To Crown a Caesar (The Praetorian Series: Book II) (60 page)

Santino looked at me questioningly.

“Pass it on,” I insisted like a third grader.

He narrowed his eyes but turned to do as I asked all the same.

“Jacob?”

The sound of my name came from Agrippina, and I turned my head to face her.  Her Praetorian had returned and I saw Varus’ headless body crumpled at her feet.  She didn’t seem aware of its existence at the moment, and since her demeanor wasn’t nearly so cruel this time around, I suspected she wouldn’t even reference it.

“I must know something, Jacob,” she said from her chair, her legs crossed as they always were.  “If I offered to give you and your friends – even your Amazon – everything you ever wanted and needed, promising to protect you and keep you from harm, will you help me?”

“I
…” for the briefest of moments, I thought about it, but it was never an option.  “I can’t do that, Agrippina.  There are things about the orb that you’ll never understand.”

“And you won’t tell me?”

I shook my head.  “I know what you’re capable of.  I’ve seen the kind of cruelty you can do with your own hands.  I watched it here myself.”

I winced at the slip, but didn’t think she’d understand what I’d meant.

But she must have because she stood again, this time with purpose.  “You have been here before, haven’t you?  You used the orb!”

I
almost laughed in her face.  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

The control she’d exuded for the past ten minutes was gone
, but instead of coming at me in a furious rage, she simply smiled, but then the insistent
beep, beep, beep
noise of Bordeaux’s watch sounded all around us and just like last time, confusion set in immediately.

Agrippina looked
at her Praetorians.

“What is that
noise?!”  She yelled.

They stood just as confused as she was, glancing about the room in search of the nuisance.  It was at that point when I started to chuckle and
she turned back to glare at me, her eyes wide and angry.  My chuckles grew to a rolling laughter.

“Boom,” I said between laughs.

A half second later, I was flying through the air again before slamming against the back wall.  The impact knocked the air out of my lungs, but I was ready for it.  I kept my head against my chest and braced for it by slowly exhaling as I flew.  It took me a full minute less than last time to get to my feet.  I saved another twenty seconds knowing where to look for
Penelope
and another fifteen because the Praetorian I’d fought the first time was still completely out of it.  I shot him in the head with one bullet and quickly scanned for targets.

I had thirty rounds left
and I was going to make sure I killed every last one of these fuckers before any more of my friends died.

Again…

I scanned left first, remembering Gaius and Marcus were here this time, each rising to their feet.  Two more bodies for the fight.  Titus still didn’t fare as lucky but at least the concrete hadn’t killed him, landing lower on his leg instead.  He couldn’t move, but it freed up Vincent to fight from the beginning.  Wang was already a blur of motion and Santino was on his feet and had his ropes torn open as well.  He moved to help Helena again while Helena went in search of Agrippina, just as she had last time.

I couldn’t forget Bordeaux.  Fate my ass.  That big lug was up as well, alive and fuming.  After the explosion, he
’d ripped open his bonds through a sheer exertion of muscle alone.

After confirming everyone was alive, I started dropping Praetorians.  Some were still struggling to their feet.  These were easy kills.  Others were up and moving to engage either myself or someone else.  These were only slightly more troublesome.  Thirty rounds, twenty five kills.  Not bad.

I looked around for Helena.  Hers was the only fight I knew for sure had a bad ending.

I found her deadlocked with Agrippina once again, on
ly this time there was no spherical object to be used as a weapon.  The two women rolled each other over and over and over again, whoever ending on top momentarily gaining the upper hand.  I wasn’t wasting any time to watch this time.  They were on the other side of the room, so I was already on the move.

Helena finally managed to get Agrippina on the ground,
positioning herself more on her foe’s legs than her stomach.  This allowed Helena to keep more control over her desperate adversary.  Agrippina tried to punch up at her, but Helena impressively caught her arm with her left hand and managed to snatch Agrippina’s other hand as well.  With a quick motion, Helena jerked Agrippina into a sitting position and head butted her.

I was ten steps away when I saw the Praetorian who almost sliced Helena in half the first time, looming in the rubble.  I noticed this time that he had been buried beneath
fallen concrete and wood during most of the fight, and was only just now able to extract himself.  Agrippina’s head rested against the ground, stunned by Helena’s blow, and Helena looked like she was ready to choke her to death.

The Praetorian moved closer.

I moved as well.

Maybe fate simply had it out for Helena.  The woman
had
impressively escaped death on multiple occasions, after all.  Perhaps Death was getting angry at her constantly snubbing him out of a pay check.  It didn’t take a leap of logic to assume that Death could be a pretty ornery guy.

But Fate, or Death, or even God, could all
go to hell.

Helena made her own fate, and so did I.

The Praetorian had his sword in hand now, cocked and ready to plunge it through Helena’s back this time instead of slashing at her.  He still had a few more steps to go, but I only had one.

I dove at Helena, tackli
ng her harder than a linebacker would have. I had to break her grapple with Agrippina, and the only way to do that was to really nail her.  I only prayed I didn’t hurt the baby, as if my impact could do any more harm than the explosion had earlier.

Unfortunately, even with all my momentum behind my leap, Helena’s hands stayed firmly clamped around Agrippina’s wrist
s.  It slowed us just enough so that when the Praetorian finally came through on his stab, he didn’t just meet air like I’d originally hoped.  Instead, his
gladius
tore right through my left flank, just below my armpit.

I yel
led in pain.

Helena finally releas
ed Agrippina’s wrists after she heard my cry of pain.  When we finally hit the ground, we rolled together, Agrippina still lying where we left her.  Once we stopped, we were separated, but all I cared about was the gaping wound in my side.  I risked a glance at it.

I immediately wished I hadn’t.

I wasn’t sure if it looked worse than it felt or not.  I wasn’t even sure I wanted to know.  The laceration was at least six inches long, from my
seratus
muscles around to my shoulder blade.  The thing had to have been splayed open an inch deep and I swore I could see my ribs.

Helena noticed it too
and rushed to my side.  She sat behind me and tried to hold me in an upright position in her arms.  I felt her bare breasts push up against my back and a flood of warmth from her active body surged around my own.  The comforting feeling help stave off the shock that was sure to come, but Helena didn’t have anything to put pressure on my wound with, so she simply slapped her hand on there and held tight.

Just like all the other times
, her help hurt more than the actual wounding, and I yelled in pain for a second time.

My attacker
ignored us, knowing Helena and I weren’t going anywhere.  He moved over towards Agrippina to help her up, and I knew she was going to order him to kill us.  I locked eyes with her for just a brief second and I saw something I’d never seen there before.

Fear
, perhaps?

She flicked her eyes at Helena,
who fumed back at her silently, refusing to leave me to die, even to kill Agrippina.  The empress took a second to evaluate all her options before finally settling on that of the fleeing variety.  Without another look, she and her Praetorian savior found an opening in the wall and got the hell out of dodge.

Helena shifted
her hand on my wound and I groaned.

“Just hang on, Jacob,” she said.  “Wang will be here in a second.”

“I’ll be fine, Helena.  It’s just a scratch.”

She looked at it again, shifting her hand to do so.

Another yell.

“If it’s just a scratch, quit crying you big baby.”

I smiled around the pain.  She wouldn’t joke if she truly thought it was serious.

More at ease than I’d been thirty seconds ago, I looked out over the fallen rubble, collapsed co
lumns, and dead Praetorians, trying to glimmer an outline of my friends through the still settling dust from the explosion.  I couldn’t hear the obvious sounds of a battle going on, but I did hear plenty of people moving around.

I blinked twice, but by the third one, two figures started moving in our direction through the debris.  I tensed at first, wincing at the pain from my wound.  I heard Helena breath in sharply as well, readying herself for anything.

I was reaching for
Penelope,
even though she was empty, when Wang and Santino came barreling through the debris, heading right for us.  Both men rushed to our position, each still shirtless and sweating heavily.  Wang moved towards my left side, already pulling off his medic bag which he must have found after the battle.

He has
tily batted Helena’s hand aside and inspected the wound.  He used his thumb and forefinger to gently part it before shaking his head after I yelled again

“Always have to be the hero, don’t you, Hunter?”  He asked, pul
ling a syringe out of his bag.

“Of course he does,” Helena replied, resting her chin on my shoulder.

I winced.  “Give it to me straight, doc.  Am I going to make it?”

Wang flicked the syringe, glancing
at me like I was a drama queen.  “You’ll live, Hunter.  It’s just a flesh wound.”

I sighed in relief and patted Helena’s arm, which she still had wrapped around my stomach. 

I shifted my attention to Santino as Wang jabbed me with the needle.

I winced but kept my attention on my friend. 
“Sit-rep.”

He coughed up some dust as
he turned to survey the room.  The blown dirt and debris continued to swirl around him, caking his perspiring body in a thick coating.  He looked more like a ghost than ever.

“We’re pretty fucked up
,” he reported.  “Titus is immobile.  His left leg is pinned beneath a giant slab of ceiling.  Gaius and Marcus are helping Vincent get him out.”

He hesitated for a moment
as he glanced towards a blown out portion of the wall.  I traced his look but could discern nothing of note, except that we had been moved down to the first floor of the villa.

“What?”  I asked.

“Bordeaux is MIA.  The first thing he did after the last Praetorian went down was to radio Madrina.  When she didn’t answer, he checked the UAV feed.”  He paused again with a shake of his head.  “The GPS beacon we gave her indicated she’s just outside and not moving.  She must have come to investigate during our little nap earlier.  Bordeaux ran that way.”  He raised a hand to indicate the direction he’d turned his attention to earlier.

Another loose end, but
he’d be back after he found her.  “What about everyone else?”

“
Everyone else has cuts, scrapes, scratches, and a few knife wounds, but you’re the worst.”  He paused once again.  “Of course.”

I smiled.  It did always seem like I managed to get myself hurt more often than naught.

“What about Agrippina?”

“She’s gone.  Scurried
her tight little butt out of here like a cockroach.  I
was
able to find this though,” he said, holding up what I knew must have been the orb wrapped in a black cloth.

“At least this mission wasn’t a total wash,”
Wang said sarcastically as he stitched me up.  “But we should look for Varus.  If he was here, he may have survived the explosion and be in need of medical attention.”

My chin dropped against my chest at the thought of poor Varus.  I knew
what the others did not; that he was already dead, probably buried somewhere here in the rubble.  We owed it to him to find his body.

“What about the other orb
?”  I asked

“Unknown,”
Santino said, before swiftly pulling back the orb as if something important finally dawned on him.  “By the way, how did you know to reset the timer on Bordeaux’s bomb?”

I coughed.  “Let’s just get everyone situated before we get into that.”

He nodded and I looked at Wang.  He was completely focused on his procedure and was already finishing up the stitches on my side.  I barely even noticed.