Page 4 of Vile Bastards
Russian is a language made for cursing, and I utilize it, snarling under my breath as I fling the seat belt off and lunge over to grasp hers, my teeth chattering from the cold. It’s fucking freezing in here, and the water’s now up to my midsection.
Without the luxury to indulge my usual proclivities, I move fast, yanking her seat belt off and pulling her into my arms. She’s a deadweight, the only warmth in the frigid November water. It takes all of my strength to drag her toward the open window on the passenger side of the Miura.
I’ll miss this car, the last piece of my papa that I had left …
With a gurgle and a burp of bubbles, the car is finally swallowed up by the river—with both Scarlett and myself inside of it. The upside that comes with that is the weightlessness of my lover’s body.
My lover.
If there was even a small fraction of my brain able to be devoted to such thoughts, I’d go right back to that moment, to the dirty racetrack, to myself, wild and rutting like a beast. Instead, I’m entirely preoccupied with the situation, struggling to swim out the open window with a comatose girl in my arms.
There’s a moment there where I wonder if I’ll have to release her body, let her go to save myself. But would I do that? I consider it, but only for a second. After all, the reason I was so willing to give myself up to the family was to save this very girl. This girl who’s in this situation—at least partially—because of me.
My sense of chivalry demands no less than self-sacrifice.
My feelings … are too complicated to sort out.
Wedging my feet on the edges of the window, I yank and out Scarlett comes, sending us tumbling through the water as it swirls around us, the current lazy but impossibly strong. There’s a brief instant where relief floods me—we’re free of the car, thank God—but then our entwined bodies are rolling through dark waters, tumbling and spinning in the current.
We’re torn away from the Miura, and in less time than it took to fly through the air, the bright orange metal of the car disappears in the gloom. We’re being carried downriver at such a rapid pace that I worry first and foremost about hitting our heads on something. The oxygen (to be specific, the lack thereof), is a secondary concern.
Which direction is up? I wonder, forcing myself to relax, to allow the water to buoy us toward the surface. That is, if the mighty river were so inclined. My chest is burning, and my brain is scrambling for ideas. I’m aware that we’re running out of time, that Scarlett, unconscious as she is, has no control over whether she breathes in the water or not.
One or both of us may not live through this.
I can’t die so soon after Papa; he’d be displeased. If I were to meet him in the afterlife with such disgrace, I can only imagine what he’d say to me.
“Fight, boy. Fight until the breath leaves your body.”
I exhale slowly, the bubbles from my nose impossible to discern in the murky umbra of the river. Kicking my feet, I start to swim. Certainly, the river isn’t so deep that, even were I to go in the wrong direction, I couldn’t at least find the ground and kick off of it.
My head swirls with the lack of oxygen, and it’s a battle to keep my lips closed, to fight the natural instinct to inhale. How long have we been under water now? Two minutes? Two minutes too long more like.
My shoulder slams into something hard, driving agony up into my neck and the back of my skull, down my right arm. I almost lose Scarlett then, almost drop this courageous girl into the arms of the river.
She is MINE! The thought bolsters me, and I snatch at the rock with my left hand, using it to haul myself up, up, up, and then I finally, blessedly, break through the surface. A violent and gasping inhale rips through me, tearing me open, driving dizziness and pain down from my head to my lungs to the tips of my toes.
With a snarl of rage, I force myself and Scarlett up and onto the rock, catching sight of her pale blue face in the moonlight. She looks like something ethereal, supernatural, a rusalka dragging her tired, ghostly body from the depths for a hunt.
“Fuck.” I choke on the word, sputtering and hacking as Russian and English both drip out of me like the curses are on tap. I’m shaking so hard, teeth clattering so violently; a migraine has taken over my skull, nearly blinding me.
Blinking water from my eyes, I look around. I have no idea where we are, but we’ve moved far enough down the river that I can’t see the blue and red lights of the cop cars. Doesn’t mean they’re not close by, but if we can get up and move, we might actually have a chance to outrun them.
