“Come on buddy”, Dante says, still motionless on the top of the gate. Waiting for her.

Shane climbs up the railing without a word and without any help, silent and smooth and agile like a cat. She jumps off the gate in one fluid movement and smoothes down her jeans. Dante smirks.

“Alright…”, he giggles with a sigh, climbing down the bars heavily, slowly. He’s still panting.

We’re out.

”The moon in silver trees
Falls down in tears
Light of the night
The earth, a purple blaze
of sapphire haze
in orbit always…”

Alice calls 119 using an emergency cell that Dante had hidden inside the dashboard of Shane’s jeep. We wait in silence, wondering if it’s all over, if it’s really over, if Justine and Johnny Sanders are or aren’t really dead.

“Al, tell them that we need an ambulance”, Dante says standing right in front of her, his eyes heavily black-ringed. Alice is speaking rapidly to the person on the other line, and stops for a second, looking at Dante with her lips parted. The look into her eyes is worried and questioning.

Dante smiles weakly and takes a long breath.

“Tell them that some people here are injured and that we need an ambulance”, he repeats in a croaky murmur. And Cassandra approaches him, worried, placing her hand on the small of his back.

Dante shifts his weight from one foot to the other, uncomfortably. His eyes are starting to look a bit glassy.

“Baby, are you okay?”, Cassandra asks.

“I’m injured”, he repeats, simply, in a quiet tone, trying to focus on his wife.

We encircle him. All together. He watches us, smiling an apologetic smile. He pulls down the zipper of his leather jacket, and lets the jacket slide down, on the pavement. The olive green t-shirt he is wearing is blood-stained on his right shoulder and on his right hip, between his ribs and the belt of his jeans.

Shane frowns in panic, touching it gently.

“What the hell is that?”, she winces.

Dante tilts his head to a side, watching her straight in the eyes. He looks sorry.

“Buddy… Remember when I deviated your gun?”, he murmurs.

Shane nods in terror, and swallows.

Dante shrugs a little.

“Well, I guess I haven’t been careful enough to avoid your bullet, too…”.

"Oh my God, Dan…". That was Shane. And I can’t even tell how her voice sounds. The guilt, the fear. The pain in it.

Dante waves his hand in the air.

"No, no, buddy. It was… It was my mistake. Seriously", he takes another long breath and his look starts roaming, again, in that scarily glassy way, "…I’m okay, really. Just call and ambulance. I’m okay. It doesn’t… even… hurt anymore".

He stumbles a little and I can hear Alice cursing in a low voice. Then he keels over, heavily, on the ground.

A second later, even the garden surrounding the mansion blows up, and we’re covered with leafs and branches and dust and soil and rocks.

We bend down, we lie on our stomachs, we cover our heads with our hands. Shane protects Dante’s motionless body. I put my arm around Cassandra’s shoulders protectively.

As fragments of woods rain upon us, I blink in the dust and my eyes fix on Tasha’s watch.

It’s 3.30 a.m. …and the third bomb seems dramatically on time.

”While down below the trees
bathed in cool breeze
silver starlight breaks down the night
And so we pass on by the crimson eye
of great god Mars
as we travel the universe”*

TBC

**

SOUNDTRACK:
* “Planet Caravan” (Black Sabbath, Pantera version)