Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(42)

He landed on his side and rolled until a hard wall crushed him to a stop, and for a moment he just panted for breath and waited for his dazed eyes to come back into focus.

When they did, he saw a slaughterhouse. Half of Wahl’s soldiers were down, blood on the street and splattered on dirty walls. There was nothing left of the building they’d been approaching but crumbled walls and burning rubble.

Those of them still standing were in a white-hot fight for their lives. Sphinxes were tearing apart surrounding buildings, trying to get at those firing from shelter, but as soon as an automaton succeeded in forcing its way in, it was faced with hails of hellish gunfire. He saw three sprawled, motionless machines. Red Ibrahim’s people had a way to kill them effectively enough, though he heard tortured screams from a building on the left where a sphinx had ripped through the roof and descended on unprepared residents.

Innocents, perhaps. But probably dead in seconds, if so.

“I found the traitor!”

He hardly heard the shout; it sounded like a whisper in his blast-numbed ears. He looked around, dazed, and then happened to look up and saw a man with a red scarf over his face aiming a rifle down at him.

He rolled away at the last instant, bullets peppering the ground and building around him. None of them found their mark, but some came far too close, and then he saw something falling toward him. It was just a shape, indistinct, and he put his hands up to protect his head.

He caught a thrown bottle of Greek fire that, by all rights, should have reduced him to burned bones on a molten street, and once he realized what he held, he nearly dropped it, anyway, out of sheer surprise. The cap popped loose and rolled away, and the liquid sloshed and rippled with half-seen flames. He steadied his hands and pulled it down to rest on his chest, which was all he could do at that moment. No throwing it back without splashing it all over himself.

More bullets rattled down, and he curled carefully on his side and hugged the wall, with the deadly bottle as protected as he could manage. If a bullet hit him, he’d likely survive. If it hit the flask, he wouldn’t.

He stayed where he was, acutely aware of the deadly weight held against his chest, and stared at the dirty wall in front of his face as an eerie silence finally fell. A beetle wandered up the scarred surface as if all the danger around it meant nothing. Lucky you, he thought. Though the beetle would burn just as surely as he if this glass container cracked.

“Brightwell?” Wahl’s voice was breathless. He turned his head at an awkward angle and looked up at her. One side of her face was bloody, and she had a half dozen bullet dents in the black armor over her chest. “Surprised to find you alive.”

“Surprised myself,” he said. His voice sounded as shaky as his hands felt. “Mind taking this?”

She spotted the Greek fire and took in a sharp breath, but she retrieved the cap and made it safe before picking it up. He rolled over on his back and sucked in a couple of deep, cooling breaths before climbing to his feet again. As he leaned against the wall, he counted the soldiers standing and realized that most of those who’d been in her escort were down.

A sphinx was systematically ripping apart something that had once been human at the far end of the street. It was damaged, with one wing gone and one leg dragging uselessly, but that didn’t make it any less horrific.

“You were right,” Wahl said. For the first time, she seemed to have a flicker of humanity in her eyes. Not for him, of course. For the men and women of her squad. “We should have brought an entire company. Not even the sphinxes can stop murderers who don’t mind destroying their own headquarters. We can only hope we can find one still alive to question.”

He didn’t tell her that Red Ibrahim certainly knew she was coming and that the building had likely already been emptied of everything of value. That the ones fighting were almost certainly hired mercenaries, with no connection back to his real organization.

If she had been better at this, Brendan would have buried the dagger in her and found a spare piece of shrapnel to shove into the wound. Blamed it on the explosion. But she wasn’t. She had no real understanding of how smugglers worked, and that was a good thing. Better to keep her in charge than someone such as Jess’s Captain Santi, who almost certainly wouldn’t have made these mistakes.

He thought, I hope I don’t have to kill you, Captain Wahl.

But he knew full well he would if it came to that.

Family first.





CHAPTER FIFTEEN




Wahl walked him to the door of his sad little house, and Brendan walked inside, grimaced at the wreckage of the place, and wearily slammed the door. His head ached fiercely, he had bruises in places he’d never been bruised before, and he reeked of smoke and blood. He couldn’t recall feeling this tired in a long time. All he wanted to do was sleep now, and the sight of the rumpled small bed drew him like a magnet. He toppled onto it facedown and felt darkness descend frighteningly quickly.

In two hours, Jess Brightwell opened his eyes.

On waking, you’ll remember everything, he heard a voice say. It took him a moment to place it, but then he remembered the carriage ride to the Serapeum, and Elsinore Quest. You will remember that you are Jess Brightwell. You asked me to mesmer you into believing you were your twin, and so I did. It shouldn’t last more than a day at most. You’ll come back to yourself as soon as you sleep, and remember all the events of the day as if you did them yourself. You’ll remember that you asked me to do this, most especially. I insist you remember that, because I don’t wish to end up at the wrong end of your knife.