by Jessica Roe
After another hour of mind numbing bickering, they finally came to a compromise. Charles agreed that they could stop by the office where Heidi had worked as a phone sales woman and collect the baby photos of Becky that she kept there.
“We'll have to make it quick,” Charles added sternly, shaking his head like he was wondering when he'd become one of those men who just couldn't say no and scowling at the victorious expression upon Heidi's face. “I mean it. In and out. Seriously...Oh, do stop smirking, you insufferable woman.”
NIGHT WAS FAST approaching, and it was almost dark by the time they reached Heidi's office. It was storming outside and dark thunderclouds blanketed the sky. The entire group were dressed in black, which kind of made Nicky feel like a secret agent. And a douche. And a ninja.
Heidi's office was less of an office and more of a tiny cubicle in a gigantic room full of tiny cubicles on the tenth floor of a thirty story building. It was empty of people, and with the lights out, the space seemed eerie, foreboding. Nothing like the busy, hive like atmosphere of the day.
“My work friends must have wondered where I disappeared to,” Heidi commented sadly as they reached her cubicle, like she had only just thought of it. “I wonder if they called the police.”
Walker scanned the room, always on the lookout for danger. “It wouldn't do them much good. Pablo owns every cop in the city.”
Nicky moved over to the window as Heidi quickly sorted through her desk. He folded his arms across his chest—a chest that was more muscular than it had been before he'd joined the Guardians—as he watched rivulets of rain make intertwining tracks down the glass. Each droplet of water tried to forge its own path, only to get swept away by a bigger force. It was ironically similar to the Guardians' own struggle with Pablo and his empire.
He couldn't see him, but Nicky knew that Zay was down there somewhere in the rain, watching the building carefully. And down in the building lobby, Charles waited, on the lookout for any of Pablo's men.
Lightening flashed, highlighting the room for a short second, and it was soon followed by a rumble of thunder. Nicky heard Becky whimper from where she was hiding underneath Heidi's desk.
“We need to hurry,” Walker warned Heidi, who only nodded in response and began sorting faster.
Nicky walked over to the desk and crouched down.
“What's up, li'l Beck?” She liked it when he gave her pet names.
“'S scary,” she said with a sniff, huddling into a corner.
“What is?”
The room lit up with lightening once again, and when it thundered, the whole room shook with the force of it. Becky buried her face into her knees. In one of her hands she held on to a green toy rabbit so hard that her fist had turned white.
“Oh, the lightening...right. Well, don't be afraid,” he said helpfully, grinning like an idiot. His grin faded when he heard Walker snort. “Lightening is cool, Beck, not scary. It's pretty, and it brightens up the room, just like you do.”
The watery smile she gave him was worth sounding like a sap.
Suddenly, Walker gripped his shoulder, hard. He looked up to see what her deal was, and then he saw her.
Gable.
She strode towards the four of them, cold and hard and evil in a way that sent shivers running straight down Nicky's spine. She glared fiercely and determinedly at Heidi, leaving no room for doubt that she was there to hurt her.
Pablo had found his missing Telepath.
Nicky ducked back down under the table. “Stay down here,” he whispered to Becky. “No matter what. Don't come out.”
He waited until she nodded before climbing out and standing up.
“Gable,” he started, pushing Heidi behind him. “Don't...” What could he even say to her? Don't kill Heidi? If he had to even say those words, then maybe there really was nothing left in her to save. He'd gone without sleep ever since they'd met on the roof, staring at the ceiling, night after night, wondering what Pablo had done to her for letting him go. Wondering whether he'd hurt her, or worse. Trying to come up with a plan to rescue her. But she didn't look hurt at all. She just looked...empty. Devoid of all emotion but anger. He didn't know how she'd gotten past Zay or Charles. It didn't really matter, not at that moment.
Walker moved, faster than Nicky had ever seen her go, and charged at Gable with her gun drawn. Before he could say anything, a shot rang out.
Walker missed.
Or she almost missed, anyway. The bullet had grazed Gable's arm and then buried itself into a computer monitor behind her. She looked down at the bloody gash. “Now I'm pissed.”
“Oh God,” Heidi cried quietly, clinging on to the back of Nicky's long sleeved t-shirt. He could sense how badly she wanted to go down to Becky, but she knew not to draw attention to her daughter. It also meant that they couldn't escape while Gable was distracted by Walker.
He'd been focussed on Heidi, and so the second shot surprised him just as much as Walker's scream did. Her gun dropped to the floor and she cradled her bloody arm to her chest and Nicky realized that Gable had been the one to shoot. “That bullet wasn't meant for you,” Gable said regretfully, but sickeningly casual, as she threw the gun aside.
Ignoring their bleeding wounds, the two women threw themselves into combat. Nicky went to intervene but Heidi clung to him tighter. “Please don't leave me,” she begged, and he was helpless to do anything but watch as Gable threw Walker over the top of a desk. He almost wished he had his own gun with him, but that would require having brain cells, which he clearly did fucking not. Charles would kill him when he found out.
But even as he watched her, he wasn't sure he'd be able to shoot Gable if it came down to it anyway.
Walker was an amazing fighter, but Gable was just...better. She fought dirtier, harder, more desperately.
Jumping up from behind the desk, Walker leaped at Gable and slammed her fist into her face. Gable's head shot back, but it didn't stop her from instinctively catching Walker's second fist. She used it to yank Walker towards her and sank her knee into her stomach. When Walker involuntarily doubled over, Gable kicked her hard in the head, causing the Guardian to stumble backwards and fall. There was a loud crack as her head hit the corner of a desk, and when she landed on the ground, she didn't get back up. Her blonde hair, now coated pink with blood, covered her face, and Nicky was pretty sure she was unconscious. If not worse.
It was his turn.
“Please don't make me fight you,” he begged.
“Stop it.” He voice was low, dangerous. “I'm not your girl any more. I'm not her. Leave now and your won't have to watch me kill the Telepath.”
There was nothing else he could do. He stepped away from Heidi and he felt her back away into the cubicle wall.
As he attacked Gable, he realized with a painful jolt that Walker had been right all along; he still loved her. And he'd probably never stop.
Maybe that was why he let her punch him again and again, because some part of him felt like he needed to be punished for loving her, or maybe it was just because she was better than him.
And then it occurred to him that if he let her win their fight, she would become a killer, and he couldn't let that happen. He fought back, and for a few precious moments, perhaps because Gable was already weakened, they were evenly matched. And then, miraculously, Nicky got the upper hand. He swept her feet out from underneath her and she landed hard on her back with a thud. She lay there with her eyes closed, and he was pretty sure she was out.
He had won.
He looked back to check that Heidi was okay, and that turned out to be the dumbest mistake he'd ever made in his whole stupid life, and he'd practically made a career out of making dumb mistakes.
Heidi screamed and pointed behind him but it was too late. An office chair crashed into the back of his head. Once. Twice. His vision blurred and started to blacken around the edges as he dropped to his knees, and then on to his face. He wanted to move, he needed to move, but it was like his brain and hi
s body were in two different universes. The chair crashed down next to him.
“You should have run while you had the chance,” he heard Gable taunt Heidi.
“Please,” Heidi whimpered. “No...”
With every little scrap of remaining strength Nicky had left, he lifted up his head, sure that it was at least ten times heavier than it was supposed to be. Gable strode towards Heidi, a big, shining, sharp dagger clutched in her hand. He tried to beg her to stop, but he couldn't get his mouth to move.
Heidi was going to die. Becky was going to die. The woman he loved was a monster.
And it was all his fault.
The last thing Nicky saw before he lost consciousness was the look of heart stopping terror on Heidi's face as Gable's dagger plunged straight towards her heart.
SOMEONE WAS SHAKING Nicky and it was pissing him the fuck off because he was trying to sleep. “The hell?” he yelled, when a large hand slapped him, hard, making his already sore head throb; he had one mother fucker of a hangover.
He reluctantly opened his eyes. Zay's rain soaked form hovered over him, concern etched into his features.
“Get up. We need to get out of here. Now.”
Nicky sat up and groaned with the effort of it. For a second, his surroundings confused him...and then he remembered.
Heidi's office. Becky's terrified whimpers. The glint of the dagger as Gable lifted it into the air.
His heart lurched and he wanted to vomit.
It was still dark outside, and the storm was still raging. When he checked his watch, he realized that he'd only been out of it for twelve minutes. Twelve small minutes. Seven hundred and twenty seconds. Such a small amount of time.
And yet it was all the time Gable had needed.
Zay scrambled over to where Walker still lay and checked her pulse. “It's not too bad,” he called out. “But we need to get her out of here and to a hospital. She's losing blood. Looks like she's got a bullet wound to the arm and a nasty gash on her head...Dad? You hear me?”
A few feet away, so still that Nicky hadn't even noticed him there before, Charles was kneeling. Just kneeling on the floor like he'd dropped there and couldn't find the will to get back up again. He wasn't moving, just staring...staring at the blood.
Before Nicky had lost consciousness, he had seen Heidi back up against the wall of her cubicle. Blood was smeared down the wall like...like Heidi had been stabbed against it, so hard that the dagger had cut straight through her, and then she had slid down the wall to die on the floor. Nicky could see it play out in his mind, like a sick horror film. A small puddle of blood pooled on the floor where Heidi—Heidi's body—should have been, but she was gone. Gable must have disposed of her.
“Oh God, no no no,” he muttered, when he remembered who else they had been trying to protect. Ignoring every sharp shoot of pain in his body, and there were so damned many, he crawled over to the desk. Of course Becky wasn't there. No. Just...more blood.
His head span and his vision blurred. Not Becky too. Not sweet, cute little Becky with her tiny button nose and her annoying crush. Unable to stop himself, he threw up on the floor in front of him.
They had failed them. Heidi and Becky. Two innocent people that had come to them for help and they had failed. Why in the hell did they even call themselves Guardians?
He had failed them.
And now they were dead.
He would never be so naïve again. Gable couldn't be saved. He'd been fooling himself the whole time. She was cruelly and bitterly evil, just like everyone—herself included—had been telling him all along. He had learnt the harshest lesson, and he would would never forget it, not ever.
More importantly, he wouldn't rest until they'd brought her and her piece of shit boss down, no matter how immortal the crazy son of a bitch was.
He needed to stop being such a misguided idiot, and start being a proper Guardian.
It was the last time he'd ever let Gabrielle Xanders shatter his heart into a million tiny pieces.
He wiped his mouth, blood and yellow bile coating his sleeve, and turned to Charles, gripping the older man's shoulder. “I'm so sorry,” he choked out.
Charles flinched from his daze, like he hadn't even realized he wasn't alone in the room. When he looked at Nicky, his face was pale, his eyes wide and red and grief stricken. His hands were shaking where they rested on his thighs. “It's all my fault,” he claimed, sounding haunted. “All my fault. I should never have allowed her to come here tonight. If I'd just been firmer with her...”
“It's not your fault, it's mine. Fucking Gable...I tried to stop her...”
“We can all share the blame, but not right now,” Zay spoke up, the authority in his voice leaving no room for argument. Nicky was so used to seeing him laid back and taking orders from other people that his take charge attitude seemed almost out of place. It was what they needed, though, as it was clear that neither Charles nor Nicky were up to the job of leading. “We need to leave before that bitch decides to come back and finish us off. You three aren't in top shape right now.”
Nicky used the desk to pull himself up onto his feet and rubbed the back of his head. A lump the size of an egg throbbed when his fingers brushed it, and he remembered the way Gable had callously attacked him with a chair while his back had been turned. He wanted to be sick all over again. “How did she even get in here? Didn't you see her? I thought there was only one entrance to the building?”
“I didn't see her,” said Zay. “And I didn't take my eyes off the building once. I barely blinked.”
“She didn't come through the lobby,” added Charles quietly. He still hadn't moved from the floor and was back to staring at the blood. “She must have come in through the roof.”
Nicky shook his head. “We should've had more people watching the place. I just didn't think Pablo would know we'd come by here. How did he know?”
Thunderclouds gathered in Zay's bright blue eyes, and he looked so much like his father in that moment that Nicky had to blink. If not for the difference in hair colour... “Gad isn't answering his phone, so if you want my guess, I'd say that little prick sold us out.”
“After giving us the box, I'd have thought Pablo would want Gad dead on sight?”
Zay shrugged. “Doesn't need to meet him face to face to give him information. Maybe he was trying to get off Pablo's hit list. Whatever it was, I'm going to kill that fucker if I ever see him again.” He re-tightened the makeshift bandage he'd put on Walker's arm, scooped her up and handed her over to Nicky. “Get my dad out of here. Call Queenie to come and get him; I don't think he's capable of driving at the moment.” He sounded oddly detached, like that was how he needed to be to take care of the situation they were in. “Get Walker to the hospital, and get yourself checked out while you're there. Show them your badges if they try to ask questions. I need to stay here and clean up the...the blood. Dad doesn't need to deal with this right now.”
Nicky nodded. Taking orders off Zay felt good. Doing something felt good.
He nudged Charles with his foot. “C'mon, Charlie, let's get outta here.”
Charles nodded and allowed Zay to help him to his feet. Sparing one last glance at Heidi's blood on the wall, he followed Nicky out of the room.
THE THING GABLE loved most about her apartment wasn't the luxury, or the fine furniture, or even the TV the size of a frikkin' car. The thing she loved most about her apartment was the windows. An entire row of them walled one side of her living room, from floor to ceiling, showing off a spectacular view of the city. It was like Pablo had guessed her need for space and freedom when he had bought the place for her. He was so astute at reading people.
She stood at the window, staring past the glass and her pale reflection to the city below. She hadn't turned on any lights when she'd gotten home—hadn't even cleaned the blood off her hands—but the room was lit up anyway by the lights of the city. She was so high up that they sparkled like tiny diamonds.
It was perfect, t
he magical New York City she'd always dreamed of, but without Sacha, it meant nothing.
What would Sacha think of her if he could see her, if he could see everything she'd done? Everything she'd told herself she'd done in pursuit of him, but where was he? She'd been working for Pablo for a year and she was no closer to finding Sacha than she'd been then. She should stop kidding herself. It was weakness that kept her by Pablo's side, and nothing more. God, she hated to think how she'd look through Sacha's eyes. He'd held her up on a pedestal, ever since they'd first met. Sure, they'd fought, and she'd driven him half crazy more times than she knew, but he'd always been the first one to break down, to slip his arms around her and whisper apologizes and words of love into her ear. He was so good, so kind hearted.
He'd probably hate her; hate everything she'd done and everything she'd turned into.
Silent as the night, Pablo stepped up beside her, so light footed that it almost seemed like he'd appeared from within the shadows. Gable had been so lost in her morbid thoughts that she hadn't even heard him let himself in. He said nothing, but followed her gaze down to the lights, his hands folded neatly behind his back. She didn't look at him, couldn't look at him.
They stood together in silence for the longest time; a lifetime, maybe two.
“You didn't tell me the Telepath had a kid,” she said finally. Her voice sounded even, toneless, distant. Exactly how she felt inside.
He took his time answering. Pablo never spoke without thinking it through first. “And was that a problem for you?”
“No.” From the corner of her eye she saw him cock his head. He was waiting for more. She gave a tiny little sigh. “The kid screamed a lot.”
“Yes, they do tend to do that.”