Then clarity hits me like a cast-iron skillet, and I force myself up onto my hands. Robbie is lying on top of me, all three hundred something pounds of dead weight, because that is what he is—dead. The blood that soaks me from midback down is from his body, though I must have hit my nose hard when I fell. Horrified, I try to roll out from under him, but find that I’ve been pinned.
Someone grunts, then rolls him away. I flop onto my back, use the last of my energy to boost myself up onto my elbows, and find myself looking up at my savior.
“Jules,” I say through a cracked, hoarse throat. “You’re here.”
“I was almost too late.” He sounds, and looks, as haunted as I feel. There are dark circles under his eyes and his lips are chapped like he hasn’t paused to drink in hours. He has just killed a man. Not by draining his life, but the way most men do—with his hands and steel. It feels wrong to be grateful for his violence, but I am, and so entranced by his beauty too that I almost forget that we are not alone.
I look up and see Ritika who, thank god in heaven, is very much alive, though with a bandage wrapped around her head—her gun trained on Leila, who has put her own aside to curl Sophie in a spider-tight grip.
I suck in a breath, swivel around the room to find Winona struggling and weeping in Aditya’s grasp as Onix stands guard next to him, looking between me and Winona for the signal to attack.
“Let me go,” Winona sobs.
“It’s not safe to touch her, Winny,” I say, my head swimming. I’m probably three concussions deep now, and I have to fight to stay conscious. I reach between my legs for Robbie’s fallen handgun. It’s heavy and alien in my ripped hands, but it feels like armor when I crawl to Winona’s side. She looks down at me with a tear-streaked face.
“What is going on, Sean?” she shouts, at the same time that Leila spits, “Stay back! Or I send our little darling on a fast track through puberty.”
Her clutch on Sophie tightens just enough to prove thatshecan and she will, and Winona gasps, both understanding and not.
Julian uncurls to his full height. His steps toward Leila are cautious; a lion tamer approaching a feral juvenile.
“Enough, Leila.”
Leila shuffles back, squeezing Sophie tighter. Sophie sniffles butdoesn’t speak, and her lower lip trembles. Immediately I am ravenous with bloodthirst.How many shots would it take to put you down? I wonder.Where do I have to aim?
Julian’s voice, though, is so gentle that I wonder if it is laced with his suggestion.
“I thought we didn’t bring children into this,” he says.
To my shock, tears sprout in Leila’s eyes.
“Since when did you become so self-righteous,” she hisses. “I’m doing this forus.”
“But I don’t want this,” Julian says. He bends, slowly, until he’s on one knee in front of them, then turns to Rose, who has turned bodily away from the scene. “Rose doesn’t. And Alphonse didn’t either.”
“You and Alphonse are the same,” Leila seethes. “You don’t eventhinkabout our family. You’re all just rushing to leave me behind, all for these no-name bitches who you swear areso specialeven though you’ll meet another one just like her in fifty years! Even Rose is going crazy these days, saying she wants this to end too. But you don’t understand. You’re denying your true nature. You’re spitting in the face of ourgift—”
“Is it really a gift?” Julian asks. “Because I don’t see you enjoying it, Leila. I don’t see you living. All you do, all the time, is run. From coast to coast, town to town, host to host. All I’ve watched you do is try to survive. You’re alive, Leila, but you have no clue who you are, what your life really could be, if you let yourself be more than this.” His gaze flits to me, and I swallow against a hard throat; I’m not sure I will ever get tired of how this man looks at me, like I’m his world shrunk down to person size. “If you let yourselffeel,for once.”
When Leila doesn’t respond, Julian places a gentle hand on hers. They overlap, his bronze against her warm tan against Sophie’s sandalwood. Despite everything, Leila transforms before my eyes. Iunderstand now why Julian felt so sure that he could convince Leila to give up the hunt without harming her. The Leila Pendersen I’d gotten to know in the cath lab, who was sweet as apple pie and helpful and committed to her job, the one I couldn’t help but like, isn’t entirely a fabrication. She is the person who existed behind her fear and uncertainty. The mortal, huddled in a god’s cloak.
“The world is different than the one we were born into. You know that,” Julian implores. “I’ll help you start over. Do this right. You’ve always been the smartest of us; you could do incredible things. And yes, you might grow old, and eventually die, but it can be a beautiful life. One you can look back on with joy and without regret.”
Leila’s chest is heaving now, tears dripping down her face, messy and uninhibited, and I find myself stunned by how the ugliness of her sobs can only make her more beautiful.
“Like Alphonse did?” she says.
Julian squeezes her hand.
“Yes,” he says.
I hold my breath. Wait for Leila to let Sophie go. But Leila is shaking her head, and my heart drops to my stomach.
“No,” Leila says. “I don’t want that. I want you tochoose me, Julian. Stay withme. We’re all we have.”
Her words shatter me, and I would fall to the floor if not for Winny, who needs me. Winny, whose hand I grasp as she begins anew to struggle and sob. Julian starts to speak again, frantically now, this time in a language we can’t understand, but Leila is still shaking her head, her entire body trembling, and Sophie, knowing she’s in danger but not understanding why, begins to weep.
There’s a creak, almost missed in the noise.