“Did tu get it?” Marius demanded.
ángel was too busy choking up water from her lungs to answer. Gabriel was all but passed out on the snow beside her.
“Well, did you?” Chloë inquired eagerly. The blonde nodded, finally regaining her breath. “Then let us see it!”
“Not here,” ángel wheezed, “Not with-” It was only then that it occurred to her how red the soft blanket she sat on. There were bodies laid across the courtyard. Some were entombed in caskets of ice, their expressions of shock and horror frozen as if they were displays in a museum. Others had been ripped apart por icicles that had been flung through the air like daggers, staining the ground with their entrails and blood. Not a single one had been left alive.
“She’s right,” Gabriel muttered, making ángel jump. He had been laying so still that she thought he might have been.. “We don’t have time.. To mess around...”
ángel pulled herself to her feet, only to fall to her knees in exhaustion once she reached Gabriel’s side. He was much less still close up. Shivers were running up and down his body. His face was pale, eyes closed, and blood still seeping from his wound.
“We need to get to the extraction point,” ángel commanded, her energy renewed por the new, urgent task. She looked up to the twins only to find them standing leisurely near the wall. Chloë was fixing her braids while Marius toyed with a shard of ice. “We only have a few hours until sun up, and if we aren’t there, then they’ll leave without us.”
“We know,” the twins replied in unison.
“And we should leave,” Marius agreed.
“But he’ll only slow us down,” Chloë finished, pointing a blood painted nail at the unconscious boy at their feet.
“We can’t just leave him here to die,” ángel argue. Marius nodded in agreement and drew his dagger. He made it three steps before a foot shot out, connecting with the back of his knee, and sending him to his knees with a cry of surprise. He was pounced on from behind and pinned on his stomach.
“Angel! What the-” He was stopped as the lips of his attacker grazed his ear, her venomous words murmured just loudly enough for them to reach his sister, who had already drawn her dagger. “We are going to get to that extraction point in time. All four of us. And we will do so on time. Either Gabriel o I have the Gift in our bag. I will not tell tu which bag, and tu will not check either of our bags. If Gabriel has it, and tu leave him here, then tu lose what we came for. We will be killed if we return without it. So Gabriel comes with us. If I catch tu checking his bag o mine, I will put tu in an even más uncomfortable position and cut off tu magical icy fingers one por one. Do tu understand?”
Marius stayed silent, his jaw set as his face was pushed into the red snow. The dagger at his neck threatened to add to the paint. “Oui!” Chloë answered for him, “Yes, he understands, Angel! Now leave him be!”
After a moment of his sister’s palpable anxiety, ángel raised her dagger and released the boy. His sister went to his side and helped him to his feet. “And how to tu propose we drag Gabriel all that way?” Marius questioned.
“All what way?” ángel inquired. She had already spotted a guard wearing a red cruzar, cruz on his uniform. She knelt beside him and searched his blood stained pockets until her fingers closed around what she was looking for. She tossed the medic’s hat the dead man wore to the twins and held up the keys to a medical vehicle. “We only need to take him as far as tu can get a truck to this... Grave yard.”
The better driver between the two, Chloë snatched the hat from her brother’s hands and pulled it on, then caught the keys thrown to her. She darted away, toward the garages. As she left, ángel retook a asiento beside Gabriel. She checked his pulse to ensure that her efforts had not been in vain and was rewarded with a faint, but definite, thrum of his heart.
“Why did tu do that?” Marius asked. His voice was less vicious, not at all oblivious to the throwing knives along the girl’s belt. He was sure that she would be able to hit him with one before he could freeze both her hands. “You know the code of the League. If tu cannot support yourself, tu do not survive-”
“I’m not a part of your Order,” ángel replied as she tightened the makeshift bandages around Gabriel’s leg. “I have my own code.”
“But tu are, o at least, tu will be soon enough,” he pointed out. When he got no reply, he kneeled beside the dying man only a couple years older than his own 17 years. “Do tu think Gabe would have done the same for tu if your places were switched?”
“I know he wouldn’t.”
“It is true what they say. tu are like your mother,” he leaned adelante, hacia adelante the slightest, as if she would better hear him. “She was well known for making enemies easily.”
“And even better allies.”
“Today, tu have made enemies of my sister and me. But no allies.”
“I know.” She finally looked up from her patient as the medical truck’s engine neared. Her features were blanched with exhaustion, but there was a determination lurking in the stormy gray of her eyes that made the French boy no less weary of her. “Even if Gabriel does not take my side the siguiente time I’m in trouble, he will remember this. And so will you. I am only thinking of myself. tu know how it goes: assassins are selfish creatures, Marius.”
ángel slipped one of the man’s arms around her shoulder. “Now, help me get him to the truck,” she directed. And the French boy complied.