Total pages in book: 45
Estimated words: 40901 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40901 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
I want to kill them. I want to kill them with my bare hands. But I have to use my hands to cradle her now, to hold her close and to ride back down to the waiting Earth.
The guards have scattered by the time Deimos’ hooves touch dirt, fleeing to tell their stories to the wider world, I am sure. They may not be aware of it, but I have closed every portal in and out of this place. There is no escape. Not for Katie, and certainly not for them.
“Good boy,” I praise as Deimos returns to the ground from which he came. Katie is lying limply in my arms, her pulse fluttering lightly, her life force threatening to evaporate.
I was supposed to break her. But not like this.
We have a hospital on site. I imagined it would be put to use for wounded guards, but the first patient besides myself is Katya. My Katie. My anger and disappointment are palpable as I run from the yard into the facility, following my first trail of blood to deliver her to the doctor.
“You’re back. What did she break this time?”
The doctor who treated my nose greets me with flippancy few other men would survive. His expression shifts and his demeanor changes when he sees what I have in my arms.
“Angel,” I say, laying her down on the bed. “Run through with three arrows.”
The doctor is named Champ. Doctor Cole Champion. He’s a Harvard trained trauma specialist with a sad penchant for gambling and cocaine. He springs into immediate, calm action. Two nurses emerge from the wings at his command. I stand back and watch as they start to work on Katie. One of the arrows went through her left thigh. The other went through her stomach — a wound that could have been slowly, painfully fatal. The final arrow pierced her shoulder. A few inches in different directions and it would have been immediately fatal. Katie can die. Her angel blood won’t protect her if a wound is severe enough.
“Unless you want to scrub and mask up, I’m going to need you to get out of here,” Champ says. “I’ll send for you when she’s fixed up.”
That’s what I needed to hear. He thinks she can be fixed. She has to be fixed.
I have other matters to attend to. Five guards, each of whom will be taken to task for their bitterly, nearly-lethal incompetence. I find them huddled in the one place they naturally tend to go for safety, the break room. There is food here, a wall of vending machines providing the sort of crap they mistake for reward. These men all have military and private mercenary training. They should have known better than to fire on the target without orders. I cannot imagine what must have come over them, but I know it will not get another chance to do so.
I have erased these people from my mind, much as I am about to erase them from the world. They have seen too much, and they have certainly sinned too much. My spurs spark with every step I take into this banal room with its linoleum floors and fluorescent lighting.
The guards are huddled into a table in the far corner of the room. Their reaction to me is one of frightened children seeing the face of the monster beneath the bed for the first time. I wonder if it is because I look so terribly vicious in this moment, or if it is a culmination of bearing witness to Deimos and Katie, an angelic being and a demon beast.
“You deployed weapons without orders to do so,” I begin, my voice soft and controlled. I am speaking to them in the language of a manager, because they need to be tethered to mundane reality, and quickly.
“She was flying a-fucking-way!”
I turn to look at the man who cursed at me. He is a redhead, sweaty and pasty. He looks at me for a brief moment with his milky gaze, and then finds the candy wrapper in his hand a more appropriate target for his ocular attentions.
“You all deployed your weapons,” I say. “This is grounds for termination, and indeed, prosecution. Our prisoners are people, with the same rights as people.”
“Nothing wrong with shooting an escaping prisoner,” someone particularly keen to die adds.
“What a courageous opinion,” I deadpan. “Shooting at a fleeing woman comes to you naturally, does it?”
Men like these should be more careful in the way they speak, but of course they are not. They are addled from the shock of all they have witnessed, but instead of expressing awe, they are pedaling as hard as they can to return to their pre-existing unenlightened states of being.
“The question now,” I drawl as I pass my dark gaze over their pale and frightened faces. “Is what am I going to do with you all?”