Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
There isn’t a lot of hemming and hawing. No big argument. Danny just shakes his head in a half-acceptance and I take off after Alec. I think to give Danny a kiss, but I don’t. There will be many more kisses in our future and I refuse to believe otherwise.
As I exit through the door, I discover that I’m in a stairwell. An old, circular, stone, castle stairwell from the fifteen hundreds or whenever this place was built. I know fuck all about European history, quite honestly, so I don’t know if this is some famous castle that once survived some great war or if it’s just some random-ass castle that Zander took over and claimed squatter’s rights on. And I don’t care. I just know that now, today, in this moment, it will become the place where a vast, massive avalanche of personal history comes full circle and whatever spirits haunt these walls will bear witness.
I can hear Alec’s footsteps beating on the stairs as he runs down. I start to trail him, but then…
I look at the stairs leading up. The winding, circular path that leads to, I presume, the roof. Or maybe a gun turret or something. And I don’t know why, exactly, but that is the direction I’m drawn. And so that’s where I go. I go up.
I sling my long gun in front of me and I begin running up. Up the stairs.
Up.
Up.
Up.
DANNY
Standing in the middle of this fucked-up playroom in the middle of this castle in the middle of this country in the middle of this continent in the middle of this planet in the middle of this galaxy in the middle of this universe, I’m like, Well, this is fuckin’ weird.
But it’s not weird to me for the reasons most people might think. It’s weird because I see it (through my rapidly dimming vision) as almost an encapsulation of my entire existence. Of all our existences, for that matter. A fuckin’ cosmic collision or something.
I busted Christine out of that foster home when she was ten and she’s been with me ever since. Not always physically, in front of me, but always with me. And I’ve always been with her.
And ever since Alec joined us, we have clung to each other in desperate and complicated ways, but we’ve never let go. Not really. Because we share something deep and cellular. Inexpressible and ancient. Something that binds us.
Christine’s childhood was robbed from her. Mine was robbed from me. Alec’s was robbed from him. All of us had them robbed in different ways, but they were taken equally and led us to become who we are and to end up where we are now.
So it’s weird that I find myself in a child’s playroom as the three of us fight to see to it that another childhood isn’t stolen away by forces outside that child’s control.
Or maybe I’m just delirious.
I hear Theo groan again and realize that I don’t know how badly he’s hit. I kneel down and roll him to his side so that I can see where the bullet may have lodged. It looks like there’s an exit wound near his ass. Which is great fucking news because it means it’s less likely that it hit anything that might prove fatal.
I have a shitload of questions. Everything that’s been answered has just generated a whole new batch of curiosities. I fuckin’ hope I get to ask about them.
Slinging my rifle from my shoulder, I pull off my jacket, strip off my shirt, and rip it to tie it around Theo’s leg. A field tourniquet is a shitty substitute for real, medical aid, but we’re all doing the best we can right now.
As I’m bent down, trying to stanch the bleeding in his leg, he continues to moan and mumble. I don’t know if I’m somehow less susceptible to agony or if everyone else is just a whiner but, again, I feel like I’m managing to play through a way more serious injury than everyone around me. Not a judgment and I don’t feel superior or anything, but it’s an interesting observation.
“The roof,” it sounds like he’s mumbling. “On the roof…”
The roof? Fuck is he saying?
I tie off the tourniquet as best I’m able and stumble over to an antique-ass window that opens outward. When I bang on it to get it free, it swings out and I poke my shirtless torso through, contorting and craning my body to look up. The early evening air is chilly and I get goosebumps. But I’m not sure if the goosebumps are from the bracing breeze or from the fact that I see something hanging just over the edge of the top of the castle, glinting in the moonlight.
Something that looks like the barrel of a rifle.
A sniper rifle.