was their follow-up? Tomato sauce and a bay leaf?
I managed to suck in a tiny bit of air with a sound like a deflating bagpipe.
“Let me kill him, Victor,” begged the woman. “For God, for the cause…”
“No! And point that damn gun somewhere else before you shoot one of us.”
Fingers knotted in my hair and then my head was jerked backward. The motion, violent as it was, helped open my airway and I gasped in a huge gulp of air like a swimmer coming up after staying underwater a minute too long.
The man named Victor-obviously the leader-touched the tip of something sharp and heavy under my chin and shifted around so that he could study my face. All I could see was a bleary version of his face. Heavy Slavic features and a thick moustache.
“I… don’t know… who you are…” I wheezed, “but you got the… wrong guy.”
“Shut up,” he snapped. I could see beads of sweat popping out on his brow and running down his cheeks. It wasn’t hot in the room-he was scared. Of me? Or of who he thought I was? He said to his companions, “Nadja, cover him. Be careful with that gun, but if he moves… blow his head off.”
The woman, Nadja, shifted around and pointed the pistol at me in a two-hand grip.
“Inigo, be ready with the hammer.”
Hammer? Christ, that scared me more than the gun. A gun would at least be quick.
Victor squatted down and leaned so close to me I could smell his breath. It reeked of garlic and tobacco. I wanted to make a joke, something about being mugged by a cooking class, but somehow I didn’t think I had the audience for it. I held my tongue and tried to regulate my breathing.
“He doesn’t look like one of them. His eyes are blue.”
“Then he’s wearing contact lenses,” Nadja fired back. “Peel them off, you’ll see.”
The second man, Inigo, still held my hair, so I was unable to move away as Victor placed his rough fingertips on my face. Thumb below my left eye, two fingers on my eyebrow, and then he slowly spread them apart, widening my eye. His other hand held the weapon against the soft underside of my chin. I did not know what they intended to do-blind me, stab me, shoot me, or pummel me with a hammer, but they were poised and tense and ready. And I was still recovering from the body blow. I was in deep shit and I could feel sweat greasing my own face.
Victor leaned even closer, and now I could feel the heat of his breath on my cheek and my eye.
“No,” he said slowly, dragging the word out in apparent surprise. “No, he is not wearing contacts.”
“Oh, you’re a blind fool, Victor,” snarled the woman. “Let me do it-”
“Hush!” Victor growled and the woman faltered.
Inigo kicked me in the hip. “Cut an eye out and take a closer look. He’s one of them.”
“Hush!” ordered Victor. He repeated the eye-widening procedure with my right eye, frowning as he did so. “See? He is not a knight.”
Ah, I thought, and I realized what he was looking for. My guardian angel sniper called the killer at the hotel a knight, and that goon with the fangs had worn weird contact lenses. As soon as I thought that I realized that it was wrong. The knight would have been wearing the horror-show contact lenses over his real eyes. Victor and the others were checking my eyes to see if my normal eyes were color contacts over…
My mind stalled at that.
Over what? Did they think that the knights really had blazing red eyes with slitted pupils? Or… was that really true of the knights?
If so…
I will rip your throat out and drink your life.
Holy shit. What the hell was I into here?
Church had warned me that I got off lucky when I fought the knight.
“Please,” I said, my voice strained because they had my head pulled back so far, “I’m not who you think I am.”
Victor’s frown turned into an ugly scowl. “Oh yes? And what do we think you are?”
“I have no idea… but whatever it is, you’re wrong. Why don’t we talk about this?”
“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.
Chapter Fifty-Five
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.
