Corvus (Stars and Sails, Book 1)

Ten

The bullet hit the ground next to Tanner and Amelia Rose. Aiden's heart jolted. He couldn't believe he'd done it. The sand sprayed in the air as the bullet buried its way deep into the soft ground. Tanner let go of Amelia Rose and she fell on her rear end. She stared up at Aiden, eyes filled with shock. Tanner picked his knife off the driftwood log on which he'd been sitting. His face reddened, his teeth clenched with anger. He charged towards Aiden, the knife extended.

"No! Stop!" Amelia Rose screamed. Aiden glanced at her. His grip slackened.

But it was all over. Aiden had made his choice. He couldn't go back on it now. He squeezed the trigger once more. The gun rattled in his hand and the bullet spiraled out of the barrel in a discharge of smoke. It smelled like sulfur, like a dark must that worked itself up from the cellar and hid in the walls until you couldn't bear it anymore. It roared and roared on; a great engine, an earthquake, a puff of smoke and fire. The gun stilled, and his fingers fell numb. He dropped it.

Aiden shot Tanner right between the eyes. He staggered, dead, then collapsed face-first into the sand. Aiden joined him, his legs weakening with every passing second. He slumped onto his knees. Tanner's body was heavy. When Aiden tried to roll it over, it required more strength than he had bargained for.

"Oh my gods..." Aiden trailed off. "Oh my gods."

The dread began to fill him. He had only seen death a few times, but never like Tanner.  Never dealt by his own hand. Tanner's eyes were open and dimmed to the color of a sodden glacier. They held Aiden's gaze regardless of where he attempted to hide.

A sooty black ash clung to Tanner's forehead. The blood whelmed from the sides of his wound and slowly poured down the bridge of his nose. It scaled the slopes of his eyelids and mingled with the expanseless blue before trying to find a way back out. Then it rolled down, down his sunken cheeks and up his hollow forehead until it formed a thick, clotting war paint. The blood drained into the sand. It was too much to sink, so it slowly migrated towards the lapping ocean waves.

Aiden pushed at Tanner's shoulder. Once and once more. "Tanner! Tanner, come on." He didn't stir, but Aiden couldn't believe he was dead either.

Amelia Rose and Aiden turned their eyes back to each other at the same time. She began to tremble violently. She pushed herself off the ground with weak legs and began to run, but the sand swallowed her feet and dragged her down. Her white dress was dirty. She collapsed into a tight ball and wept. Aiden fell onto his back in the sand and looked at the stars. They began to twist and turn and stumble and orbit. Something was spinning. Maybe the sky was spinning, or the ground was spinning, or he was spinning all in his head. The two of them laid there for some time.

"Who are you?" Amelia Rose asked. She had stopped crying some time ago, but her breath was still in tatters.

"You know who I am," Aiden said softly because his throat burned from breathing so hard.

"You killed him!" A cry escaped her, but she tried her hardest to curb her emotions.

"You think you could change him." he said, shaking his head. His hand fumbled for the gun. It was still warm to the touch. He jammed it into his boot.

"Of course! How can you...how can you be so simple to believe that nobody changes?" she said, "You. Maybe you cannot change, but him—"

"He was fucked." He forced out a grating breath. "And you should believe it. He was going to hit you."

"Mr. Tanner?" she asked and drew another long pause. It lasted for hours, it seemed. "You don't know him like I do. He's not the same person he is to you. He's crude, he's boorish, but he wants so much to be good." She was wrong, Aiden thought. Tanner wanted no part of being better. He had tortured and disrespected Aiden for years.