My knock teeters me backward and I grab the doorframe to regain my balance. The door swings open on its ruined latch and I step inside quickly. Three Peacekeepers look up, startled, but not as startled as the man they are crouching around. His hand is closed around the end of an arrow and I flinch instinctively.
"What are you doing?" the man at his head barks at me. Gale hastily releases his grip on the arrowhead and turns slightly away, using the distraction to hide his face.
"I was on the street," I say, my voice trembling convincingly. "It just fell away. People are falling in, they need your help, sir." I raise my hands pleadingly, moving marginally closer to the second soldier and positioning myself between him and Gale.
"They need more help than I can give," he growls. He turns back to Gale, interested in the bow, clearly unaware of who has fallen into his lap. "You're awfully well armed for a refugee. Whose house did you loot to come across such a prize?"
Gale is trying desperately to avoid eye contact without looking suspicious about it. In seconds the soldiers will put together the bow and his size and they will realize who he is. I'm not being any use at all as a distraction. Unable to think of anything else, I launch myself at the nearest soldier. He is caught completely off guard and we go down in a tangle of curses and flying limbs. Wrapping my legs around his, I sweep him over onto his back and reach behind me to grab the ankle of the second guard. With a quick tug, he's down too and Gale leaps for the third. The sharp crack of a gunshot and Gale grunts painfully, his arm flying backward. My elbow is ratcheted around the neck of the guard I grabbed while I scissor my legs around the first one, the soldier who fired his gun. With a quick twist I hear a sickening snap and I'm holding a limp body. The whisper wails in ecstasy and my vision strobes, but I reach for the first guard and press my arm across his neck, his legs kicking and flopping until he gasps into stillness. Another shot and Gale cries out, flying backward. I fling myself across a low table and crash into the guard, barreling him forward onto his face. On the way down, his gun fires again and a black hole rips open the front of his white uniform. He doesn't feel it when he hits the ground.
Panting, I crawl to Gale who lies on his back, clutching his side while blood pours from his shoulder. The second soldier's chest rises and falls shallowly, but I don't point it out to Gale, certain he would end it. We need to move immediately.
"How?" he gasps painfully, face twisted in a fierce grimace as he grips his ribs.
"Seemed like you could use a diversion," I shrug, pulling his hand away and trying to see the wound. "Katniss is away, at least she was running when I saw you dangling over the pit." A shallow gash across the tight plane of his ribs is blackened at the edges, but doesn't seem deep or serious. "That probably burns like hell, but I think your shoulder is worse," I tell him.
He grunts and nods, trying to control his breathing. "Doesn't matter," he gasps. "We have to go now. Right now."
"You can rest for just a second," I tell him. "You'll only get caught again if you try running right now. Get your breath back." I scan the room quickly, looking for something to bind his wound with, hoping the guard stays unconscious until we leave. I force my eyes away from the two who won't wake, the whisper chanting with insane triumph. murderer killer butcher A clean looking rag is draped over a chair back and I grab for it with relief.
"I'm not as good as Katniss," I warn, winding the cloth under his arm as tightly as I dare. His breath draws in sharply, but I pull mercilessly. The winged demon flares across my eyes as I try to copy the knot Katniss made for my leg, sliding a long-handled fork through and winding until Gale curses me through clenched teeth. The makeshift tourniquet is already starting to redden, and his lips are frighteningly pale, his eyes glazed.
"We're going out the back," I tell him, peering toward the rear of the house. He nods uncomprehendingly and scrabbles around, trying to gain his feet. He's losing a lot of blood. I get my shoulder under his arm and heave him upright, supporting his tottering weight the best I can. We stumble through the silent house and I lean him against the wall while I ease open the back door, scanning for lurking Peacekeepers. The back alley is eerily quiet, carrying the echoes of the despairing cries and distant gunfire from the front. Pulling his arm around my neck, we make our way outside.
Gale is wobbling on his feet, his eyes rolling sluggishly in his head. The bandage is bright red already and I grind my teeth in frustration. With all the wounds I've been around, it seems like I'd have picked up something about healing.
"You're doing great," I whisper as I scan the alleyway with frantic eyes. Where to go? Someone is going to see us and that will be that. "We'll be safe soon."
He shakes his head doggedly, "Katniss," he slurs.
"I know," I grind out, my own anxiety screeching against my helplessness. What to do?
I jump like a startled deer when a door across the alleyway swings open and a tiny man pokes his head out, his eyes darting up and down the path, hissing and waving us toward him. I appreciate the kindness, but once he realizes who we are, it will be a different story. I shake my head, and wave silently, trying to signal that we're fine.
"Peeta," his voice barely carries across the yard. "Come quickly!"
My heart thuds into my shoes and Gale's head rolls on his neck, trying to focus on the threat. I haul him around, readying to run, but the man calls out again.
"Junius was my son!"
I freeze. traps tricks lies danger The whisper buzzes an angry warning and I stand, rooted to the spot by indecision. Finally, I realize we have no other choice. If it comes down to it, I'll shove the nightlock through Gale's teeth and try to grab his knife for me.
Crossing the small patch of alleyway, I drag Gale along and we crowd through the doorway into a dimly lit apartment. The small man is teary-eyed and trembling like a leaf, clutching at us and trying to get us inside quickly. Gale drops into a seat at the kitchen table and slumps forward, head cradled on one arm, the other hanging limply at his side. Junius' father, if it really is him, flutters around the kitchen, gathering towels and water. And then I see a picture of Junius, beaming next to my Capitol headshot, framed on the wall over the table.
"He loved you," the man says, his voice low and cracked, unable to meet my eyes. "He thought you were so brave and so kind. He always said it was an honor to work for you."
I swallow a lump in my throat. "He was brave, too," I reply. "He knew he was going to be in trouble at the end, and he only wanted to do what was right. You would have been proud of him."
The man's hands still for only a moment. "Thank you," he whispers. "I am."
After a fraught pause, he finally looks at me. "I have a closet behind the bathroom that can't be found without knowing to look for it. You can hide there."
This is where Junius got his courage. I hate to do this to him, hiding a rebel of Gale's stature means certain death, but my blood is screaming with the need to find Katniss.
"I need to go, I have to find my friends. But, I'm so sorry, can he stay?"
Junius' father nods, resolute and terrified. "I'll keep him safe."
"I know you will." I offer my hand. "We haven't met. I'm Peeta Mellark, from District Twelve."
"I'm Cassius Deluze," he replies, shaking my hand firmly. "I have no affiliation any longer."
The ache in his voice twists in my chest. I grasp his wrist and meet his eyes. "Soon, we'll all be from Panem," I promise him.
Cassius helps me slip out the front door into a nearly empty street. He hisses directions to the City Circle, only a block away, and ducks quickly back inside, the door thumping firmly closed. I run. Around the corner I slide to a stop, swallowed up in the flood of refugees all moving in the same direction. It's like the dreams Eirik used to have. No matter how hard he ran, he never gained ground. I struggle forward, fighting my way through the throng of despondent, crushed humanity huddled together for warmth and security.
The closer I get to the City Circle, the louder the whisper rings in my ears. Visions of flaming chariots, screaming crowds, leering sponsors all flare before my eyes and I begin to see grasping hands and bared teeth. My hands pull automatically against cuffs that aren't there and I bite my lip until I taste blood, trying to force my mind to focus on the need at hand. I scan the crowd for her bright red cloak.
Unable to see anything, I pull myself up on the flat surface of a bollard, teetering and dangerously exposed. My eyes fly over the surging crowd, and then I see it. A large, rectangular pen in front of the mansion is guarded by anxious looking Peacekeepers. Its concrete walls hold in scores of children, clustered together and shivering, terrified and freezing. Forming a human shield in front of the mansion.
My vision jumps and stutters and my hands begin to shake. Rage, hot and roiling, churns through my belly and rises in a furious tide through my blood. With a strangled snarl I leap down and start toward the barricades, the crush of bodies falling aside as I stalk toward the guards keeping children between danger and Snow.
A screaming pulse in the crowd and the wave of refugees is blown sideways, carrying me with it. Voices rise in panic, "The rebels! The rebels!" and the crush swells back as the rebel army surges into the Circle, refugees fleeing frantically. I brace for the blasts of pods they must activate, but curiously, they don't come. Warily, I turn back to my path. A tremor in the air, a low hum, and a hovercraft appears over the penned in children. The seal of the Capitol gleams prominently from the shining hull, but something about it tugs at my mind. If Snow is desperate enough to hide behind children, why wouldn't he use the craft to flee?
With a hiss of opening hatches, a swarm of silver parachutes flutters over the children, bright with promises of valuable gifts. Their hands reach upward, grasping and clutching, freezing and blue but eager nonetheless. The hovercraft vanishes as suddenly as it appeared, and tiny fingers work at strings, fervently prying open the unexpected treasures. Two heartbeats later, a concussive blast as a scattering of the parachutes detonate.
My knees buckle and I drop to the snow, screams are rising over the red mist and miniature corpses. Stunned astonishment gives way to frantic commotion. A rising swell surges toward the barricades where the trapped children are either lying in crumpled heaps or writhing in spreading crimson pools. Some stagger blindly, unable to comprehend what's happened.
The Peacekeepers begin desperately heaving at the concrete barriers, clearing a way to the children who still clutch numbly at silvery bundles. The flash of sunlight off one parachute flares in my vision and I leap to my feet, icy dread turning my steps leaden as I rush forward. It was no coincidence only some of the parachutes loosed their deadly load, my suspicions confirmed as another host of white uniforms rush through the gap toward the wailing children. The painfully familiar medical uniforms of District Thirteen flood into the penned area, escorted by troops of rebel soldiers. The children are bait.
As if in a nightmare, I fight my way forward, screaming my warning. But my way is blocked by the milling, horrified people and my voice is lost in their mourning wail. Like an insect trapped in an amber bubble, I'm immobile, inert, voiceless. Ahead of me, clinging to a flagpole, a figure swathed in a billowing black cloak screams into the crowd.
"Prim!"
She leaps into the crowd and for a moment I lose her. Then she surfaces, closer to the barricade, fighting her way to the concrete pen and the crowd of medics there. Time slows around me as I watch her race toward the danger, into the grip of catastrophe. With a strangled cry of despair, I lunge forward, just as the rest of the parachutes explode.
A bloom of coppery orange and radiant gold. Glowing balls of luminescent beauty fly over the crowd against the thrumming boom of the eruption. Her cloak flares into fiery wings as she flies back toward me. A fireball runs its blazing touch along my chest and over my shoulder, gifting me my own flaming wings as I sprint toward her, reaching for her, clutching her to my chest, wrapping her in my arms where she should have been all along, where she should always remain.
With a crash, we tumble backward into the snow and I rip her flaming cloak away, my own wings flaring out behind me, licking tongues of flame along my jaw and up my neck, across my face. I roll her over in the snow, smothering the fiery hunger that tries to devour her, my hands gladly taking the flames from her as I beat away the blazing heat from her terrifyingly still body. But other hands are pulling at me, prying me away from her, and I have no strength left to fight them. I collapse onto the snowy ground next to her, consumed, as I always knew I would be, by her fire.