“Why’d they stop shooting?” Cherry asked after the longest five minutes of my life.
“They don’t need to waste the ammo. They’re probably waiting us out,” Aurora replied.
“Is everyone good?” Brody called from his hiding spot further back.
“In five,” Mal replied.
“What happens in five?” I whispered to my sister.
“We need to move,” she replied, still hovering above me like a shield. Her giant tits were pressing into my back.
“Move where exactly?” I asked loud enough for him to hear me.
“We go left. Use the other cars as shields. Once we hit the tree line, we’ll be fine.”
“The fuck? Or they could just shoot us down over there instead.”
“Watch your mouth. The watchmen only patrol roads. They’ll let us go once we’ve cleared it. They weren’t supposed to have tagged up this far yet.”
His calm demeanor made me want to shake him. My head spun with all this new information. How did he know all these things? Unable to ponder it properly, I peered around Aurora to see the path Mal suggested we take.
Freaking how?
“You want us to go left? You want us to run across three lanes of traffic while dodging bullets?” I couldn’t catch the laughter that followed.
“Just run really, really fast,” Amo cut in sarcastically.
“Three,” Mal called out.
These crazy fucking assholes.
My heart was pounding so fast I could hear it in my ears. This damn anxiety was making me sweat more than I already had been.
Aurora shifted so that she was beside me and offered an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry, I’ll do my best to cover you.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because you’re my baby sis,” she replied matter-of-factly.
Well, that made me feel like an epic level bitch. It pissed me off, too. I wasn’t made of glass, yet we were on this road because Samael saw me as fragile. He called for us to move, and, without hesitation, I launched myself forward, feeling a satisfying burn in my calves.
For a total of three seconds—I know because I counted—nothing happened. The shooting started again directly after.
In order to not get riddled with bullets, we ducked and weaved around the cars. More than once, I swear I’d almost gotten struck. I could hear the bullets whizzing by. Aurora stuck with me, unnecessarily doing as she said she would. Mal purposely stayed further back—also doing something unnecessary and stupid.
Takara and Amo made it first, Brody and Jin right on their heels as they all four disappeared into the trees.
“Move that ass, Lils,” Mal shouted.
“Shut…up!” I breathed. I was doing well considering how much strain I’d put on myself the past two days.
We were a few strides away when a screech sounded from behind us, nearly causing me to trip over myself.
I glanced back, seeing Cherry, holding the side of her face and no longer attempting to run, ducked behind an old pick-up. I couldn’t risk going back to help her.
After reaching the grassy embankment before the woods, I rushed into the woods and whirled around to see how Cherry was doing. Aurora stopped beside me, Mal right behind her.
“We need to keep going. Mal said.”
“What about Cherry?”
I rested my hands on my knees, clutching my right side to relieve a stitch. I peered through the foliage, trying to find her.
I could hear her crying and whispering to herself. I couldn’t see all that well from this vantage point. I managed to catch a small glimpse, revealing that she had blood dribbling down the side of her face.
“You were hit?” Amo’s voice carried from deeper in the foliage.
The concern in his tone alarmed me. I’d never heard him sound like that before. I turned to see who he was talking to, my eyes landing on Mal.
He’d already pulled his shirt off to use as a tourniquet. A small hole was visible on the upper side of his right chest, blood trickling out of it.
I wanted to rush over and do something, but what could I do? There wasn’t anything around to magically fix his wound. Freaking out wouldn’t benefit anyone either.
“We need to keep moving,” Takara said.
“She’s right. We can’t stay here. We’ll have to leave the girl. She isn’t going to make it, and we’re not going to save her.”
The ‘girl’ in question was Cherry. It would’ve been more humane if one of us had taken her out than leaving her life balancing like this, but we didn’t have any other options right now. Samael would always come first.
Cherry had made it this far being seemingly unmarked by any faction. If she miraculously managed to survive this, her greatest advantage would be that.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It didn’t take us long to get out of the woods. We took an obvious path straight for approximately twenty minutes before arriving in a field. From that point on, we followed another road.
When I caught sight of the Brabus in Glady’s Inn parking lot, I was once again left to wonder just who Samael really was. How could he know of this place unless he’d been here before?