Together: A Dark Romance Duet || Leon Kennedy x Female Reader

Chapter 26: Leon

I watch the life depart what remains of Ramón's battered body, dislodging my knife from his engorged eye. The orb squirms under my blade, yielding to the pain after the third time. I raise my gun to Ramón's forehead and shoot. Finally, the creature relents, letting go of the last strings of life it held on to. Ramón cries out in pain. I jump backward just as the monster's body flails, lashing out in a reckless attempt to fight for life. His body, as well as the mass of gore he's attached to, drops to the stones, sputtering and twitching a final few times.

"See you in hell, Mr. Kennedy,"  Ramón's dark, guttural voice echos out on an exhale of breath. The fall lets off vibrations on the bridge, shaking the stones beneath me and seemingly the walls of the ancient chantry, a rumble of power leaving this earthly plain. Behind Ramón's body, I watch as that power causes the suspension bridge to fall, collapsing to the ground with a massive thud, kicking up the dust around it. In the aftermath of the fight, silence descends.

Fuck.

I catch my breath, staring down at the mass of flesh, sinew, and gore—at the once regal Ramón Salazar, who now lies dead at my boots. "Fucking clown."

I'd kill him again if I could just for all the trouble he's caused me, for the part he's played in this shitshow. He's the reason she felt the need to run off again, the reason she willingly went with Krauser.

I know why she did it, though. There was no way we could've taken down both Ramón and Krauser. Krauser has that same power in him, the power that knits torn flesh back together in seconds, that easily replaces blood with some vile, acidic fluid, the kind of power that craves death. Once that plague takes up space in the bloodstream, it forces the host to abandon its body, giving way to a greater being. I've seen it happen too often, and if I'm not fast enough, it will claim us both.

"No time to lose," I mumble, reloading my shotgun. It's not smart to dwell among the dead, so I make haste. With one last glance at Ramón's prone form, I slide past it, quickening my steps with each breath closer to her.

Following their footsteps, I greet the night with a lungful of fresh air. A sea breeze engulfs me, ruffling my hair and flowing over my damp skin. It's been too many hours without sleep, but nothing I'm not accustomed to. Still, I find myself lagging as I take the weathered stone steps down the side of the castle, gazing out at the vast expanse of the Atlantic, a beast in itself that seems to sever us from reality. I've been on countless remote missions before, but never one that made me feel so isolated, so discounted, as if I'm a ghost haunting a graveyard, so close to life but never allowed to touch, to cross over to the living. It's more than enough to drive someone to insanity, being in the company of death for so long.

I reach the bottom of the stones, finding a rusted elevator similar to the one Luis and I took on our path to the surface. The shaft is worn by wind and sea, yet a single lightbulb within sways in the breeze, letting me know it's still powered for use. I have no time to consider other options—this is the only path forward, the only one they could've taken in their escape. A moment later, my suspicions are confirmed when I hear the steady stream of a motor, waves slapping against each other in the wake of a presence, a disturbance in the otherwise still surface.

As I disappear behind a mountain of jagged rocks, I barely glimpse the speedboat that cuts through the waves, emerging from a cave as it leaves the castle behind.

My jaw clenches. "I won't let them take you away from me again," I say to the wind, hoping my words guide me forward, following her to the end.

~

At the bottom of the elevator and through stone corridors, I reach a boathouse and find exactly what I'd been hoping to see. There, bobbing gently in the calm waves, a speed boat waits moored to the side of a dock.