Assassin's Heart (Assassin's Heart, #1)(61)

I rolled and threw the cudgel overhanded. The weapon struck him dead in the forehead.

The snarl across his face vanished as his jaw slackened. He stared at me in utter shock. Then his eyes rolled up in his head and he fell, crashing onto the alley floor.

I struggled to my feet, my body aching and my breath sharp in my chest.

Lefevre’s last man cradled his injured arm against his ribs, whimpering. I faced him, stiletto in hand.

He fled. When he reached the alley entrance, he began screaming for lawmen, shouting about murderers and ghosts and other unintelligible things.

If the lawmen showed, it’d be over. We needed to flee.

I stumbled over the bodies toward Les. I crouched and pushed the hood off his face.

His eyes were closed, but he was breathing. I released my own breath, not even aware I’d been holding it. He wasn’t dead. I hadn’t gotten him killed.

“Les.” I tugged on his leathers. “Alessio!”

He moved his head but didn’t wake. I lifted one of his eyelids. He moaned and feebly struggled away from my fingers.

We needed to leave. Now. Any longer and we risked being caught by the lawmen.

I grabbed one of his long arms and draped it over my shoulder. I braced my back against the wall of the alley and stood, pulling Les with me.

He was too heavy. I needed to find the strength to move him. I couldn’t be weak now. I tugged on him and called his name, and he seemed to wake enough to get his feet under him.

We stumbled deeper into the alley to the boarded-up door I’d seen when we’d first dropped into this alley. It didn’t matter where it led. It had to be better than walking the streets in the open.

The board was rotten and old and it took barely any effort to yank it down. Les leaned on me more and more the longer I supported him.

The lock had failed years ago and I pushed the door open, heaving Les with me into the dark and gloom.

Dust coated the air. I coughed heavily behind my mask, and for a moment, I was back in my home in Ravenna and it wasn’t dust in the air but ash, and it wasn’t Alessio I carried but my brother Rafeo, bleeding his life away. A sob escaped me, but I kept us moving through the building as tears blurred my vision and my breath burned my throat.

Les fell and dragged me with him.

“Alessio!” I yelled, but he didn’t respond. He lay on the ground like a dead man. I couldn’t continue to carry him like this. I needed a solution.

I examined the dark, decrepit building. It had been a house once, for a family maybe, with children and laughter and warmth.

Rotted carpets were spread across the floors, large sections torn away to reveal the wood beneath, and black wallpaper peeled off the walls like the rind from an orange. A rickety staircase led to a second floor, but most of the steps were missing, stolen for firewood perhaps.

In a corner, concealed behind a collapsing wall, stood an old cupboard and a pile of blankets. We had to hide and pray the lawmen wouldn’t find us.

I grabbed Les under his arms and dragged him to the cupboard. I pushed him inside and ran to the main hall.

Anyone looking for us would be able to follow the drag marks and footsteps in the dust to the cupboard. I’d have to lay a false trail.

I pushed my weight against the half-collapsed wall in front of the cupboard room. It creaked, then crashed onto the cracked tile of the floor, covering my drag marks. A storm of dust exploded into the air and I coughed. I climbed over the debris and snatched a moldy blanket.

In the hall I used the blanket to fake more drag marks as I headed away from the room and to the other side of the building. I found another boarded-up door and rammed it down. It spilled me into an alley. This one, though, had a canal running along the end of it.

I dragged the blanket after me, creating an extended trail of dust. Then I lobbed the blanket into the canal’s waters.

The abandoned building was easy to scale, even with my shoulder and its fresh pain, and I dashed as fast as possible to the roof to keep my false trail intact.

In the square, a troop of lawmen made their way toward the scene of the fight. I’d run out of time.

I raced across the roof and scurried down into the alley, recklessly jumping the last story. The hard cobblestones jarred my ankles and back. I leaped into the house as the light in the alley dimmed from the lawmen’s entrance.

When I reached Les, still hidden in the cupboard, I climbed in with him, pulling his long legs against me so the cupboard door could close on our tangled bodies.

The air and dust were thick inside. The gods themselves had to hear the beating of my heart as I tried to keep us quiet and still.

Les groaned beside me. I covered his mouth with my hands, the hair on his face sharp against my burned palm.

Shocked shouts drifted in from the alley. The lawmen had found the bodies.

They rushed into the building. I drew Les tight against me and kept my hand over his mouth.

My breath against my mask sounded like bellows pumping in my ears. They’d hear me. They couldn’t not hear me. I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated on Les’s warm breath against my hand.

“Look!” a voice came. “Over here!”

Footsteps pounded through the building, and then silence again. I swallowed, my throat like a desert.

More footsteps, casual this time, as if the person strolled along a park instead of an abandoned building.

All my life I’d fought and killed people but had never experienced fear as I did then, hiding in the cupboard, praying we wouldn’t be discovered.