The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp (Alfred Kropp #1)(39)

“You must call them,” Cabiri told Bennacio.

“The thought galls me,” Bennacio answered.

Just then a girl came into the room, and Cabiri got up and Jules got up and so I got up, and all the crumbs in my lap fell on the throw rug. She was tall, almost six feet, barefoot, wearing a sleeveless green dress that trailed the floor. Her auburn hair was pulled back from her face and her pale skin glowed in the firelight. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.

She went directly to Bennacio, who stood up as she came toward him, and she took his hand and kissed it, then pressed it against her cheek. “My lord,” she said softly.

He touched her cheek with his free hand and said, “Natalia, you should not be here.”

“Nor should you,” she said.

He was turned three-quarters from the firelight, so his face was in shadow and I couldn’t see his expression when he said, “I have no choice,” but he sounded sad, the same way he’d sounded when he said “Our doom is upon us” back in Knoxville.

He turned toward me and said, “This is Alfred Kropp.”

“I know who Kropp is,” Natalia said, and she didn’t look at me. Her voice had a very clear tone, like the ringing of bells in the distance, so even though she spoke softly, you could hear her across the room.

“He saved my life,” Bennacio added. I’m not sure why. Maybe to get her to like me. I could see that was going to be a hard sell.

“That you might sacrifice it,” she said to Bennacio.

“That I might keep my promise.”

I looked at Cabiri, who was studying the way the light played on his wineglass, and at Milo, who was standing by the front door, like a soldier on watch. I didn’t know what had happened to Jules. Bennacio and Natalia were talking like they were the only people in the room, and I was very uncomfortable.

“Your promise!” she said. “No, not your promise, my lord, but another’s, the promise of a myth, made a thousand years ago to one whose bones have long since crumbled to dust. You trust the word of the dead above the vows of the living.”

“I trust the purity of my Order.”

“Your precious Order is no more, my lord. The knights have departed.”

“All but one.”

“And soon you too will fall and I will be alone.”

“Is this why you came?” Bennacio asked. “To torment me in this way? I cannot abandon my oath for any human being, no matter who she may be. I cannot sacrifice the world for the sake of one person.”

“The world is not worth saving, if not for the sake of one person,” she said.

He touched her cheek. “I love you before all things, and I would perish rather than see you suffer. But you do not understand what you are asking, Natalia. I cannot turn my back on heaven. I will not damn myself, even for love.”

“You’re the one who does not understand,” she shot back. Then her shoulders slumped and all the fight went out of her. She leaned against him, and he took her in his arms and held her as she cried softly into his shoulder. He murmured her name into her hair as he looked at me. Our eyes met and I looked away. I couldn’t take the look in those eyes.

28

“The hour grows late,” Cabiri said. “You must decide, Bennacio. We have lost both plane and pilot. You did not hesitate to use the outsiders to cross the border. You must call them now.”

Before Bennacio could answer, Milo said, “Someone is here.”

The window beside him exploded inward, and glass flew across the room. Something landed in the entryway and rolled toward us, bumping against Cabiri’s leg before coming to a stop.

It was Jules’s head.

“The lights!” Cabiri cried. He and Milo rushed around, blowing out the kerosene lamps. Bennacio shoved Natalia toward me, picked up a bucket that was sitting by the fireplace, and threw water onto the logs. There was an angry hiss and a plume of white smoke.

“Down the hall, Alfred,” Bennacio said. “Last door on the left. Hurry!”

I grabbed Natalia and pulled her down the hall, feeling my way along the wall with my right hand. She wasn’t making it any easier in the pitch dark by trying to pull free. She was a tall girl and strong for someone so thin. Behind us, I could hear the sounds of a pretty terrific fight going on, breaking glass, shouting, the clump of feet, and the sharp crack of furniture breaking.

I reached the end of the hall and found the door, pushing Natalia into the room and slamming the door closed behind us. What were we supposed to do now? Duck in the closet? Hide under the bed? A roaring sound moved directly overhead now, the steady thumpa-thumpa-thumpa of a helicopter, and then the pop-pop-pop of gunfire and men screaming.

I let go of her wrist. “Maybe we should—” I started to say, but she didn’t let me finish. Out of the dark a knee landed right in my crotch and I dropped straight down and curled into a ball on the floor. When you take a hit like that, there’s nothing you can do but curl up around the pain and hug it till it fades.

“That is for taking the Sword and sentencing him to death,” she hissed at me. Through my tears I saw the door open and her shape silhouetted in the lighter dark of the hallway. She held a tapered dagger in her right hand. Then she was gone and my pain and I were alone together.

I grabbed on to the edge of the bed and pulled myself up. I was swaying there by the foot of the bed, the pain keeping tempo with the beat of my heart, when the beam from a large flashlight stabbed into the room. I just rushed the guy without thinking about it, lowering my shoulder and slamming into his chest, forcing him out the doorway and into the hall. He lost the flashlight when I hit him. I started pounding his middle with both fists, till he grabbed my right wrist, twisted my hand behind my back, swung me around, and forced me to the floor, putting his knee in the small of my back and bringing my wrist up so the tips of my fingers were touching my neck. It felt like he was pulling my arm out of its socket. Then I felt something cold press behind my ear.