Deadly Expectations (84 page)

As I took a few steps toward the gap in the wreckage Damian had passed through there was a new sound.
 
A distraught, choking scream, like the throat that made it wasn’t working right.
 
I paused and turned my head to try and make it out but the more clear it became the more I didn’t want to find out.

“
Brandon
…”

A woman’s voice.
 
More screaming, then again.

“
Brandon
…”

Then from another direction, a baby crying.
 
My mind imagined what he had done.
 
I tried to think although my own grief over losing Paul didn’t want me to give a shit.
 
They were dead, broken, jump started back to something like life by the man who saw me care about them.
 
I’d looked after them for years, every time my dream brought me here.
 
Never failed to make sure they were close.

I kept my pack over my shoulder, my knife in my hand.
 
The opening still in front of me so the gun was easy to get to.
 
Then I turned and hurried to the mother hoping Damian would think I’d be drawn to little
Brandon
.
 
As I spotted her I felt a small contraction but nothing like the heavy labour I’d been carrying with me.
 
I crouched down and watched her.
 
She appeared to be alone, fighting to push herself up.
 
There was no expression on her face but the screaming continued.
 
I put my hands on my ears and looked around behind me to make sure that I was alone before I got up to go look for her baby.

As I got further from her I could make out his little cry again.
 
It was the same wail, over and over.
 
Like his mother’s; three plain screams then a
Brandon
.
 
They weren’t alive; they were only doing what Damian made them do.
 
Even though they were dead I had to put them back the way they were.
 
What he had done to them was disgusting.

I circled around the middle of the debris trying to keep the same distance from the baby for a while before I approached.
 
He was moving, his cries not coming from the same place twice.
 
It only took a minute for him to stay put.
 
I could barely hear his mother but
Brandon
’s rhythmic wailing continued, no longer pacing me through the wreckage.

When I was closer I peered past a piece of the plane’s tail section.
 
Damian’s back was to me, something cradled in his arms.
 
My nose wrinkled as I glared at him then his hands dropped to his sides, the baby dangling from one of them by his ankle, the pace of his cries unbroken.
 
Damian dropped him to the ground and turned slowly as I pulled back out of sight.

“I can smell that disgusting offspring inside you … couldn’t resist coming for this one, could you?”

I heard him draw in a lung full of air past his nose.

“What makes you weak makes me strong,” Damian laughed and I heard his foot drag on the ground.
 
Brandon
’s cries became louder, like his head had turned toward me.
 
“Yours will be even more fun to play with.”

I could kill him here; take the baby to his mother.
 
I took a step further back, waiting to see what he would do.

“Yes,” Damian’s voice, closer now, “I smell you there.
 
Hiding like a child.”

I backed away a few more steps, around the piece of tail.
 
Brandon
continued to sound off like a car alarm and Damian had gone silent.
 
A quick glance over my shoulder to make sure he hadn’t gone around then as I turned back his hand was on my throat, his other on my wrist controlling the knife.

“Stupid bitch,” he worked his mouth for a moment.
 
I tried to turn away knowing what was coming but he held me still.
 
Spit hit me in the eye and down my cheek as I struggled.
 
Another small contraction reminded me to hurry.

“Coward,” I choked out at him as his grip on my neck tightened.
 
I kept fighting him, distracting him as my free hand went in my pack and took his gun.
 
“Chicken shit coward,” I spat back as the safety came off.

I wanted nothing more than to fill him with metal from his own gun but I could feel Andre in me, angry that I would deny him his chance.
 
Reminding me it had to be the knife.
 
I pushed myself toward Damian and pressed his gun to his thigh as I pulled the trigger.
 
His hands let me go as I put another round in almost the same place then I went past him as he fell sideways into the tail clutching his leg and swearing at me.

As soon as I was out of his reach I put the gun away and went to
Brandon
.
 
Wiped the spit on my sleeve and got down to the ground to pick him up.
 
When I looked back Damian was hobbling after me, one hand on his leg, the other held his knife.
 
I couldn’t imagine being on my feet after that.
 
There was blood but not enough to worry about him losing it too quickly.

Quick as I could I started to the baby’s mother led by her screams.
 
I’d gotten some distance on Damian but he was still after me.
 
I put my hand on the baby’s chest and thought about quieting him.
 
My hand filled with a bit of light and I let it find its way around inside him as I hurried.
 
Just stop what Damian did, I thought and when the light stopped searching I let it into
Brandon
.
 
He pulled in one last lung full of air and instead of crying he simply exhaled and was still again.
 
I put my lips to his little head.

“I’m so sorry about the bad man,” I whispered.
 
“He’ll pay for it.”

As I took my last steps to the mother I prepared for quieting her.
 
I tried to wrap her arm around him but she kept squirming, unaware that he was near.
 
My hand went to her chest and as I watched Damian get closer my light explored, learning what he had done to her, until it was ready and I let it loose.
 
She fell still and I put
Brandon
back in the crook of her arm and turned her head back to face him.
 
I brushed her hair from her face and kissed his again.
 
Then I stood as another small contraction came, stronger than the last few.
 
Whatever I’d done to calm them was wearing off.

Damian was thirty feet away, still coming for me.

“You’re going to be alive when I take him out of you … his screams will be real …” Damian’s rage in every syllable.

I didn’t reply as I stepped away from Brandon and his mother, leading Damian away with me, giving me time to decide on how to attack him before he forced me into reacting.

“That bitch Alina came home … so happy … imagine the surprise on her face after weeks of telling her how much I wanted it.
 
She said, ‘my sweet Damian … we’re expecting.’
 
My fucking Lord, she brought me flowers!
 
I one punched her in the head, right on to her annoying little ass.”

Damian laughed, his face contorting in pain every time he had to use his shot up leg.
 
I’d seen the damage first hand, over and over.
 
His horrible bragging couldn’t upset me any more than I had been already the past couple of months.

“She didn’t beg for me to stop until I was on top of her, sinking my teeth in. ‘Is this how I filled you up?’ I asked her, ‘What’s the matter, why don’t you like it now?’”

The more he talked the more I wanted his end to last and last.
 
I still had his gun.
 
I could shoot him in the other leg, get him on the ground.
 
Or I could paralyse him like I’d done to Paul.
 
Keep him from hurting me as he felt everything.
 
Another contraction came, longer and more painful than the last.
 
I realized that I would have to do something soon.

I tucked my knife in the back of my underwear as I kept my distance from Damian, handle tilted to the left so I could grab it.

“Do you make the same noises she does when the pain is too much?”
 
Damian asked me.
 
“So much like the ones that came out when I made the earth move underneath her.”
 
His hand had moved to the front of his pants grabbing himself, excitement on his face when he wasn’t wincing with pain.

I led him through the wreckage another half minute, getting more and more angry at him, before I paused and brought his gun up, aiming at his right knee.
 
He was still thirty feet away, his right hand flashing with blue and going out, pressing it to the wounds on his leg.
 
He’d used it all up on Paul and the woman and her baby.

“Shit, really?
 
You almost missed from right on top of me!
 
Stupid cow, you can’t hit it from there.”

I thought about it.

“You’re right,” I yelled back as I stopped and lifted the gun before I pulled the trigger and sunk a round deep into his right shoulder.
 
Into the little soft spot just under the end of his collar bone.
 

“That’s for biting my sister …” I whispered.

Then as he went down I shattered the knee of his good leg.

“Bitch!” he screamed back.

I went to him, slowing as my stomach tightened.
 
Not enough to stop me but the next one would.
 
That I was sure of.
 
His knife was still in his right hand as he tried to push himself up so I aimed at it and squeezed the trigger.
 
His two smallest fingers disappeared as well as a piece of his palm leaving him with the one good limb
Brandon
’s poor mother had.

“Sweet, sweet irony,” I breathed to myself against the train of angry bitches rolling from his mouth.

“Ready Andre?”
I said out loud as I backhanded the butt of the gun that he’d hit my sister with hard into his face.
 
Then I dropped on his one good limb.
 
My knee sinking into the nerves inside his upper arm.

“Weak, impotent, coward,” I whispered to him as he screamed at me.

I tossed the gun aside out of Damian’s reach as Andre reached behind me for my knife.
 
Pain was returning hard and fast to my stomach and if Damian pushed me off him I’d be in trouble.
 
He’d still be stronger with one good arm than I would be frozen by a contraction.

Andre pressed the tip of the knife to Damian’s chest, his left palm on the end of the handle, his right hand gripping it, fingers curled around under the delicate gold guard.
 
He moaned through his teeth as his two fingered right came up and clutched my throat, digging in deeply, the pressure of his effort pushing his hot blood out and on to me.
 
I felt it start to run down inside my torn shirt.

“You’re the only man I’ve met whose worse than me,” Andre said from my lips as he pushed me up on my knees and used my weight to force the blade in as I pressed my neck deeper into Damian’s hand.
 
My lips pulled back and my teeth ground together as the small vibrations of his body tearing inside were transmitted through the handle up into my palms.
 
I watched Damian’s eyes open wide and his body go stiff as the blade pushed up into his chest and into his heart.
 
Damian’s grip on me weakened, his fingers scrambling to keep their purchase.
 
Andre turned it hard and quickly pulled it out then jammed it deeply into his left shoulder.