To start at the beginning of the story go here.
Several of his rooks stared at what used to be their boss, then at each other and the guns they held. I refocused and tried to get eyes on Sophie and Nika until one of the rooks made the mistake of raising his weapon again and shouting threats. The others, uncertain, followed suit.
The first rook went down with a muted scream that wasn’t immediately noticed in the renewed calamity. The flash of the Opinel knife showed itself just before the second rook was impaled through the neck. It was only then that I realized we had crossed the line and there was no going back. There probably never was.
Two of the rooks swiveled to the sound and sight of the blood and death, screaming at the murdering phantom. Whatever noise Sophie might have made was drowned out by the rest of the rooks, shouting at me or Nika or each other.
Of the few that still had their guns on me, one went down, screaming louder than the rest as I imagined Sophie slicing his Achilles tendon. The other caught a glimpse of the dodging yellow shadow. He fired off several rounds in a panicked fit, the burst drowning out everything else.
There was nothing but panic then, bullets and screams rising up into the night.
Nika stared at Sartre’s corpse and the blood pooling black onto the ground. Then the renewed gunshots pierced her veil of horror and she ran like it was a starter’s pistol. I pushed Sartre off me and stumbled after her.
One of the rooks spotted her and raised his submachine gun. I diverted course to tackle him, smashing us into a car’s hood, denting it with our combined mass. By the time I looked up, Nika was a good couple dozen yards away, running down the road.
I picked myself out of the cratered car hood and cursed. Before I could follow, another group of cars, one a familiar Mercedes, pulled out in front of Nika, tires screeching and lights flashing. She must have recognized the figures jumping out of the Mercedes, because she started screaming again as they grabbed her and dragged her away.
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To read the author’s published work, go here.
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