Chapter 18 #2
I don’t answer him. Instead, I tell Bes, “I can’t carry you. Can you climb up to the street with one hand?”
Luckily, the blade pierced his bad side, leaving his right side free and clear.
Bes nods, wincing even at that small movement.
I head up first, arms and hands trembling along the metal bars. They’re slick with God knows what, and I’m careful with each step so I don’t slip.
Chest heaving, I pull myself up onto an empty street, Cec at my side.
“What the bloody hell happened down there?” Cec demands.
First, I crouch low, taking stock of my surroundings before answering him. Luckily, there aren’t many streetlamps here; in fact, the grate sits almost directly between two of them. Either we got lucky, or this tunnel was strategically placed. Something tells me it’s the latter.
I turn back as Bes’s white-shirt arm pops up through the hole, followed by his head and other arm.
“Bes was stabbed,” I explain, leading Cec over to the open hole and guiding his hand to Bes’s right forearm. “Pull him up.”
Dropping his cane, Cec does as I ask without question. I shift over to Bes’s injured side, wrapping my arms around his torso and lifting. He groans but otherwise doesn’t say anything.
Once he’s over the edge, we lay him down on the ground. Eyes closed tight, his face is as pale as can be, the knife still stuck in his chest. Now I can see it better, I let out a breath: as he said, it doesn’t look like it pierced anything vital.
His handsome face is bloody with a couple fresh cuts, his eye already blackening. At least he’s alive.
He groans again, eyes fluttering open.
Cec kneels at his side. “Are you alright, Bes? Hawkins says you were stabbed.”
“That I was,” he manages.
Protecting me, I think. He was stabbed protecting me.
Cec looks near me. “And you were down there with him?”
“She shouldn’t have been,” Bes cuts in before I can respond. “She should’ve come up here at the first sign of trouble.”
I nearly yell at him, before reminding myself to keep my voice down. “I suppose I was too damn stubborn to just abandon you.”
While Cec feels around for the grate with his foot and pushes it back over the hole, Bes regards me with appreciation in his eyes. “A fool thing to do.”
Why is he being so obstinate? I refuse to feel remorse for wanting to help him.
My gaze searches his. “I’ll gladly play the fool if it means never leaving you behind.”
After a moment, he shakes his head, unable to keep a soft grin from pulling at his lips. Then winces again.
“It means more than you can know to hear you say that,” he grinds out, “but you can’t put yourself in danger trying to save me. It’ll only end in death or disappointment.”
I open my mouth to argue, but clamp it shut. Bes almost died tonight taking a knife in the shoulder for me—and might still if we can’t stop the bleeding.
Breathing shallow, Bes says, “Cec, take my right arm and help me up.”
His cousin is at his side instantly, lifting Bes to his feet with impressive strength.
“Where’s the knife?” Cec asks.
“Left shoulder.”
Cec clicks his tongue. “We’ll have to leave it in until we can get back to the boat and stitch you up.”
Cec turns toward me. “Can you sew, Hawkins? I can attempt it, but it would be better if someone who can actually see does it.”
I nod, then remember he can’t see me. “I can, and I will. Whatever Bes needs.”
Bes’s attention shifts to me. Wiping the blood from his lip with the back of his good hand, his gaze searches mine intently. Despite him nearly dying, my heart races at his attention; it must be the lingering adrenaline.
His voice is rough when he speaks again. “Cec, give Miss Hawkins your jacket.”
Shucking off his tuxedo jacket without questioning the request, Cec offers it to me.
I shake my head. “I don’t—”
“Unfortunately, you do.” His pointed gaze flicks down my jumpsuit.
Following it, I find the spattered blood left behind from the Blackshirt I killed. My stomach turns at the sight, but settles quicker than I thought it would. I appear to be coming to terms with the killing of fascists at my own hand, yet refuse to stomach the idea of Bes dying at theirs.
Killing was once so foreign to me. A sin not only in practically every religion I refuse to subscribe to, but my own moral code as well. Now, in less than a week, I’ve killed three people who would’ve done the same to me if given the opportunity, and… I don’t regret it.
Not yet, anyway.
Each time I’m faced with choosing between living and dying, I choose living the only way I can in this new world I’ve been thrust into: by killing.
Instead of being gutted long after, like I still am with Claude, I find I’m relieved when I gain the upper hand over the fascists whose sole purpose is to kill us and take the amulet.
They’re not interested in negotiating; they only follow orders.
Before the Temple of Seti I, I didn’t consider lethal self-defense an option.
Now… now there’s too much at stake to question the morality of the thing before taking action.
I already made the mistake of not killing Ingrid at the museum.
Ailsa died in Messina—and we all nearly died moments ago—because of it.
I won’t make that same mistake again.
I did what I had to do in the club, and I’m not ashamed of it—I’d do it a thousand times over if it meant Bes lived.
I’m not sure what all that says about me, but I don’t have the luxury of looking at it too closely at the moment.
I peer out into the dark, silent street around us. Bes is right about one thing: the bloody clothes would rouse suspicions we can’t afford. Not when he has a knife sticking out of his chest.
Pulling my arms through the oversized sleeves with trembling hands, I button up the jacket to hide the blood stain. I then draw my switchblade from my pocket once more, ready to use it again if necessary.
“Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Finally,” Cec mutters. “I was beginning to think we wanted to get caught.”
I allow Bes and Cec—cane in one hand, the other gripped around Bes’s arm—to go first, trailing them through the darkened streets of the Port of Civitavecchia and praying we make it to the boat in one piece.