With the trio having driven over ninety miles per hour, the seven or so hour head start they had gotten out of the motor city was all but gone. That was if the police were still searching for them, they had traveled through two states before the scuffle between Dessa and Chance had occurred. Bear hoped beyond hope that the authorities hadn’t called for a nation wide man hunt, that would mean that there would be nowhere safe for them. Let alone on the side of the freeway with Chance laying stiff as a board and looking like a pin cushion with two very large pins sticking out of it.
After his declaration of Chance’s death, Dessa had thrown him aside and hadn’t let the large man anywhere near the body again. Any time he tried to touch her shoulder or even the body Dessa would shove him away and complain about how Chance could still get up. Bear had felt the pulse fade, had felt the heart stop pumping the precious liquid through the assassins body. He was dead and there had only ever been one man that had ever come back from the dead. Bear didn’t think god was looking to make it two.
As the large Chimera gazed at the two tragically joined loves, his heart fought against his head to do what was needed to be done. He stepped forward and regretted it as soon as he heard the gravel crunch under his boot. Dessa turned quickly and shot him a glare that promised death if he dared to interrupt her solo memorial again.
“Dessa, we… you need to get out of here.” he tried to sound as calm as possible. “you are on the run just like I am. The difference is; if you get caught I am pretty sure that the penalty will be a hell of a lot more severe than mine. You are looking at death!”
“No!” the sobbing assassin shouted at Bear. “ I won’t leave him! He’ll wake up. He always wakes up!”
Bear had to admire her determination on being so stubborn, he had tried to reason with her again and once again had been shown that sheer willpower was keeping her next to Chance. He had to admit that he felt a pang of jealousy, his ex-wife would have never been that devoted to him as to believe he would come back to life. In fact he was sure that his ex would be the one to push the swords in deeper. To have someone convince themselves of the impossible was either true love or blind stubbornness. He still didn’t know which.
“Dessa, there are two swords sticking from two very important body parts. His neck and his heart. There is no way he is going to wake up from that. I’m sorry.” Bear said more frustrated than he meant to.
“I don’t care! He’s come back from worse.” she glared at Bear and he felt a shiver run up his spine. “ I have seen him get crushed by a steal shipping crate on the docks and he still crawled out from under it without a scratch. He just needs more time to regenerate that’s all.”
Dessa wiped away her tears and looked up and saw more than just Bear for the first time in an hour. She could see cars lined up for miles, all slowly moving along side the scene and each one seemed to be staring right at her and Chance. The scene must have been an odd one to come across, a body with two swords sticking out of it with her crouched over it crying like a child, and a very large man holding a bike helmet talking to her calmly. If she was in one of those cars she would have stopped too. Somewhere in the back of her mind she could hear the berating Alpha would be giving her as soon as he found out that not only had she killed a Chimera, but on top of that she caused a traffic jam and let it get on the news. She didn’t see or hear the traffic helicopters but she knew enough to know they were coming.
“We need to move him.” Dessa said calmly, her sobbing having stopped as soon as she registered what was going on.
“What?” Bear asked a little confused.
“We have to get him out of the open! Look at all that.” she motioned to the cars and traffic behind him. “He needs to be out of sight, then maybe he can get the time he needs to get better.”
As crazy as the action sounded, Bear had to agree that getting the lifeless body out of plain sight was a better idea than just leaving him there to rot. He took a few steps toward the body and saw that Dessa would actually allow him closer than three yards away. He crouched and looked over the body, looking for the best angle to grab Chance without doing even more damage. Seeing no real way to move Chance without those swords cutting deeper into his flesh he frowned. He didn’t think hurting a corpse would matter, but Dessa was adamant about Chance still being alive. He was more than a little sure she would kill him slowly if he hurt Chance anymore than she already had.
“I can lift him, but we have to get these swords out of him or else they will only do more damage.”
Dessa nodded, her red auburn hair covering most of her face. Her gorgeous green eyes hadn’t left Chance’s motionless body as Bear examined it. She watched as bears massive hand reached for the sword in Chance’s neck and didn’t understand how her own could grip the large man’s wrist so hard. It was as if she was watching herself from afar and couldn’t actually control her actions.
“No… I’ll do it.” Dessa heard herself say as she pulled Bear’s hand away.
She didn’t see Bear step back, she didn’t see him frowning, she didn’t see him turn away to give her the privacy she didn’t ask for but needed desperately. She had done this, she didn’t think that Chance would allow her to connect but when she saw his actions, the way he carried himself she had understood that Chance wasn’t there anymore. It was Suicide, and that was a different creature all together. Suicide was a violent, cunning, deadly and uncaring person. Then out of the blue she started to see that being fight against itself. She didn’t understand any of it, but it didn’t matter now. Chance was gone, and no matter how much she denied it, he wasn’t coming back. Not after something like this.
Her hand wrapped around the hilt of the sword and she began to pull. Her mind drifted back to just a few months ago, she had vowed to get Chance out of her life pulling the metaphorical daggers out of her heart. As she looked at the blade protruding from Chance’s neck all those daggers seemed to slam right back into her heart. All the things that could have been, the differences Chance had made in her life, the emotions that all of those spikes carried suddenly weighed very heavily on her heart.
Tears began to fall from her cheeks in droves. Each one landing on the bloodied neck of her former mentor, her former lover, of the only man she had ever given herself fully to. The memory of the night Chance had killed her parents flashed in her mind as she continued to hold the sword. She hated him so much for taking her parents from her but the more she thought about it the more she understood what Chance had done. The assassin had taken her from a home filled with drugs to a place where she was safe and secure. He had taken an innocent child from a home filled with narcotics, illegal guns, and blood money to a life that was served fighting the very thing her parents had stood for. She still hated him for lying all these years, but the hatred was small in comparison to the pain she felt now in the epiphany of what the Chimera had really done. He really had rescued her, without her even knowing she needed it.
Dessa’s hands moved to grip both of the hilts of the swords that stuck freely from Chance’s unmoving body, her fingers wrapped around them tightly as the tears trickled over her cheeks and onto her arms only to fall farther over her hands to find a final resting place in the pooled ruby liquid around Chance’s neck and chest.
“I’m so sorry Chance.” Dessa whispered as she leaned down and kissed the Chimera’s lips softly before pulling the swords out together.
“Look!” Bear shouted shaking Dessa from her grief.
* * *
![[send message]](https://www.writerscafe.org/images/mail.png){kind=small}
![[befriend]](https://www.writerscafe.org/images/friend.png){kind=small}
Share This
Email
Facebook
Twitter
Read Request
My Library
Flag Writing
