Garrett clenched and unclenched his hands, the blood tacky, still warm but cooling. He was beginning to rise when he found his voice. It was not the rasp of before, but instead firm, staccato, as you would speak to a dog you did not know but had need to make obey.
"You should pray."
He was standing now, but his head still down, looking at those hands, then past them, onto the floor, at that tangle of limbs and frumpled clothes on the wet ground. Wyatt looked like a discarded doll, face upturned, mouth slack, but the eyes mercifully closed. Edmund blinked, the revolver still aimed unerringly at Garrett, his own mouth opening as if to speak, but no sound came out as he heard Garrett continue.
"You should pray. Pray you don't miss. Pray that you counted right with your shots. Pray you don't get a jam or a sour round."
That voice grew louder, harder, as Garrett craned his head up, degree by degree with each syllable. Edmund felt his hand itch. Then his eye, blinking furiously. His mouth still open, feeling filled with sand. Words would not come, not from his lips, only to his ears, as Garrett continued.
"Pray you can shoot me accurately enough times to put me down."
Garrett turned away from Wyatt completely now, head raising. Was he taller somehow? Edmund had been sure that there was no appreciable difference in their stature, but he swore now that was a lie. The man looked over him, over the dead doll on the wet ground, over what felt like all of creation at that moment like a stormcloud, a roiling thunderhead with the promise of a violent downpour upon all things. Those eyes, as pitiless as the steel of their hue, grasped onto Edmund's gaze.
"So you should pray. Pray to God. Because only God can save you from me now."
Edmund should have prayed.