Augustine’s cover fire kept the other two pinned by the ancient woodstove. I hit the deck and crawled left, using the overturned furniture as a shield. The gunfire was so close it made my fillings ache.
Seraphina sat absolutely still. Not cowering, not crying. Her face was a mask of calculation, eyes tracking the vectors, judging the odds.
The second Russian went down, screaming, Seneca’s blade protruding from the hollow of his neck. The room smelled like copper and panic. Damron racked the shotgun and fired again, hitting the third man square in the torso. The Russian slammed back into the wall, dropped his weapon, and tried to crawl to the kitchen. Damron let him.
The last man, the one closest to Seraphina, went for her like a shield, grabbing her by the neck and hauling her upright, chair and all. He had a pistol to her temple, speaking in a rush of guttural Russian. I caught only a word—"govno"—before the rest was lost in the reverb.
I froze. He was three meters away, maybe less, and her eyes had gone wide.
Seneca broke the standoff, circling behind, hands already red up to the wrist. “Drop it,” he said. His voice sounded like it was made of gravel and broken glass.
The Russian didn’t drop it. He pressed the muzzle deeper into Seraphina’s scalp, drawing a line of blood at her hairline. She flinched but didn’t cry out.
I saw the decision in Damron’s face before he even moved. He lowered the shotgun, a half-second of fake surrender. The Russian tracked him, yelling something about "Amerikanskiy suka," spit flying.
In that blink, Augustine fired one shot. It caught the Russian in the shoulder, a clean hole that spun him sideways. The bullet missed Seraphina by a breath, but the shock was enough. She twisted, chair buckling, and the Russian went down with her.
Seneca was there, fast and final. He pinned the Russian, broke the man’s wrist with a single stomp, and pried the gun from his useless hand. I rushed to Seraphina, heart in my throat, and started cutting the duct tape with my pocket blade.
She was breathing, shallow but steady. The blood at her temple was superficial, a red line already drying in the cold air.
“You okay?” I asked, stupid as hell, but I had to say it.
She laughed, sharp and raw. “I told you I’m harder to break than I look.”
I could have kissed her then, but her hands were still taped behind her back.
Seneca wiped his knife on the Russian’s shirt, then tossed the blade at my feet. “You owe me,” he said, not looking at either of us.
Damron checked the dead and the dying, his own face unreadable behind the sweat and powder smoke. Augustine stood in the doorway, rifle at low ready, watching for the next wave.
The world had gone so quiet I could hear my own pulse.
Seraphina leaned into me, her body trembling with the aftershock. I freed her hands, then held them in my own. Her skin was ice, but the grip was fierce. “Is it over?” she whispered.
I looked at the carnage, at the men who had thought they could take her and walk away. “For now,” I said.
Seneca yanked the one live Russian to his knees, tied his hands with a length of dirty cord. “What do we do with him?”
Damron shrugged, already reloading the shotgun. “Nothing. Let the feds clean up their own mess.”
Seneca grinned, but it was the kind of smile that belonged on a warning label. He dragged the prisoner outside, left him kneeling in the snow, then lit a cigarette and waited for the headlights of the responding units. They’d be here soon. It was always that way.
Inside, Augustine handed me a bottle of water, then sat next to the stove, nursing a bruised rib. “You good, Chemist?”
I nodded. “Never better.”
He nodded back, then shut his eyes. He wouldn’t talk about the fear, and neither would I.
Damron made a sweep of the building, double-tapping each corpse to make sure the job was done. He came back, wiped the stock of the shotgun on his jeans, and said, “We should go.”
Seraphina tried to stand, but her knees buckled. I caught her before she hit the floor. She leaned into me, head buried in my shoulder, hair wild and sticky with blood.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“I don’t think so,” a man said as he appeared through a doorway, his thick Eastern European accent almost too thick to understand. He was the size of a mountain, his nose just as crooked. “She stays.”
I moved Seraphina behind me. “I got him,” I said to Damron, Seneaca, and Augustine.
