Ashley didn't move, didn't breathe for a long minute. She pushed the lid off the shoebox once more and this time, reached in to grab the hand inside. It could've been anyone's hand, and she was trying to convince herself of this when she flipped it over and saw the faded blue ink where Brandon made his to do list on a daily basis.
Until this moment, Brandon's danger hadn't felt real. It had seemed simple to her. She'd help Jonny as a means to help Brandon. No one would hurt either of them, because of Xander.
Jonny and Xander both had warned her it wasn't a game, and she brushed them off, along with Xander's claim about there being consequences to every choice. Those consequences, the danger, the idea one or both of them may not survive this, that Brandon might die before she reached him or perhaps she wasn't able to handle everything without help … these realities hadn't felt real before she discovered the evidence that she was in over her head.
How stupid am I? Jonny was right. Xander was right.
Brandon was in the kind of danger she wasn't able to protect him from. And maybe no one else could, either.
With calmness she didn't feel, Ashley replaced the lids of both boxes and slid them into her backpack with trembling hands. It hadn't yet clicked she held her brother's hand or that his eye had been staring lifelessly up at her.
"Hey!" the shout of a vamp from the entrance of the entertainment room jarred her out of her thoughts and back into her danger.
Because she was in danger. Just like Brandon. This wasn't another night beating up vamps for some stupid hope of revenge against someone she didn't even know anymore.
This was a civil war, one she and Jonny were caught in the middle of.
Something clicked inside her. This wasn't a game. There was a chance one of the people she loved most in the world wasn't going to survive this. Brandon was being sawed into pieces for reasons she couldn't begin to guess.
This time when Ashley drew her knives, she could think of only one thing: making anyone who had a hand in hurting her brother pay for it.
The sound of Hector scuffling with vamps distracted her briefly before she launched at the two moving through the entertainment room towards her. Ashley drew a breath. Her hands shook from emotion she wasn't able to feel at the moment but which she knew would be as powerful as one of her seizures when it hit.
Her attack on the vamps passed as if she were in a dream. Disengaged yet acutely aware of everything, she didn't try to refrain from killing as she usually did. She let her instincts control her weapons and closed her eyes to the spray of blood. Its warmth soaked her, before she had even made it out of the entertainment room.