The Age of Embers {Book 3): The Age of Reprisal

by Schow, Ryan

  They see us, stop, catch sight of their three slaughtered friends, then turn and bolt the other way. Another gunshot cracks the air and the younger man drops dead.

  The woman yelps, but doesn’t stop running.

  “Get me inside,” I tell Brooklyn. She hooks my arm over her shoulders and I say, “Where’s Orlando?”

  “Inside the house.”

  “Is he okay?” I ask.

  “I…I don’t know,” she says, fear in her eyes.

  “I’ll check on him,” Eliana says. “Go see Adeline. Come on, I’ll take you. Hurry.”

  I protest, worried about my son, but Brooklyn and Eliana usher me inside my own house where Adeline tries not to freak out at the sight of me. She’s wetting a cloth, starting to dab my face, but all I can think about is Orlando.

  “Why don’t you know about Orlando?” I ask Brooklyn, the black spots starting to crowd my vision again. “What happened?”

  Eliana runs up front to get a better look at the street.

  “We were attacked. He got hit,” Brooklyn says. “Punched, not shot.”

  “Is he dead?” I ask, both the implication and the question visibly startling Adeline.

  She turns to our daughter. We both do. Brooklyn’s eyes boil over, her mouth now moving like it wants to say something, but she can’t say anything.

  “I tried to wake him up,” she finally says.

  I’m shoving my body out of my chair now, staggering toward the door, pulling it open and calling his name. Fear is a swift, debilitating force gushing through me, burning my insides, filling my head with visions of all the worst possibilities.

  I push through the back door and there are dead people everywhere.

  Ice is looking at me.

  Another gunshot goes off and it sounds like it’s coming from upstairs. Eliana races past me, heading into Eudora’s house, toward the sounds of the rifle.

  Draven…

  Making my way toward the house, my thoughts zero in on Orlando. He’s all I can think about. Everything else, however, has suddenly become extra bright and extra loud. I step inside the house and Veronica is crying. No, she’s sobbing. Ice is on his knees in front of Orlando, saying, “C’mon buddy, wake up.”

  Ice sees me, looks up.

  Once upon a time, he may have been a hitman and emotionally vacant, but now he’s not hiding anything. Not at first. He stands up, steps out of the way. I see Orlando lying on the floor, lifeless with a big gash on his head.

  “They hit him,” Veronica says, wiping her eyes. “He fell, but we just thought he was unconscious, you know? Like knocked out, or something?”

  “He’s got a pulse,” Ice says.

  Those four words save my life. They give me hope. Leaning down, I feel around his neck, make sure it’s not broken. When it feels like it’s okay, I scoop him up against the screaming agony inside. My body threatens to fail me. This is my boy.

  I won’t fail him.

  I refuse to.

  Carrying him out the door, down Eudora’s porch steps, across the alleyway and up my porch steps, Adeline is there, opening the door.

  She’s crying, moving to my side, her eyes on Orlando.

  All around us, the sound of gunfire peppers the air. I hear screaming but I ignore it. There are a dozen possibilities cranking through my head, but not front and center.

  Only in the background.

  In the foreground of my thoughts, I’m wondering about Draven, and now about Xavier. I’m wondering about that freaking runt who shot the woman I dragged out into the street as leverage.

  But then I’m thinking about Adeline.

  I don’t know if she came with me to Eudora’s or met me there. For some reason this bothers me. I can’t remember. Reality is awkwardly stitching itself together and I’m pretty sure I have a concussion. Or something.

  I don’t know at this point.

  All I know is I’ve been hit in the face with rocks. Or maybe I’m just tired, dehydrated, these old muscles of mine weary and pushed too far.

  In other words, same crap, different day.

  “Lay him on the table,” Adeline says as Eudora is clearing away what dishes she can. Moving is hard—nearly impossible—but still manageable. With Orlando draped in my arms and unconscious, I’m starting to feel every protesting limb, all the screaming muscles inside me, the strain on the tendons, the ligaments, each and every joint.

  The table isn’t cleared off completely, but my body is giving out.

  Especially my back.

  I stumble forward, all but drop my son on the table, then stagger backwards, grabbing for my back.

  “Don’t just drop him,” Adeline fires at me.

  Carolina is cleaning the cloth Adeline used to dab blood from my face, which is bleeding again and dripping everywhere. And the nine year old girl she’s with, Bianca (the refugee who still isn’t speaking), is standing in the corner of the doorway watching all this go down.

  Her face is abject horror.

  My vision tilts then blurs, my equilibrium shot. Suddenly the world is off center and I’m reaching for something, anything. When I fall down, I’m pretty sure I hit my head because instead of pain, all I know is blackness.

  Then sweet, sweet nothingness…

  Chapter Nine

  Out on the street, it was all blood ponds, broken bones and someone’s eyeball. Draven was a good shot, but he took a couple of heavy punches taking out the clowns down in the living room. Now he was lining up what shots he could, putting kill shots on all those in range. He spared the women and children, anyone looking under fifteen being a child.

  Someone else wouldn’t do that, but he still considered himself to be human.

  The second he saw the man who shot Fire’s hostage, he lined up that shot, too. The instigator in this whole thing was peeking out from behind a car, seemingly unconcerned.

  “I see you, ese.”

  The guy was scoping out the battlefield, taking inventory of the dead, looking to assess threats, present and otherwise dispensed.

  Draven was sweating profusely. He had one round left. Even worse, there was only half a box of ammo left and it was in the other room.

  He locked in on the man in the sights, let out his air even as he heard pounding feet coming up the stairs, then squeezed. There was a flash of red, but he hadn’t put the round in the man’s eye as he’d hoped. He did take off most of his ear, though.

  Cursing to himself, wiping sweat from his eyes, he chided himself for missing.

  The second he saw what he’d done, he was up and scrambling to the room next door to get more ammo. He ran into Eliana in the hallway.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I’m good,” he said, quickly moving past her. “No time to talk.”

  He was back in the room, feeding the rifle fresh rounds, lining up on what targets were left. Most of them had run for cover. The innocents had that look like they were hoping to make it off the block alive. That’s when their neighbor’s front door opened up and a guy dragging a young boy shouted out, “Get out here and lay down your arms or I pop the kid!”

  His voice had every bit the boom that Draven’s 30.06 had. He lined the scope up on the man, but couldn’t get a clear shot. Certainly not sweating the way he was.

  “Get me a hand towel,” he barked at Eliana.

  He wasn’t sure if she handed it to him or not because he couldn’t take his eye off the unfolding scene. The man had a gun to the boy’s head, the muzzle pressed to the flesh. He was using him as a shield. Through the scope, Draven saw the man’s finger resting on the trigger.

  Damn…

  He couldn’t risk the shot.

  If he hit the shooter and the impact triggered a spasm in that finger—an involuntary reaction to grievous bodily harm—the kid would have another hole in his head.

  Eliana was suddenly by his side. He could hear her breathing. He could smell her hair and skin. He turned around and she was holding a towel, as requested.
/>   He took it, mopped his face, then he thanked her.

  “What are you waiting for?” she said, looking past him, out the window.

  “Killing him might cause him to shoot the boy,” Draven said.

  “How well do you know him?” Eliana asked. “The kid?”

  “That’s Phillip!”

  She seemed taken aback. Okay…

  “Take the chance,” she said, “but be ready for a second shot.”

  He looked up from the scope, then turned and found Eliana’s eyes. The two of them were only a foot apart, but even that close, he couldn’t get a read on her.

  “You’ve got no spine,” she said to him.

  “Phillip could get shot!”

  “Whatever leverage someone thinks they have on you, you must take it away so they have nothing. This is how you draw them out, how you break their minds, how you kill them. Give me that gun.”

  She reached for it, but he pulled it back. She reached for it again, but he swatted her hand away.

  “How many more have to die before you do what must be done?!” she said, wild eyed and enraged.

  “Get the hell out of here, Eliana. I’ll handle this.”

  He set his sights on the man again. The gunman was walking Phillip into the street, shouting orders to him and the Dimas’s.

  “Everyone out front now!” he screamed. “Lay down your weapons and come out with your hands on your heads, fingers laced together!”

  As he was shouting, quietly but very quickly, Phillip’s older brothers—Chase and Ross—emerged from the house, kitchen knives in hand. They rushed the man from behind on tippy-toes. Both boys got to him around the same time, sticking him in the back with the knives. They didn’t bury their blades and run. Two of those three musketeers went after the guy prison style, trying to turn him into a pin cushion.

  The second this clown reeled back and let go of the child, Draven squeezed the trigger, causing a red misting right behind the man’s head.

  He dropped down dead on the sidewalk.

  The two brothers looked up toward Draven, then went after their brother. Phillip was not crying, but he was visibly scared.

  The three of them ran back into the house.

  Draven turned and saw Eliana hadn’t left. “Don’t ever come at me like that again, you crazy bitch.”

  “What’s going on in here?” Ice asked.

  He’d appeared inside the doorway in time to see Draven and Eliana in a glare down contest. Neither of them took their eyes off the other. Finally Eliana looked away.

  “I made a mistake,” she said to Ice. Then to Draven, she turned and said, “You made the better call.”

  Turning back around, Draven had eyes on the street again. It looked like five or six guys were moving in on Xavier’s house. He hadn’t seen any action for a few minutes and he wondered if Xavier was alright after the barrage of gunfire leveled at him.

  “We need to see about Xavier,” Draven said over his shoulder.

  “I’ll check on him now,” Ice said.

  “Let me clear you a path first,” Draven said. “You’ve got half a dozen meatheads on their way in to his place.”

  Chapter Ten

  The second the guys kicked in the back door, Xavier attacked. He got a hold of the first guy fast. Acting on a healthy measure of fear and instinct, he drove the paring knife into the man’s side to slow him down. When the man faltered, Xavier pulled him in the kitchen then slammed him against the door, pinning it shut. The pained look in the man’s face pulled at Xavier. The feeling passed the second the other guys started driving their shoulders into the door.

  Moving quickly, there was no room for error. That’s why he put two solid shots on the guy’s chin, shook the spark of pain out of his hand, then trenched open his neck with the paring knife.

  He let the man fall against the door. By now the frame had cracked and a square of glass broke. The next guy to ram the door shoved the dead body back. There still wasn’t enough room to squeeze through. Another driving shoulder against the door pushed their dead friend back enough for one of them to try squeezing through.

  Scumbag management, Xavier thought.

  He’d put them in a funnel for now. One at a time he could handle. But three of them? Hell no. He’d worked a desk way too long for that.

  So now that four had become three, the wheels were turning again.

  Scumbag number two was shoving and pushing himself halfway through the door when Xavier gave it a mighty kick. The older white guy ooofed, but kept moving. Xavier kicked the door again, this time so hard the door’s outer frame splintered. Outside, scumbags three and four were shoving up against the door and scumbag number two.

  After what he’d just done to their friend, how could these guys still want in? Revenge. Come hell or high water, Xavier could see in their eyes, they wanted him dead.

  This scared him. So instead of waiting for scumbag number two to get in, Xavier rushed the door, body slamming the guy before he could break all the way through. The impact broke more glass, cracked the door nearly in half, left the entrance more vulnerable than ever.

  Wasting no time, he drove the knife into the man’s sternum. Xavier backed up, grabbed the man’s shirt, yanked him through the door.

  The guy couldn’t even get his feet under him. Scumbag number two just fell down face-first. In moments he’d be dead guy number two. He’d made himself useful though, falling right in the path of the others. This was making it hard for the other two to get to him.

  Future victim number three stumbled and tripped over his dying (near dead) friend. Xavier got him quick with three swings of the blade—the third one being fatal—but future victim number four (his fate not certain) got the jump on him.

  He didn’t realize how worn out he was. Or how ready future victim number four was to punch Xavier’s clock.

  He squirmed and bucked and took a beating. There were smears of red everywhere, hot spots and wet spots on his face and hands. The guy’s elbows and knees just kept coming! Scumbag number four (now officially downgraded from ‘future victim number four’) wasn’t huge, but what he never had in size, the guy made up for in speed and tenacity.

  At some point in time, as he had more and more resolve beat out of him, Xavier realized that if he could just grab the guy, he could slow the flurry of violence.

  The objective became clear: get him, pull him down, smother the life out of him.

  It took four or five more shots, a jammed finger and a kicked ball sack for Xavier to grab a left foot. The left foot was planted though. The right foot kicked him in the mouth. Xavier got a hold of that foot next.

  Blasted mouth, obliterated nuts, blood drizzling from his face…and he still got it.

  Screaming a low, guttural rage, channeling all his defiance into one, solitary effort, Xavier jerked on both legs.

  It was enough.

  Off balance, future victim number four tried to step backward. Xavier held on. Mouth stained red, a half-triumphant smile plastered to his face, he revved with delight.

  The shifting weight told the story. The toes came up, Xavier pulled those ankles once more. Both feet came up clean and the body dropped.

  Renewed, Xavier scrambled up the man’s frame, kept his position despite bucking hips, defensive fists and hands that thought pulling hair was the right move to make. It wasn’t. He solved that problem by head-butting the guy right in the baby-maker (tell no one!). The body curled, telling Xavier the shot mattered.

  He’d broken through the torrent of violence. He was now in charge. The man wasn’t giving up easy, though. His hands clawed at Xavier’s face, pushed at his head, became fists that hammered the back of the DEA man’s skull. Face pressed down into victim number four’s chest, Xavier widened his base, kept moving. Finally one of the scumbag’s hands got in, tried to push his face up and away, slow the impending attack.

  Xavier was fully in the fight now. He was invested in life, in living.

  Turning fast, he go
t the man’s thumb in his mouth, clamped down on it. A stiff yelp escaped him. Victim number four tried to yank his thumb loose, but Xavier had it. The heel of his free hand slammed into Xavier’s head over and over again, but X’s mouth was pit bull strong. He refused to let go of the thumb.

  At this point, victory outweighed the cost.

  In the struggle, the groove of the man’s first joint slipped in between his teeth. Xavier sunk his teeth in, twisted, really went after it.

  The end of the thumb separated and the man’s screaming nearly shattered his ear drums. That hand was officially done. Two hands became one.

  Spitting out the severed digit, telling himself he couldn’t stop moving until it was done, Xavier crawled the rest of the way up the body, dropped a forearm on the guy’s throat and leaned all his weight upon it.

  He was looking right into victim number four’s eyes now. There was so much fear in there. And tons of desperation.

  He was gurgling; Xavier was all but growling.

  In the battle of wills, he was about to reign victorious. All future victim number four had to do was die. When the eyelids began to flutter, Xavier got that extra surge.

  Leaning harder, he said, “Just let go, brother. It’ll be a lot better on the other side.”

  The body withered, then went slack. Xavier rolled off him, gasping for air, his muscles turned to jelly, his body smarting from the abuse. Add four more stains to his soul.

  But dammit, he was still among the living!

  That’s when he heard movement. Someone was there. They were coming in the back door. Sadly, he didn’t have the energy to face future victim number five. No, scratch that. He would be victim number five. It was over.

  Oddly enough, he was okay with that.

  Xavier closed his eyes, said a quiet prayer, asked the Lord for forgiveness for the lives he’d taken. He also asked Giselle for forgiveness because this was not the kind of man he wanted to become.

  When he looked up and saw the hardened man’s eyes looking down on him, he drew a deep breath, let it out, felt everything hurting in him at once.