11.1
Now that the danger no longer existed solely within her imagination, Nikki was able to force a little oxygen down her throat.
She coughed and spluttered, scrabbling at the ground and at her neck, straining with every cell in her body to look up and face reality.
But the reality was that she could do nothing. She hadn't had any power to begin with.
The sun was suspended directly above the golden-capped figure, making them shine as if they were an angel descending upon earth.
An angel with a ski mask.
"Rosy!" Blake called up with a smile, shielding his eyes from the sun. "You look even better than Owen!"
He began walking forward, free hand in his short pocket.
"And Nikki, you look terrible! Why don't you send some deer down for their weapons, Rosy? You can hit the blond girl."
Instantly, three deer to the glowing figure's right and three to her left sprang out of their statue-like poses as if they'd been shot out of a cannon.
Their legs turned over so fast and they thumped their hooves into the ground so hard that pieces of rubble were sent sailing into the air behind them.
Rippling muscles tore their limbs back and forth, and they sprang from side to side like fleas, making Eve the only one who could visually trace their movements.
BANG
Eve's bullet stabbed into a deer's chest, just below its severed stump of a neck. It was just enough to bring the animal down.
Corvus had fired simultaneously, but he might as well have been shooting blindfolded.
In a split second, the frenzied group of mammals was upon them.
Corvus instinctively dropped his gun to free up his hands for defense, but the deer weren't going for his body.
Instead, the one flying towards him ducked beneath his outstretched arms and kicked its flying hoof into his gun, instantly snapping it in two and sending the pieces flying like bomb shrapnel.
Eve wasn't so lucky.
The hurtling animal hit her chest like a train, shattering her sternum and hurling her body like a straw doll.
She tumbled down the pit's sheer side, all the way to the bottom.
"EEEEEEVVE!!"
Nikki scrambled to her feet and sprinted for her friend, whose unconscious body was draped face-up over a chunk of concrete, spine arched back to its limit and blood dripping from the places where her clothing had been shredded by the rubble.
But Nikki felt her ankle pop out of place and she fell.
Her shoulder snapped, and the impact of her head against twisted metal took her consciousness, but only briefly.
Blood poured from the right side of her forehead, but she could still open her left eye, and she raised her head, tears falling down her cheek as the sight of Eve's broken body was engraved into her mind.
Corvus stood and watched as the deer returned to their positions, leaving only one extra opening in the ring–the one that belonged to the deer Eve's bullet had eliminated.
He directed his gaze to Eve and to Nikki, his former companions who lay still, perhaps never to move again.
Blake walked down the wall, coming to a stop with Nikki at his feet. He looked down at her with those eyes, heavier than they used to be.
"Life, or death?"
Nikki's hand found his bare shin, and she muttered, "Death–for you."
Yes, Blake deserved to die. Corvus realized that killing him was the just thing to do.
So, driven by justice, his lanky, towering figure leapt down the slope.
He had eyes only for the perpetrator.
Blake had taken him in seven years before, and Blake had promised him justice.
That was why Corvus had joined him. For the purpose of justice.
And now, Blake had to be punished.
But amidst his sudden flood of emotions, Corvus's focus had become far too narrow.
His right side was struck by a hundred-pound bullet.
The animal had moved so quickly that it had truly been no more than a blur.
Corvus was grounded–knocked cold.
Blake lifted his eyes, observing Corvus's dark figure laid out across the rubble.
"Rosy, come down here," he ordered. "You can take the girl."
The angel who stood as the commander of the ring stepped forward.
She climbed downwards, headed on a straight path to Eve, her newest victim.
Out of a long pocket in her pants, she pulled a serrated knife. It was 12 inches long, and its notches were deep. Teeth of metal.
With the XI painted in red at her feet, the angel knelt, placing her blade against the girl's bloodied neck.
The teeth broke the surface of Eve's skin.
But, with only a moment left in the young girl's life, everything turned white.
The sky erupted around a demon of lightning, its outstretched hand bringing down pure fury.
The impact alone was enough to break someone's soul.
Metal clanged together, and rubble was shattered amidst a world of blinding light.
Thousands of pounds of junk circulated through the air as if it had forgotten where it belonged, yet somehow, when all of that weight came crashing back down to earth, the dying girl in the pit's depth was completely untouched.
Untouched by the damage and held inside a pair of shaking arms.
Echo was there even before the eruption's impact faded away and the physical world returned.
Amidst the insanity she'd produced, she clutched her daughter to her chest.
Those pink irises were no longer half-hidden beneath heavy eyelids; they were wide open, screaming adrenaline.
Eve was saveable. If anyone could tell, it was her. Echo.
Everyone else was gone, buried beneath the shrapnel of the demon's wrath.
But her eyes were opened so wide that she wouldn't have missed a single discrepancy in the landscape.
Slowly, she pulled her eyes off of her daughter's bloody body and tilted them upwards, across the entire debris-littered, fiery slope and to the top of the ridge.
There, with the blue sky and an army of deer at his back, stood Blake Stane.
His cheek was bloody, and his shirt was torn, but he was standing. He was standing, and he showed no real signs of injury.
But Echo's eyes didn't linger for long.
The rubble shifted behind her, and she whipped her head around, watching as a broad-chested man emerged beneath hundreds of pounds of metal and rock.
He was impossibly unhurt, and Echo held her daughter against her body so tightly because she was terrified Eve might slip away, just as sand would slide between her fingertips.
A deer from the ring was next to move. It leapt hundreds of feet downward in only a few bounds, and it dug its feet into the ground like a jackhammer. A second headless animal arrived, and between the two of them, they were able to scrape the lifeless body of their leader out of the junkyard.
The ski-masked angel was decimated. Her right arm ended at the elbow, and it was obvious that her legs had been rendered dysfunctional. Blood had already soaked every inch of both her skin and her clothes, making her look like she'd been run through a meat grinder.
But her skull was uncrushed.
Echo stood from her knees, so threatened that it looked as if her entire life was being stolen from her–because it was.
Her eyes went from left to right. From enemy to enemy.
Her face was the image of psychotic fury, not tense, but unforgiving. Pink eyes glared, and her mouth was open, hissing black curses onto any who dared to look upon her.
Or upon her daughter, who had become no less than an extension of her own body.
Another figure came flying over the deer, over the crest of land, and sprinting down the crater's wall, around the small fires that had sprouted up out of it. He hesitated at the sight of the blond-haired man, but his legs didn't falter until he reached the bottom.
Jelani stared at Eve's limp body in horror.
But when he met Echo's eyes, he stumbled backward, falling hard against the crumbling earth.
With one glance, He felt as if every ounce of blame that existed in the world had been placed on his shoulders.
He wanted to beg for forgiveness. Beg her to spare his life.
He imagined how her actual enemies must have felt.
And there he was.
Blake was climbing down the wall, calmly navigating the disaster at his feet.