Edward Crichton - To Crown a Caesar

Agrippina frowned and reached around to caress her burned behind. “So you’ve chosen that path then.” She sighed and looked away. “Unexpected, but if that is your choice, there is something else I wish you to know.”

I looked down at her warily. “What?”

She met my gaze, her deep blue eyes sparkling in malice and a type of cruel enjoyment.

“I want you to know that just prior to the battle outside of Rome four years ago, I issued a bounty for your Amazon.”

“What?” I asked, not completely understanding.

She blinked innocently. “I offered five thousand sestertii to whoever brought me her head. At the time, I didn’t even know why, really. Silly decisions like that come to you when you are young, I suppose.”

“You… you…” but no words came to me. My head swam again and, this time, I succeeded in stumbling down the stairs. I managed to keep my footing but a sharp pain in my chest doubled me over in pain as realization of her words hit me. I held myself up with my hands on my knees and fought off the anger building inside me, demanding my body cooperate and allow me to breathe again.

I failed, and a mental image of Helena’s severed head popped into my mind. Her mouth hung lifelessly ajar and her green eyes were aimed at the sky, without color and dripping with blood. I smacked my temple with the palm of my hand, trying to forget the image ever existed, and yelled out like a man possessed — completely failing to maintain my demeanor.

She had all but killed Helena herself. On that already bloody day, not a single enemy Praetorian would have passed up the opportunity to cash in on Agrippina’s lucrative reward. Helena’s death had been a guaranteed thing, and only through the grace of God, had she survived. She had been no more than a mere pawn in Agrippina’s sick and twisted game of life, a game with no moral boundaries, common sense or consequences. A game where people died on a whim. Her whim.

Nothing prepared me for the hatred, the pure evil vehemence that course through my veins like the mightiest of rivers in that moment. Not the death of my mother, the bloodshed that sparked World War III, the sense of frustration over marooning us in Rome, or the feelings of guilt over failing to protect the woman I love all those years ago.

Agrippina’s naked form gazed down at me calmly. I stared at her with tear stricken eyes as I shouldered my rifle with a shaky hand, chambered a round, flicked off the safety, and shifted my aim towards her stomach. In that moment, if I was going to kill her, I would ensure it was long and painful. I paused, allowing the fact she was going to die seep into every synapse in her brain, but she didn’t even seem to care. She just sat there, exposed for all to see; convinced she sat in control of everything.

“Every game has an ending,” I choked, looking into sultry blue eyes I could barely see. “And yours is over.”

I pulled the trigger.

Three rounds of deadly vengeance seemed to crawl towards Agrippina as they cut through the air. The concept of time no longer held sway over reality as it once did and I could almost see the distortion of air around each bullet as they sliced through the air at a leisurely pace.

That’s when I noticed that the bullets would miss.

My mind was overclocked, racing so furiously that I didn’t even notice how my aim had faltered. Somehow, a previously unknown assailant had pushed my rifle to the side milliseconds before I had fired, angling my shots to hit Agrippina’s bed sheets a few inches from her thigh. My attacker then came at me in a dive from a location I had previously thought empty, his momentum and mass hitting me with such force that we tumbled deep into the room. Time began to progress normally again and I rose to my feet, slinging Penelope around to my back and got a good look at my attacker.

He was wearing a tight, black, body suit and a mask that covered everything but his eyes. His outfit was so completely un-Roman that at first I thought it was Helena, but I knew it couldn’t be. The person before me was clearly a man, a head shorter than I, and very skinny, but judging from the force of his tackle, made of solid muscle. The man had to be a Roman, one whose fashion sense conflicted with everything I knew about his culture. The man looked like a ninja as he adopted a fighting stance with his knees bent and his arms out in front of him protectively.

Who was this guy?

Agrippina had brought her feet up underneath her and was kneeling on the bed now, her eyes analyzing every move we made as she wiped blood from her neck and wiped it on her bare thighs. She smiled at me and spread her arms wide. “You didn’t expect all your questions to be answered so quickly, did you, Jacob? That, as you would say, would spoil the story.”

I narrowed my eyes and tilted my head at her odd word choice but was distracted by my attacker trying to circle around me. I dropped into a combat stance of my own, knees bent and my left leg behind my right, fists up. We circled each other as I stared into the man’s eyes, eyes that were as calm and calculating as Agrippina’s.

He made the first move.

He ran straight for me, leaping into the air and kicking out with the tip of his foot. I easily blocked the kick to the left and hoped to land a quick jab to the side of his neck when he landed. But instead, the man used my poor judgment to fall immediately into a crouch and roll beneath my jab. He ended up behind me and swept my legs out from under me, dropping me onto my back. I fell for the maneuver like a pathetic rookie., the punch I had intended to land meeting nothing but air. I hadn’t expected anything like that from my opponent. The man was fighting like a martial artist, knowledgeable in any number of forms and disciplines.

Taking the initiative once again, the man leapt from his crouched position, hoping to grapple with me on the ground, but I was prepared for him this time. I rolled onto my toes, and pivoted so that when he landed, I planted a kneeling side kick into his rib cage, knocking him two feet away from me and onto his back. I stood up and looked for Santino. I found him dealing with his own attacker. They seemed deadlocked, but then Santino managed to draw his scimitar, and I knew that fight was already over.

But my own attacker didn’t waste time wondering about his partner, and used my distraction to jump to his feet and rush me with a superman punch to my chest, knocking the wind from my lungs. I doubled over and he sent a knee flying into my nose. I stumbled backwards as I felt it break upon impact. My head spun as blood sprayed from my nostrils.

My opponent was relentless, following up with a side kick into my chin, sending me flying through the air again. I fell a few inches away from Santino’s sculpture this time, a foot closer and I would have been skewered by Venus’ sword. I looked up, the world still spinning, and I saw my attacker loom over me. His eyes didn’t suggest he was taking any pleasure from the fight, or that he was predicting a premature victory. He just stared at me coldly, revealing nothing, and I felt a knot grow in my stomach. I looked to his left hand and saw three blades gripped there, my vision evidently playing a cruel trick on me.

I couldn’t focus enough to even stand. I was defeated and I knew it. I moved my hand to my radio, hoping to send Helena one last message when my attacker made his first real mistake.

He forgot about Santino.

My friend also knew better than to waste time in a fight, and I watched as my opponent was amongst the living one second and then had a knife sticking through his throat the next. Santino pulled it back and the man collapsed. He reached down and hauled me to my feet by my recon vest and yanked me towards the door.