The sound of a gun firing rang in everyone’s ears and reverberated about the room slowly as if to allow the people standing around and doing menial tasks to hear it clearly. No one would dare believe nothing had happened once they heard the panicked screaming.
“Orpheus, move!” The words had barely passed the girl’s lips when I felt the burn of the bullet burrowing through my stomach mere seconds after I had moved in front of her and she had screamed at me. “Orpheus!” The poor girl sounded frantic as I fell to my knees. I had never been shot before; never felt the burn of a bullet but the girl was innocent. She had never felt pain like this. She didn’t deserve to be shot just because some boy had gotten drunk and found a gun to play with.
“That does h… hurt a tad m… more than I… I thought it would.” My silver eyes glanced into her tear-filled hazel ones as she knelt beside me and tried to staunch the bleeding with her small pale hands. The crimson blood coated them freely. Why did her hands covered in blood fill me with such a deep need to kill the man who had introduced her to that violence?
“You stupid fool; you should have let me take the damnable bullet!” There was a break in her voice as she spoke, revealing how afraid she was. “Lie down. I’m going to try to stop the bleeding.” I raised my hand, making an attempt to tell her to stop her silly notions of helping me only to have her grab my wrist with one of her blood-soaked hands. There was a glare in her eyes as she forced herself not to cry from her hopelessness. “Don’t argue with me, Orpheus! Just do it!” She made a weak attempt at shoving me back, but I was more than twice her size.
Against my better judgment I laid down, leaning back on my elbows and feeling the pain of the bullet with every slight twitch I made. She tore her scarf from around her neck and bunched it up against the wound to stop the bleeding, but when I heard the cock of the gun as the little bastard moved closer to the two of us, I tried to get back up, but the pain wouldn’t allow it. Then again, neither would the girl. She kept her hands on the scarf and kept applying pressure as she looked back over her shoulder.
“Get up and get against the wall. Leave him there or we’ll shoot you, too.” He sounded calm, and I could feel the girl’s hands trembling against my stomach.
“Fuck you, asshole!” I barely had time to react to the cursing when she turned back to face me, putting more pressure on the wound when I saw the boy scoff, aim, and fire a bullet into the girl’s right shoulder. Her eyes widened as the pressure of the bullet entering her back knocked her forward just enough to position her small body over my larger one when she collapsed with her head just above where her hands were still applying as much pressure as she was able.
Women were screaming and men were cursing in the background, but all I could see was red as I saw the girl choke and cough up blood onto my shirt to add to the blood soaking her back. I tried to push myself up, but had to fight the pain in order to do so. I raised my right knee up as I put my hand to the girl’s injured shoulder. She hissed through her teeth from the pain she no doubt felt.
“She didn’t listen. If she had, she wouldn’t be in pain, right now.” I looked up at the young boy. His dark hair was unkempt and long, his dull blue eyes glaring down at me as he aimed the gun in my face.
“I have business with you and only you, Orpheus, but it seems your little brat wants to get in on the action.” The boy brought his booted foot down hard on the girl’s injured shoulder. Her reaction was instantaneous as she cried out and dug her fingers into my stomach around my own injury. I tried to make a move, but he cocked the gun in my face and I couldn’t. “I wouldn’t move unless you want your pet to die, Orpheus. I have no problem with it. In fact…” The boy removed his foot and grabbed the back of her collar, pulling her to her feet, though I could see her legs shaking from the weight of standing through the pain she was no doubt in.
“Give her to me and I won’t kill you, boy.” The child only laughed as she pushed against his chest. Her face was far paler than it normally was and there was blood dripping from the corner of her lips. Her glasses had been knocked enough to sit crookedly on her nose.
“You’ve taught her well, Orpheus. She’s a fighter. It really is too bad she’s not very good at it y…” Before he could finish his sentence, she brought her hand up fast and struck his nose with the heel of her palm so hard that the boy stumbled backward and fell with her on top of him. I moved to my feet as quickly as I was able as the pain shot through my stomach. I barely glimpsed the girl yank the gun from his hand and flipped the safety before removing the clip. She barely had the time to toss the bullets in one direction and the gun in the other before the boy grabbed her by the hair and pulled.
Her glasses were knocked off of her nose entirely as he jostled her and moved to his feet, pulling her about harshly. If I hadn’t been shot, I would have been able to move faster. I had no doubt the girl would have slipped out of the young man’s grasp already if she hadn’t been shot as well. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to stand calmly, applying pressure to my wound with the girl’s scarf.
“What exactly do you want from me, boy?” I had to stop thinking about the girl. I wasn’t thinking as clearly as I should have been.
“I want vengeance, you bastard!” He yanked on the girl’s hair while he nursed his still bleeding nose with his opposite hand. Where were the police? The boy had lost his gun and everyone had run outside to safety aside from the three of us, so there should have been some kind of law enforcement coming to help!
“For what, you stupid boy? I’ve not done anything to you.” The boy growled at me, his attention off of the girl again. He really did need to pay more attention to the violent little chit.
“You forced my father to kill himself!” Seconds later, the girl drew her left arm forward and brought it back as hard as she was able into the boy’s ribs. I heard at least one crack from where I was standing. It finally forced the boy to release her so that he could nurse his newest injury. The moment she was free, she dropped like a rock and would have hit the floor had I not moved forward, forgetting my own injury, to catch her and pull her back away from the boy.
She coughed up more blood as she clung to my right arm to keep her standing. Where had her glasses gone? I looked about before I realized they weren’t important at that moment. The boy was coughing up his own blood by this point. Then again, he might have been spitting out the blood from his nose.
“Lesson one of taking hostages, my boy: never take your eyes off of them if you don’t know what they might do in a hostage situation.” Only then did the police finally come in to arrest the boy. I thought back a moment as I remembered what he had said. I had no doubt I had caused his father to kill himself, but that would be dealt with later. Now, I had a girl with a bullet in her back that needed medical treatment just as badly as I did.