"Alma!" I called.

"That bruise is too small for an axe. The fact that we left him laying there with Wade in the same room, then he would have been axed."

Her words started making sense as soon as I doubly checked the wound around his thigh. It was more like a scratch, sort of like something had managed to cut through the fibers of his trouser and gotten some part of his thigh.

The fact that he wasn't axed but slammed to a sink, with a man who had an axe with him, sounded corny. How he maneuvered around the hallways and only got a mia scratch around his thigh in such a hell sounded even cornier. He knocked the door not even attempting to open it so he knew there were people in the archery.

He lined forward to fidget on me but I was quick to jump away from any closer to him, "answer the question asked," I insisted agitatedly.

Limping backwards, he sighed.

He quit the innocent play and decided to show what a devil he was. He shoved his hand in his back animatedly pulling something he had been hiding.

As he did so, Alma tightened the bow as I instinctively toddled backwards.

It was an axe. He grinned devilishly unleashing it from where it had been hidden. "Surprise!" He exclaimed stepping towards me.

"Cole?"

"Make any other step closer to her and I shoot," Alma was serious, that tone was no joke.

He stopped on his trails and grinned devilishly.

°*°

After I left the orphanage, Cole waited for me to go back and check him out. Maybe persuade my parents to adopt him too, but I didn't do either. He remained in suffering every night peering at the stars at night like we used to together. He convinced himself that I would back for him but that didn't change the fact that I didn't.

When an intelligence agent was sent, he did save all the kids but him.

Dimitri stole him from the crowds of kids that were to be saved and ran with him deep into dark woods.

Ever since that day he put the blame on me.

Until one day he finally got anl chance to get to me. He saw a man in a black coat, who gave him an opportunity to find me and help him finish me.

°*°

He narrated before taking a step forward.

Alma shot her well set arrow as promised. It crossed my face, the impact almost hitting me as well, digging directly into his right arm from the front to the back. The shaft sticking in between. Blood spatting out with utter pressure almost spilling on me, he didn't quite.

He switched his axe to the left hand, jolting forward angling it towards my head.

Alma triggered another arrow but unanticipatedly, clumsily released it. It shot with the same impact and luckily it hit him. Right into his right side of the chest, it dug. The impact pushed him backwards, but he was too resilient and in a second he was back to stability.

He loosened the axe lowering the angle of inclination, like one that had felt no pain, he clasped the arrow by his chest with his left and snapped it into two.

My eyes and my mouth widened in unison in disbelief my lungs inhaling more oxygen than the recommended amount.

He grinned and tightened his grip on the axe raising it in a slow eerie manner, like he wanted to kill me in a slow but painful way.

I jolted backwards in escape.

Alma triggered another arrow. Through the sight, she aimed presumingly at his chest since that was where it hit. It hit right into the middle of it and half the arrow sunk in. He didn't quit, he sprang back to live still not even close to falling, but somehow blood from his insides found its way to his mouth.

He didn't pay any attention to the arrow shooter, instead his chilly-red eyes glued themselves right at my face and didn't stop.

I became too terrified to move more than a step behind, panic painting itself on the walls of my head. I took in deep breaths and out my chest rising and falling to its extreme.

Alma removed another from the quiver swinging on her back triggered it and shot at his leg.

Like a zombie, he stumbled slowly his disoriented figure gaining on me. His mouth was full of blood like a vampire that had just come from sucking blood, escaping from his forehead, more blood, his normally gentle kempt hair had fallen on his face, his white shirt cascading blood from it, his eyes hallow, and he didn't seem to quit. Not even after getting shot once more at his right shoulder.

I found myself toddling backwards until my back hit a wall. He was gaining on me, and his cold eyes seemed to have nothing but purely cold intentions with me. He angled his axe aiming at my neck.

I couldn't move. Disbelieve and betrayal-pain working on me, I felt rooted at the spot and all that was left for me was to watch myself die.

Alma did quit. She triggered one with a blue fletching, pegged the nock against the bow string fastened her grip, and pulled the string backwards to its maximum stretchability. She then released it at once.

It sliced through the air and right into his skull it went. It got in through the right ear and got stuck in somewhere in between his brain.

Blood was hast to cascade itself out through his right ear. He became rigid for a second and then broke down like a broken robot fighting against death for his urge to axe me. A second later, my head would have been anywhere but on my neck.

Immediately I lost my strength and found myself dropping on the floor. My back scratching against the wall as I slid down.

The past few seconds were so vivid that even after recapping them, the event still seemed like it wasn't real. The inanimate corpse lying on the floor in a pool of its own blood, stated otherwise.

I had never seen what I had just seen. One of the people I valued the most in my life getting killed right in front of my eyes. Making matters worse he was against me.

I tightly hold my knees against my chest.

It wasn't exactly a perfect time to break into tears but my emotions didn't know that. I felt tears cascading themselves out, and the more I tried to wipe them off the more they came out.

Alma was refilling her quiver with arrows borrowed from other quivers.

She flung a fully equipped quiver at me which gently hit the edge of my shoe followed by a bow she had specially chosen for me.

"He could have killed you you know. It was stupid to stand there helplessly," she muttered after staring at me silently for a while. I knew some part of her understood why I was glued.

"Anyway, I could really use a little in pulling those things to the door," she signed at the targets.

I sighed and decided put on my big girl pants steadying my breath. I have to face this.

I matched towards her and assisted her push the target towards the door. It was way heavier than it looked, but we managed to push it after engaging all our strength.

We mounted it against the door knob in such that it would take a lot of effort for a normal human to burst it open.

A second later, even before we had made it to another target to reinforce the other, we heard the door knob creaking. We both switched our glances towards it. Seemingly, someone was struggling to turn it. Rotating it both clockwise and anticlockwise, the intruder failed to open it.

He or she stopped followed by loud silence.

We both exchanged glances wondering whether to check out who it was or ignore and pretend like it never happened.

Alma dismounted her bow which she had hanged around her shoulder and took an arrow from her quiver triggering it to the bow string. I did the same though I knew clearly well I was terrible at targeting.

We slunk towards the door to an angle in which we could make whoever was on the other side of the door through the door lite.

"Don't get too close," I warned out of my own insecurity.

Abruptly, a back-gloved fist punched through the door lite with a force that broke the glass lite into shatters scattering themselves on the floor with a loud crush. The owner of the fist was still indistinct at my point of view but the fist didn't seem friendly.

The hand was unfolded and swiftly grazed at the left bottom side of the lite where the knob was located. It parted severely missing, until it caught the knob.

We both stared, each more addled than the other.

Alma released her arrow before the hand could fumble further with the knob but missed. It dug just besides it and by the look of things the intruder noticed it. The hand darted on the arrow that was just an inch to attaching it to the fine mahogany door.

Alma was swift to trigger another arrow while I was still struggling to focus my eye to the target through the sight.

My fingers slipped out of my nervousness, and the arrow shot. Surreptitiously, the hand disappeared its way out of the lite leaving my arrow to hit nothing but some part of the door.

Alma shot blindly through the lite while I triggered another arrow.

I knew I was a terrible aimer, so I had to take my time one eye closed the other focusing on the sight for aim. I released the arrow. Unlike Alma's, mine hit another part of the door.

"Nice try for a beginner," Alma whisper an irrelevant and yet consoling statement, though it was more like skeptical than legit.

Thinking that the intruder had vanished, the door was banged hard producing a loud crush that resembled that of a gunshot wrecking half of the target's difference and a better part of the door.

The inhuman energy went silent once again, recharging.

For so long could the remaining part of the target protect us.