Chapter 21
The headlight got brighter in my rearview.
I floored it through a turn, and Vihaan's laptops went sliding.
The vehicle fishtailed, and I yanked it back into line.
My first smuggling run across the Strait, I was sixteen.
My tío rode shotgun, told me to thread the needle, or we'd both end up in a Spanish prison. I threaded it. I'd do it again.
Tonight I had five people in this vehicle, and Patroklos wanted all of them dead.
"Left in two hundred meters," Vihaan called from the back. His face glowed blue from three laptop screens. "Construction zone. Might slow him down."
"Might?"
"He's on a motorcycle. Physics is on his side."
I took the left hard. Jasper braced against the door without looking up, one hand on the katana across his lap.
The calm poured off him like cold water. He sat beside me with his sword ready, no panic, just that flat tactical focus he wore like armor.
The streets were chaos at this hour. Vendors packed up their stalls, auto-rickshaws drove like they wanted to die, cows wandered through intersections because nobody had told them they couldn't. I cut between two trucks with maybe a hand's width on either side.
Rhadamanthys twisted in his seat with both revolvers up. "I can take the shot."
"Not yet. Wait until—"
Gunfire cracked behind us.
The back window exploded. Nevada ducked. Mr. Nobody turned his head slightly like a bullet had just passed six inches from his skull and kept that same calm expression he'd been wearing since Casablanca.
I cut my eyes to Jasper. Still steady. No holes in him.
"Now?" Rhadamanthys said.
"Now."
He fired through the broken window. Patroklos swerved but kept coming. The motorcycle engine screamed, and he closed the gap we'd barely opened.
The construction zone came up fast. Orange cones lined the road, exposed rebar stuck up everywhere, and an overpass loomed overhead that might collapse if you breathed on it wrong.
I threaded between the concrete barriers doing eighty.
The mirror clipped the concrete and exploded.
Glass and plastic went everywhere, but I kept my foot down.
Patroklos went around. He cut through some gap I couldn't see and came out ahead of us. Mierda, he knew these streets. The sickle on his back caught the streetlight as he leaned into the turn.
"He's flanking," Vihaan said. "This guy's running some kind of local nav overlay. He's got the whole grid mapped."
"I see him."
Jasper shifted forward in his seat. "Want me to lean out?"
"You are not leaning out of a moving vehicle."
"Diego—"
"That's an order, guapo." I shot my hand out and locked it around his knee. "You get shot leaning out a window and I'm gonna be pissed."
He grunted and I left my hand there one second longer than necessary before I had to shift gears.
The intersection came up. Patroklos should've had the angle, but some auto-rickshaw pulled out at exactly the wrong second. He had to brake hard. I shot through the gap doing ninety.
The smell hit me then. Burning rubber and hot metal mixed with the sweet rot of open sewage from a drain we'd just blown past. The whole city smelled cooked down to its essentials. My abuela used to say God protected fools and smugglers. I gripped the wheel tighter and asked Him for both.
"Okay, good news, bad news," Vihaan called. "Airstrip's three-ish kilometers, a straight shot through the industrial district. Bad news, I'm losing cell towers and if I can't maintain uplink, we're navigating by vibes."
"How comforting."
"I live to serve."
Patroklos recovered and fell back into pursuit. Every turn I took, every burst of speed I squeezed from this thing, he stayed locked on. I kept waiting for him to drop back, to cut his losses. He kept coming.
The streets got wider. Traffic thinned. I opened it up, and the engine roared. This thing rattled like it wanted to come apart, but I'd driven worse in worse shape with worse odds.
Rhadamanthys reloaded. Spent shells hit the floor. "He's not falling back."
"I know."
"Any bright ideas?"
"Working on it."
Jasper locked his eyes on mine. The heat crawled up my spine and spread into my shoulders. I'd never figured out how to breathe normally when he looked at me. Then he turned back to the windshield without saying whatever he'd figured out.
I started to reach for him. I needed to touch him, to make sure he was solid, real, still mine. I curled my fingers into a fist around the gear shift instead.
The headlight got brighter.
Patroklos gained on us. The motorcycle could accelerate faster, brake harder, take turns I couldn't touch in this heavy bastard. We were going to run out of road before we ran out of him.
"Vihaan. Tell me you've got something."
Keys clicked. Screens refreshed. "Alley on your right. Cuts through to the parallel street. Too narrow, but—"
"I'll take it."
The alley came up, and I yanked the wheel. We went in sideways. The remaining mirror came off on the brick walls, and sparks shot past the windows. The whole vehicle screamed. I kept my foot down.
We burst out the other side. I corrected and found the road and kept going.
The headlight disappeared.
Rhadamanthys checked where the mirror used to be. "We lose him?"
"No," Jasper said.
He pointed ahead, and my stomach dropped into my boots.
Hijo de puta, he'd come out of nowhere. Patroklos had cut through some alley I'd completely missed and emerged right in our path. The motorcycle headlight pinned us.
"Diego—" Vihaan started.
Patroklos aimed straight at us. He kept coming like he'd made peace with dying as long as he took us with him. I knew that look. I'd worn it.
He hit us doing sixty.
Metal screamed. I slammed forward into the airbag, and white powder exploded in my face. The world spun. Glass shattered everywhere. Something cracked my head hard enough that I tasted colors. We hit a wall and stopped.
Dios mío, everything rang. The noise in my skull drowned out every other sound.
I kicked the door. It stayed shut. I kicked harder. The hinges gave, and I fell out onto the pavement. Blood ran into my left eye, and I wiped it away. I couldn't tell if it was mine or someone else's.
I turned and Jasper was already out with the katana drawn, steady on his feet like the crash had been a minor inconvenience.
Rhadamanthys hauled Nevada out of the wreckage.
Mr. Nobody slid out of the back seat, brushed glass from his sleeve, and stood very still with his face tilted up toward the sky.
Vihaan crawled out last with his laptops clutched to his chest. "I swear to God, if my screen is cracked, I will sign you up for so much spam mail. "
The motorcycle lay on its side twenty feet away, totaled and burning.
Patroklos crawled out from under it.
The crash had destroyed him. Blood covered every inch. His left arm bent the wrong way and his left leg dragged. But he still reached for the sickle on his back.
I pulled my shotgun and walked toward him.
He tried to get up and made it halfway before his leg gave out. Then he lay there and glared up at me, eyes full of nothing but hate.
I pointed both barrels at his face. “Did you touch her?”
Patroklos glared at me.
I shot a round into the dirt next to him. “Did you fucking touch my girl?”
Patroklos opened his mouth. The sound that came up from his throat was thick, gutted, vowels mashed against the stumps of consonants that had nowhere to land. He pushed it louder, and the noise spread but never sharpened. A word sat buried in there somewhere. I couldn't reach it.
Jasper moved to my left. "Net," he said. "He's saying no."
"No what?"
Patroklos dragged in a breath and tried again. He stared straight at Jasper and forced the Russian out through a mouth that couldn't shape it, every syllable a wreck.
"He guarded the door." Jasper translated flat, with no inflection. "Says he never went inside."
I kept both barrels on him. The answer should have mattered. It bounced off me like a stone off glass.
I aimed at his chest. "Any last words, pendejo?"
Patroklos glared at me. He tried to stand. He failed.
"That's what I fucking thought."
I pulled the trigger. The shot cracked loudly.
"That's for Eight."
Patroklos rocked back but stayed on his knee. Blood spread across his chest.
I fired again.
"That's for Jasper."
He went down on both knees. The sickle clattered against the pavement.
I stepped closer and aimed at his head.
"And this is for me."
The third shot dropped him.
He fell forward onto the pavement and stayed down.
Smoke curled from the barrel. The gun burned hot in my grip.
I stood there with the gun still up until I was absolutely sure he wasn’t moving.
Jasper stepped up beside me. He slid the katana back into its sheath, slowly, and the click of the guard seating sounded loud in the quiet. Blood dried on his neck. He was alive, whole, here.
I lowered the gun.
I stood there. Owned what I'd done, carried it forward. That was the deal.
Jasper held out a cigarette.
I took it and our fingers brushed. The contact burned straight up my arm and into my throat. He lit it for me, cupping his hand around the flame, and I drew deep, held the smoke, let it go.
We stood there close enough that his breathing moved the air between us. The burning motorcycle crackled. Sirens started up somewhere in the distance.
"You ok?" Jasper asked.
"Better now."
We both stared at the street ahead, at nothing.
He reached over and took the cigarette from my fingers. The tip glowed as he brought it to his mouth and drew deep.
"Airstrip's three kilometers," I said.
Jasper turned toward the vehicle. "Then let's move."
I dropped the cigarette and crushed it under my boot. Patroklos lay where he'd fallen. The Pantheon would find him eventually. Let them.
We had a plane to catch.