The end of the barrel looked like a gaping tunnel.
I grinned up at her. My teeth felt slick with blood. “Would do it again.”
She cocked the gun. “I know you would. And that’s why Green Creek will be purged. I spared you once because you were just a child, and I hoped that by freeing you from the chains of the wolf, you would see the errors of your ways. I won’t make that mistake again.”
I said the only thing I could. “Nevermore.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Nevermore.”
The raven flew.
The ink in my skin felt scorched, the bonds within me burning brighter than the sun.
gordo gordo gordo
The wolves were with me.
It was all I could ever ask for. Here, at the end.
I would take her with me, and they would be safe.
I slammed my arms against the glass underneath me.
The roof rumbled as it cracked, metal and concrete and plaster shifting. Elijah took a stumbling step back, eyes going wide as the roof shook.
She was off center, which was the reason the bullet missed its target.
It didn’t hit me.
Instead it shattered the glass of the skylight I lay upon.
Weightlessness, only for a moment, as the glass gave way beneath me.
I fell through the skylight, head rapping against the metal frame, feet scraping against the cracks in the roof.
I remembered him.
Mark.
Standing in front of me, telling me I smelled like dirt and leaves and rain.
Telling me he needed to protect me.
The way he’d tasted on a summer’s day, his bare feet in the grass.
The look of betrayal on his face as he stood on my doorstep.
The way my hand had felt on his throat as I left a raven on his skin.
I wished I’d gotten to tell him I loved him. One last time.
I fell.
The glass spun around me.
And from below me came the sound of a furious wolf.