“Fuck yeah,” Gabriel nearly roars.
There’s a moment of quiet following the roar, and I think we’re all rather stunned by Gabriel’s reaction.
Then Lucifer begins to chuckle.
“You’re a weird fucker,” Andrew mutters and shakes his head.
With the chunk of bloody metal still clenched between the pliers, Andrew pulls a plastic baggy out of his medical bag and drops it in.
“That felt fucking good,” Gabriel groans and rolls his shoulders. “Like a fucking rotten tooth getting pulled out.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it,” Andrew says as he drops the baggy into his bag and wipes off the pliers.
“Simon is now impatiently informing me that we only have thirteen minutes,” Lucifer says.
“Yeah, yeah,” Gabriel grumbles, his good mood vanishing. “Tell that fucker we’ll be out of here before he can get it up for his wife.”
“I’d rather not,” Lucifer chuckles.
“It will only take me a couple of minutes to staple Gabriel up,” Andrew says and pulls a plastic device and spray bottle from his medical bag.
Gabriel frowns and glances over at Andrew. “Staples? What the fuck? I thought you said you were stitching me up.”
“Yeah, well, the wound is bigger than I originally thought, and this will get us out of here quicker,” Andrew says with a shrug.
“Fuck, let’s just get this over with,” Gabriel says with resignation and then he looks down at Alexei with a look of disgust. “Every second that cocksucker gets to take a breath is a second he doesn’t deserve.”
“Oh, I’m sure he’s suffering plenty,” Lucifer says with a hint of amusement.
And I find myself saying, “He’ll never suffer enough.”
The room goes quiet for a moment.
And then the amusement fades from Lucifer’s face and he nods his head at me. “Indeed.”
Gabriel takes one look at me, at my face, and says, “Fuck this shit, let’s get this done.”
“You can’t stop now, you’ll fucking bleed out,” Andrew protests as Gabriel stands up from the medical bed, holding me in his arms.
“Just slap another fucking maxi pad on it,” Gabriel growls as he gently sets me down on my feet.
Cursing and muttering under his breath, Andrew drops the bottle and plastic device in his bag then pulls out a white bandage.
“Here you go,” Andrew says as he literally slaps the bandage over Gabriel’s wound. “But if you bleed out, it’s your own damn fault, you big dumb fuck.”
“Fucking noted,” Gabriel smirks and then he starts to tug me over to where Alexei is laying.
Tugging on his hand, I look up at him with concern. “Gabriel…”
The thought of him dying because he’d rather help me with this is just too terrible to fathom.
“It’s fine, baby,” he says, and gives my hand a reassuring squeeze.
I glance over my shoulder at Andrew.
Seeing my worry, Andrew nods. “He won’t die. That bandage gives him a couple of hours.”
Deciding to trust Andrew, I sigh and turn my attention back to the man that’s caused me so much heartache and pain. The man who killed my mother…
The man who forced me to play a part in killing my father.
I start to stumble, nearly tripping and falling, as flashes of my father’s brains hitting the car pulse through my head.
The sound he made as he slid down the side of the car still rings in my ears.
Grip tightening around my hand, Gabriel keeps me upright, but it reminds me too much of when Alexei forced me to pull that trigger.
Even now my fingers throb with the ache.
Lucifer steps out of the way respectfully, and I glance down, taking in the full carnage of what Gabriel did.
For once, Alexei’s outside matches his inside. He’s so ugly and mangled, so fucked up and broken, I don’t even know how he’s still breathing.
“How do you want to do this?” Gabriel asks.
Hysterical laughter wants to bubble up in my throat, but I swallow it back down.
“What are my options?” I ask him instead, and to anyone on the outside looking in, it might look like we’re casually discussing something, like what to have for dinner, instead of how we should kill this piece of shit.
Gabriel’s lips quirk with amusement. “We’ve got guns and explosives.”
I nod my head, figuring as much.
Such a death seems too easy for him, though. At this point, it would simply be a mercy.
There’s only one way to go that’s fitting for this asshole, I realize.
My throat tries to close up as I ask, “What about fire?”
Gabriel’s eyes gleam and that quirk of his lips stretches into a full grin. “We can do fire.”
As Gabriel turns to Andrew and starts barking orders for the things we need, I remember the reports I read about my mother’s death. My father tried to keep them from me, but I had to know what happened.
According to witnesses, she didn’t die immediately. The explosive itself didn’t cause her death.
It was the fire.