My wounds slow me down, and I am not up as fast as I want to be, dragging my body to respond. We reach our feet around the same time, and I lunge forward, swinging a fist at her. She ducks and tackles me around the waist, shoving me back. We crumple together on the ground.
She doesn’t move fast enough, and I slam my elbow down onto the side of her head. She cries out in pain, and I do it again. One hand reaches up to claw at my face, and I feel the adrenaline rush of my training kicking in. She is in the perfect position, and I have a split second to react.
I kick my legs up, wrapping the arm between them. I push down on my heels to get me up for just a second, and then a fall back hard, pulling her arm with me. I can hear the shoulder snap as I land and know I either dislocated it or broke it. This would be where she falls apart into a crying mess, and I can keep her docile until help arrives.
Twisting the grip I now have on her wrist, I wrench the shoulder even further, and she screams. I tighten my legs around her, then pick up one foot and slam it down on her chin. The resistance in her arm lessens. I do it again, and it all but stops.
“Are you done?” I call out to her, but she doesn’t respond. I wrench on her wrist again, applying more torque to the shoulder, but she doesn’t cry out again. She must be unconscious.
I shove her hand away and spin to a sitting position. I have only let her go for a second and am reaching out to grab her hand again when she suddenly turns toward me, and points my gun at me. I barely have time to fall backward as a shot rings out. I am on my back as the hand with the gun follows me, and I kick at it. The grip loosens, the gun falling to the ground beside me. I roll toward it, gathering it up in my hand and turn on my side to face the fleeing Rachel as she makes her way to the door.
I pull the trigger.
She slumps against the wall, crying out again, her fingers slipping off the door handle. At the last second, I had pulled the gun down from aiming center mass and shoot at her leg instead. She crumples, a silent scream stuck in her throat as she holds her thigh with the only arm that still works. Blood seeps through her clothes and around her fingers as she slides further down onto the ground, writhing in pain.
I sit up and realize my left arm didn’t move with the rest of my body. I look down at it and see blood pouring out of a bullet hole, directly in the center of the still-healing gash from the scythe.
“Are you freaking kidding me?” I cry out at the arm that now suddenly overwhelms me with pain. I glance back over at Rachel, her face a mask of tears and bruises. I point the gun back at her and scoot back, so I rest against the far wall to wait. Before long, Sam will get here with backup. Until then, I sit, gun trained.
The sound of the door splintering under Sam’s boot is one of the greatest things I have ever heard. It cuts through the pain and reminds me I’m still here. A team rushes in and surrounds us, but I won’t back down.
“Emma,” Sam says from beside me, resting one hand on my back and the other on my gun. He gently eases it down. “Come with me.” He lifts me up into his arms, and I hear him talking into his radio. “I need a bus. Officer down. Agent Griffin has been shot.”
He looks down at me and pulls me close to his chest. My blood seeps into his shirt, but he only presses closer.
“Sam,” I murmur.
“I’m here,” he says. “You’re right here with me.”
I hear Xavier’s voice in the back of my mind. You are where you are. She doesn’t want to tie her soul here. In that moment, I know the place, the surroundings, that matter to me the most is Sam. And he is where I want to tie my soul.
“Sam,” I murmur again. He looks down into my eyes. He’s fading, but I hang on long enough to say the words. “Marry me.”
Epilogue
Four days later …
“Why do you get to leave your room?” Xavier asks. “They won’t let me.”
“That’s because you can’t get out of your bed,” I say. “It’s a lot easier to move around after getting shot through the arm than it is after breaking your hip and two ribs and separating your shoulder.”
“They could put me on one of those table things. Strap me to it and then stand me up and wheel me around,” he argues.
“Like Frankenstein?” Dean asks.
“Frankenstein’s monster,” Xavier corrects him. “Though, I suppose Dr. Frankenstein could have tested it. Or just ridden around on it for fun.”
“If you find one of those, get me a matching one,” I say. “This wheelchair still hurts all my bruises.”
“The metal head strap stabilizing the upper half of your body probably wouldn’t feel much better,” Xavier points out. “But I’ll see what I can do.”
“You have got to stop disappearing from your room,” Sam says, coming in and dropping a kiss to the top of my head.
“I didn’t disappear. I came to see Xavier.”
“How did it go?” Dean asks.
Sam nods and sits down on the chair beside Xavier’s bed. It positions him near both of us, and I reach over to hold his hand.
“It went well. Rachel is facing enough charges to make the judge yawn when she was reading them out. Lindsey Granger’s family was there. They wanted me to
