Jonathan Maberry - Assassin's code

“Victor, don’t listen to him,” warned Nadja. “He will try to control your mind.”

I expected Victor to rebuke her for the silliness of that comment, but instead I saw doubt and fear insinuate their way onto his features. He pulled his hand back and forked the sign of the evil eye at me and fired off a fragment of prayer, “O Lord, protect with Your right hand those who trust in Your name. Deliver them from the evil one, and grant them everlasting joy.”

Then he used his thumb to peel back my upper lip so he could examine my teeth. The others bent to look as well. Inigo grunted.

“No,” stated Victor, “he’s human enough.”

Human?

“Absolutely,” I agreed, though with his fingers in my mouth it came out as “Ahzoluly.”

Then Victor turned his head and looked at Ghost, who lay helpless and panting in the net. “And see-he comes with a fetch dog.”

Inigo’s grip on my hair eased a bit. “I don’t understand this. They said that he was a knight.”

“I know,” said Victor, licking his thick lips. “But when have you ever seen a knight in the presence of a fetch dog? I mean… how could that even happen?”

The others said nothing.

Victor straightened. “Krystos will be here any minute. He’ll know what’s happening. He’ll get to the truth.”

I really didn’t like the way Victor said that. I doubt I was supposed to like it; and it seemed to me that the bad situation I was in was about to get a whole hell of a lot worse.

Whoever this Krystos was, I didn’t want to meet him on my knees.

I had Inigo to my right side holding my hair-though not as tightly as before. Nadja was behind him, aiming past his shoulder at my temple. Victor squatted in front of me, one hand still on my lip and the other holding some kind of spike under my chin. And Krystos and who knew how many others were on their way.

None of the odds were in my favor, and Lady Sniper was nowhere to be seen. I was outnumbered and outgunned; I had no weapons. Why should today be any different?

It was die-or go for it.

I went for it.

CIA Safe House #11

Tehran, Iran

June 15, 12:39 p.m.

I wasn’t nice about it, either.

With a bellow of pure rage, I kicked back with all my strength and caught Inigo in the crotch. He flew backward, arms whipping wide, and his left forearm smashed Nadja across the nose and mouth. She screamed and her finger jerked the trigger, firing a bullet that punched a hole in the wall a foot from Victor’s head. Nadja and Inigo fell together in a screeching tangle of arms and legs. The moment Inigo’s hand released my hair, I darted my mouth forward and bit down hard on Victor’s fingers. Bones crunched and he howled in agony. As he jerked his hand away, the spike cut me laterally across the underside of the chin, but then it clattered from his hand.

All of this took place inside one hot second.

I launched myself off the floor at Victor, but my foot slid in the coating of garlic powder they’d thrown at me. My reaching hands missed him by an inch as he backpedaled toward the entrance to the living room.

“ Monstrul! ” he bellowed as he scrabbled inside his coat. I thought he was going for a gun, but he produced a second spike and a second item, a rubber-headed mallet. And a detached part of my brain realized that it wasn’t an ordinary spike. It was a piece of polished hardwood that had been lathed down to a deadly point. He raised both items as he dropped into a crouch to meet my charge.

The son of a bitch was going to fight me with a hammer and wooden stake.

This would have been a great time for a flag on the play so we could all sit down and take a moment to find the thread of sanity we’d obviously lost. I mean, seriously-a fucking stake?

“ Monstrul! ” he cried again. “ Monstrul! ”

It was a Romanian word. It means pretty much what you think it means.

He chopped at my chest with the stake while raising the hammer high for a big downward strike.

I slap-parried the hand holding the stake and smashed his nose with a straight jab; the blow knocked his head back, chin high, to expose his throat. I sidestepped and smashed him hard across the Adam’s apple with the edge of my wrist. I could feel the cartilage collapse into rubble. Victor’s shouts imploded into a whistling wheeze as he tried to find breath that would never be his again.

As he sagged to his knees I tore the stake out of his hand. Now I had a weapon.

Inigo and Nadja were still disentangling themselves from each other in the cramped hallway. But suddenly I heard voices yelling from outside.

The kitchen door banged open and I heard the yelling of the names of my dancing partners.

The cavalry had arrived. Theirs, not mine.

Two men crowded into the doorway. One man-a big bruiser with a handlebar mustache-had another hammer and stake in his hairy fists; the other was an Irish-looking guy with no jacket and a shoulder holster over a black T-shirt. He was reaching for his nine millimeter.

I was out of time.

Screw this. If I was going to go down, then I was going down hard.

I still had the stake, so I kicked Mustache Pete in the nuts and drove the stake into Irish Bob’s chest. It punched through his pectorals but jammed to a stop on the ribs, so I hammered it deep with the flat of my palm. I wasn’t aiming for the heart-partly because that’s protected by the sternum and partly because I wasn’t as batshit crazy as these sons of bitches-but the spike sank to half its length in his left lung.

I let go of the stake and elbow-smashed him across the mouth which sent him sprawling into Mustache Pete, who seemed to be shaking off my kick too damn fast.

Incredibly the Irish guy wasn’t dead. He snaked out a desperate hand and grabbed my sleeve as he fell and that jerked me forward off balance so that we slammed into Mustache Pete and the three of us fell together in a twisted, spinning comedy of flailing limbs.

My body was under the pile, with Irish Bob on top of me. The impact crushed us together and drove the stake all the way into him. He died on impact, his body going immediately slack with a terminal exhalation. Unfortunately, his sudden dead weight pinned me to the floor with Mustache Pete half on top of us both. The combined weight of both men drove half the air out of my lungs. Irish Bob’s holstered pistol was pinned between us, with my right hand twisted into the press at a painful angle. To make it worse, Mustache Pete was trying to stab me with the stake. He had no clear angle, but he kept chopping at me, mostly hitting his dead friend. His face was a mask of confusion, insanity, and horror, and as he chopped he continually whimpered a word I didn’t know.

“Upier… Upier…”

I heard Inigo’s voice as he and Nadja tried to make sense of the melee on the floor.

“Mihai,” shouted Nadja. “Move… move! Let me get a shot.”

Mihai must have been Mustache Pete-and he ignored Nadja and kept stabbing at me with manic energy. It was a terrifying thing, and I had only one free hand to fend him off, but at the same time his body blocked Nadja’s aim.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Inigo moving in at an angle. He bent and grabbed one of Irish Bob’s ankles and started pulling him off of me. My legs were the only part of me that was free, so I kicked Inigo in the kneecap. It wasn’t the best angle, but, on the other hand, at most angles the knee is a pretty good target-strong as hell when it’s bent and locked, fragile as a breadstick when it’s straight. I caught him flat on the kneecap and his leg snapped with a gunshot crack.

His scream was ear-splitting-and then he collapsed right onto my other leg, and lay there twisting and screaming.