Page 65 of Senseless
More gunshots fired off somewhere further away, like a shootout was going down behind me. In front of me, I saw a pickup truck with a wire cage fixed over the bed. It still had a pre-Collapse license plate that I didn’t recognize. I couldn’t squint, but tried my best to read it. Did it say West Virginia?
A woman’s scream gradually became louder, and I couldn’t even grit my teeth at how harshly the sound hit me. A door slammed and booted feet stomped down the porch I was facedown on. Some guy was dragging a woman along the ground by a rope tied around her wrists.
I couldn’t see well from my angle, but she was clearly terrified and fought like hell. Her wrists were already chafed and bleeding, red lines dripping down her tattooed arms. The guy was dragging her straight to the truck with a cage on it, and apparently no one was stopping him.
Hades, what the fuck is happening? Do something!
His life is hers to take.
What?!
Someone ran up, arms outstretched toward the man, with a well-trained shooting stance. If I didn’t already feel cold and dead, my heart would have stopped at the sight of the woman with long brown hair billowing around her.
Mari?!
The man dragging the other woman paused, but Mari didn’t give him an opportunity to draw a weapon. She pulled her trigger and emptied the gun into him—six shots with no hesitation, her expression calm, if even cold.
That’s my girl.
My pride was short-lived as I saw movement behind her, and then a shot rang out that wasn’t hers. Mari fell, shock and pain on her face as she reached her palms out to break her fall. A dark stain began coloring her pant leg.
Hades!I cried out mentally as loud as I could.Let me move! She’s fucking hurt!
No movement came, no matter how much I begged and pleaded. It dawned on me too late that I was watching this scene through someone else’s dead body, likely one of these fuckwads who had gotten shot.
The man who shot Mari walked up to where she lay on the ground, trying to drag herself to the tattooed woman, his gun pointed toward her head. I’d never felt worse or lower in my life than at that exact moment. What kind of cruel joke was this, being forced to watch the woman I loved die?
HADES, PLEASE! PLEASE DO SOMETHING!
Her life is not yours to take.The ancient god’s voice reverberated through my mind, angry and protective.
Footsteps crashed near my head, nearly kicking me. A shot fired and Mari’s attacker went down, clutching his stomach. Then a giant of a man crossed the distance with nearly inhuman speed until he crashed into the shooter. From there, the huge man sat on him, punching and crashing the man’s skull against the ground.
It went on and on. I saw blood and brain matter flying from the force of the blows. I quickly put together that it was Shadow, turning Mari’s attacker into ground meat with a barbaric violence that I had never seen before. Shadow had always been a clean killer, nothing like this.
He finally stopped, pausing to stare at his hands as if coming out of a trance. When he finally went over to cradle Mari in his arms, putting pressure on her wound while his blood-speckled face frowned with worry, it was all I needed to see.
So she found him. And he really does love her.
The dead are your vessels, my reaper,Hades said to me.Use them to see what you must.
In a sudden jolting sensation, I was back.
“Rory?”
Both of my parents were staring down at me, concern on Mom’s face and curiosity on Dad’s. I blinked. I could fucking move again! I sat up with a groan, my head aching slightly.
“You alright, son?” Dad asked. “You went down like a sack of potatoes.”
I nodded, smiling genuinely for the first time at the sight of Hades, looking regal with his belly on the ground and front paws stretched out.
“I think…I know how we can win,” I said in an excited whisper.
Twenty
MARIPOSA
The excruciating, burning pain in my leg had dulled to a pulsing ache when I awoke. My whole body was stiff as I attempted to stretch and move. A quick glance out the window told me little—it was cloudy and gray.
