To Crown a Caesar (The Praetorian Series: Book II) (26 page)

This was idiotic.  Running from ninjas upon
the rooftops of Ancient Byzantium?

Who came
s up with this stuff?

I was so fucking sick of A
ncient Rome.

“Come on,” I said, pulling Helena again.  “Got anything in that bag of yours that won’t draw any attention?”

“No,” she answered.

“Great.  Time to go hot then,” I said, pulling out my suppressor equipped Sig P220.  I planted my feet, turned and took a knee, observing at least a dozen black clad ninjas running towards us
from three different angles.  I unloaded half a dozen rounds at the center group before popping off my remaining rounds at the group coming in from our left.

I stood and ran, unloading the spent magazine into my bag as I went.  When I turned again, there were a handful of bodies dead or dying on the r
oofs, but those who remained had spread out, making them very hard to hit while on the run.

I swore and shoved my pistol back in my bag, realizing I needed speed over firepower now.  Distracted, I didn’t see a low lip jutting out over the edge of the building we were currently traveling on.  Just before I made my small leap to the next building, my toe tripped on
it and I went sailing through the air.  Thankfully, I cleared the small gap but landed roughly on my shoulder.  I did a quick roll, got to my knees, and allowed Helena to help me up.

She shook her head, but for once didn’t comment on my klutziness.

We ran from our pursuers, leaping over a number of small gaps between rooftops, but we were quickly running out of real estate.  I could see the eastern walls of Byzantium and the Bosporus beyond them.  We needed to get back down to street level, but we couldn’t just leap off from the height we were at.  We were far too high.  We needed another route down.

Perhaps it was best for us to continue on high ground.  If we had to get into a firefight, it was better to be up here than down in a killzone like a narrow street.  Then again if we were at street level, maybe we’d be able to lose our pursuers like Xenopho
n had attempted mere…

Helena grabbed my hand with one of her own and pointed with t
he other.  “Get ready to jump!”

I followed her upraised arm and spotted a building to our right, on the far side of the street, with a second level doorway and a balcony.  If we timed it just right, Helena and I should be able to jump to the top of those stairs and make our way into the home.

“Are you crazy??” I shouted.

She didn’t
answer as she stumbled again.  When she recovered, she sent a painful glance at her feet, and I realized why she wanted to get off the roofs so quickly.  Her weakly constructed sandals had come off and she’d been running on bare feet for quite a while.  Every step she took left a series of small blood stains behind her, a painful trail that was easily followed.

I didn’t have
time to think of a way to help.

Ten steps remained between us and the jump.  I risked another glance over my shoulder to see our ninja buddies still behind us but gaining.  With four steps to go, Helena stumbled again, her feet unable to continue supporting her.  I snagged her arm and brought her in close. 
One step remained, and with a surge of energy, we were flying through the air, our legs kicking beneath us as we fought for distance.  Below us, residents looked up at a pair of flying morons who had just jumped off a roof, most of the men’s attention on Helena.  On our way down, I realized we had over jumped, and we’d have little time to stop ourselves before slamming into the door.

I came down first, still holding Helena’s hand.  My knees instinctually buckled into a roll, Helena’s body reacting similarly. 
I hit first, but the heavy wooden door only bucked under my weight.  In typical fashion, the damn thing must have been dead bolted into the frame, and I felt something crack in my chest as well as in the door frame.  Helena slammed into it a half second later, her added mass and momentum enough to smash the door open on its already broken hinges.  She let go of my hand and managed to swiftly roll inside, while I had to scamper on my hands and knees, trying to follow.

Once inside, I kicked the door shut, plunging us
into darkness.  I stood but my first step failed to meet solid ground and realization dawned on me that I was about to fall down a flight of stairs.  Helena, unfortunately, had risen to her feet on the third or fourth step down, oblivious to the fact that I was about to fall on her.  I was already on my way down before I could think to warn her and gravity did the rest.

We fell together, tumbling over one another and banging ourselves against everything that got in our way.  The nausea inducing tumble ended when I hit the floor first, summersaulting head over heels before my back slammed against the opposite wall, the back of my head following suit.  My body collapsed on its own accord and I slid on my butt so that only my head rested against the wall.  Stars sprang into my mind and my vision darkened, but I could still make out the shape of Helena as she barreled
her way towards me.  I tried to move out of the way as she landed hard on her side, her left hip thwacking against the floor loudly.  She started to roll, hitting my shins first before her momentum propelled her up and then down onto my chest.  She landed on me perpendicularly, her lower back resting on my abdomen.

My head throbbed as blood trickled down the back of my neck and
I found it difficult to breath, Helena’s presence upon my chest only hindering the process.  Instinctively, I placed one hand against her shoulder, the other against the side of her hip, and pushed her off me with little thought of how her own body would react.

My breathing
eased almost immediately.

I finally allowed myself to look at Helena, concluding she seemed mostly fine.  Besides her bleeding feet, any additional cut and bruise seemed minimal, and none of her limbs appeared broken,
but I couldn’t know for sure.

Her clothing hadn’t spared
nearly so well.

Most of her outfit had been made
out of a thin silk like material – not overly durable – and had been torn to shreds during our run, leap and fall down the stairs.  At least she’d had the sense to wear her modern undergarments beneath, her sports bra and tight short shorts basically all she had left.

S
he began to cough uncontrollably where she lay, doubling over in pain on the ground.  She curled into a ball and clutched her side before a spasm forced her to uncurl and arch her back so violently that I feared she’d fold in half in the wrong direction.  Every muscle in her body seemed contorted and close to bursting from her skin at the exertion.  For a moment I thought she was experiencing a seizure, but the muscles at the small of her back loosened and her body relaxed.  She curled into a fetal position again and wrapped her arms around her stomach to stave off the pain, the latest painful throes of yet another of her attacks ebbing away.

I crawled as fast I could to her side and flipped her onto her back, hoping beyond hope that she was still conscious.  When she opened her eyes, I saw them full of pain and, as ever, directing pure rage at me and me alone.

“How… in the name… of God, have you survived… your life, Jacob?!”  She yelled through her agony, punching me square in the jaw to punctuate her words.  “You have to be the biggest klutz on the entire planet, from now until the goddamned future and everything in-between!”

I held a hand to my sore jaw and forced myself to keep from smiling.  A moment later, I held
out my other hand, indicating that she shut up when I heard a banging noise above us.  Our leap of faith had to have thrown off some of those chasing us, but it seemed like someone had come to inspect our house.

Helena got the point quickly
and I helped her to her feet as she fought off the last of the pain.  Together, we shuffled over to a dark corner of the house.  I heard voices from the level we had just vacated and hoped for a miracle that there was only a few of them.  I retrieved my Sig from the floor, my bag having spilled its contents everywhere, and quietly reloaded it, thanking God I’d left a bullet in the chamber so I didn’t have to make any noise pulling back the slide.  Helena retrieved a small knife from her own bag.

“Let’s try and take these guys alive,” I whispered, my adrenaline pumping once again.  “Find out who the fuck they are.”

She nodded and scampered off beneath the stairwell, waiting for the men to come downstairs.  I waited as well, crouching in the shadows directly to the left of the stairs.  I tried to take a deep breath to calm my nerves but winced after just a quick one.  I needed to get my chest taped up soon or I’d be having serious trouble breathing pretty quickly.

The voices upstairs stopped, and I heard them shuffle towards the stairs.  Not a second passed before the first set of black footed men descended
to our level, passing Helena without a thought as to what lurked beneath the stairs. The man stopped on the landing and waited, scanning the dark room with eyes that hadn’t had enough time to develop their natural night vision.  As a result, he failed to notice my presence mere feet from him in the dark corner, and I made my move.

I sprung from my hiding place and grabbed him by the neck with my arm.  I brought my hip into his body and tossed him to the ground
.  I placed a hand against his face and smashed the back of his head into the floor to keep him quiet.  I snapped my head around to see Helena grab the feet of the second man before he could reach the bottom of the stairs.  He tripped and fell, knocking his head into the wall as he went.  He crashed onto the floor and Helena was on top of him in an instant.  She rested her knife against his neck, and I was just about to order her to cut his throat, just to scare my guy a little, when he cut me off with the use of my name.

“Hunter!  Wait!”

I looked down at the man I had subdued and wondered who the hell he could be.  I reached down to pull his mask off to reveal a very familiar face.

“Gaius!”  I practically screamed, looking down at one of my closest Roman friends.  I looked over and saw Helena pull off her own victim’s mask to reveal my other friend, Marcus.

I was stupefied.  What the hell were they doing here?

I turned back to Gaius.  “What in the name of almighty Jove are you doing here?!”

Gaius looked scared shitless as he coughed in pain.  “That, my old friend, is a very long and interesting story.”

***

Relative to the rest of the day, our trip back to our apartment had been rather dull.

Once our initial confusion had worn off, Gaius and Marcus had been quick to assure
us that they were not our enemies.  According to them, they hadn’t had any idea they were chasing Helena and me until I pulled my gun on them.  They hadn’t been much more forthcoming than that so far, indicating they needed the relative safety of our apartment before they could explain themselves.

I agreed
, and the four of us had made our way back to Santino and the safe house.  Before we left, Helena spent a few minutes rummaging through the lady of the house’s collection of clothing.  She hadn’t found much, but she’d managed to pilfer a black robe for herself.  The last thing we needed was her walking down the streets in her underwear.  That would draw far too much attention.

After donning her new outfit, I helped her limp along to the house.  I bandaged her feet with the limited medical supplies I had in my bag, but each step had to be like stepping on glass for her. We also had to take a moment to wrap Marcus’ sprained ankle, a result of his tumble down the stairs.
  Finally, even though I needed it for my own head, I offered Gaius the disposable cold pack from my med-kit.  The only thing we couldn’t fix was my cracked rib.  It would have to wait, even though every breath I took felt like someone was sticking a knife into my lungs, and every step hurt more than the last.  After the time it took us to find our way home, it wouldn’t have surprised me to discover that my lungs had been shredded to pieces, but a lack of blood in my mouth quelled those fears.

What I couldn’t divine, however, was if any of Gaius and Marcus’ comrades were following us.  The two Romans claimed to be
on our side, and I really wanted to believe them, but it was hard to trust anyone these days.  If only we had Santino’s UAV to provide rear reconnaissance, but I had to settle for surreptitious glances over my shoulder as we rounded corners and pushed our way through people.  I hadn’t noticed a tail so far, but that didn’t guarantee our trip wasn’t being watched.

Twenty minutes later, our apartment was within sight.  We passed by the waiting wenches hanging around outside and in the hallways and stairwells, each giving Helena an annoyed glance as we passed by.  These particular whores would have rated very low on any man’s scale, and they knew if Helena tried to bust in on their action, they’d be put out of business quickly.

At the end of a long hallway on the third floor of the building, we found our door, opened it, and went inside to find Santino leaning back in a wooden chair, his bare feet on the table, apparently spending his time counting something on the ceiling.  He turned his head to see what the commotion was, but because Helena and I weren’t the first ones in, he flew into action when he didn’t immediately identify Gaius or Marcus.