We're Losing Him!

Candice's P.O.V.

It was as though in the mountain night that had followed the shot, a thunderclap that smashed all apart, the bullet tearing into the back of Mantovani with a wet, sickening thud that knifed my stomach and I felt the same terrible weight against my heart that I had felt as he crashed at me, his weight crushing me down to the ground as he fell at me, his weight heavy and warm and frighteningly still. Blood was spreading, and soaking through his shirt and on my hands as I scrambled to roll him on his back, my fingers going numb in the warm blood, the familiar horror of losing the one person who made this insane world seem like it made sense overwhelming me in tidal waves that left me choking. "Mantovani! No, no, no, said I, and I stretched the palms into the wound high up on his chest and I could feel the blood pulse between my fingers, hot and insistent, and his eyes fluttered over and closed, and the green depths clouded with pain and something deeper, and he regretted something, loved something, and had something to do with a look that broke my heart in a thousand jagged pieces.

The sheriff laid his rifle down gradually, and the smoke curled down the barrel like a contented sigh, and there was a twisting of his face into a grin which was more monster than man, and he came forward, his feet so crunching over gravel, See? That way you break up a dynasty--one bullet at a time, but his men were not in the mood, they still had their rifles on us, and the war had only halted in the deadly stagnation of that frozen pause, as though the night itself was holding its breath. Conti leaped out of the treeline just now, his bandaged shoulder forgotten in the rage, and opened upon the guards in every direction, and struck one a headlong blow that sprinkled red mist across the floodlights, and Sanna called Sanna was roaring somewhere about the back of them, Cover them! Get to the girl!" The family charging towards it like a wave, firing, making the stand-off sound as much of an inferno of hail and shouts as possible. The scream of mom, high and desperate, broke the silence, Candice! Get down!" and I had found her in the dark, with her pistol, and discharged it at one of the guards coming our way, when the bullet struck his knee, and he went staggering down, and the fury of a mother's love had turned her who used to bother about dresses into a fighter who would kill without batting an eyelid.

I disregarded all that, and my life became that of Mantovani, and white and moist with sweat, and he was breathing in shallow, rattling gasps, and his breath foamed with blood at the sides of his mouth, and I crouched down and lay my forehead against his, and whispered like a maniac,--Stay with me; you must stay with me--we have a life, remember? The sea house, idleness in the morning, no more fighting," blood and tears on my face, the universal neediness of trying to plead with the world not to take him overwhelming me. His hand jerked, groped feebly at mine, and his fingers were cold and trembling with pain, and he got out the word love, you, run, please, and I shook my head and said no, but I must keep my hold on him and he bled his last and the horror of it was making my chest sink in.

Bullets flew by, one brushing my arm, like fire, but I hardly felt it, my attention on Mantovani, how his eyes were clouding, the green turning to something gray and remote, and I kissed him, just as I could do nothing more, screaming all of the passion that we had known together into it, and hoping that love alone would revive him. Conti also came to us, crawling in on his hands and knees, shooting at the guards coming up my back, and with a voice that was coarse with emotion, said, We must get him away; he is hemorrhaging too heavily! and we dragged Mantovani along a low wall, his body as dead as a corpse, and the blood left us, spread in the earth, to my cheeks like a turner. Sanna came in, his own injuries being forgotten, pressing his hand to a ripped sleeve, shrieking at a radio to be taken out, "Get the chopper here now! We're losing him!"