Elara's POV
The smile was the most terrifying part. It was a mask, a lie he didn't even bother to make convincing. It said, This is a misunderstanding. We can talk. But his eyes, those frozen-lake eyes, told the true story. They held the cold, flat look of a man assessing a problem that needed to be eliminated. Permanently.
Every nerve ending in my body fired at once, a synchronized alarm screaming RUN!
I spun so fast the world blurred. My tote bag, forgotten on my shoulder, flew off and hit the wall with a soft thud. I left it. I left everything. Survival was a white-noise shriek drowning out all other thought. I launched myself back down the pitch-black alley, blind with terror, my arms pumping like pistons.
"Get her!"
Vance's roar shattered the night's quiet. It wasn't a smooth, commanding tone anymore; it was the raw, guttural snarl of a predator whose hunt had been discovered. A dangerous predator with resources.
The first gunshot came less than two seconds later.
The sound wasn't like the crisp bangs in movies or TV. It was a catastrophic KRAK that tore the fabric of the air itself, a physical shockwave that punched me between the shoulder blades. A searing line of white-hot fire scored across the outside of my right arm, just below the shoulder. The impact didn't push me; it spun me, whipping me halfway around like a ragdoll.
I'm shot. I've actually been shot. The thought was absurd, clinical, a fact about a body in a textbook. A distant part of my brain noted: Ballistics. Likely a 9mm. Velocity approximately… Then the pain arrived, not as a wave but as a sudden, all-consuming inferno. A brand of pure agony pressed into my flesh. A shocked cry was ripped from my throat. I stumbled, my legs buckling, and clutched at my arm. My fingers came away warm and slick. Blood. My blood. In the dim light from the street behind me, it looked black.
Don't stop. If you stop, you die. If you fall, you die. Move. MOVE.
The mantra beat in time with my crashing heart, a primal drum driving me forward. I lurched into a run again, my gait clumsy and stumbling. I burst out of the alley onto another deserted side street. The world was a tilting carousel of dark, anonymous buildings and blurry, haloed streetlights. Which way is safe? Where do I go? There was no safe. There was only one way. Left. Go left.
The heavy, pounding footsteps behind me were a drumbeat of death, growing closer with each thunderous step. Two sets. Maybe three. They were faster. Stronger. Uninjured. I was a wounded animal, leaving a glittering trail of crimson drops on the dark, wet pavement. A perfect, idiot-proof path for the wolves.
Think like a storm, a detached, analytical part of my mind whispered, cutting through the panic. It was the part that could look at a radar map and predict a tornado's path. You're not a person right now. You're a low-pressure system. You are chaos. Move erratically. Don't be predictable. I veered sharply right, ducking into another, narrower alley, my breath sobbing in my throat, each gasp a knife of cold air in my lungs. The pain in my arm was a living thing, a rabid dog gnawing at the edges of my consciousness, trying to drag me down into darkness.
I tripped. My foot caught on a bulging black trash bag. I went down hard, my knees and hands smacking the wet concrete. The impact sent a fresh jolt of agony through my arm. A whimper escaped me. The footsteps grew louder, echoing off the close walls. They were at the alley entrance.
Scrambling up, my palms scraped and stinging, I tasted bile. Up ahead, I saw a slash of brighter light. A main road. Atlantic Avenue. There would be traffic, even at this hour. There would be people, late-night commuters, witnesses. Safety in numbers. It was a fragile, desperate hope, but it was the only one I had left.
I poured every last ounce of will, every shred of strength, into my legs. I forced them to move, to carry me out of the darkness and into the light of the wide street.
The street was empty.
Not just quiet. Deserted. Shops were dark, steel grates pulled down over their windows. The sidewalks were bare. The traffic lights cycled pointlessly from green to yellow to red for no one. The only sign of life, the only source of light, was a flickering, purplish neon sign directly across the road. The world had abandoned me. The strength bled out of me, mixing with the blood soaking through my coat sleeve. My legs trembled violently, muscles turning to water. I couldn't run another step. I could barely stand.
I looked up, my vision swimming, dark spots dancing at the edges. The neon sign buzzed and sputtered, casting a sickly, pulsating glow on the wet sidewalk.
It was a bar. The sign, in elegant, old-fashioned cursive script, read: Nero's Gate. And underneath, in smaller, stark, block letters: Private Members Only. The heavy, running footsteps skidded to a halt at the alley entrance behind me. I heard their ragged, furious breathing. I heard the gritty sound of a shoe pivoting on pavement. I had one choice left. It wasn't a choice at all. It was the final move in a game I'd already lost.