Fate's Exchange (Twisted Fate, Book 1)

Chapter Seventeen

The world pressed pause. Everything dulled to silence. Mr. Tinsley's leering grin gaped in surprise and a trickle of blood escaped from the corner of his mouth. He looked down with wide eyes and fell to his knees, letting go of the gun to clutch at his chest with both hands. The metal scraped like the sound of a marble being dropped into a tin can as it landed on the ground beside him.

He face-planted on the pavement, unblinking, his eyes frozen in a state of shock while a thick pool of blood spread outwards from beneath his body. I watched him die until finally, he was just dead. Gone. He would never hurt Tina or any other girl again.

The world moved forward again. Pain exploded within me, excruciating, burning with intensity.

The first time I died, death had been slow, dreamlike. It had been surreal in a way that made me feel like I had somehow been disconnected from my body, floating to hover above myself and watch from a distance without actually having to experience it. At least, that's how I had felt after the initial pain of the beating I'd been served had subsided.

The agony from a bullet was incapacitating.

From the hole it blasted through my body, pain radiated outwards, ricocheting through me until no part was left untouched. I didn't know where it began or where it ended. My body was on fire. Every. Single. Inch.

"Are you girls okay?" A deep voice questioned from above. I heard the metal of Mr. Tinsley's gun scrape against the pavement as it was kicked away, connecting the sound to the shadows in my peripheral sight. The blare of the police registered along with the crackle of their radios as they called into dispatch. First responders—police, paramedics, and firefighters—crowded in around Mr. Tinsley's body.

"Did this man hurt you?" the deep voice asked.

Sure, he'd hurt us. He'd sexually assaulted Tina and killed me. Correction: he'd shot me, which was now killing me. I was dying. Again. But all Tina said—all Tina knew—was, "We're fine."

I tried to open my eyes and look up at the man coming to our rescue. The echo I'd heard before Mr. Tinsley had slumped to his death must have been from his gun. Mr. Tinsley shot me as this man shot Mr. Tinsley. Two triggers, two bullets, and two deaths. All for the sake of one girl.

Tina tapped me on my back and I groaned, but I couldn't move. A weight had settled over my limbs and the connection to my brain had been severed. My life was all but over.

"Alyssa, get off me," she mumbled.

"Tina..." I gurgled, choking on my blood, the taste bitter with iron. I was getting used to it, but it would never be familiar.

"Alyssa?" Suddenly, Tina found the breath required to raise her voice. "Wait! Officer, my friend is hurt."

I felt their hands as they rolled me onto my back and off Tina. The officer swore and got on his radio as Tina yelled, "Oh, my God! Alyssa! No, no, no... This can't be happening. Alyssa!"

I couldn't reach out to comfort her.

"Put pressure on her wound," the officer directed Tina, though she already had.

Her hand was shaking. His hands joined hers in an attempt to pressurize the wound. Even when my blood seeped through the cracks in their fingers to match the stain I'd left on her shirt. She saw it and choked on another sob.

"An ambulance is coming. Just keep pressure against the wound, okay? We'll help her." The officer spoke in short, quick sentences, his tone hurried.

I knew that meant that my fear was confirmed: I didn't have much time left. I was dying and it was almost at the same time as before. Given that this time I wouldn't be tortured for hours first, I should be grateful, though the pain from a gunshot wound was like all the pain from what I'd felt before had been consolidated into the injury. Shouldn't it be less painful if it was quicker? It wasn't fair. Not just the agony I was feeling, but the fact that I was dying again—I changed what had happened! I should have been allowed to live!