Page 70 of Iron Cross

"Jesus, you couldn't shoot the broad side of a barn," I said.

"Well how about we switch, and I'll drive while you fucking try to shoot something as someone drives like a fucking suicidal road runner?"

"I have had it with you, Shiny, I swear to God!"

I faintly heard the whirring sound of a window coming down, then three distinctive shots. Pop. Pop. Pop.

The two cars behind us swerved, the inside of them covered in blood, like the heads of the drivers had exploded.

One more pop, and the two cars seemed to halt in their tracks, as though their engines had completely seized up. One car crashed into the side of the mountain, and another ended up in a ditch.

I was struck dumb as I watched my wife calmly raise the window back up before she put the pistol that had been under the back seat on safe, dropped the magazine, and then pulled back the slider, catching the bullet that had been in the chamber in mid-flight.

"What the fuck?" Shiny said, and I couldn't have said it better. “What the hell was that?”

"Black is the color of my true love's hair,” I said, as I felt Shiny and Kira’s eyes grazing my skin. “Your eyes despair, your lips deceive.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Shiny said, turning in her seat to look at our passengers, before turning back to me. “You really are bat shit crazy, you know?”

“I have you now, and you’ll never leave,” I said with a slight chuckle, feeling the small seedling of joy that grew in my chest. My family was back. The world was right, even as the world around us might burn. Even as bullets riddled our car as we limped down the road.

I pulled to the side, letting the car idle as I turned in the seat to my wife who held our boy against her chest, her purple hair covering her face as she averted her gaze from me.

“We're going to have to have a long discussion on why you know how to do that."

Chapter twenty-one

I Have No Fucking Idea

Kira

The word of the day was… I have no fucking idea.

Rule number one was to be as ordinary as possible.

We played a role, and wore a mask to the outside world. We were two-dimensional characters, with no nuance or depth. We were actors on a stage, with lines and no backstory. We were the secondary characters in the thing we called life.

We valued our covers more than anything else.

That had been true to me once, before life grew inside me.

My son was scared. Clinging to my leg in terror, and I had had enough.

There are no rules when it comes to being a parent. I’d commit gleeful homicide for my son. I’d sacrifice a bus load of nuns, orphans and kittens if I got to spare my boy from unhappiness. Of that I was certain. And I would navigate my way from this hell too. I had to. I was a mother. That was my job.

“I’ve got to go,” Sinead said quietly to me. “Are you okay?”

I wasn’t sure how much I trusted her anymore. I had thrown my lot with her years ago, but that had been because of Aoibheann. She had been the ghost of Christmas future - a sign of what I would be if I stayed here.

“I’ll be fine,” I said, shaking my head, holding my son close.

For all his evil, I knew that Eoghan would never harm his son. I was almost certain of that. He was not like his father in that way. I was sure of it.

Right?

We arrived at the familiar guarded gate with the iron spades. The Soldiers seemed different than before. Not in uniform, but in… something else. Like a militia had turned into a military. They were fitter, more efficient, crisper in their salute. The drive up the long drive was silent. But the foreboding I’d had the last time wasn’t there, maybe because I knew Alastair Senior wouldn’t be waiting at the top of the grand staircase.

As I stood on the cobblestone of the circle drive, in front of the grand red brick mansion on the top of the hill, I wasn’t so sure.The house was as imposing as it had been before, but there were noticeably more guards in every direction. Their uniforms were more polished, their boots more shined. Each one nodded at my husband, and greeted a curt, "Mr. Green."

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