Ravenwings (Imaged + Completed) [1st in Trilogy]

Part III: Chapter 48

 Wait, what? My mind gaped as Woodman halted my attempt to leave.

"You've seen our faces. We can't just let you run off. You know, even though I promised not to hurt you, my friends did not." Woodman motioned to Earnest, who raised and aimed a gun directly at me. "Come back here, dear. We promised you'd get to watch him scream, didn't we?"

"Let her go!" Raven demanded, struggling Percy, Ben, and Woodman. "You f*cking–"

Woodman gave him a good solid kick in the stomach for speaking, and Raven doubled over. "Shut the f*ck up. You know I'm a man of my word; you should have been clearer on your deal."

"If you want my obedience," Raven insisted, "you better let her–"

"I said, shut the f*ck up!" Woodman boomed and kicked him more and all the harder. "I'll have your obedience, every time I hold a knife to her. We can't just let such a valuable token go, I now have complete control over you...and the complete set of collectables."

"Please no," I begged, the words tumbling out of my mouth before I knew they were there. Raven would never manage to escape as long as they kept me for insurance. We would grow old in those cages in the basement dungeon. It was the only thing worse than Raven being locked up with a small chance of escape; both of us locked up with no escape.

"How could you not have seen this coming?" Woodman laughed, and his cronies followed his cue with a cliché chuckle.

This can't be happening, this...just can't be happening... We were supposed to escape, we were supposed to get away...

"We're keeping you two together; isn't that thoughtful of us?"

No, please no... There had to be a way out. 

Raven looked back at me over his shoulder again, and Woodman yanked on the belt as he had before, pulling on it and cutting off some of Raven's circulation as his face turned a little red. "Hey! Don't you try to pull anything, or I might just give your 'girlfriend' to Percival."

Raven immediately petrified as still as a statue, his jaw clenched in rage.

This can't be it. There has to be something... My pocket...the thing Raven had slipped in my pocket. I subtly slipped my hand into my flannel pocket and felt something cold, metal, and long.

A dog whistle?!

"It's nice to have you back where you belong," Woodman told Raven with a triumphant sigh. "And as for our little demon-spawn's wh*re," he turned to me as my throat dried up. "Even though we've so much to gain from your little escapade, you still need to face consequences."

"Let me pay them," Raven interrupted, and was kicked and beaten for it as he gasped in pain at the blows.

"Shut up and watch what happens when you cross me," Woodman said. "Earnest, relieve her of her right knee."

The color drained from my face as Woodman set the fate for the knee he'd threatened me over a full week ago. But it feels like a whole lifetime...

Earnest had a straight, blank face as he closed in on me, then lowered his gun to aim at my leg. Come on, Earnest, of all of them I'd hoped you might have a change of heart...

I shook my head. "No, p-please, I can't heal right from something like that, you could kill me, d-don't you want me alive?"

"Not necessarily," Woodman replied flatly. "I wonder how fast it'd break if it watched its precious piece die. This is what you get for trying to run away from me, you little sh*t," he snarled at Raven.

Raven struggled against Ben, Percy and Woodman, grunting in gasping in effort and desperation.

Earnest, giving Raven a wide berth, was merely feet from me, the gun shaking a little in his old hands. I trembled in my bare feet, my for-now-intact knees weak as jelly. 

"You can shoot her now, let's see it," Woodman prompted. "Birdsh*t, this is what happens when you don't do as I say. Never forget; she'll still have three more 'trimmable' limbs."

"Perhaps we shoot her foot off, save the knee for another day?" Earnest negotiated at the last second. "We can't have her bleeding out; she's just human."

"She's not bleeding out from a kneecapping, Earnest, just shoot her."

The gun he had trained on me only shook more as Earnest hesitated. 

"Shoot her!" Woodman demanded, appalled. "Now!"

"Please no," I begged him, looking directly into his eyes pleadingly.

Earnest huffed as he broke eye contact with me, lowering the gun and giving up.

"For f*ck's sake," Woodman cursed, turning his handgun that was on Raven towards me, clicking it loaded and ready.

My heart dropped to look down the barrel of the gun, and time slowed down as he squeezed his finger.

Raven, his wings now stronger than our assaulters had ever seen them, knocked every one of them to the ground with the sweep of his magnificent wings that stretched out ten feet each. Even Craig, who thought he was a safe distance away, yelped as he was knocked to the ground with nearly the force of a car crash.

In the split second before the direction of the bullet was set in stone, a surprised and mid-fall Woodman spun his weapon partway back towards Raven, the aim of the barrel turning to find its mark towards the center of Raven's chest.

By the time the bullet was released from the chamber, it was too late to do anything about it. My mouth opened to scream, but the sound that would have come out was overpowered by the heartbeat-stopping report of a gun.

Bang!