Edward Crichton - To Crown a Caesar

My stomach churned at the thought.

She smiled at me and kissed Helena on the forehead before standing up and moving down past the line of captured and beaten warriors, looking at each soul in turn. She stopped at the very end of the line, in front of Gaius and Marcus.

“Traitors,” she hissed. “Your deaths will be first.”

They sneered at her but she ignored them and snapped her fingers, summoning a handful of her guards. “Take them outside and crucify them.”

Gaius and Marcus struggled against their Praetorian handlers, trying anything to break away, but there was nothing they could do. With three Praetorians on each of them, they might as well be David without a sling. They were hauled through the room’s single door and never brought back. Everyone else struggled against their restraints, all except Helena, who was merely doing everything she could to stay on her knees.

Agrippina ignored Gaius and Marcus’ removal and walked back in my direction. She turned her head and saw Titus.

“You, I have not met,” she said, gripping his chin with her fingers. “Lovely, though. And young. I think I will keep you.”

She continued, leaving each of my friends with a comment as she passed by.

“Brute,” she said to Bordeaux.

“Cripple,” as she passed Vincent

“Oriental,” to poor Wang.

“Ah, you.” Her final comment was to Santino. She almost sounded happy to see him, but it wasn’t hard to read between the lines. “Stamina you may have, but as I told you before, your performance was hardly worth repeating.”

Santino just smiled at her.

I blinked as his smile reminded me of something, but what was it exactly? Oh, that’s right: that he was an asshole. But he was my kind of asshole. It’s who he was. And it was a good thing, at least in this moment, because it also reminded me who I was as well. It reminded me that I was always prepared for anything, and that I always had a knife behind my belt.

I would have smacked myself if I wasn’t tied up, but I didn’t let myself grow too excited just yet. We were still in it deep.

Agrippina moved back to her chair to consult with one of her Praetorians. I used the time to check on Helena. She was still mostly out of it, her head bobbing from side to side as it hung near her chest. Occasionally she’d snap it up like she was waking abruptly from a nap, but it would just as quickly drop again. I hissed at her, trying to get her attention, but she remained incoherent.

I decided to ignore her as I tried to budge my knife from its hiding place at my back. It was tricky. My hands were tightly bound and the knife was in there good. It was going to take me a few minutes of finagling to get it out without anyone noticing.

I decided to multitask by trying to physically get Helena’s attention with a kick of my foot. I probably hit her harder than I should have, but I had to make sure she was all right. Luckily, she reacted, and her eyes finally popped open. She craned her head to look at me and I could tell her vision wasn’t quite there yet. Her eyes were normally so piercing that she always seemed to be looking right through me, but instead, her eyes were swollen and tracking all over the place.

I snuck a quick peek at Agrippina, noting her Praetorian had left again, and that she was impatiently tapping her foot for his return.

I looked back at Helena. She was blinking rapidly and she seemed to look at me with much greater focus now. When I thought she was coherent enough to communicate I mouthed, are you okay ? She jerked her head in an abbreviated affirmation and I breathed a silent sigh of relief. I was about to ask about the baby, even though I knew she couldn’t possibly know anything, when Santino interrupted me.

“Tell me you have a plan, Hunter,” he whispered.

“Me?” I replied quietly. “It’s your turn.”

He shook his head, mumbling something about lazy leaders and inept commanders.

“Where’s your knife?” He asked.

“I’m working on it.”

He opened his mouth again but Agrippina interrupted, strutting back towards us.

“Now, Jacob, are you prepared to help me?”

“I’ve told you. I don’t know how the thing works,” I insisted.

She hummed a disbelieving noise, and pulled the orb from behind her back.

“Tell, me,” she said. “Do you see anything within?”

Just to pleasure her and buy us some more time, I looked, not expecting to find anything. But to my surprise, I did see something within. Something I’d never seen before, but couldn’t quite make it out so I played dumb.

“There’s nothing there, Agrippina. There never is.”

“That is too bad.” She snapped her fingers. “Perhaps some incentive will be required.”

A Praetorian answered her call, bringing with him what appeared to be Wang’s 9mm Beretta. She held it in her hand, inspecting it briefly, before pressing it against my forehead.

“Now?”

I smirked. “You don’t even know how to use that.”

“I don’t?” She asked, shifting her aim towards Helena. “And now?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but I didn’t say anything. She was bluffing, but even if she wasn’t, I had to hold out as long as possible. I was gambling with the two most important lives I had, but I had to stall. The power of the orbs could not be allowed to fall into her hands.

She noticed my stubbornness and lowered her aim.

“Hmm… that won’t do,” she said. “Besides, I want you to watch her suffer. Perhaps one of your friends.”

She walked out before Bordeaux, Wang, Vincent, and Santino, pointing the gun at each, humming as she switched from target to target in a Roman version of eeny, meeny, miny, moe. She passed back and forth, over and over between them before finally settling on Bordeaux.

She smiled. “You.”

She pulled the trigger. The suppressor equipped pistol’s bang was barely loud enough to reverberate off the walls or hurt my still dazed brain, but the memory of Bordeaux’s skull shattering open would resonate in my mind for the rest of my life. I watched as the large Frenchman took the round defiantly, but fatally. The bullet entered through his left eye socket, and exploded out the back of his head, covering the wall behind him in blood and grey brain matter. My friend’s body didn’t move much at first, his large mass holding him firmly against the force of the small, fast moving object. But soon, gravity took its toll and he slumped to the floor — lifeless.

I stared at his body in shock, unable to comprehend that such a violent death could come to a friend as close as he was.

Was.

Was…

Everyone else struggled against their restraints again, and I found myself mindlessly joining them, momentarily forgetting about my knife. I wanted nothing more than to rip Agrippina’s heart from her chest and shove it down her throat. Only Helena, still in a daze, managed to avoid the image of Bordeaux’s death.

“You fucking bitch!” Santino screamed, his insult standing out amongst all the rest, spittle flying from his mouth. I’d never seen him so angry.

She angrily turned to face him, pointing the gun at his head.

“Perhaps you shall be next?”

Santino defiantly turned towards me, switching to English.

“Don’t tell her anything, Hunter! Wait for the b…”

But Agrippina pistol whipped him before he could finish.

Wait for the b…?

Wait for the what?

What had he been talking about?

The bitch? The batman? The bomb? The bomb!

Perhaps Bordeaux will have the last laugh after all.

But, what time was it? I couldn’t see my watch or anyone else’s. How long had we been out? I had to stall.

“You can continue to watch friends die all night, Jacob,” Agrippina said, as I watched her slowly squeeze the trigger. “But remember, your Amazon’s death won’t be anywhere near as quick or easy.”