It doesn’t bode well that Natalia didn’t know there were going to be so many. I have no idea why Fernando would be keeping his daughter in the dark, holding her at arm’s length, but damn. Does it mean he knows that she’s been talking to me? Telling me things?
At the very far end of the huge, sprawling lawn, I catch sight of the man. Fernando looks like he’s eight feet tall. He seems to be glowing with pride as he looks down on a confusion of color and fur, just ten feet away from him. I can’t see what’s happening at first. Then, I make out the still form of a body in the center of the pack of wolves. Still, at first, I should say, and then jerking, twitching, dancing almost, as the wolves rip and tear and claw and bite.
They’re feeding.
They’re frenzied.
Their muzzles are covered in blood and gore.
And they are nearly done with their meal.
Natalia covers her mouth with one hand, supressing a horrified sob. “We’re too late. Oh god, we’re too late.”
Even if we’d arrived twenty minutes ago, we would have been too late. “Who is it? Do you know who it is?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I can’t see.” It’s no real surprise that she can’t; her eyes are filled with tears. She buckles at the knees, sinking to the floor. I try to catch her, but she wrestles free from my grip, crawling forward on all fours, watching the nightmare unfold before us through the gaps in the marble balustrade.
I’m at a loss. I arrived fired up to help. To stop this somehow, and now that it’s too late, the adrenalin that has been coursing through my body for the past half an hour has no purpose to serve. My muscles are jumping, demanding me into action, and yet there is no course to take. Nothing that will help, now that the lifeless body out there on the lawn has been reduced to sinew and bone. I haven’t felt this useless in a very, very long time.
“Persephone!” The cry rings out through the night, and it’s the blood curdling cry of someone who’s just had their heart ripped out. Natalia stops crying. She gets to her feet, and then we’re both scanning the crowd again, looking for the person who screamed out the name.
It comes again, loud and clear.
“PERSEPHONE!”
With the large crowd of Fernando’s players taking up much of the room on the lawn, we didn’t notice him before now: Plato, on his hands and knees in the dirt, naked, hands bound behind his back. His face and his torso are streaked with dirt, and a river of blood is running down his back, over his buttocks and down his muscles legs.
“Oh god, is that—”
“Plato,” I finish. “Yes. And the body out there is obviously Persephone.”
“Oh god. Oh god…” Natalia screws her eyes shut tight. She looks like she’s never seen this before. She must have, though. From the way she’s spoken, she must have seen this over and over again, and yet she seemed sickened to her core. Perhaps that’s the difference between men and women. I have seen so much violence and death in my life. The things I experienced while at war haunt my dreams. There seems to be a big difference between a normal person seeing something like this and when I see it now, though.
I know it’s wrong. I know it’s fucked-up. My soul rails against it as firmly and as strongly as it possibly can. And yet I have hurt more than this. I have witnessed such depraved, evil, dark things that I can no longer pinpoint the worst of the worst.
Across the manicured lawns, the wolves are still at work. I have no idea how long they will take over their kill, but they don’t seem to be done yet. They’re getting lazy, full, but they’re still bickering amongst themselves, arguing over their food. Plato screams, his howl of agony plaintive and misery-filled. Harrison, who was still laughing until a moment ago, looks furious. He scowls, his attention turning to Plato. With quick, decisive steps, he heads across the lawn.
“Oh no. Oh god, no,” Natalia wails. I don’t need to ask why she seems so distraught. I can already see the intent in Harrison’s eyes and I know he means no good. He reaches Plato quickly, drawing his gun from his belt at his waist. I’m moving then. I don’t even know what I’m doing until I realize I’m vaulting over the balustrade, down onto the lawn, and there’s suddenly grass beneath my feet.
“Sam! Please, come back!”
I have no idea how Natalia remembers to call me by my cover name, but she does, thank god. She sounds stricken with fear, but I am no longer in control of my own body. I couldn’t stop myself even if I wanted to. I stride across the lawn, fire slamming through my veins. When I see Harrison holding out the gun, when I see that it is, in fact, my gun, I break into a run.
No fucking way is he shooting Plato with my gun.