Prompt 7 - Long Shot

A return to the adventures of Iha, a fiend-for-hire who manipulates the luck of others yet can never seem to escape her own ill fortune.

The door slammed shut behind her, and was immediately riddled with bullets. She was saved only by her body's insistence on tripping and tumbling to one side, driving knee and elbow into the splintered wood of the floor as shards and shrapnel rained from overhead.

Two near shots had laid her arm and side open, dripping red as she forced herself to her feet against the nearest wall. Her movements were made in spite of the nagging pain, two fresh shells shoved into her waiting shotgun, levelling it against her shoulder as she stepped closer to the room's sole window.

Noise and activity boiled beyond it, shouted threats and the click of readied weapons. Far more worrisome, the splash of unseen liquid and the distinctive thrum of new flame.

No good. If she allowed them to set a light to that place, then nightfall wouldn't provide the salvation for which she hoped. It had to be utterly dark once the sun slipped behind that jagged horizon, or she'd be a corpse before it rose again.

Her gaze slid sideways across the fading light that the window admitted, and at her bidding, the luck of those outside tipped in her favour again. Curses erupted as a sudden gust of wind extinguished the flame that they'd nursed, and the fuel that they'd laid for it sank to slake the thirst of the dusty ground.

That had been enough to rile them again, plain to be heard in the patter of boots and the overlap of angry voices. They were drawing far too close to the remains of that bullet-broken door, and if they were all intent on entering at once, she'd have no hope of holding them back.

So her own boots were set in motion again, pattering across the floor of the shack in which she'd taken refuge. Little more than a wooden husk, one of more than two dozen in what had once passed for a border settlement. Its back door fell from the hinges as she set her shoulder against it, and the day's last light cast broad lines of shadow across her path. Crossing the dust and stone of the street at a sprint, waking whispers when her feet fell in dark places. Someone's poor aim drove a bullet into the ground a foot behind her, and she flung herself behind the cover of another sorry shack, cursing the slowness of the sun's descent.

So close. So close, but they were already swarming around the structures in her wake. Shouting curses, threats, waving weapons high and jostling one another for what they deemed the safest positions. If they drove her beyond the limited cover of that ruined village, even her power over the luck of others was unlikely to save her.

So she sought to circle back instead, around their advance. Stooping in the thickest of shadows, gasping against the heat that never seemed to abandon that part of the world. Their cries transmuted into frustration and nervousness as they failed to find her ahead, and one of the loudest urged his fellows to spread out in a more organized search.

That was her advantage. 'Organized' was a word that most of them hardly seemed to know, fanning out in groups of two or three to poke at the least stable of those desiccated huts. Others tried not to act as though they were lingering in cover, fearing her buckshot, and only a few seemed to take to the search with real experience or fervour.

Just a minute, a minute or two longer. It would take them far longer than that to find her, which meant that even in hiding, she had-

“There she is!”

Impossible. That one of them had spotted her, that they'd been lucky or she had been careless enough to let it happen. She had not survived that long, however, by debating the possibility of things that were already happening. Instead she found herself flowing into motion again, beyond the lethal touch of the bullets that tore through wood at her back. Across another of those dangerous open spaces, flinging herself into a roll that would carry her into darkness and cover again.

Didn't even see the shot that struck her so cleanly.

White-hot through her heaving chest, in one side and out the other. Her own luck, guiding it away from bone and vital organs, yet the pain was enough to leave her sprawled across sun-baked dust. Choking on the next breath that she tried to draw, pushing herself to hands and knees with all of the speed that she could still manage.

Not enough. One of them was already there, a boot hooked beneath her to flip her onto her back again. It was planted against her chest with unforgiving weight, forcing out what little breath she'd managed to draw, and someone unseen wrenched the shotgun from her hand.

They stood in silhouette overhead, so little light left to reveal them. Though many murmured in assent, the one who stood with a foot atop her was the one to speak in direct address of her. Rough and furious, all but spitting his words down upon her.

“You've led us on a long run, b***h,” he growled, as though any of them could forget it. “But it's over now �" tell me where it is, and I'll put a bullet between your eyes, quick and clean.”

Liar. She could see it in his narrowed eyes, in the anticipatory grins of his posse. Telling them what they wanted to know would do nothing to change their intentions.

Fortunately, that had just ceased to matter. The sun had taken the last of its direct illumination, and in its wake, night seemed to fall like the pulling of a curtain.

“You lose.” Words forced from her heaving chest, painting confusion and additional anger across the faces of those nearby. A lopsided grin spread to occupy her face, all bitter humour and jagged teeth, and she let her head fall back to rest against the warmth of the dust below. “It's going to be a dark night.”

There it was. Understanding, blossoming across the upside down faces she could glimpse from that angle. With it came horror, and though several started to back away, it wouldn't be quick enough for any of them. That whispering had started to spread from the shadows, and the darkness that dominated the village was no longer static.

Bleeding and morphing from where it should have lain, spreading like oil across the ground. From there it rose, murmuring its own stories and intentions as it gained form. Most of those who had gathered were turning to flee, while the one who had planted his boot against her chest stooped to close a hand around her shirt's front instead.

“Give it to me,” he demanded with an edge of unmistakeable fear to his voice. “Give it to me now, or I'll-”

The touch of animated shadow against his shoulder seemed to steal the words from him, leaving him rigid in terror as it spread to encompass the length of his arm. His fingers were loosed from her shirt, and she caught herself as she fell, sitting slumped against the nearest shack as that grin broadened to dominate the lower half of her face.

“Shades take you,” she coughed in his direction, in a far more literal sense than the expression was typically employed. “Try losing with a little grace for once, Havar.”

Screams were rising from the edges of that small settlement, distorting at the top of the human vocal range and rising breathless into something beyond. That darkness was rising over the shoulders of her pursuer, swelling and gathering into the vague suggestion of a humanoid form, and its arms lowered to lock around the rapid rise and fall of his chest. For a moment longer, he seemed to linger on the edge of perfect panic, eyes still fixed on her as he hyperventilated for the last time.

Then the shade's ethereal arms dove beneath the surface of him, rooting for whatever it intended to extract from within. The breath that he drew was not returned to the world, and seconds later, the shade drifted back to let him stand unaided. In its nigh-invisible grip, it carried something new, writhing wild and as dark as itself.

In its absence, the man stood motionless, staring as though he'd forgotten that he was meant to interact with the world at all. Still breathing, still balancing, but there was nobody home behind those eyes.

No resistance, nor a word spoken as she wrestled herself to her feet. Bending to reclaim her shotgun from where it had been dropped, levelling it against her shoulder and bringing its twin barrels into line with his head.

A shot of mercy, roaring through the night and reducing the top half of his skull to shrapnel. What was left of him slumped to the dust, there to stain it with his draining blood, and one hand was removed from the shotgun to rummage through a side pocket of her shirt.

From it she extracted a small silver talisman, its surface pressed into a pattern of exquisite detail and its edges flared into the shape of an abstract star. Hung from a length of similar chain and valuable not for its materials, but for the effect that it was already exerting on the area that surrounded her. Five feet of space that the shades seemed to ignore entirely, drifting past the barrier's edges with a fresh harvest in hand and not a glance in her direction. The screams had fallen to silence, and what was left of that settlement belonged to the zealously protective, the disembodied.

And her. That jagged grin blossomed across her face again as she steadied herself, one hand to return the shotgun to its harness, the other wrapped around the talisman and pressed to that leaking wound in her side.

Would be some time before she was whole again, wheezing with every breath and trudging in her slow progress toward the village's borders. For that night, however, she had won.

As long as she could say that, there wasn't much less that mattered.