Chapter 23 #2
He came at me. I squeezed off two shots, and both hit center mass. Body armor ate them. He staggered and kept coming. The sword came at my face, and I threw myself sideways, hit stone hard enough to tear through my shirt, rolled and came up firing.
He closed on me before the second round cleared the barrel.
Too close for the gun to matter. He knocked it aside with the flat of the blade, and the sword came down.
I jammed my rifle up to block, and the impact rattled every bone in my arms. He ripped the rifle away like I were a child holding a stick.
Mierda. This was how I died. In a tunnel, disarmed, with a Greek demigod swinging his dead lover's weapons at my head.
The katana caught the blade mid-thrust, inches from my chest. Jasper stood between us, locked into that cold operator mode I'd seen twice before and hoped I'd never see again.
"Diego. Move."
I scrambled back and went for the pistol at my hip.
Achilles and Jasper circled each other, katana versus sword and chain sickle. I raised the pistol, and they moved too fast, too tangled. If I pulled the trigger, I be as likely to hit Jasper as Achilles. I shifted left. The angle stayed bad. I shifted right. Worse.
I stood there with a loaded gun and nothing I could do with it, and the man I'd spent every night of the last month memorizing fought for his life three meters away.
My abuela told me once that the worst thing about loving a fighter was the watching.
She'd said it about my grandfather, who came home from jobs with blood on his knuckles and stories he'd never tell.
She'd sit at the kitchen table and wait, and the waiting was the thing that ate her alive.
I'd thought she was being dramatic. I owed her an apology.
Jasper gave ground, step by step. Achilles pressed forward with the sword, driving him back. Each strike landed like he meant to cut through Jasper and into the earth beneath him, and Jasper absorbed every one, redirected, gave another step. But Achilles had nothing to lose.
The sword caught Jasper's shoulder. He twisted, but not fast enough. Blood spread through his shirt, and the air left my chest.
"Jasper!"
He couldn't answer.
An arrow punched through the back of Achilles's ankle. He dropped to one knee and looked down at the shaft sticking through the joint.
I spun. Hades stood at the far end of the corridor with a bow in his hands. He held it like a man returning to something he'd put down a long time ago. He reached for a second arrow.
Achilles snarled and lurched upright on the ruined ankle. The chain sickle whipped out and wrapped around Hades's throat before he could nock the second arrow. Achilles yanked hard. Hades stumbled forward, clawing at the chain biting into his neck.
"No!" I raised the pistol, but Achilles had already hauled Hades in front of him like a shield. The Greek sword came up to Hades' throat.
"Shoot," Achilles said. "Go ahead. See if you can hit me before I open his throat."
Jasper lifted his katana, but held still. “Let him go.”
"Why?" Achilles limped backward, dragging Hades with him.
Blood ran down his leg from the ankle and left a smeared trail on the stone.
"You walked away from everything. Everything he built for you.
Everything I never..." He jerked the chain tighter.
Hades choked. "Patroklos is dead. You threw it all away, and he's still dead. "
"Killing Hades won't bring him back," Jasper said.
Achilles laughed. The sound cracked off the stone. "No. But you care about this. Your allies. Your little cause." He grinned, and nothing behind it was human. "I'm going to take things from you now, Hephaestus. The way you took from me. One by one until you understand what it costs."
He backed toward the corridor behind him. Jasper started forward, and Achilles pressed the blade against Hades's throat. A thin line of blood appeared.
"Don't."
Jasper stopped.
I raised the pistol and sighted on the sliver of Achilles's head visible above Hades's shoulder.
Two inches of target. I could make that shot on a range with steady hands and a paper target that didn't stare back at me. I didn’t know if I could make it with Hades's eyes locked on mine and the margin between rescue and murder measured in a flinch.
I lowered the gun.
Achilles dragged Hades around the corner. His uneven footsteps scraped against the stone, growing fainter. I ran to the turn. The corridor stretched empty ahead of me. A trail of blood led into the dark.
"Fuck!" I slammed my fist into the wall. Stone bit into my knuckles. "Fuck."
Jasper closed his hand around my shoulder from behind. I turned. Blood soaked through his shirt, dripping down his arm. His face had gone white.
"You need medical," I said.
"Later." He swayed, and I caught him before he went down. His weight hit me, and I braced against the wall, one arm around his waist, the other still holding the pistol. He ran warm even now, even bleeding, and I pressed my hand flat against his back to feel his heart thump through his ribs.
"Now, Jasper. Sit down before you pass out."
I eased him down with his back against the wall and dropped to my knees in front of him.
He breathed shallow and fast. I pulled his collar aside and pressed both hands against the wound.
Blood welled hot between my fingers. I wanted to put my lips on his forehead and tell him he was fine, but my hands were filthy.
He opened his eyes. He looked at me the way he'd looked at me in the dim light when the blast woke us, that half-second of finding me in the dark like I was the first thing he needed to confirm was still there.
"Stay with me," I said.
He put his hand over mine on the wound. His fingers were cold. I wrapped mine around them and pressed harder.
Valentina appeared in the corridor with her rifle still in hand. She took one look at us and her expression flattened.
"How many?" I asked.
"We lost six. Twelve more wounded. Mateo's gone."
I already knew about Mateo. But her voice saying it turned him from a body on the tunnel floor into a name I'd carry. His daughter turned seven next week, and somebody else would have to bake the cake.
"The children?"
"Safe. Your mother has them."
I nodded and kept pressure on the wound. Jasper had closed his eyes again with his jaw clenched against the pain, but he kept his fingers laced through mine, sticky with his own blood, holding on.
We'd held the line. The Kalderash had bled for people they barely knew because I'd asked them to, because I'd stood in my grandmother's root cellar and told them it mattered, and they'd believed me.
Six of them had paid for that belief, and Mateo's daughter would grow up without him because her father had trusted the kid who'd left the valley at seventeen and come back with a war in his pocket.
Jasper's blood ran warm between my fingers. The tunnel went quiet. Somewhere above us Achilles dragged Hades into the dark, and I held on tighter because Jasper was the one thing I could keep, and I was not letting go.