Chapter 14
I jerked awake at the sound of the door banging open sometime later. I reached for where I usually kept my knives, but I wasn’t wearing them. I did, however, have a strange arm draped across my chest. Rafael. He hadn’t left my side.
"Jesus Christ," came Diego's voice. "It smells like a whorehouse in here."
Rafael and I both scrambled to yank our clothing back into place while getting to our feet. I winced at the feeling of dried cum spread all over me. Jesus, he’d been really into it.
Jasper took in the scene before grunting and lighting a cigarette.
"Oh, good!" Diego's face lit up as he set down his bags. "You finally fucked! Maybe the tension will be better now."
Rafael took one look at me, then pulled away from me like I'd caught fire.
"Oh no." Diego's smile faded as he watched us refuse to look at each other. "This is worse, isn't it?"
"Dа," Jasper said around his cigarette. "Much worse."
We yanked our clothes on without looking at each other. The air between us was thick enough to choke on. Every accidental brush of skin made us both flinch.
Diego set down the last of the supply bags. "Right. Well. I brought food and ammunition and—"
A proximity alarm suddenly screeched.
Jasper dropped his cigarette, stomped it out and drew his katana while Diego went to the monitors. "How many?"
"Twelve. No, fifteen. Mierda. Sacra Custodia and Cerberus. All three entrances."
"Both?" I demanded, leaning over the monitors.
Diego frowned. "And from the looks of it, this time, they're working together."
Something cold slid down my spine. "That's not possible."
"I'm looking at the same feed you are, hermano."
Rafael moved beside me, staring at the monitors. "The Church and the Pantheon don't cooperate. Ever."
"Well, someone forgot to tell them that," Diego muttered.
Something big banged on the warehouse doors once, twice… The doors buckled and then broke open. The soft clink of gas canisters registered as tiny metal cylinders rolled in.
“Move!” Jasper yelled just as the smoke canisters exploded.
I dove to one side, pulling Rafael with me, both of us coughing. As soon as we found cover, I drew my blades and peeked over the work table we’d ducked behind.
A dozen Sacra Custodia poured through one entrance, while Cerberus soldiers came through the other, rifles raised.
A Pantheon enforcer came at Jasper with a rifle. Jasper's blade took his hands off at the wrists before the man could pull the trigger. The enforcer's scream cut short when the katana's return stroke opened his throat. Blood sprayed across the concrete in a wide arc.
Another operative rushed him from behind. Jasper pivoted, the blade moving in a tight circle that caught the man under the ribs and continued through his spine. The body folded wrong, collapsing like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Holy fuck, he was scary in motion.
Diego was beside him, sawed-off shotgun in hand. His first shot caught three Sacra Custodia operatives clustered near the door. The blast turned their silver masks into scrap metal and their heads into red mist.
I turned just as a Cerberus operative came at me, combat knife raised. I blocked, twisted inside his guard, and drove my blade up under his jaw. Bone cracked. The tip punched through the roof of his mouth into his brain. He went limp instantly.
Rafael's rifle cracked beside me. An operative who'd been lining up a shot on my back dropped, neat hole between his eyes.
"Behind you!" I shouted.
Rafael spun, driving the rifle stock into a Sacra Custodia operative's temple. The man's head snapped sideways with a crack. Rafael followed with a kick that sent him sprawling, then put two rounds through his chest.
We fell into rhythm back to back, moving as one unit. When he went high, I went low. When I pivoted left, he mirrored right.
An operative came at us, sword raised. I ducked under his swing and hamstrung him. Rafael's rifle butt crushed his windpipe.
Two more rushed us from opposite sides. I took mine through the kidney. Rafael caught his in a burst of gunfire, stitching a line from groin to throat.
"They're too coordinated," Rafael said between shots. "They must be working together.”
That wasn't right. Those organizations had been at war for centuries. They didn't work together. They didn’t even cooperate if they didn’t have to.
A Cerberus operative threw a flashbang. The world went white, and my ears rang. I stumbled, blind and deaf, blade up defensively.
Rafael's hand caught my elbow and steadied me, guiding me back while my vision cleared. Two bodies lay at his feet, dropped while protecting my blind side.
"If they’re working together, then they’re both answering to one commander," I said.
Rafael's face went pale. "That's impossible."
"You see what I'm seeing."
Across the warehouse, Jasper's katana carved through another operative. Diego's shotgun boomed. A cluster of enforcers dove for cover, but one wasn't fast enough. The blast caught him in the side, spinning him before he hit the ground.
We were holding. Barely. Bodies littered the concrete, and blood made the floor slick, but we were holding.
An operative came at me, and I drove my blade through his throat, but my mind was somewhere else.
Running through the pattern of attacks. Rome.
Rio. Now here. Every time we'd escaped, it was because one side interfered with the other.
Every close call that went our way happened because the two organizations got in each other's way.
What if that wasn't luck?
What if someone wanted us to keep running?
Then a single word cut through the chaos. "Enough."
Everyone froze.
A figure stepped through the carnage in an immaculate navy suit. I frowned when I recognized Judge Minos. What the hell was he doing here?
"Prince Constantine." Rafael's rifle came up, finger on the trigger. His hands shook.
My head snapped toward Rafael. "What did you call him?"
"His name is Prince and Grand Master Baron Constantine III,” Rafael said. “He runs the Order of the Knights of Malta, the Order of Saint Michael, and the Sacra Custodia.”
“But…” I shook my head. “He’s Judge Minos. One of the three Judges of the Pantheon.”
We both turned to look at each other as the realization slowly sank in.
Constantine. Minos. They were the same fucking person.
The coordinated attack made sense now. The convenient escapes. The way both organizations always seemed one step behind but never quite caught us. He'd commanded both sides. We'd never had a chance.
Constantine smiled like a teacher watching students finally grasp a difficult concept. "There it is. I do enjoy watching understanding dawn. The Church and the Pantheon aren't separate powers. They're Zeus's right hand and left. I simply serve as his voice in both."
My stomach turned over. Every move we'd made, he'd allowed. Every victory had been him loosening the leash just enough to let us think we had a chance.
"Suka," Jasper spat. "You're working for Zeus."
"Ah. Hephaestus." Constantine beamed. "Eight years, Zeus has been patient. And here you are. Worth the wait, I think."
Constantine lunged forward, grabbing my face before I could react. I tried to jerk away, but his grip was iron, fingers digging into my jaw. My hand went for my blade, but a dozen rifles clicked behind me, all pointed at Rafael.
"I would be careful were I you, Lorenzo. Remember, I hold your priest's life in my hands. Verstanden?" His breath was warm against my face. He released my jaw and stepped back, adjusting his cufflinks. "Now then, where were we? Ah yes, you were about to—"
"Hey, cabrón," Diego's voice cut through. "Catch."
He pulled a flashbang from his belt, yanked the pin, and threw.
The grenade tumbled end over end. Constantine's eyes tracked it, smile vanishing.
I squeezed my eyes shut as the world went white.
Constantine shouted orders that got lost in the chaos. A hand came down on my shoulder and Rafael's voice ground out. "Come on! The door's this way!"
Diego's shotgun boomed twice, muzzle flash lighting the smoke for a split second.
Together, we fought our way through the mass of confusion toward the door. I sliced through three men while Rafael shot two more. If I weren't careful, the bastard was going to get more kills than me.
We burst out of the smoke into the hangar, sunlight blinding after the darkness. The Cessna sat fifty yards across the tarmac.
Behind us, smoke poured from the warehouse. Figures stumbled out, blind and coughing.
"Go, go, go!" Diego was already running.
Bullets sparked off the tarmac. We ran in a broken line, zigzagging to make ourselves harder to hit. Rafael ran beside me, Jasper ahead, and Diego brought up the rear, laughing like this was the best day of his life.
More bullets. One passed so close to my head that I tasted heat. Another punched through Rafael's sleeve, missing flesh by inches.
We reached the plane, and Diego yanked the door open. "Get in!"
Jasper climbed into the copilot seat, katana still in hand, blood still dripping from the blade. I threw myself into the back. Rafael dove in after me, pulling the door shut as Diego fired up the engines.
The propeller caught and roared to life.
"Hold on!" Diego's hands flew over the controls.
The Cessna lurched forward. We accelerated down the tarmac, bullets pinging off the fuselage. I caught a glimpse of Constantine standing in the hangar doorway, watching us go. He raised his arm and waved pleasantly.
The wheels left the ground. Rio dropped away below us, favelas and green mountains and the sprawling Atlantic stretching to the horizon. We climbed, the engine straining, and the warehouse became a toy behind us.
Silence filled the cabin except for the engine's steady drone.
There was blood on all of us. Jasper had his katana across his lap with gore slowly dripping onto the floor. Rafael's sleeve was torn and red-stained. The cut across my ribs burned when I breathed. We looked like we'd crawled out of hell.
When the plane hit turbulence and I started to slide, Rafael's hand shot out and caught my wrist.
Our eyes met and held for a second too long, and he let go like I'd burned him.
I stared at him. We'd just fought side by side. Moved together like we'd been doing it for years. And before that, on the warehouse floor, he'd been all over me. Biting. Marking. Making a mess of both of us like he couldn't get enough.
Now he was acting as if my touch was poison.
Fine. If that's how you want to play it. Be an emotionally stunted prick of a priest. I turned away and stared out my own window, putting space between us.
"So." Diego glanced back at us. "Where the fuck are we going?"
Rafael's jaw worked. "We need help."
"From who?" I couldn't keep the bitterness out of my voice. "Constantine controls the Church. Minos controls the Pantheon. They're the same person working for Zeus."
Silence stretched.
"New Orleans," Jasper said quietly.
Everyone looked at him.
"New Orleans?" Diego finally said. "Did you hit your pretty head, guapo? What's in New Orleans?"
"The one person Zeus can't touch." Jasper pulled out a cigarette and lit it. In a pressurized cabin. "To see the Oracle."