I know that bargaining was pointless now.
“Leave him out of this?” Budimir says in amusement. “He’s a part of this, just as much as you. I assume this is the loyalty that you hold in such high regard?”
Budimir raises his gun again.
This time, he’s pointing it at Cillian.
My best friend glances up at me and I can see the apology written all over his face.
He knew that intervening would mean his death.
And he attacked anyway.
“Here’s another lesson, my dear nephew,” Budimir continues as I stand there, frozen in place, with the butt of a gun pressed to the back of my head. “Loyalty and stupidity aren’t so far apart. These men that surround you were smart enough to recognize power when they saw it. That is why they answer to me.”
Then he turns his gaze to Cillian, who is now chalk-white and weakening by the second.
“Where’s the girl?” he asks.
“What girl?” Cillian asks, so convincingly even I almost believe him for a moment.
“Artem’s fucking wife,” Budimir snarls.
“She abandoned him the first chance she got,” Cillian replies. “We haven’t seen her since the clinic.”
Cillian, you fucking legend. I will forever be in your debt.
“Well, then,” Budimir sighs, “you’re of no more use to me.”
He cocks the gun and fires.
Once.
Twice.
Three bullets emptied into my best friend’s chest.
I roar wordlessly at the top of my lungs. It’s a primal, haunting sound, ripped straight out of my soul.
I don’t even realize I’m moving forward towards Cillian until something hard and blunt clocks me at the back of my head.
I drop to the ground, soft dirt squishing between my fingers as I stare at the body that’s just dropped limp at Budimir’s feet.
“Cillian,” I whisper. “Fuck… Cillian…”
I try to keep crawling forward, but I’m hit again, right on my spine. I fall flat against the fallen leaves. They scratch at my face and I suck in my breath as their rotting smell fills my nostrils.
Cillian…
I hear footsteps moving closer. Someone puts a boot toe under my ribs and rolls me over. Every motion is agony.
As I peer up, I catch a glimpse of the crescent moon hanging over me, just before it’s blocked out by Budimir’s face.
“You see, Artem?” Budimir lectures. “You see how much more satisfying it is to be patient? Now, I get to walk away and you get to lie here in the dirt where you belong. You get to lie here with your dead friend and bleed out slowly while you go over all your mistakes.”
He spits on my face. Cocks his gun one more time and unloads it into my stomach.
Then he turns and pads away.
The forest slowly empties. Silence takes over once more.
My head spins with memories, past and present, but none of them feel real. None of them feel like they belong to me anymore.
I see a tan woman with haunting hazel eyes, a mangled body and a bloody baby in her arms.
I see an old man with heavy brows and a wizened sorrow on his face.
And last of all, I see a blonde Irishman, with a smile on his lips and an apology in his too-blue eyes.
7
Esme
There’s a moment when everything feels like it’s going in slow motion.
As though my only coping mechanism is to compound everything down into milliseconds so that I don’t have to deal with the inevitable threat walking towards me.
I’m going to drag you to Artem and he can watch as my seed slips out of you.
The man’s words hang in the crisp mountain air.
They’re too ugly for my little paradise. Too filthy. Too cruel.
His face is contorted with lust and anger and a desire to inflict pain. He licks his lips slowly and for the first time, I truly understand what it means to have your skin crawl.
Nausea bubbles up inside me like a volcano, but I tamp it down and try to focus.
I bring my hand up. He sees the gun in my violently shaking hand.
His eyes go wide.
Before I either give into the urge to puke or lose my only opportunity at this, I pull the trigger.
It’s harder than I think it will be. Or maybe I’m just weak and afraid.
The force of the recoil sends me stumbling backwards, but I manage to keep my feet.
He bellows and jumps to the side. A piece of tree bark behind him splinters on impact.
I missed.
A foot or more wide.
“You fucking bitch!” he growls, his jaw clenched with anger.
Then he makes a run in my direction.
I raise the gun again, but I’m too slow. He’s on me.
His body crashes into mine. Drives the wind from my lungs as we land in a tangled heap in the dirt. When my hand comes swinging down, it hits a rock embedded in the forest floor.
The gun goes clattering from my grasp.
I don’t have time even to scream, because he’s swatting my thrashing limbs aside as he struggles for control. I put up a fight—as best as I can.
But I never had a chance.
He tucks each of my wrists beneath his knees as he straddles me. Two quick slaps across the face knock me silly. I taste blood.
“You’re going to pay for that, you cunt,” he snarls.
“No… no, please…”
“Yeah, that’s right. Beg me to let you go. It won’t help, but I’ll let you beg me anyway.”
My head is pounding with the weight of my fear as he spreads my legs with one of his knees. He releases one of my hands so that he can fumble with my clothes.
I bring it up hard, slapping him clean across the face. My nails tear skin, leaving streaks of glistening blood on his cheek.
He recovers almost instantly and slaps me back just as hard.
My eyes un-focus for a moment. All I can see is blinding white light.
But I keep struggling.
I will not simply lie in the muck and grime of the forest and accept that I’m going to be raped.
“Lie fucking still, you bitch!” he screams at me thunderously.
A smarter woman might have listened. And maybe I might have, if it hadn’t been for the child inside me.
I couldn’t let this happen—for my baby’s sake. He manages to rip at the front of my nightgown. The thin fabric gives way easily. He pulls again, harder, and the tear widens until it’s reached my stomach.
“No… no!”
“I told you to shut the fuck up,” he barks. “Unless you want this to go…”
His threat trails off as his eyes fall to my swollen belly. “You’re pregnant?” he asks in amazement.
His shock is the distraction I need. My free hand grabs a handful of the dark, gritty soil and I fling it hard into his wide-open eyes.
He yells back in shock. Cocking back, I swing my fist straight into his nose as hard as I can.
Something gives way beneath my knuckles. Bone or flesh, I don’t know, but I feel his blood slicking the back of my hand.
The bastard falls back into the dirt, cupping two hands to where I struck him and cursing rapid-fire.
I scramble onto my knees as I root around in the dirt, desperately looking for the gun I’d dropped.
I can feel him at my back, inching closer as he tries to coax his vision clear once more.
Where is it? Where the fuck is it?
And then I see the butt of the weapon glinting out at me from under a ragged leaf.
I lunge for it. My fingers close around the grip just as the man’s hand closes around my ankle.
“I might have gone easy on you, bitch,” I say. “But now I’m gonna fuck that baby right out of you.”
He tugs hard. I lose my position and my head slams against another half-buried rock.
In that moment of disorientat
ion, I see a flash of a woman behind my eyelids.
I’ve never met or seen her before.
But I feel like I know her.
She’s pregnant. She’s terrified. She’s staring death in the face…
She’s staring my brother in the face.
And I feel a kinship with this Marisha I’ve never known and never will know. This woman who was married to my husband, who was carrying his child, just as I am now.
A woman whose last view of the world was my brother’s stormy eyes—just before he murdered her.
And suddenly, I’m furious.
I’m determined.
But most of all, I’m tired.
I’m tired of being a plaything in a world ruled by powerful men who think they can just take what they want.
I’m tired of having to fight them off, shout to be heard, beg to be left alone.
I whip around fast. My hands don’t shake anymore. The gun is steady in my grasp as I turn it on him.
I have the satisfaction of seeing his eyes bulge with fear.
And then I shoot.
This time, pulling the trigger feels like the easiest thing in the world. My hands are steady. My aim is true.
And when the bullet reduces his face to a mess of blood and bone, it’s not disgust or guilt or anger than I feel.
It’s power.
The man’s body hits the ground with a dull, lifeless thump. I sit up a little straighter, the gun still clutched between my hands.
I take a deep breath, staring at the body in front of me, savoring the way he lies there, unmoving.
I remember the way I felt after my first kill. Mischa—the man in Tamara’s apartment I’d stabbed again and again.
That guilt nearly ripped me in half.
This time is different.
I don’t know what that means just yet.
8
Esme
When my legs feel strong enough again, I rise off the ground, taking the gun with me. I turn and walk away from the body, venturing deeper into the woods.
I find my way back to the cabin and then, using that as my starting point, I head off in a different direction.
The moon hangs low in the sky, illuminating my path as I hear the scurrying of forest creatures all around me.
Minutes later, I come across a clearing. This is it. This is the place.
It’s bloody carnage everywhere I look. Crimson stains the ground, but I don’t shy away from it. Instead, I leap right over the sticky puddles and keep moving forward.
Because I see him.
Artem.
He’s lying on his back in the middle of the clearing. Nothing else moves. Nothing makes a sound.
I rush forward and sink to my knees at my husband’s side.
“Oh, God,” I whimper. A sob breaks through my façade of calm. I squeeze his hand between mine and say it again—I don’t know what the hell else to do. “Oh, please, God, no.”
I need him to move. To say something. Just fucking blink, goddammit.
But nothing.
Nothing.
Until…
His finger twitches in my grasp.
“Artem?” I say. “Artem?”
Suddenly, the tiniest of motions—his chest rising and falling slowly. It’s so faint I can barely tell.
But it’s there.
It’s fucking there.
He’s alive.
Gratitude floods back into my body. “Thank God,” I breathe. “Thank fucking God.” I bend forward and kiss his forehead, his cheek, his lips.
“Artem,” I whisper, “can you hear me? Stay with me. Please, just stay with me.”
I shake his shoulders, rubbing my hands against his face and slapping him gently, trying to bring him back to consciousness.
His clothes are absolutely soaked in blood. I look for the wounds. A bullet hole in the bicep, a jagged stab wound just above his hip, and a nasty shot buried in the center of his stomach. Each one worse than the last.
I don’t know much about emergency medicine, but it doesn’t take much to realize the obvious: it doesn’t look good.
I rip a long strip off the raggedy end of my nightgown. That one gets knotted around his bicep. The flow of blood staunches at once.
I repeat the process twice more and press the torn, balled-up fabric into his stomach and ribs. He groans each time. His eyelids flutter, but they don’t open.
I stand up, still clinging to his hand, and look around. It’s cold. My skin is raised in goosebumps over every inch of my body.
But I know what I have to do.
I have to get him to town.
Up on this godforsaken mountain, he’s as good as dead. We have no medicine, nothing to operate with, and no one who knows how to do that shit anyways.
And even though I haven’t seen any more signs of the men who did this, there’s no telling if they’ll come back. All that’s left of them is the blood on the earth and stomped tracks leading away.
So we have to move. That’s the only option. Every other route leads to death.
The question is… how?
I try to pick Artem up, but he groans again, louder. He’s too heavy anyways.
Which means my only hope is to bring the car to him.
I kneel back down and lean forward so that my lips are at Artem’s ear. “Hold on. I’m coming back. I’m coming back for you.”
I don’t know if he hears me or not. It doesn’t matter. I’ll keep trying until he’s cold in my arms.
I turn and run through the forest with moonlight guiding my way. I run fast despite my shaky legs and my fast beating heart. It feels like I’m burning up on the inside, but cold air hits my skin from all directions. I’m tired, but I refuse to give in to the fatigue. I can break down later.
For now, I have to run.
As I go, I search the forest for any sign of Cillian. Did he chase the attackers? Did they take him? Did he go for help?
I can’t wait around for him to get back, though. I just have to keep going forward.
It’s what Artem would do.
I get back to the cabin in record time and head straight for the car.
I’m aware that traversing through parts of the forest in the car will be difficult and quite possibly dangerous, but what fucking choice do I have?
I get into the car and turn it around slowly, inching into the woods with the headlights on. They only highlight how treacherous the path is. Huge boulders rear up on every side with barely enough room to squeeze between them. Unstable gravel could send the car sliding into the ravine at any moment.
I navigate through it carefully, but my pace enrages me. I’m moving at snail speed. It’s not fast enough. Artem is bleeding to death and Cillian is who the fuck knows where.
“Faster, faster, dammit!” I cry to the empty car. I smack the steering wheel like that’ll help.
I inch through the forest. Every scrape of rock on the car doors makes me wince, but it doesn’t matter.
At long last, by some fucking miracle, I make it. My headlights pick out Artem lying in the middle of the clearing.
Dying a little at a time.
I’m as close as I can get, but the trees still keep me from getting any nearer. There’s still a good fifteen or twenty yards to traverse with a comatose man who weighs double what I do.
I throw the back doors open and then sprint over to him.
“Artem,” I gasp. I’m praying that I’m not too late.
I nearly keel over with relief when I realize he’s still breathing. But his breaths are even shallower than they were before, dwindling down to almost nothing. I grab the collar of his bloodstained shirt and try to pull him up.
He doesn’t budge.
“Artem,” I beg, frantic. “Please, you have to help me. Please… just get up.”
The panic ratchets up to my throat when he stirs. His eyelids flicker open for a moment—one beautiful, heart-wrenching moment—before sealing shut again.
“Artem!” I sla
p his cheek several times, hard. “Artem, please. I can’t get you into that car by myself.”
Where the fuck is Cillian? He’d know what to do. He’d be able to help.
The dying man in my arms is well over six feet. I try again to slip my arm under his shoulders and tug, but all my might amounts to about three inches of progress. When his groans turn into agonized whimpers unlike any noise I’ve ever heard him make, I stop and collapse to the ground again.
I’m tired. I’m freezing. I’m pregnant.
And as strong as I think I am, I’m just not strong enough.
All of that means my husband is going to die out here. He’s going to bleed away, wither to a cold corpse, and I’m just going to have to sit here and watch that happen because I’m too fucking weak.
No.
No.
No.
Something lights up in my chest. Like a fire within. It’s not just desperation. Not just determination.
It’s anger.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, I’m mad. Mad at him and at the guns that did this to him and the world that keeps doing this to me, again and again.
“Fuck you, Artem!” I half-cry, half-scream. “Fuck you for bringing me here and leaving me like this!”
I’m so angry I can barely form words. I pound my fists against the cold, hard-packed dirt of the forest floor.
“I didn’t ask for any of this, but you came out of nowhere and you gave me this baby! You gave me your name! You married me. So fuck you—get the fuck up!”
I’m mad at him.
I hate him.
I love him.
I can’t possibly lose him.
I start beating my hands against his chest over and over again like a woman possessed. The forest echoes with my cries.
And then by some miracle, my madness breaks through his catatonia.
His head lurches forward, but it falls back onto the forest just as quickly.
But his eyes remain open.
I grab his face with both my hands and meet his eyes. He looks through me at first, but I don’t care.
“Artem, listen,” I start to say. “Get up now. You’re not dying here. Not like this. I know it’s hard, but you need to get up. Now.”