Chapter 15
The flashlight shook in my hand, and I couldn't make it stop.
The tunnel swallowed what little light I had about ten feet ahead, and after that it was just black stretching down into the mountain.
Stone pressed in close on both sides, scraping my shoulders every few steps.
I had forty people behind me in the dark, and I was supposed to get them through on a dying flashlight and a memory from when I was twelve.
Eight stayed glued to my left side, breathing steady and controlled, probably running whatever tactical assessment looped through her head. Even down here in the dark she covered angles that didn't exist.
A kid cried somewhere back in the line, trying to stay quiet about it and failing hard. My mother's voice came soft in Romani, and the crying cut off. She'd used that same tone on me when I was small and convinced thunder meant the world was ending.
The tunnel got tight and mierda, I had to turn sideways just to fit. Stone scraped my chest, my back, and I had to angle the flashlight just to squeeze it through. Behind me, someone sucked in a breath like the walls were going to close completely and bury us all.
"Keep moving," I said, trying to sound like I knew what the hell I was doing. "Almost through."
I had no idea if that was true. My tío had walked me through this tunnel exactly once.
I'd been twelve with my wrist locked in his hand and a candle that kept threatening to go out.
That kind of knowledge lived in your bones, passed down through generations.
Except I'd left. I'd spent fifteen years running from this valley, and now I was supposed to remember which fork to take in the pitch black with forty lives depending on it.
Jasper was still up there. So were Rhadamanthys with a knife wound that had to be screaming by now, Danior, Alonzo, and Lorenzo, who'd been stitched together with fishing line and spite two days ago.
They faced however many men Achilles had brought down that mountain.
The gunfire had stopped maybe five minutes back, and I didn't know if that meant they'd won or if everyone I'd left behind was already bleeding out in my grandmother's courtyard.
Every second I spent down here was one more second Jasper could be dying.
I moved faster.
The walls finally opened up and I could breathe without choking on stone dust. My boots found better traction, and I picked up the pace, flashlight bouncing off wet rock that probably hadn't seen daylight in a hundred years.
The air changed about twenty feet ahead.
It smelled different, fresher, like the mountain had finally decided to let us go.
The tunnel sloped up, and I took it at a jog.
Eight kept pace beside me without making a sound.
Real light filtered down from above, not the flashlight dying in my hand but actual dawn, gray and weak but real.
The exit was a crack in the rock face that I could barely squeeze through. I turned sideways and pushed out into the open air.
A gully spread out in front of me, scrub brush and loose rocks under a sky going from black to gray.
I turned back to the crack and started helping people through.
My mother came first and took my hand without saying anything.
Then Valentina, moving slow but steady. The kids came next, blinking like they'd been underground for a week instead of an hour.
I counted as they came through. I hit thirty-six and stopped.
The last person squeezed out, and I counted again to be sure. Everyone who'd gone into that tunnel with me had made it out alive.
Jasper and the others were still back there, still fighting or already dead, and I had no way of knowing which.
I turned to look for the best route down the gully. That's when the men appeared on the ridge above us, a dozen at least, maybe more, rifles already shouldered, spread out along the high ground like they'd been waiting for us to pop out exactly where we did.
Patroklos stood dead center.
I knew him from Jasper's description. He was tall, with a scar running from his mouth down to his jaw, and that sickle on his belt. He raised one hand and held it there, palm out, the universal sign for don't fucking move. His eyes carried about as much life as the rocks behind him.
Behind me someone racked a slide. Metal clicked once, then again. Beni moved up beside me with a pistol already in his hand, held loose against his thigh where Patroklos could see it clear.
"Diego." My mother's voice came quietly behind me. She wasn't asking if we had a problem. She wanted to know what I planned to do about it.
I stepped forward and spread my arms wide. Eight moved with me, and I didn't try to stop her because that ship had sailed about three months ago.
Patroklos lowered his hand and just stood there.
We stood there in the gray dawn, two groups of people who all knew how to kill. Nobody had fired the first shot yet, but that could change fast.
One of the younger guys behind me broke.
The crack of a pistol split the standoff, and Patroklos's men opened up. Rifles barked from the ridge, and dirt kicked up so close I tasted it. I dove left and dragged Eight down with me behind a boulder that wasn't nearly big enough for both of us.
The gully went to hell. Rounds chewed rock above my head and sprayed my face with chips that stung like wasps.
One of Patroklos's men pitched forward off the ridge and rolled halfway down before he stopped.
My people returned fire from whatever cover they'd found, and I couldn't hear myself think over the noise.
I got my pistol out and blind-fired around the boulder, didn't bother aiming, just trying to keep heads down. Beside me Eight had found a rock and pressed herself flat behind it, completely still. She knew the rules: stay small, stay low, stay alive.
"Carmen!" My mother was somewhere behind cover, and panic shot through me. "Mamá!"
"Here!" Her voice came from behind a scrub brush that wouldn't stop a stiff breeze. She had someone with her, dragging them back toward better cover. Blood soaked the person's shirt from collar to belt.
Another one of Patroklos's men dropped. Beni was a hell of a shot when he wanted to be. But they had the high ground, and we had a gully with rocks the size of dinner plates. This was going to be a massacre if we didn't move.
I looked for an exit and found nothing but open ground in every direction. We were fish in a barrel.
Valentina had gotten down behind a rock with two of her nephews covering her.
One of the kids cried again, and someone tried to quiet her while keeping their head down.
We'd lost at least two people already, maybe more.
Bodies lay across the gully, and I couldn't tell who was dead and who was just smart enough to play it.
Patroklos stood on the ridge like he had all day. The sickle stayed on his belt. He just stood there while his men cut us apart from the high ground.
We were going to die here, all of us. We'd made it through the tunnel just to get slaughtered in a gully on the wrong side of the mountain.
Beside me, Eight's breathing changed. The steady rhythm broke, and her chest expanded slow and deep, pulling air like she was loading a weapon. She opened her mouth. She set her jaw, and her whole body shifted from stillness into purpose.
Then a voice cut through the gunfire.
"STOP."
Everything stopped.
The rifles went quiet. My people stopped shooting. Even the kid stopped crying. Everyone turned to look at where the voice had come from.
Eight stood in the open.
She'd come out from behind her rock and just stood there with her hands at her sides, no cover, no weapon.
And they'd stopped.
I started to move toward her, and she looked at me. She just looked at me, and I froze because the expression on her face said trust me as clearly as if she'd spoken it out loud.
She walked forward, through bodies and blood and dirt chewed up by bullets, until she stood right in front of Patroklos.
They stared each other down. The gully went so quiet that every beat of my heart thundered through me.
Then she spoke again. "If I go with you, will you leave them alone?"
Dios mío, no.
I moved before I could think about it, pushed off the boulder, and started toward her. Beni grabbed my arm, and I nearly put my elbow through his teeth before I registered what he was doing.
"Diego, don't." His voice was low and urgent. "If you move, they'll shoot."
He was right. Patroklos's men had their rifles trained on me now, every single one of them. The barrels tracked my chest, and I froze with Beni's hand still locked around my arm.
Eight didn't turn around. She kept her eyes on Patroklos and waited for an answer.
Patroklos studied her for a long time. His face broke for half a second when she spoke, a crack that he sealed back up before it could spread.
He looked at Eight the way you look at a mirror you weren't expecting to find.
Then he looked past her at my people scattered across the gully, wounded and bleeding and pinned behind rocks that wouldn't stop a second volley.
He checked his own men on the ridge, counting how many he'd already lost.
He could kill us all. It would cost him time and bullets and men, but he could do it.
Or he could take what Achilles actually wanted. Leverage on Jasper. A nine-year-old girl who'd just offered herself up to save forty people she barely knew.
Patroklos looked back down at Eight and nodded once.
He reached down, and she took his hand.
My knees hit the dirt. The impact shot through my jeans, and I didn't care. Beni let go of my arm, but I couldn't move, anyway. I just knelt there while a nine-year-old girl volunteered to walk into hell because I'd brought her here.
Behind me, someone cried.
You're the leader now, Diego. Time to lead.