In response, he briefly exited the room before reappearing, dragging a body behind him. He dragged it out in front of Agrippina’s seated form, dumping it disrespectfully. I looked at it, seeing that the body was absent a head. I looked at it in confusion for a few seconds before glancing up at Agrippina. She gazed at me coolly, her eyes widening in realization a few seconds later. She held up a finger.
“How silly of me. You need the head, of course.”
She turned to reach for something behind her. In one quick motion, she reoriented herself and tossed whatever she was holding in one deft movement. As it flew through the air, I identified it as a human head. It hit the ground a few feet in front of me with a horrible squishing noise and rolled its way to rest between my knees. It landed face down. All I could see was a mop of dark hair.
Agrippina rolled her eyes and motioned with a hand to the same guard who had brought in the body. He marched over and rotated the head so that a set of all too familiar grey stared back at me.
Varus.
I snapped my head away, averting my eyes from the man I had come to call a friend. A man I knew to be some long descended ancestor of mine. A family man whose life was now over.
Without wanting to, I moved my attention back to his face. Even if his features had been horribly mutilated, I would have been able to identify him by his eyes alone. They were a cold grey, and set exactly like mine. But his face wasn’t harmed. His features were as clean and humanlike as they had always been. Even his normal expression of contemplative thought was still there, eternal on his severed head.
I closed my eyes and turned away.
The guard retrieved Varus’ head and brought it back to Agrippina. She accepted it, and by the time I reopened my eyes, had it in her lap, stroking poor Varus’ hair like a Bond villain and his cat. I clenched my teeth in anger once again and stared daggers at her. She was unphased by my attempt at intimidation and continued to stroke my friend’s head.
“This fool,” she said, “managed to operate the orb.” She haughtily lifted her chin again and continued. “But he did not share in my excitement. While I may know what it does, I have been unable to personally operate it, or find anyone else who can. I may have lost my temper.” She raised her shoulders just slightly. “I am the first to admit my mistake, but sometimes our emotions get the best of us, do they not, Jacob?”
I kept my mouth shut, not dignifying her with an answer.
Everyone had managed to get themselves up into a kneeling position by now, all strung out in a line, kneeling shoulder to shoulder. Only Helena remained inert. Noticing my attention, Agrippina tossed Varus’ head over her shoulder and moved to crouch besides Helena. She reached down and stroked her hair momentarily until she grew bored and pulled on Helena’s shoulders, mounting her on her knees. I was now able to see that the source of her blood was a small cut on the side of her temple, probably from a blow taken when she was knocked unconscious. It had to be why she was still out. No one else seemed to be bleeding.
Once Agrippina managed to balance her upright, she caressed Helena’s naked body with a hand, humming in satisfaction as she poked one of Helena’s breasts, but a heartbeat later, she reeled back with a hand and slapped Helena across the face, snapping her out of her doze. She cried out in pain from both the slap and quick transition to consciousness, coughing and choking, her eyes unable to lock onto anything. Her head lulled lazily until Agrippina grabbed her by the hair.
She turned to me. “I’ve wanted to do that for a very long time. I must admit that I suffer from sudden bouts of jealousy on occasion.”
Helena mumbled under her breath indecipherably. Agrippina noticed, and brought her head closer, pretending to try and hear what she was saying.
“What’s that, dear? Oh, does it hurt. I’m sorry.” And with that, she brought her head in closer, and kissed the side of Helena’s cheek, right where she’d slapped her. I couldn’t watch. She turned back to look at me once again.
“I’ve always wanted to do that, as well,” she sighed. “If only there was time for more. The three of us could have had something truly special, Jacob.”
My stomach churned at the thought.
She smiled at me and kissed Helena on the forehead before standing up and moving down past the line of captured and beaten warriors, looking at each soul in turn. She stopped at the very end of the line, in front of Gaius and Marcus.
“Traitors,” she hissed. “Your deaths will be first.”
They sneered at her but she ignored them and snapped her fingers, summoning a handful of her guards. “Take them outside and crucify them.”
Gaius and Marcus struggled against their Praetorian handlers, trying anything to break away, but there was nothing they could do. With three Praetorians on each of them, they might as well be David without a sling. They were hauled through the room’s single door and never brought back. Everyone else struggled against their restraints, all except Helena, who was merely doing everything she could to stay on her knees.
Agrippina ignored Gaius and Marcus’ removal and walked back in my direction. She turned her head and saw Titus.
“You, I have not met,” she said, gripping his chin with her fingers. “Lovely, though. And young. I think I will keep you.”
She continued, leaving each of my friends with a comment as she passed by.
“Brute,” she said to Bordeaux.
“Cripple,” as she passed Vincent
“Oriental,” to poor Wang.
“Ah, you.” Her final comment was to Santino. She almost sounded happy to see him, but it wasn’t hard to read between the lines. “Stamina you may have, but as I told you before, your performance was hardly worth repeating.”
Santino just smiled at her.
I blinked as his smile reminded me of something, but what was it exactly? Oh, that’s right: that he was an asshole. But he was my kind of asshole. It’s who he was. And it was a good thing, at least in this moment, because it also reminded me who I was as well. It reminded me that I was always prepared for anything, and that I always had a knife behind my belt.
I would have smacked myself if I wasn’t tied up, but I didn’t let myself grow too excited just yet. We were still in it deep.
Agrippina moved back to her chair to consult with one of her Praetorians. I used the time to check on Helena. She was still mostly out of it, her head bobbing from side to side as it hung near her chest. Occasionally she’d snap it up like she was waking abruptly from a nap, but it would just as quickly drop again. I hissed at her, trying to get her attention, but she remained incoherent.
I decided to ignore her as I tried to budge my knife from its hiding place at my back. It was tricky. My hands were tightly bound and the knife was in there good. It was going to take me a few minutes of finagling to get it out without anyone noticing.
I decided to multitask by trying to physically get Helena’s attention with a kick of my foot. I probably hit her harder than I should have, but I had to make sure she was all right. Luckily, she reacted, and her eyes finally popped open. She craned her head to look at me and I could tell her vision wasn’t quite there yet. Her eyes were normally so piercing that she always seemed to be looking right through me, but instead, her eyes were swollen and tracking all over the place.
I snuck a quick peek at Agrippina, noting her Praetorian had left again, and that she was impatiently tapping her foot for his return.
I looked back at Helena. She was blinking rapidly and she seemed to look at me with much greater focus now. When I thought she was coherent enough to communicate I mouthed, are you okay? She jerked her head in an abbreviated affirmation and I breathed a silent sigh of relief. I was about to ask about the baby, even though I knew she couldn’t possibly know anything, when Santino interrupted me.
“Tell me you have a plan, Hunter,” he whispered.
“Me?” I replied quietly. “It’s your turn.”
He shook his head, mumbling something about lazy leaders and inept
commanders.
“Where’s your knife?” He asked.
“I’m working on it.”
He opened his mouth again but Agrippina interrupted, strutting back towards us.
“Now, Jacob, are you prepared to help me?”
“I’ve told you. I don’t know how the thing works,” I insisted.
She hummed a disbelieving noise, and pulled the orb from behind her back.
“Tell, me,” she said. “Do you see anything within?”
Just to pleasure her and buy us some more time, I looked, not expecting to find anything. But to my surprise, I did see something within. Something I’d never seen before, but couldn’t quite make it out so I played dumb.
“There’s nothing there, Agrippina. There never is.”
“That is too bad.” She snapped her fingers. “Perhaps some incentive will be required.”
A Praetorian answered her call, bringing with him what appeared to be Wang’s 9mm Beretta. She held it in her hand, inspecting it briefly, before pressing it against my forehead.
“Now?”
I smirked. “You don’t even know how to use that.”
“I don’t?” She asked, shifting her aim towards Helena. “And now?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but I didn’t say anything. She was bluffing, but even if she wasn’t, I had to hold out as long as possible. I was gambling with the two most important lives I had, but I had to stall. The power of the orbs could not be allowed to fall into her hands.
She noticed my stubbornness and lowered her aim.
“Hmm… that won’t do,” she said. “Besides, I want you to watch her suffer. Perhaps one of your friends.”
She walked out before Bordeaux, Wang, Vincent, and Santino, pointing the gun at each, humming as she switched from target to target in a Roman version of eeny, meeny, miny, moe. She passed back and forth, over and over between them before finally settling on Bordeaux.
She smiled. “You.”
She pulled the trigger. The suppressor equipped pistol’s bang was barely loud enough to reverberate off the walls or hurt my still dazed brain, but the memory of Bordeaux’s skull shattering open would resonate in my mind for the rest of my life. I watched as the large Frenchman took the round defiantly, but fatally. The bullet entered through his left eye socket, and exploded out the back of his head, covering the wall behind him in blood and grey brain matter. My friend’s body didn’t move much at first, his large mass holding him firmly against the force of the small, fast moving object. But soon, gravity took its toll and he slumped to the floor – lifeless.
I stared at his body in shock, unable to comprehend that such a violent death could come to a friend as close as he was.
Was.
Was…
Everyone else struggled against their restraints again, and I found myself mindlessly joining them, momentarily forgetting about my knife. I wanted nothing more than to rip Agrippina’s heart from her chest and shove it down her throat. Only Helena, still in a daze, managed to avoid the image of Bordeaux’s death.
“You fucking bitch!” Santino screamed, his insult standing out amongst all the rest, spittle flying from his mouth. I’d never seen him so angry.
She angrily turned to face him, pointing the gun at his head.
“Perhaps you shall be next?”
Santino defiantly turned towards me, switching to English.
“Don’t tell her anything, Hunter! Wait for the b…”
But Agrippina pistol whipped him before he could finish.
Wait for the b…?
Wait for the what?
What had he been talking about?
The bitch? The batman? The bomb? The bomb!
Perhaps Bordeaux will have the last laugh after all.
But, what time was it? I couldn’t see my watch or anyone else’s. How long had we been out? I had to stall.
“You can continue to watch friends die all night, Jacob,” Agrippina said, as I watched her slowly squeeze the trigger. “But remember, your Amazon’s death won’t be anywhere near as quick or easy.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but my response was suddenly drowned out by an insistent beep beep beep noise, emanating from somewhere in the room. I glanced around. My ropes were almost cut but I had yet to determine what was making that noise. It seemed to be coming from Bordeaux. Agrippina looked at my friend’s body as well, hoping to discover the source of the annoyance. I realized what it was a half second later.
Agrippina turned to look at me, anger in her eyes. I met her stare, and offered her a cold smile. A smile completely devoid of happiness, joy, or relief. The only emotion it conveyed was vengeance.
Through clenched teeth, I whispered, “boom.”
And then room was engulfed in flame.
The explosion originated from some place above us and seemingly on the other end of the building, but that didn’t save us from the deafening explosion or the concussive blast that sent those on their feet flying across the room and those of us kneeling against the wall behind us. I watched as Agrippina bounced off one of her Praetorians and careened across my line of sight, landing somewhere near Helena.
Luckily, the bomb hadn’t been close enough to inflict traumatic nerve damage on any of us, so we’d survive. Had we been too close, we could have died from any number of factors. The fire from the explosion, the blast wave shattering our bodies, or the pressure build up liquefying our bones could have left us as little more than a puddle of goo on the floor.
Even so, my ears were ringing and I knew I wouldn’t be hearing anything for minutes if I was lucky. But I was conscious and I finally had the opportunity to use my knife and finish cutting through my ropes. Santino was also up, patiently waiting for me to palm the knife off to him, which I did immediately.
I didn’t wait. I got to my feet and searched for Penelope.
Helena was slow to rise, sluggish at first, but she’d also been furthest from the explosion. I watched as the limber woman managed to squeeze her feet through her bound hands so that they were now in front of her. She stumbled away from me and I had to assume she was searching for Agrippina.
I couldn’t worry about her now. Praetorians were getting to their feet all around me. I needed my weapon. It was time to end this. Vespasian could live with it if we killed Agrippina. We weren’t leaving without her, but what state she came with us in was up to her.
I thought about Bordeaux. He wouldn’t have a choice on how he was coming home. Gaius and Marcus were also loose ends. I had no idea where they were. They were probably already dead.
My mind focused when I found Penelope, still in the hands of the bastard Praetorian that had been fondling her earlier. He was only a few feet away, but it felt like I was wadding through jell-o after the explosion. I pushed through it.
He saw me coming and attempted to draw his gladius, but I was on him before he could draw it from its scabbard. With a quick punch to his wrist, his grip loosened and the sword dropped back in its sheath. The move came at the same instant as I stomped on his foot, following that up by kneeing him in the balls. He doubled over in pain, still gripping my rifle, so I snatched his head with my hands and smashed my knee into his nose this time. My kneecap hurt like hell, but he was probably dead. I pushed him over and he released Penelope into the air as he fell.
I snatched her out of the air, turned, and fed a round into the chamber.
It was dark after most of the torches had been snuffed out by the explosion, but the room was now dimly illuminated by the night sky, visible through the collapsing roof. Rubble was strewn everywhere in big slabs, chunks and toppled pillars. The level above us was visible in some places, and I notice at least one enemy Praetorian buried alive, only his head exposed.
I activated the night vision on my rifle’s ACOG scope.
Peering through it, I noted two Praetorians making their way towards Helena. Once again, even through the dim green glow of my night vision, I saw evil intent on their faces, just like the
Praetorian four years ago that had almost killed her.
The rest of the boys were up now as well, searching for weapons of their own. Wang was already getting in touch with his inner martial artist, having taken out two Praetorians with quick karate kicks to the head. He’d been close with Bordeaux as well, former swim buddies, and his anger was obvious. Vincent was up as well, but he wasn’t fighting.
He was grieving.
A large chunk of the ceiling had fallen during the explosion right on Titus. I could only see the upper half of the young Roman’s body, everything from his belly button down having been crushed by the concrete. Vincent held Titus’ visible upper body in his arm, and cried for his adopted son. Watching the old man cry caused me to hesitate.
But Santino didn’t see Vincent in his time of grief, or if he did, he focused on the Praetorians going after Helena instead. He bravely body checked one of them into the other and started beating him to death with his fists. His action snapped me from my own sadness at the loss of Titus and the pain Vincent was feeling. I hit the second Praetorians in the back as he got to his feet with a three round burst, just before he could enact some measure of revenge on Santino.
Helena had noticed her savior as well and helped Santino to his feet after he was finished with his prey. She reached up and touched his cheek in thanks for the save, an intimate gesture only friends as good as they could share without it seeming awkward. He threw her a goofy smile, gripped her hand momentarily, and rushed off to find someone else to kill. Helena, meanwhile, spotted Agrippina and went directly for her.
A slight motion to my left pulled my attention away from her and I spotted one of the ninjas trying to flank me. He rushed at me with his small scimitar blade, but instead of waiting for him to skewer me, I ran out to meet him. Spinning at the last second, I managed to guess which way he was going to lunge and avoided his blade. He stumbled past me and I put another three round burst into his back.
Six down, another thirty or so to go.
I unloaded the remaining rounds in my magazine on whatever targets I could find.
To Crown a Caesar (The Praetorian Series: Book II) Page 40
