Page 82 of Gunslinger Girl

I can’t.

Do what you need to do.

“Pity?”

It was Eva.

“Come,” she said. “We must not keep them waiting.”

She shrugged off Max, unable to look at him again as they started for the stage. The other performers called out encouragement, but Pity heard only one word out of every ten, her eyes locked on the black maw of the tunnel leading to their platform. When the cool darkness enveloped them, she roused suddenly, pulling each gun from its holster.

Twelve bullets, she counted, an echo of the morning that had led her here. More than enough to kill a man.

But Eva and Marius were with her, too, and the measure of the man’s blood was meant to be spread between them. She could guess how.

Selene wants a show.

As the platform carried them into the arena, disorientation rocked Pity, as it had at her first performance. The crowd was still the crowd, she told herself, peering into the shadowy seats. She needed no mock assassination attempt to win them over this time, no false offer of blood. They had already given her their love.

Now, in return, all they were asking for was the real thing.

And if I don’t give it to them… She licked her lips. The air tasted different than it had during her act, laced with an unfamiliar ferocity that wouldn’t be denied. If you lose the crowd, you lose the act… and maybe more.

Halcyon was gone, but his voice remained.

“A sight indeed,” he said. “One of our oldest acts and our very newest, side by side. And Serendipity, our savior, our angel with six-shooters—for without her, Miss Selene would surely have been lost. This heinous assassin put a bullet through our darling sharpshooter, leaving her with a permanent reminder of her peril. I say she returns it to him. What say you, Cessation?”

She would have drawn on Halcyon had he been near, for hamming it up the way he was. Instead, she mirrored the Zidanes, smiling and brandishing her guns charmingly, while inside, her muscles felt like they might give way at any moment. Under the pretense of checking her ammo again, she fought to gather herself. Though she couldn’t see Selene in the flesh, she knew the woman was watching. The same way she knew that no performance meant as much as this one did.

At Eva’s direction, they spread out—Pity moved toward one end of the arena, the Zidanes to the other. Music began, and the floor opened again.

After he’d spent months in captivity—months of interrogations and torture and who knew what else—Pity expected a man half dead already. Instead, save for the dishwater-gray jumpsuit, he looked very much like he had the last time she had seen him. The bones of his face were more distinct and his hair longer, but he must have been fed well enough and allowed to bathe. The only distinct difference was the grim hollowness in his gaze, apparent even at a distance.

Eva signaled and they approached, closing in on him like he was a wounded animal. Eva and Marius drew a knife for each hand. Pity filled hers with ebony grips. No barrier went up, and she didn’t expect it to. There was no reason for her to miss.

Twelve bullets.

The assassin considered them individually, turning in a slow circle, as if he wasn’t sure where he was or who they were. But when Pity took another tentative step forward and his eyes alighted on her, there was recognition.

And a glint of hate.

She froze, close enough now to see his hands—and fingers—clearly. They ended in red-pink masses. Every one of his fingernails was gone. Her stomach clenched, hands tightening around the handles of her revolvers. It didn’t have to be like this. Surely this man had suffered enough. She could finish it now. Empty her chambers into his chest and call it justice, call it revenge, overzealousness, or anything else she wanted.

When he feinted toward her, she did nearly that. But at the last instant, her fingers froze on their triggers and she danced back instead.

That’s exactly what he wants, she realized. He knew he was a dead man and that she was the weak link, the jumpiest of his chosen executioners. He’s a mercenary, she reminded herself. A trained assassin. He tried to kill Selene. He tried to kill her.

Pity steeled herself as he crept back, looking disappointed at his failed gambit.

She could finish him now. End this macabre farce in a matter of moments. And though she’d be able to name it a lot of things, there was one thing she wouldn’t be able to call it…

A show.

He came at her again and she fired. He stumbled back as the bullet struck inches in front of his foot.

Bang! Bang!

With each shot, he jerked away, his movements more and more off-balance.