Vagabonds

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Bystander

"No," Eliza shrieked, leaping forward, but she was too slow. Joe hit Aquila squarely in the middle of his torso, launching them both halfway across the clearing.

"Woah!" Tori shouted, throwing herself out of the way as the two bodies crashed into the tree beside her, splintering the trunk.

"G-g-guys," Tero said.

But Aquila and Joe weren't listening. Eliza watched with open-mouthed shock as her gangly, pale friend matched Aquila's strength with barely a grimace. Aquila threw Joe to the side, but Joe grabbed his arm and dragged him along. They hit Old Betty with a clang, rolling along the truck's rusty cab, the thuds of fists hitting metal accompanied by guttural snarls. Aquila's wings snapped open, engulfing them for a moment before Joe swept his leg out, making Aquila stumble.

"Stop!" Eliza screamed, finding her voice. "Stop, stop, stop!"

But they didn't listen. Aquila beat his wings, thumping Joe's head. Joe immediately spun on him, yanking on a fistful of feathers and making Aquila shout with pain. Tero shifted from foot to foot, his blind eyes wide, his hands twitching as if with the urge to help.

But the two figures were such a tumble of arms and legs and wings that even if Tero could see, he wouldn't have been able to intervene.

Tori stepped up beside Eliza, her revolver pointed at the ground.

"Is this what you had in mind?"

Eliza ignored the hissed remark. Her heart was like a drum in her chest as she watched two people she cared about contort and growl and snarl. Where were the boys who had smiled at her? Laughed with her? Comforted her?

With astonishing power, Joe propelled the two of them into a sapling as big around as Eliza's thigh, snapping it in half. Aquila threw a punch that dented Old Betty's bed.

Finally, one of Joe's hits landed.

Aquila's head snapped to the side.

Blood sprayed.

That's it, Eliza thought.

Gathering the fraying edges of her courage, Eliza strode forward.

"STOP!" she shouted, putting a hand on the nearest shoulder to drag it away. Aquila's muscles tensed beneath her hand, rippling with power.

It was instinct. It must have been. Instinct or raw nerves or the pain of the hit. Whatever the reason, Aquila swung around, fist clenched, arm driving with all the supernatural power of his modified genes.

The punch hit Eliza right in the sternum.

For a moment, the world went dark. She flew backward, sailing through the air with no concept of where she was or what was around her. It was almost... pleasant. Floating. Drifting. An endless note of soft darkness.

And then she hit a tree and the world crashed back in with enough pain to make her gasp.

She heard another snarl, felt the distant reverberations of the fight through the fog in her brain.

"How dare you, you goddamn animal," came Joe's voice, accompanied by the pulpy sound of fists hitting flesh. It seemed so far away, the echo of an unpleasant world spearing through the miasma of her agony.

Eliza only rallied when she heard the gunshot.

She blinked as the clearing finally went silent, struggling to breathe through lungs that felt like they'd shrunk. The crack of the pistol still reverberated around her like a ghostly threat.

"That's enough," Tori said, her gun still pointed at the sky, glaring at each of the three boys in turn. Tero looked positively petrified, hovering in the shadows of the nearest oak and wringing his dark hands. Joe was glaring at Aquila with all the pent-up hatred Eliza had never acknowledged, lips curled back in a feral snarl.

Aquila was staring at her, his features twisted in horror.

"Eliza, I'm so sorry —"

"This is insane," Tori interrupted, pointing the smoking nozzle at the ground again. "We're wasting time."

Eliza tried to say something, but her voice only came out as a croak. She fought to swallow.

Tori looked at Joe and then back at Aquila. "You two need to get a handle on it, or else we're all fucked."

"He hit her," Joe said in a voice like a rumbling engine.

"And you hit him," Tori answered, tucking the gun into the waistband of her skirt.

A massive shadow fell over Eliza.

"Are you okay? I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to..."

But she couldn't respond, not even to comfort Aquila. She was still struggling to breathe and beginning to hyperventilate as her brain screamed for oxygen. Rolling onto her hands and knees, Eliza gulped for air.

"We need to get her home," Aquila said. "I'll fly her —"

"No you won't," Joe spat.

"We can drive her to the mansion," Tori said, kicking Old Betty's hubcap. "If this crumpled up rust bucket still works."

"The r-r-road is s-shut d-d-down," Tero said, his stutter worse than ever.

Eliza was blinking, trying to see straight as her body roiled with the shock of the punch. But she managed to focus on the deep, resonant sound of Aquila's voice.

"There's a back entrance," he said quietly. "A tunnel that goes right into the cave. You can follow me down the logging road that will take us there."

When Eliza looked up, the first thing she saw was Tero looking at his brother as if he'd just shared something personal, private. Dangerous.

A back entrance.

A secret way into the mansion.

What would Amile do if she knew?

Eliza swallowed, shoving onto her knees.

"Joe..." she gulped, coughing as her voice caught on the jagged epicenter of pain in her rib cage. "He's..."

"We'll blindfold him," Tori said, taking command. "And I'll take his phone."

If she'd had any breath left in her body, Eliza would have laughed at the irony.