Assassin's Heart (38 page)

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Authors: Monica Burns

BOOK: Assassin's Heart
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The knowledge sliced into his gut with a sickening twist. To think he’d actually allowed himself to believe they stood a chance at happiness together. He drew in a sharp breath as his heart clenched painfully. The sensation couldn’t have been more agonizing if someone had ripped the organ out of his chest. Not even the torture he’d endured at Nicostratus’s hands had been this painful.

“Then Gabriel was right. The bitch must be quite special if you value her so highly.”

Nicostratus’s thoughts filtered their way into his head as two figures dressed in flowing hooded capes vaulted their way off the top of the wall in front of them. His father and the Praetorian Dominus. A moment later, three more figures followed. Fuck. Lysander grunted with angry frustration. He should have known something would go wrong tonight. He should have locked Phaedra in a closet before coming here. How in the hell was he going to keep her safe?
“You won’t, Unmentionable. Have you forgotten how easily I defeated you the last time?”
The Praetorian’s sneer was meant to infuriate him, and he fought to keep himself from rushing forward to confront the
bastardo.
“You still lost, didn’t you?”
Satisfaction rolled through him as he could read the fury in the Praetorian Dominus’s mind at being reminded he’d lost to a Sicari Lord.
“There will be no avoiding justice tonight, heretic. Tonight I shall leave my mark on you,
just as I have on so many others.”
Lysander threw up a mental shield as the man’s thoughts swarmed in his head. He was wasting his energy using his telepathy this way, and he needed all the strength he had to keep this
bastardo
out of his head. If he didn’t, the Dominus would be able to easily counter any maneuver Lysander made in his effort to defeat the Praetorian. And it was going to take a hell of a lot more than brute strength.

“Defeat me?”
Gabriel’s mocking laughter echoed in his head. “Y
ou truly are delusional,
Unmentionable. You cannot defeat me, heretic. For your insolence, I think I’ll fuck your

woman slowly while forcing you to watch.”

“I told you once, and I’ll tell you again, you’re going to have to go through me to get to her,” Lysander snapped as he fought to fortify his mental defenses. He grimaced. It was the second time he’d responded to Gabriel and Nicostratus out loud, and he was sealing his fate every time he verbally answered the taunts in his head.

“Who the fuck are you talking to?” Ares bit out without looking away from the approaching threat.

“I believe the question you should be asking my son is which
one
of us is he talking to.” Nicostratus’s voice carried across the last fifteen feet that separated the two adversarial parties. It was a bomb obliterating what was left of his world.

“Son?” Pasquale spat out the word as if he’d just tasted something unpleasant.

“Yes, my son,” Nicostratus said.

Il Christi omnipotentia
, was that a note of pride in the
bastardo’s
voice? The man’s quiet laughter dragged him back into that dark pit, while the mutilated side of his face twisted and pulled until his face was on fire again like it had been the night Nicostratus had tortured him. All around him, his friends muttered their disbelief.
“What the hell is he talking about, Lysander?” Ares’s question was tight with disbelief and anger. He ignored the question.
“I. Am. Sicari.” He enunciated each word in an effort to believe the statement was true. Inside he knew it was a lie.
“Oh, but we both know differently, don’t we, my boy?” In the darkness, Nicostratus’s voice rumbled across the circus field like thunder. “Show them the birthmark. The one we
both
have.”
“
Christus
, is he telling the truth, Lysander?” Cleo’s words reflected her shocked horror.
He didn’t want to answer the question, but he wasn’t about to lie either. His silence was no less damning. He didn’t even have to probe his friends’ minds to know what they were thinking. Their thoughts found him. Whispers of shock, disbelief, and horror, even a trace of fear, crashed into him. Distrust followed, and the sensation scraped across his nerve endings until his entire body ached.

He’d always known the moment of truth would be hard, he’d just never realized how agonizing it would be. Beside him, Phaedra’s reaction was the worst. Her shock and horror he understood, but it was her fear that almost brought him to his knees. Her reaction said it more clearly than any words could. He’d lost her. Only this time it was forever.

He pushed the pain deep. He couldn’t save her if he was distracted. And s
he
was why Gabriel and Nicostratus had come. They’d come for Phaedra. His jaw tightened at the thought. Over his dead body.

“With pleasure, Unmentionable.”

He shut out Gabriel’s sneer. With a discipline he’d sharpened since the night his father had tortured him, he closed off his thoughts to everything but the task at hand. With pinpoint precision, he visualized the Praetorian Dominus crashing to the ground from a vicious right hook.
His invisible blow sent Gabriel flying backward, and before the Praetorian hit the ground with a thud, he charged the man. As Gabriel sprang to his feet, Lysander flipped his sword so the tip was pointing behind him. Darting past the Praetorian, he dragged his blade across Gabriel’s arm. The Praetorian Dominus shouted with rage.

“I seem to recall I drew first blood the last time, too, Praetorian,” Lysander said grimly as he spun around to face the man.

Behind Gabriel, he could see Ares fighting Nicostratus, while the rest of his friends were dealing with the remaining Praetorians. Friends? He had no friends anymore. The lapse of concentration cost him dearly as an invisible pulse of energy slammed into him like a baseball bat.
The blow sucked the wind out of his lungs and sent him to his knees. Quickly, he cleared his head of everything but the man striding toward him, allowing Gabriel to think he was too stunned with pain to move. That part wasn’t hard to imagine. The
bastardo
had packed one hell of a punch in that mental blow . As the Praetorian Dominus’s boots came into view, Lysander allowed his senses to visualize the precise moment Gabriel lifted his sword.
Before the man could strike, he jammed the hilt of his sword up into the man’s balls. The Praetorian Dominus howled with pain and sank to one knee. Immediately, Lysander rolled to the right and was on his feet to send his blade flying toward Gabriel’s thigh. His sword barely grazed the man through his cloak, as the Praetorian Dominus still had the wherewithal to wave his free hand and knock the blade aside.
“Perhaps I underestimated you, Unmentionable. In some ways, you fight just like a Praetorian. And if you think to impress your father, you shall fail.” Gabriel’s words were like fuel on a fire.
“I’m not trying to impress anyone, you fi
glio di puttana.
I just want you dead,” he spat out fiercely.

“As I you, so prepare yourself, Unmentionable. You’ve not long to wait.”

In the next instant, Gabriel sprang to his feet, and with a rounded cartwheel, the man whipped his body through the air, his cloak hitting Lysander in the face—blinding him. A moment later, a sharp blade sliced into his shoulder, the tip of the sword just missing his neck. Pain lashed at him, and he grunted at the way his shoulder ached. Ignoring the pain, he whirled around, only to wind up flat on his back as another of Gabriel’s mental blows knocked him off his feet. In response, he visualized his boot slamming into the Praetorian Dominus’s jaw.
The mental foot action sent Gabriel’s head snapping backward, while giving Lysander the opportunity to get back onto his feet. He’d barely managed to regain his own footing as Gabriel straightened and glared at him with hate twisting his features.
Christus
, the man’s recovery was amazing. Didn’t this guy feel pain?

“Pain is a relative term, Unmentionable.” Gabriel’s voice was cold and brittle as he read Lysander’s thoughts. “But for you, it holds no meaning because your life is at an end.”

A hard weight pressed into his entire body, forcing him to his knees. His mental reserves were beginning to weaken, but his only option was to push back against Gabriel’s hold on him. The Praetorian Dominus increased the weight bearing down on him, and despite managing to rise to his feet, Lysander still couldn’t break the man’s hold over him.
With a grunt, he deepened his concentration and threw more of his telekinetic strength into fighting back. The intensity of his focus made it impossible to see Gabriel’s sword flying through the air at him until it was too late. He tried desperately to shift his focus and block the sword, but his reserves were almost nonexistent. Resolved to his fate, he closed his eyes and shut out Gabriel’s gloating thoughts as he waited for the sword to slam into his chest.
In that moment, steel clanged against steel as another sword blocked Gabriel’s, sending it spiraling away from Lysander. The Praetorian Dominus uttered a noise of fury as Lysander opened his eyes to see Nicostratus lowering his sword. Stunned, he stared at his biological father.
“We’re done here, Gabriel. We’ve lost this round.”
“No,” the Praetorian Dominus exclaimed with vehemence. “I want him dead.”
“Not tonight.” Nicostratus glared at the other man. After a long moment, Gabriel whirled away and ran toward the wall. Nicostratus turned his head toward Lysander. “You didn’t disappoint, my boy. You’re everything I could ever hope for in a son.”
“Get away from me, you sick
bastardo
.”

Lysander swung at the man as rage welled up inside him. Nicostratus easily dodged the blow then dragged his blade across Lysander’s chest. A moment later, the Praetorian was retreating toward the wall surrounding the circus. Fire streaked through Lysander as he swayed on his feet, unable to move. He heard someone behind him, and he froze. There was still the matter of his Praetorian blood to deal with. Without looking at the person behind him, he went down on his knees and bent his head.

“Whoever you are, make it quick,” he said with a tap to the back of his neck.

“Get up, you
bastardo
.” Cleo’s hand bit into his shoulder wound as she dragged him to his feet. “You’ve got a fucking lot of explaining to do before I put you out of your misery.”
The pain in his shoulder made his stomach churn as Cleo released him and stepped back away from him.
Christus
, she’d deliberately gripped his injured shoulder. He couldn’t blame her. She was furious with him. The fact that she was even talking to him was amazing, because in her book, he’d lied. He had no doubt everyone else would feel the same way. He slowly staggered to his feet, his entire body on fire as nerve endings signaled pain. Slowly he turned toward the small group staring at him. Their cold expressions, with the exception of Emma’s sympathetic one, hurt worse than the wounds setting his body on fire.
“Phaedra will have to perform the
Curavi
at the safe house. It’s too dangerous to stay here. Let’s move,” Ares said coldly and turned away to head back to where they’d parked the cars.

One by one, the rest of the team turned and followed Ares. Phaedra was the last to move. Her face devoid of emotion, she turned her back to him and followed her brother. In that moment, Lysander hated Cleo for not killing him.

Chapter 20

LYSANDER was Praetorian. The enemy.

Somewhere deep in the back of Phaedra’s mind, a small voice denied the words, arguing that he wasn’t the enemy. She silenced the protest with an anger born of renewed grief. He was the son of a Praetorian. But more horrifying than that, his Praetorian
bastardo
of a father had murdered her parents. The reality of it was repugnant. Lysander’s father was the butcher who’d killed her parents.
Fear rushed through her blood as she remembered how the Praetorian’s voice had echoed across the Circus Maxentius. Like his face, she had never forgotten the monster’s voice. Even now, after all these years, she remembered that cruel voice taunting her and Ares as the
bastardo
had stood over her mother’s mutilated body. The terrifying memory flashed in front of her eyes. The priest’s closet. Her mother’s screams. The peephole she’d peered through to see her mother’s murderer. Lysander’s father.
Her stomach churned as she fought not to throw up. She was in love with the son of the man who’d butchered her parents. Lysander hadn’t just betrayed her by hiding the truth. He’d made her betray the memory of her parents. Her heart shattered. The pain of it lancing through her with an agony that surpassed the injury on her leg.
She should have sensed the evil in him. How had he been able to keep it from her? No, she’d sensed it. She’d seen that darkness in him. The memory of that day on the stairs flitted through her head. His emotions had been dark. Riddled with despair. At the time, she’d been convinced his emotional state was the result of the torture session he’d endured. Now she knew differently. She’d simply mistaken it for what it really was—his Praetorian blood.
Her heart twisted inside her chest. She couldn’t believe that. Didn’t want to believe it. There had to be some other explanation. She’d seen his despair, the tortured nature of the beast inside him. She was certain of it. It hadn’t been his attempt to deceive her. No. She would have seen any duplicity on his part. J
ust like she’d seen the truth that he was
Praetorian?
How could she be sure he hadn’t been deceiving her? He was a telepath. He could have known she was at the top of the stairs reading his emotions. It would have been so easy for him to deceive her. He was Praetorian. It was what the
bastardi
did. That and work toward their goal to exterminate the Sicari.

A shudder rippled through her as her thoughts came full circle. Lysander’s father had butchered her parents. The thought made her numb. Everything in her world had collapsed on her in the blink of an eye. Phaedra fought back the tears as she stared out the backseat window of the Land Rover. She hadn’t felt this lost since the weeks and months after her parents were murdered. And seeing their killer tonight had pulled all of her grief back to the surface. Her hand trembled as she wiped a tear off her cheek. She was grateful Lysander was driving the other vehicle. Being in the same car with him right now would have been unbearable. It had amazed her that Cleo had chosen to go with him.

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