by J H Leigh
That’d become our new reality.
Until I awoke with a start, my heart pounding, a Klaxon alarm going off in my head.
My entire body tensed. Panic sweat drenched my skin as sensed something was wrong. Jilly stirred beside me but Dylan was also awake. I slowly met her gaze. We weren’t alone in the apartment — and it wasn’t Badger.
I nudged Jilly awake just as Dylan gently covered her mouth so she didn’t scream.
Jilly’s eyes flew open but she remained silent with a short nod of terrified understanding as Dylan removed her hand. I gestured to the living room. Dylan slid with the stealth of a cat from the bed and I followed. Jilly silently dropped to the floor and crawled under the bed. Dylan gestured for me to hide in the closet but I shook my head.
I wasn’t going to cower in a closet while Dylan faced whatever was coming for us.
I snatched a baseball bat lying against the closet door. Dylan pulled a knife hidden between the mattress and the box spring. There was a gun hidden in the kitchen but we had no way of reaching it in time.
Whoever was in our apartment, wasn’t there to be neighborly. It was nearly three in the morning and they weren’t looking to sell us Girl Scout cookies.
I held my breath and peered silently around the corner from the shadows.
Three figures, dressed in black, were in the apartment. First, they headed to the master bedroom, which was technically Badger’s but he wasn’t there. Finding it empty, they came our way, moving through the darkened apartment with a stealth that spoke of experience.
The Avalon had sent professional assassins to kill us? Jesus, how would we survive?
My fingers clenched the neck of the wooden bat, scared out of my mind, nearly pissing myself.
They were there to clip loose ends.
But I wasn’t going down without a fight and neither was Dylan. I could almost feel Jilly shaking beneath the bed but she didn’t have a weapon so what could she do?
We were sitting ducks. All we had going for us was the element of surprise and a hard-core will to survive.
I could tell they were men by the way they moved. The first man crept into the room, a gun with a silencer in his hand. I swung like I was hitting for the World Series, the bat connecting with a jarring crack against his skull, spraying blood and whatever else against the bed and far wall. He went down and Dylan jumped on him with the knife, slicing his throat wide open.
I didn’t have time to freak out over what we’d done; our element of surprise was gone.
Two more men flooded the bedroom. I tried swinging again but he deflected the blow and I stumbled, nearly going to the floor. The dark was our only ally. I heard Dylan screech as the other man lifted her off her feet and slammed her to the threadbare carpet. I kicked at my assailant, sweat slicking my forehead as pure adrenaline powered my limbs. My foot connected with a jawline, sending a riot of pain rattling up my leg but his angry grunt told me it’d been worth it.
“You little bitch,” he growled, grabbing my leg and jerking me toward him. I spun like a crocodile, kicking and flailing. A gun went off and something hot seared the top of my shoulder. Holy fuck, was that a bullet? An acrid smell curled my nose hairs. He’d shot in my direction but missed my head. My grasping fingers found Dylan’s knife that she must’ve dropped in the scuffle. I swung wildly. The knife sunk past muscle with a sickening squelch that made me gag. He grabbed wildly for me and I pushed the knife deeper, twisting as it sunk to the hilt, biting into his spine on the other side. He fell to the floor, landing with a hard thump as a death rattle gurgled from his throat. I tried to scramble to my feet but everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.
Dylan was on her back, her assailant had his hands around her throat. I could hear her choking and flailing but I couldn’t get to her.
Suddenly, Jilly wiggled out from beneath the bed and launched herself at the man like a wild thing made of teeth and claws. He had no choice but to release Dylan so he could defend himself from Jilly. He yelled in agony as Jilly sunk her canines into his neck with a savagery that was both awe-inspiring and scary as fuck. I fumbled for the gun or the bat as Dylan gasped, trying to catch her breath. The man reached behind him and tossed Jilly as if she were made of straw. She crashed into the old dresser, giving him time to struggle to his feet, holding his neck where she’d chomped into him.
“The gun,” Dylan cried out but the man already had it in his hand. Oh God, I was going to die. But just as the man pulled the trigger, two things happened at the same time blurring time and space right before my eyes.
Jilly had scrambled to her feet and tried to push the man’s arm but ended up square in front of him as the gun went off, taking the full brunt of that shot as she crumpled forward. I screamed, trying to catch Jilly, uncomprehending as the man arched his back as if someone had pulled the hair from his head but in fact, it was the knife as Dylan had plunged it right into his liver.
He wasn’t dead yet but he would be as he writhed in agony, the minutes of his life ticking by without prejudice. I didn’t care, he deserved to die a horrid death. “Flip the lights,” I screamed, still holding Jilly as she lay still in my arms. “Oh my God, Dylan…oh my God!”
Dylan, her face bloodied, mottled handprints bruising her neck, limped to the lamp and flicked it on, stumbling toward me. “Is she dead?” she asked, stricken and afraid.
“I don’t know,” I wailed, trying to keep pressure on the wound in her stomach, watching in horror as it burbled past my fingertips like a broken pipe. “We need an ambulance!” But Dylan ignored my frantic cry and knelt beside Jilly, gently searching for a heartbeat. “What the fuck are you doing? Make the call!”
“She’s already dead,” Dylan said, choking on a sob. “She’s gone.” Rocking back on her heels, she covered her face as her shoulders shook with tears but I couldn’t accept it. Couldn’t accept that within a heartbeat, Jilly was gone.
Minutes ago we’d been in that bed, sharing a tight, cramped space, clinging to each other for warmth and security and now she was dead?
“No,” I mourned, holding her limp body tightly to mine. “No, no no!” I refused to allow this to happen. I glared at Dylan through a sheen of tears. “Call. The. Fucking. Ambulance.”
But Dylan snapped out of her shock and bounded to her feet, gesturing wildly to the dead people everywhere, her shrill voice strangled. “And how do we explain this? Huh? Got any bright ideas on how we explain that we just murdered three men? For all they know, we might’ve killed Jilly, too! No one is on our side on this. This is your fucking fault anyway. You just had to go talk to your friend, didn’t you? Now, they know where we live!”
Dylan’s hissed accusation cut into my soul.
I blinked back in stunned, horrified silence as Dylan stomped from the room, leaving me with four dead bodies, one of which was still cradled in my arms. Was this my fault? Had I caused Jilly’s death? I held Jilly, tears flowing down my face. What the fuck just happened? I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t let go of Jilly but I knew we couldn’t stay. Grief and shock mingled in an entangled mess until I couldn’t breathe around the horror building in my brain.
“It was self-defense,” I whispered to Jilly even though she couldn’t hear me. “They were going to kill us.” I adjusted her dead weight in my arms, ignoring the ache in the protesting muscles. I wouldn’t let her go. She saved my life. “Why’d you do that, Jilly?” I cried quietly. “Why did you jump in front of the gun?”
But Jilly couldn’t answer. She’d never answer another question again. Never try to mediate between me and Dylan. Never insert her scary optimism into a conversation or be blindly supportive and loyal to whoever she believed was her friend.
Because Jilly didn’t have real friends but she wanted to be a friend.
And she sacrificed herself for the people she cared about.
Me and Dylan.
A fucked up duo if there ever was one.
I ugly cried on that floor, holding Jilly’s
slowly cooling body until Dylan returned to drag me away.
We couldn’t be caught in that apartment with four dead bodies.
We had to leave Jilly behind.
“C’mon, we gotta jet.” Dylan had her backpack on, tossing mine to me. I was shaking from head to toe. “Badger will take care of this but this place is burnt.”
“What’s going to happen to Jilly?” I asked, my throat closing.
“The worst has already happened to her. She’s dead. What happens from this point forward…Jilly isn’t going to care.”
Dylan was right but the horror of knowing that Jilly wouldn’t have a dignified resting place was more than I could stomach. I ran to the toilet and barfed. I took a minute, resting my head against the cold rim of the toilet bowl, then rising on shaky legs, rinsed my mouth, changed my clothes and grabbed my pack to join Dylan.
My soul felt punched bloody but Dylan’s blunt realism spoke to my own pragmatism. We couldn’t stay here anymore. If The Avalon sent three goons to kill us, once they realized that mission had failed, they’d send more until they finally succeeded.
I shouldered my pack and asked with zero emotion, “Where to now?”
“Until Badger can get us a new place, we’ll go back to the church.”
“What if they just follow us there, too?”
“They won’t tonight. After that, we’ll think of something.”
I nodded. I didn’t have much of a choice. We had to leave the scene of the crime. What had once been a safe place was now a hot-spot and we had to run.
First Tana, now Jilly, were we running away from the inevitable? Were our death warrants signed, sealed and delivered to the Grim Reaper? Maybe all of this running was pointless.
I didn’t know how The Avalon had found us but they had.
If Dylan was right and they found us because of me, I’d never forgive myself. The shock had turned my insides numb.
I took one last look before leaving the apartment.
I’m so sorry, Jilly. You deserved so much better than anyone had ever given you…even me.
“Let’s go,” Dylan urged and I followed her out of the apartment. We ran into the night, careful to keep to the shadows and away from any obvious CCTV cameras.
Running was all we knew to do.
Nowhere felt safe.
13
We made it to the church, slipped inside and barricaded the door, just like before. Dylan made a quick call to Badger and returned to drop heavily onto the lumpy sofa, the frozen look of devastation mirroring my own.
“I don’t know how they found us,” I whispered against the scrape of guilt on my heart. “I swear I was careful.”
“Well, they found us,” Dylan said flatly.
Yeah, they found us. “And we killed them.” I looked at my hands, remembering the feel of the knife as it’d ended the man’s life — a man who had come to kill me and my friends. “They’ll send more,” I said. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“We should tell Hicks,” I said.
“Chill out, let me think,” Dylan snapped, pulling her knees up to her chest. The church was like a freezer but we didn’t feel the cold. Nothing could compare to the desolate chill lodged in our souls. We were murderers now. Sure, it’d been self-defense but I knew nothing would ever erase the memory of the kill. I felt bile rise in my throat but I swallowed it down. I started to shiver. Dylan cast me an irritated look but reached over and pulled me close against her shoulder. Tears slid down my cheek to splash on my chest. Jilly was dead. The knowledge kept echoing in my head until I couldn’t hear anything else. Dylan must’ve been suffering the same stone-cold reality because she said in a halting voice, “Jilly saved us. The silly shit saved us both. She could’ve run and gotten away but she didn’t. Why didn’t she run?”
“Because we were her family. A fucked-up, dysfunctional family but a family just the same,” I said, wiping my nose on my sleeve. “And she’d do anything for family.”
“Fuck,” Dylan muttered, shaking her head. “Sons of bitches. I hope they suffered before they died.”
“Me too,” I said, giving in to my savagery. They deserved to die. They’d come to kill three kids. They were as soulless as Madame Moirai. “I’d give anything to be the one to end that cunt. I want to watch the life bleed out of her.”
Dylan knew exactly who I was referring to. She nodded. “Same.”
“So what now?” I asked.
“I guess, sleep?”
“I can’t sleep,” I said, shaking my head. “I feel like I need to puke and shit myself at the same time.”
Dylan motioned. “There’s an empty bucket over there.”
I eyed the bucket. How was this my life? In all the times I’d hated being with Carla, hating our abject poverty, at least I’d never had to shit in a bucket while trying not to puke my guts out at the same time. I guess it was true that you never really appreciated what you had until it was gone.
Even if all you had was a shithole with indoor plumbing.
I settled against Dylan, pulling the ratty blanket over us that smelled faintly of piss and ruin, just thankful for the warmth. “Do you believe in heaven?” I asked.
“No.”
I glanced up at Dylan. “No? Not at all?”
“I don’t know,” Dylan admitted with a tiny shrug. “Maybe at one time I did. Now? I don’t know.” She paused, asking, “Do you?”
I didn’t know either but I liked the idea of heaven. “Sounds like it could be cool if it were real. I like to think that if heaven is real, Tana is okay.” My voice cracked. “And Jilly, too.”
Dylan’s hand found mine beneath the blanket, squeezing tight. “Yeah, me too.”
I let my eyes close, the rush of adrenalin finally receding, leaving exhaustion in its wake. I didn’t want to dream or think. I wanted the dark hole of oblivion to suck me up and bury me. If I didn’t wake up, a part of me would be relieved. To die on my own terms seemed so much better than to die because Madame Moirai had ordered it.
I thought of Jilly. I was still in shock. I would miss her cold feet and sunny optimism. I would miss her ability to turn a situation into something less or more than it was depending on what was required. I would miss her constant surprising me with details about herself or her life before Madame Moirai and how I wasn’t sure if she wasn’t a cracked egg after all.
I would miss everything that Jilly was and would never be.
Like Tana.
Maybe it was fitting that it was just me and Dylan now. We were both assholes, both bitches on our best days, and now we had to find a way to destroy a network bigger than we were, with little to no resources.
On paper, it seemed like certain suicide.
How could we hope to prevail when no one was on our side? When no one cared? Who gave two shits about the girls lost to the machine?
Damn it, I cared.
I would make people care if it killed me.
And let’s face it, it probably would kill me but it would be worth it.
Jilly never actually shared what’d happened with her and her buyer but it was likely the same as what’d happened with mine and Dylan’s — sanctioned abuse.
What broke inside a person that made them believe it was acceptable to abuse another human being like they weren’t a person the same as them?
As fucked up as my life was, I would never hurt someone the way Henri had hurt me, the way Madame Moirai had manipulated me into thinking I was doing something to make my life better when in fact, it’d made everything nightmarishly worse.
If I was willing to entertain the idea of heaven, that meant I got to envision hell. While heaven was a nice thought, the idea of hell — and The Avalon roasting in it — made me happy.
Gleefully, actually.
I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted to see them burn. I wish I’d been able to stick around and watch the auction house go up in flames instead of running for my life.
I would
’ve roasted marshmallows and watched until every ember died into ash.
But like everything associated with The Avalon, my choices had been taken from me. Running and surviving had been my only options.
Just like now.
Tears stung my eyes even as I tried to hold them back. Dylan’s light snore told me she’d dropped off already.
Dylan was hard as nails whereas I still had soft spots that bled when poked.
Deep down, I knew Dylan was devastated at losing Jilly but she couldn’t possibly show that vulnerable of an emotion, not even to me.
Maybe with Nova but Nova was gone, too.
The Avalon had steamrolled our lives in unforgivable ways. Even though I wanted nothing more than to bury the memories so deep it would take an excavator to dig them out, I knew I had to crystallize every memory of the auction, Madame Moirai and my buyer. Any detail might lead to something useful. I would gladly suffer the flashbacks, the PTSD and the degradation if it meant that some detail I had locked in my head ultimately brought them down.
Right now, it felt like a pipe dream but shoot for the stars, right?
At some point, I fell into an uneasy sleep. Every sound jarred me awake. I shivered and shifted my stiff bones. Dylan moaned in her sleep but otherwise didn’t stir. It was nearing morning. Dim, milky light pierced the dirty windows. I knew I wouldn’t get any more sleep despite needing it. My eyes were filled with grit and my head hurt but my mind was already spinning.
Carefully removing myself from the sofa so I didn’t jar Dylan, I grimaced as my bladder protested and eyed the bucket. Not much of a choice. I shimmied my jeans down and squatted over the bucket, relieving myself with a grateful sigh. With nothing to wipe with, I drip-dried and then pulled my pants back up. I would have to find a place to dump the bucket later. From what I remembered Jilly saying, this room had been the priest’s office at one point. Why a priest had a sofa in his office I could only imagine but I suspected if that sofa could talk it might have some horrifying stories to tell.