A Night To Remember

29. to kill a salvatore

Elliot Salvatore

Mine was a fate worse than death. I cradled the dying between my arms. Survivor guilt thrummed through every strings of vessel attached to my heart as theirs started to die. Burgundy on my skin. My throat burned all the words I wanted to scream. I didn't know how to voice the emotions inside my head.

Another bullet pierced the copper filled air. I jumped to my feet and flipped the table over, using it as a temporary shield. Delicate pieces of my grandmother's precious fine china shattered into thousand of shards. My fingers tightened around the gun I was holding as I blindly shot back at the intruders. They could be anywhere inside the trees and I had no vision of them. I looked around the garden trying to get a hold of some of our guards. None of them were in their usual spot.

I heard my grandfather tried to get up from behind the chair he was took down with him. The sound of blood gurgling out of his mouth drowned out the gunshot fight and for awhile my whole world stopped spinning as something between guilt and anger constricted inside my chest.

I turned my head and looked down at my grandmother for the first time. She laid her head on my thigh. Cashmere sweater soaked with sticky crimson. A bullet between her eyes and seven more on her abdomen. I counted the shots. I connected the bullet holes because there was nothing I could do. She was dead. I was holding her corpse. I realized as I sat in the cold of her blood and struggled to grasp the concept of what happened a minute ago and what was happening.

So much blood. I fucking hated it. So cold with grief. I had never been so alone. The entire world crumbled down onto me.

"Elliot." My grandfather groaned a few feet away. I snapped my head to the source of his voice and found him crawling toward us.

I stared at the blood trail he left behind and grabbed his shoulder, carefully laid him flat on the ground. "Hold still. I don't know where the shooter is."

"Where's Gianna?" His voice came out all wrong and hoarse.

My fingers flexed around my gun. I never answered his question as I shielded him with my body. "You can't die. Okay? You. Cannot. Die."

"It takes more than a bullet to kill a Salvatore." He told me, willing to scowl at me with disappointment. Except I could tell the pain was starting to get to him too. "Have your father taught you nothing?" His question came out with more blood.

"Father will be pissed if you die on me." I said as I stuck my hand inside the gunshot wound on the side of his neck.

For the first time in my life, I dropped my gun during a bloodbath. It was a dumb thing to do but he was dying and I couldn't do a damn thing about it. His face got paler by the seconds I didn't know what to do. I could feel it as his pulse started to slow gradually. I shoved my free hand into my pocket and fished for my phone to call for backup.

The screen was slippery with blood from my red covered fingers by the time I managed to dial a number. "Eden will be here soon. He's going to know what to do. Okay? You better hold the fuck on, old man." I told him as I listened to the sound of my phone beeping.

For a man so adapted to everything dangerous, Steven Salvatore had never looked so small before. His eyes dimmed with slight acceptance and defeat. He brought his hand to my face, smearing more blood across my cheek.

I wanted to crawl out of my own skin and got rid of the sickening feeling of it on me. It was too much blood. It was everywhere. Blood that used to feel like my most favorite piece of cloth was suffocating me whole.

"She's dead, isn't she?" He asked softly.

My entire body tensed. I clenched my jaw and looked at him dead in the eyes, hoping he wouldn't give up. "Yes."