The Mech Who Loved Me(107)
Unless they had reason to.
Unless emotion overruled them in the moment, and what better way to pit two forces against each other than to make one think the other had murdered one of their own?
"Hold the line!" someone bellowed, and it sounded like Charles Finch, the enormous weapons master of the guild.
"Please lay down your weapons," a voice said through a speaking trumpet, a desperate plea. "Disperse peacefully, or we will be forced to disband you."
Firelight reflected off the coppery hair in front of her-just a split-second glimpse she caught through the crowd of black-clad blue bloods. Garrett.
There.
If she was just fast enough to get to him....
"Let me through!" Nighthawks jostled her on all sides. Ava pushed and shoved, earning startled looks before they saw whom it was and let her through.
Garrett gestured men into place, clad head to toe in strict black leather. Runnels of sweat slid through the sooty layer of grime on his handsome face. Every command came from him in a sharp staccato, as if he was holding the Nighthawks together by sheer force of will.
He saw her and paused, momentarily torn out of the melee around him. "Ava, what are you doing here?" he yelled.
"Don't suppress the mob!" she called back, staggering as the shield wall was pummeled by a wave of angry protesters and the horde of Nighthawks, in general, were forced body-to-body, crushing her a little. "Don't retaliate!"
Some instinct made her look past him, as if her peripheral vision caught sight of something moving across the street. A curtain twitching in an upper story window. Something long and hollow staring directly at them, no, at him-
It clicked into place far too slowly in her mind.
"Garrett!" she screamed, and made a last frantic scramble to get to him.
Maybe he saw it in her face. Maybe it was the tone of voice she used, but Garrett frowned and twisted back to look at what had caught her eye-
-and it was possibly the only reason the bullet that ripped through him took him in the shoulder, rather than the middle of the back.
Blood sprayed across her face as he jerked forward in surprise and began to fall, his left arm a bloody stump just below the shoulder.
Garrett. Charming, handsome Garrett who loved his wife, and had two sweet daughters who adored their father.
Garrett who'd been there for Ava at every moment during her recovery, after he and Perry rescued her from Hague's laboratory.
Gone beneath the feet of his Nighthawks.
Twenty-Five
THE WORLD NARROWED to a very small bubble around her.
Ava blinked, and then she was at his side, her mouth babbling soundlessly as she saw the damage. "It's all right," she thought she said. "It's all right."
But it was not all right.
Too much blood. Bone. The gaping mush of burned flesh. Garrett gasped, his eyes so very wide, but it was Hague's face swimming through her mind as he shined the lamp in her eyes. Hague's hand lifting a scalpel as he said, "This won't hurt at all, mijn lien."
Suddenly she was in a distant world, where she was the one screaming-
-Blink-
Screams echoed. She looked up, nostrils flaring and her stomach in revolt. Found the streets a melee of Nighthawks fighting against the crowd. Not in Hague's laboratory. Not the one screaming.
And Garrett was bleeding to death beneath her hesitant hands.
Horror filled Ava, but it was a distant hollow ache as she stared at everything she'd tried to prevent. All she could do was babble to Garrett that he was going to survive, as she tried to stem the bleeding with a piece of torn skirt.
"Stay with me!" she cried desperately, but the pressure in her ears and around her forehead was getting tighter, and the world dulled around her.
-Blink-
A man at her side, asking if she was okay. No. Demanding it. Shaking her. "Ava? Ava?"
She looked up into Kincaid's face, and stupidly enough, the first thing that went through her head was his words from last night: we have no future.
"They shot him," she whispered. She saw it again. The rifle. The curtains moving. Garrett turning to look at what caught her eye. Ava looked down, to where her hands were covered in blood. "He's bleeding."
"Aye. I know." Kincaid stripped out of his coat. "Is there a doctor here?" He lifted his head to bellow, "The guild master's down! Is there a doctor here?"
Garrett's chest heaved and he tried to clutch her fingers with his remaining hand. His face was so, so pale. "Ava...." An exhale as he shivered. He tried to look at the ruined stump of his arm. "Jesus. Jesus, my arm-"
"You're going to be all right," Kincaid said sternly, ripping his shirt off over his head and pushing Ava's bloodied hands out of the way as he swiftly wrapped his shirt around the stump. "You've lost the arm, but you're a blue blood. You'll heal." He shot Ava a glance as he gently used his shirt to try and stem the bleeding. "He'll heal, yes?"