Chapter 12: The Stand
The stand happened in the parking garage beneath the safe house.
Victor’s team had found them.
Not with subtlety this time. With numbers. Black vans. Men in plain clothes who moved like they had done this before. Walter had the exit route ready, but the vans blocked it. Ethan stood between his grandfather and the approaching men, small and determined, the gift already pulling at him like a tide.
William arrived with his own security, stepping out of a car with Celeste behind him. The two sides faced each other across concrete and yellow lights.
Victor’s voice came through a speaker on one of the vans.
“Hand over the boy. He belongs to the Pavilion.”
William stepped forward. “He belongs to no one.”
Celeste’s voice was sharp. “William, this is bigger than your guilt. The gift can save lives. It can save our son again if he weakens. It can save you when your time comes.”
William looked at his wife with something close to disgust. “You would use a child the way my father used his mother.”
“I would save our family,” Celeste said.
Ethan’s nose started bleeding again. The gift was reaching, unbidden, toward the tension, toward the threat, toward anything that felt like it could break.
Walter pulled him back. “Not yet.”
The two sides stood in the garage, guns lowered but ready, the air thick with the smell of exhaust and rain.
William looked at Ethan.
“You brought my son back,” he said. “I will not let them take you for the same reason.”
He turned to his father’s voice on the speaker.
“This ends now.”
Victor’s laugh was cold. “You always were sentimental.”
The first shot came from the shadows. Not at Ethan. At William. A warning. A message. The garage erupted. Security from both sides moved. Walter pulled Ethan behind a pillar. William returned fire, shielding his wife despite everything.
In the chaos, Ethan felt the gift surge again. He saw a guard fall, a bullet in his chest. Without thinking, he ran to him, placed his hand on the wound, and whispered the words.
“Come back.”
The cost was immediate. Blood poured from Ethan’s nose. His vision blurred. The guard gasped, the wound closing under Ethan’s hand.
Walter shouted his name.
May you like
The stand had become a war.
And the boy who could bring people back was the prize at the center of it.
