A/N: So here comes the big fight! Ouch! :)
7. Invading the lair.
When we both made it to Griffin's lair, he remained outside to bury the last Paladin left from Roma, while I just sat there and polished my sword. I didn't want to look at him because it hurt to think that maybe in a few minutes he wouldn't be there anymore.
Then I heard someone Jump into the lair. I got up, held my sword high and turned to Griffin. He hadn't heard anything and seemed to avoid my gaze as easily as I was avoiding his. I turned to the entrance of the cave and decided to go on foot.
When I reached the living-room, I understood two things at once. First, David had brought his girlfriend to the lair. Second, he hadn't Jumped to several places before coming. I could already hear the sound the machine was doing on the other side of the jumpscar. I swore between my teeth.
When she saw me and when her brown eyes locked on my katana, Millie grabbed a metal box and tried to protect herself from me. Meanwhile, I heard David talking to Griffin outside.
"David's outside. Go!" I didn't need to say it twice, she almost ran to the entrance.
I just stood there, in front of all his drawings, dreading who might be the first to enter, though I perfectly knew it would be Roland. I swore again.
Griffin Jumped at my side, his blue eyes wide when he saw the opening wormhole in the middle of his home. I took his hand and squeezed it. He wrapped his arm around my waist and leaned towards my ear. "Promise me you won't try anything foolish."
I turned to him. "I won't. You?"
"Can't promise, luv'!"
David then Jumped next to both of us. Griffin let go of me, and I suddenly felt unarmed. He turned to face the taller one with fiery eyes. "What have you done?"
David pushed him aside a little. "Griffin..."
"Where does this thing go?"
"We gotta go!" He pushed him away again, while the wormhole started to produce electric noises. Someone was getting through.
"David, what did you do?" Griffin's voice was angrier than I ever heard it before.
Then we saw it. He was coming through. I Jumped outside of the lair, to hide behind the rocks, and waved to Millie to go away. I heard the boys doing so too, and I guessed they were hiding behind the columns. "Please God, if you do exist, don't kill him, just don't!" I lifted my sword and prepared myself for any amount of Paladins invading the lair.
I heard it. Three of them had gone through. I had the effect of surprise on my side, but so did they. I was hiding, they weren't. And I could guess some of them had heard about some kind of alliance between the Jumpers.
Alliance, let me laugh. Killing or being killed. That wasn't an alliance at all. It was Resistance. We were bloody Jews fighting bloody Nazis. And we wouldn't need Americans to save our asses this time!
It all happened very fast. I heard a cry, then another, louder, and I made up that David had fucked up. No way could this boy be useful. I started breathing evenly to prepare myself, and I heard him. Roland. He was there, of course. And he was so happy to see David again. I was sure he would take his precious silver knife any moment now and try to rip his stomach in two. I couldn't let this happen. But, hey, I wasn't alone in this!
I watched Millie as she climbed the dune to see where it lead. She would be safe as long as she visited Egypt. I turned around and tried to see where the other two had gone.
"Thanks for leading me to your friend!" His voice hadn't changed. Still the same old bigot bastard. I repressed a growl.
"Wait wait wait! Why are you doing this to me?" I rolled my eyes. Would he never learn? "I never hurt you. I never hurt anybody!"
"Not yet but you will. Sooner or later you all go bad." For once I agreed. But hey, dearest, why was that?
"What if I'm different?" Yeah, because you're a stupid selfish git!
"You're not different."
"I'm different!" I let out a cry. Griffin had joined the fight, after all. I moved from the shadows and decided to see what was definitely going on. He had taken his flame-thrower from the armoury and was now threatening the bastard with it. A wave of affection shocked through me.
"Move!" Roland jumped out of the way, but one the other two didn't make it and burnt alive.
I heard Roland and Griffin engaging a fight, but I was too busy engaging my own to see what they were doing.
The man was tall. Like very tall. Unfortunately he wasn't too tall to move quickly. He was just the most perfect war machine I've ever seen. And his electric sticks were moving far too quickly for me to dodge everything.
I caught one shock in the stomach, another in the forearm. When I turned to lift my sword he kicked it out of the way. I got one of my knives out, but so did he. We engaged front fight, but every move I did was automatically shot away. I cried out in pain when his blade entered the flesh of my right leg, not far from where I had been injured two days before, and I Jumped away.
"You bastard!" I yelled before Jumping in his face.
He waited for this. They all do. Damn my temper!
The wires closed around my body and I was forced down. The current was excruciating and I thought I'd never be able to have proper thoughts anymore.
I didn't hear who or what killed him. I just saw him fall, a horrible hole on the side of his head, but all I could feel and hear and taste was pain. But I could see a strange dust wave coming all over me. I felt my breathing scorch, but I just kept on crying and screaming and trying to move under these death wires.
Suddenly it was gone. They were all gone. The pain, the wires, the burns, all gone.
And I could feel. His hands were pulling me up, softly, carefully. I knew it was him. I recognized his touch, the shudders it sent through my spine.
When my eyes opened, I saw his face, not inches from mine, and all I could do was kissing him. He was alive. I was alive. We made it alive.
He didn't answer the kiss and we parted, unsatisfied.
David was standing where the wormhole had been, his blue eyes wide in shock and pain. I didn't understand why. Griffin sat me against his still standing couch and went in his armoury. I struggled to get up but decided to just wait until my whole body responded. It took a while.
"I gotta go get her!" I suddenly heard the boys arguing. I lifted my eyelids and saw them both standing next to the bomb Griffin had kept all this time in one single purpose.
Oh dear, they had her. They got her and now my dear Griffin, almighty blowing Briton wanted to kill her as well as all of the Paladins working with Roland. I tried to get up again but it was hard, as if I weighed a ton.
"Wha'?"
"Griffin that's my fault that she's there, I...can't just..."
"What?"
"We gotta get her out of there right?" He looked at Griffin in total despair. "We have to get her out of there!"
"Okay, I can hear you! I'm not deaf! I understand what you're saying, I can actually hear!"
"Alright."
"It's a crying shame, it really is. But, you know what, we all have to make sacrifices once in a while, you know." He walked towards his desk and I caught his gaze. He looked at me, half sorry half decided. I just shook my head.
"'Cause you're making any?" I growled. Of course he did! You silly little daddy's boy!
"You know what, I made mine, right? I was five. They came to my house and killed my parents." David just grabbed the bomb and Jumped away with it.
I narrowed my eyes at Griffin as he stared into thin air, then at me. "Don't! Griffin, just don't!"
He Jumped in my face, pecked me on the lips and Jumped away through David's jumpscar.
I bolted upright, suddenly recovering all my faculties, but when I reached it, the jumpscar had just disappeared. I swore between my teeth and turned around to find any clues of where he could have been.
I decided to play safe. I grabbed my sword and Jumped to Millie's house. I sat on the rooftop and waited for Silly-boy to come back. Because I knew that there was no way he wouldn't win over Griffin. Not for Millie. When you fight for the most precious thing you possess, your strengths are decoupled. I knew that for sure.
I ripped part of my shirt and banded my still bleeding leg with it. I saw burns on my stomach and arms, but they weren't serious. So I sighed and waited.
When I saw him Jumping in front of me, in the street, I understood something could have been wrong. David's eyes were somehow sad, and he was bruising all over. "Oh no!"
He Jumped again and I followed. I knew where he was.
When I appeared next to him on Millie's balcony, he took my throat and shot me a killing gaze. "Don't you try and do like him!" His whisper burnt my face.
"David, where have you left him? Please, tell me!"
"So that you can fulfil your little bombing plan? I don't think so!"
"I don't want to kill them! Look at me, David Rice!" I turned his face so that his eyes were just inches from mine. "I don't kill for a pleasure. Save her. I know you can. You love her. I love him. Please, David..." I withdrew my hands and wiped the tears away.
He just looked at me, still at guard, and then his eyes caught Millie, wires wrapped around her and the column to which she was tied. "I left him in Chechnya."
I pushed him aside and Jumped away.
I landed in a battlefield, not far from a little city where tanks were moving away. Some electric cables were cut down all over the place, and a tower was down.
I Jumped in the city. I have been there before. I had followed a Chechen Jumper who wanted me to help him save his sister. If all went as planned they are now safely living in South Carolina.
I stopped a soldier. He didn't seem unfriendly, but I knew that a woman wearing a sword couldn't be seen in a good way in such a troubled country. "Простите, вы видели молодого блондина с кожаной куртке?" The man looked at me strangely, and I wondered if my Russian was still as good as it used to be.
He shook his head. "Нет, но я увидел двух парней боях под пилоны существуют" He pointed towards the fallen electric tower, and I shook hands with him.
"большое спасибо" I walked towards it, dreading to see a corpse or something.
I could have been close. Griffin was hanging in a fallen pillar, still running current, and he had already fainted. I could see burns on his hands and face, and I thanked the sky his back at least was protected.
I turned around and searched the place for anything that could have helped me. Nothing, of course.
When I turned to him again and saw that he was barely breathing, I started to panic.
"Griffin, I made you swear. If you die, I kill you!" And I Jumped away to my lair.
So, sorry, only one chapter left and an epilogue. Sorry! :(
Oh, and if any Russian-speaking readers pass by, sorry for the sickness, I really hate Google's translations, but hay, Jumpers' writers didn't think about making them land in Italy, shame... :s
