Blanket of Fear

"What do you mean, they're here?" Eliza whispered, feeling her heart clutch with fear when she realized that the final battle had started. She was beyond terrified that now, things were all going to end. She'd heard Jimmy say that Sean Castro was here, and she had heard that Johnny was dead. She was absolutely heartbroken that her young friend; the one boy who'd understood her since she had been outcasted after he had started dating Leigh. He had truly been the one person who'd been there for her. Even when Zacky hadn't been, Johnny had. It killed her to know that he was gone now; that she would never be able to see the light in his hazel eyes again or hug him again.

"They're here," he said simply before he gave her a sympathetic look. "They’re here they’re about to start the fight, Eliza. Zack wanted me to give you this,” he told her quickly before he pulled a gun out of his pocket, making sure it was loaded before he handed it to her.

Eliza looked down at the gun, her eyes widening when she saw it, realizing just how serious this situation was. She felt Jimmy pull her in for a small smile before looking at Leana, who had already armed her gun with a dangerous look on her face.

“Let’s go. The action is going to start without us, and we can’t have that,” she said softly. She didn’t want to let everyone see the way she looked. Leana had always been a private kind of person.

Eliza nodded before pushing her hand back through her hair as she started following them out of the bedrooms. Already downstairs, she could hear fighting breaking out. Her heart raced with fear for Zack, wondering if he was already right in the middle of the fight. Jimmy stayed in front of her as they made their way downstairs, a determined look on his face as he pulled out his gun.

“Stay as far away from the fighting as you can, Eliza. None of us want you getting hurt. Make sure that you have your weapon armed at all times and that you’re within eyesight and hearing range of one of us at all times. If you see Matt and Val, stay out of their way.”

Eliza nodded, although she didn’t agree with what Jimmy was saying. She didn’t understand why she couldn’t be in the middle of the fight, too. She wanted to be able to fight alongside with Jimmy and Zack and all of the others. And more importantly, she wanted to kill Sean Castro.

She knew that Zack had a lot more against him than she did, but she felt it would only be right if she killed him. He had deceived her for her entire lifetime that she had known him.

“Alright,” she nodded, looking around the room they’d walked into. She didn’t notice Zack or anyone else right away, but she knew that they were somewhere close by. She felt Leana walking behind her, gun raised and a frown on her face.

Eliza ducked when she heard the door bang open, and she felt a scream strangled in her throat when she saw Zack flying backwards from it. She ran towards him immediately before Leana grabbed her arm, stopping her from doing so.

“Don’t! He’ll be alright, Eliza. You remember what Jimmy said,” her friend told her before she shot her gun in the direction of a small blonde woman who was lunging towards them with a bloodied mouth, fangs exposing her vampiric nature.

Eliza felt another pain in her heart when she watched as Zack stood once more on shaky legs. His green eyes met with hers, flashing with something before he turned back to face the man who had thrown him through the door—none other than Castro himself.

That’s when Eliza’s world fell apart. She watched as her ex raised his gun at Zacky’s chest before she ran towards him, breaking out of Leana’s hold before glaring angrily at Castro, her gun raised and pointed at him, an angered look on her face.

“Don’t you dare,” she hissed at him. She hadn’t seen him in so long that she had almost forgotten what she looked like. She couldn’t believe she’d ever mistaken him for an angel. He might look appealing to the eye, but even now, she could see his cold personality in his eyes; in the way he walked, and the way he smirked when he saw her standing there.

“I must say, I didn’t expect him to leave you here for me to find. Not that you’re all I’m interested in, of course. Now that I’m here, I plan on annihilating Avenged Sevenfold once and for all. I will claim Bat Country as mine. And I’m going to have some fun with you afterwards.”

He didn’t say anything else as he turned his eyes back towards Zacky, teeth bared and his eyes even more blackened than they usually were. Just as Castro lunged at Zacky, she saw Matthew dart out from behind a couch, blocking his brother from attack and letting Castro attack him instead.

“You’ve hurt my brother enough,” Matthew spoke angrily before letting out a sharp cry of pain as Castro ripped a large chunk of flesh out of his neck. Castro just smirked at Matthew and tossed him out of the way, moving back to Zack. His brother’s intervention, however, had given Zack enough of an opportunity to find his gun and aim it, pointing it straight at Castro’s head and not blinking as he shot the man three times.

Eliza watched as Sean’s eyes went blank, his mouth opening in a large O shape before his body fell towards Zack’s. She could already tell the man who had tormented her for so long was dead, but she knew the battle was far from over. Castro wasn’t the only person here greedy for control of Bat Country. He had brought reinforcements, and they too would want to control the large territory.

She heard Matthew gasping for air, and both she and Zack made their way over to him. For the first time since she had known Zacky, Eliza saw tears in his eyes, and it broke her heart. She hated seeing him so broken like this.

“Kill me, Zack,” Matthew croaked out, reaching to grab on to the front of his brother’s jacket, both brothers’ eyes meeting as Zack let out a shaky sob. She watched as Zack pushed his hair off of his face before raising the gun once more, pointing it directly at his brother’s chest.

“I can’t do it,” he said after several minutes, choking out another sob before he turned to Eliza, so much pain in his eyes that it nearly made her fall over.

“You have to,” Matthew said thickly through gritted teeth, spattering some blood down his chin before he tightened his hold on his brother’s chest. “Do it for Mother, Father, and Zina. Do it for yourself. I deserve to die this way, Zachary. I deserve to die a traitor’s death.”

“No, you don’t,” Eliza whispered, crawling closer to Matthew as she grabbed his weak hand in hers. “What’s done is done. You’ve changed. You saved him, Matthew. You aren’t a traitor.”

“Just do it, Zack!” Matthew yelled out, tears starting to spill out of his eyes. Zack still couldn’t say anything, and he looked vacantly at his brother’s eyes before dropping the gun.

“I can’t,” he whispered once more before he stood, eyes widening when he saw someone lunging at Eliza. He threw her out of the way and the person who’d been aiming to shoot her knocked him to the ground. Eliza’s eyes widened when she saw that it was Val.

The blonde woman had her gun raised, pointed directly at Zacky’s head, complete anger and hatred in her brown eyes as she cocked the gun. Zack’s eyes met hers, just as much anger

“You killed her,” Val whispered angrily as she looked at Zack angrily. “You caused her to do what she did and you killed her! You deserve to die,” she whispered angrily, hot tears starting to fall out of his eyes.

Zack just narrowed his own eyes back, not backing down. “I didn’t cause Michelle to betray us, Valerie. And I didn’t cause you to betray us either. But you’re almost worse. You pretended for a long time that you were our friend; that you cared. You got pregnant with Matt’s child, for God’s sake! There is nothing lower.”

“I love Matt,” she snapped at him, narrowing her eyes. “Don’t you dare tell me how I feel about him. I—”

Before she could finish her words, Eliza shot the woman twice in the back. She knew that it was a cold thing to do, shooting someone she’d regarded as one of her very best friends in the back, but it was only fitting. She knew that Zack never would have been able to pull the trigger on her. She’d seen it in his green eyes; he hadn’t been ready to, and she didn’t want to make him do something that would hurt him more than he already was.

She dropped the gun after she saw Val fall to the ground. Matt ran into the room and saw her fallen. He let out a strangled cry as he ran over to her dying body, cradling her small body up against his. Eliza felt her heartstrings tugging for Matt. She could tell how much the man loved her, and she felt bad for knowing that he’d been deceived by her.

“Val, don’t die,” he whispered. “We’ll make it right. You can...We can figure something out. Please, just don’t die. I can’t lose you,” he whimpered, tightly holding her body close to his before he pressed his lips shakily against hers.

The blonde woman just raised her hand to touch the side of his face. She knew that no one understood what she had done. She felt bad that she had deceived people she’d been close to for so long, but in the same breath, everything she had done had been for her family. “The baby’s name is Kimberly Eileen,” she whispered before grabbing his shoulder tightly in her hand. “She’s at the house in Seal Beach, with my mother.”

“No, Val,” he begged her, tightly holding her before his hot tears started splashing onto her face. Val let a few tears of her own slip out of her eyes before her eyes went cold, no more emotion in them, the life completely gone away from her.

Eliza groaned, closing her eyes when she felt Zack walk over to her and wrap his arms around her tightly. The end had come a lot faster than she had thought it would. She hadn’t been prepared to see Val die in front of her; to see Matthew nearly die protecting a brother he had once betrayed. But the most painful thing of all was knowing that Johnny had died; that he was gone, and never coming back. That was what truly broke Eliza’s heart. Her freedom from Sean Castro had come at a steep price, and she didn’t think she deserved it.

“It’s alright,” Zack murmured softly into her ear. “Everything is going to be fine now, Eliza. I promise. Everything is going to be alright. We’re going to be alright.”

She just nodded slowly, not believing him. Things were far from alright, and she knew it. Now that Castro was gone and dead, she had no idea what was going to happen next. All she could hope for was that something good came out of this, and that Johnny’s death could be avenged.