Chapter 55

55

Eva

Even though I know he's coming, I jump back when he walks through the door. Like a phantom. Like a vampire. Like Death has been chasing me across Europe.

People believe love is fated, but what if death is fated, too? What if he's my soul mate and my death mate?

I took all the best weapons. Unfortunately, the antique guns didn't come equipped with antique bullets. If they did, I could blow him out the door right now.

I've disabled every camera. Not just in this shop but in the entire market hall, except for a tricky one above the twisted staircase on the south side. He's lucky I think of these things.

He observes my weapons: a sword and a shield, and a backup blade around my waist. He considers his own choices, mounted on the wall, hanging over our heads.

"You didn't bring the rapier I gave you," he says. "I wanted you to have it."

"In the hypothalamus," I joke.

It might seem like an odd time to make jokes. After all, within the hour one of us is going to be dead. But I'll let you in on a little secret: Laughter is a weapon. Whether you're fighting off sadness or anger or a deadly assassin.

Jonathan pulls a machete from a wall, tests its weight. It looks pretty rusty.

"I'm not sure if my tetanus is up to date," I point out.

"If you die of tetanus, it still counts. A kill is a kill," he says, but he puts the machete back on the wall.

"Anyway, that rapier was so not my style," I say. "It was your style."

"What does that mean?" He tries a sword with jeweled inlays. Seriously.

"It was a little pretentious," I say. "In fact, all of this is a little pretentious." I gesture to the walls around us. "Antique weaponry? Give me a Glock any day of the week."

"Well, when you do this job for as long as I have—"

"Oh, here we go."

He cocks his head. "What?"

"How old are you? You've got to be early thirties tops. And you were in prison until you were at least eighteen—"

"Twenty-five," he corrects. Damn. How exactly did he kill his father?

"I've been an assassin for over three years," I say. "You haven't been doing this that much longer than me."

He finally settles on a sword. It matches his shirt. I'm not even kidding. Style will be the death of him. Tonight.

"I'm sorry my pretentiousness so offends you."

"You don't need to apologize for anything. I'm going to murder you. Problem solved."

He smirks. "Don't make me laugh, or I won't want to kill you."

My throat catches. "Do you want to kill me?"

He looks me dead in the eyes, like he did on the train, like he did in bed, like he did the last time we fought. "No. But I'm going to. Do you believe me?"

"Yes."

"Good."

We cross swords. We fence. Right away it feels different from the fight in the hotel room. Jonathan is not fucking around. Not only is he planning to kill me, but he plans on doing it fast.

I start with the upper hand. I spent time on recon. I learned the space. I chose the best spot, with higher ground and room to move. Jonathan immediately tries to get me out of this spot, to drive me into a corner. I suspected he would do this, and I used those suspicions to my advantage.

I set up a trap. An antique cannon on a high shelf. When he drives me into the corner, all I have to do is hit the wall and the cannonball will fall, shattering his shoulder.

I just have to be careful not to make the setup too obvious. I have to fight back, to resist just enough to make him feel comfortable, to make him feel safe, and then…

He thrusts me into the corner, not realizing I allowed him to thrust me into the corner.

I hesitate. I feel my reluctance, a split second of regret. The problem is, I like his shoulder. I've buried my head there before, and it would be a little gruesome to see it shattered by a cannonball.

The cannonball drops. It does hit him, but not squarely enough to do major damage.

He gives me a look. "That was a trap," he says.

"Or an act of God."

He drives me into another corner. He lunges. I parry. Then he surprises me: He throws his sword at the display wall. Weapons rain down over our heads. I go for cover, ducking under a shelf. He runs out of the shop.

I wait until the dust has settled, and then I follow him.

He is waiting for me with another sword in the aisle of the market.

"It was getting hot in there." He is lightly sweating.

He draws his sword. I draw mine. We fence, now with a lot more room to maneuver.

"You know," I say, "fencing is really not my thing."

"Are you seriously trying to suggest that I have the upper hand?" he asks. "You chose the weapons and the location. You could've had your Glock. You could've blown me to pieces." He's right and he's not right. I could've tried to shoot him when he walked through the door. He has his gun, too. This could've been a gunfight. But I didn't want it to be. I didn't want it to end that fast. "You could have used my brother," he says, and his breath hitches, his eyes lock on mine and I can see how grateful he is that I didn't.

"I want to play fair," I say.

"We can't play fair," he says. "Fair is: Everyone gets out alive. The longer we delay this, the harder it gets."

"I know."

"Someone has to pull the trigger, metaphorically speaking."

"I know."

He flies into a driving attack, forcing me back through the market hall until we almost reach the twisted staircase.

"Stay away from that staircase," I say.

He pauses his attack. I take the opportunity to riposte. "Why?"

"I didn't disable that camera," I say. "I couldn't reach it."

He gives me a look, then holds up a finger. There is a shop selling Venetian masks just beside him, and he walks over to it. He neatly cracks the window with the pommel of his sword and extracts a mask. He removes his glasses and tucks them into his pocket. He puts the mask over his face and jogs casually up the stairs until he is just beneath the camera. Then he jumps up and smashes it.

He lifts the mask off his face and casually travels back down.

"God, you're such a show-off," I say.

"You could have said thank you." His breath is pounding. He is standing at the bottom of the stairs with the mask now on top of his head and he looks so beautiful, like some kind of angel of death. I can't stop looking, and he can't stop looking back, and it's like something turns over inside us both.

"Eva?" he says.

"What?" My head feels oddly light.

"I'm sorry, but I'm going to kill you now."

"I'd like to see"—he stabs me beneath the shoulder, with frightening precision—"you…" I stagger back. Blood is pumping, pretty quickly, down my side. Pumping is not good. "You asshole ."

His face is pale, but his voice is perfectly, chillingly calm. "You probably know this, but that is your brachial artery. If you keep fighting, you'll bleed out faster." Pumping means artery.

"Fuck." What did I think was going to happen? He told me he was going to kill me, several times. I acted like it was foreplay.

"If you don't get immediate medical attention," he continues, "you'll bleed out slowly. I would estimate that you have approximately twenty minutes to live."

"You fucking asshole." I feel lightheaded, and I'm pretty sure it's not because I love him.

He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a loaded syringe. "I brought this. I don't want you to suffer."

"You're so thoughtful." My voice sounds weird. The whole world is pumping with my blood.

"It's how I would want to die." His eyes are filled with genuine concern. He is genuinely insane. "You won't feel any pain."

"I can't believe you killed me." I feel my knees start to give out, not from loss of blood—not yet—but from shock. Maybe I could save myself if I called an ambulance, but he could stop me. He's standing right in front of me now, perfectly intact.

"Try to focus," he says. The audacity. "Do you want me to administer it?"

"Killing me once wasn't enough?"

He flinches, like he's the one hurt. Like he's the one dying.

I try to tear my sleeve to make a tourniquet.

"You shouldn't do that," he says. "You'll just prolong your suffering." And his. He looks miserable. I actually feel bad for him. Not that bad.

"Give it to me," I say.

"What?"

I put out my hand. "The needle. I know how to inject myself."

He seems to understand that this is the honorable way to go. He won't even have to feel bad for killing me; I'll have killed myself. He moves to hand me the syringe, then hesitates, like he doesn't trust me .

"Killing me is one thing, but I draw the line at torture," I say. Still he hesitates. "Do you know how many times I could have murdered you but didn't? You really think I'll bother now? I have better things to do with the last nineteen minutes of my life."

He sighs, then tosses me the syringe.

I catch it in the air. I lunge. I swing my sword wildly to distract him, then jam the needle into his jugular vein. It's extremely dangerous to inject a needle into the neck, but if he dies, he dies.

"Shit!" He jumps back, grabbing his neck. He looks at me in shock.

"I would apologize"—I grit my teeth—"but I'm not sorry. You killed me first." I didn't inject everything. I don't want him dead. I just want me alive. But it's hard to guess how much to administer when I don't even know what's in the needle.

"I don't…" His eyelids start to flutter. His chin drops.

I slap him. "Try to focus," I tease. "Now, where is your brother?"

"He's close…" His voice is faint, far away. I may have given him too much.

I search his pockets until I find his phone. I force it into his hands. "Call him. Tell him to come now ."

He dials, squinting at his phone. "Mas, I need you to come now ." He repeats my words, slightly slurring. His brother seems to protest. "It's not for me. It's for my girlfriend." He just called me his girlfriend. What in the headfuck? He tells Mas where we are and what we'll need, then ends the call. "He's coming."

"Can he fix this?"

"He was an army surgeon. Yeah, he can fix this." He seems relieved, even though he's the one who finally pulled the trigger.

"Good." We need to get to the street. I need to keep Jonathan awake. If I lose him, I don't think his brother will save me. "How far away is he?"

"Seven minutes, but Mas drives fast."

"I guess it runs in the family."

Jonathan starts toward the street, fighting the drugs. He seems to realize that if he passes out, I can kill him before he wakes up. I have him, and he has me. We need to stay alive for seven minutes.

He leads me to a street corner. "It's probably better if we don't move," he says, and then he collapses onto the curb, barely catching himself on a streetlamp. So dramatic. I mean, I'm the one bleeding to death. He's just high.

He fishes sloppily through his pockets as I sit down beside him.

My wound seems to be bleeding faster now. I can feel it with every pump of my heart, my blood leaving, my life leaving. I thought dying would hurt more. All in all, this isn't a bad way to go. At least I'm not alone. If I could choose anyone to die with, ironically, it would be him. The guy who killed me.

Jonathan finds what he's looking for, then leans over me and examines my wound.

"May I?" he says.

"You think I trust you after this?" I ask. I try to move away but his eyes stay locked on mine, keep me trapped in place.

"I know you do," he says. He opens up his hand and reveals a pair of forceps.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," I say.

"It's not what you think," he says. "I'm really good at making tourniquets. I've done this before. Many times."

"Is that another brag?"

He tears a strip of fabric from his shirt. "Please?" he says.

I sigh. "Fine."

I watch as he loops the fabric around my arm and the forceps. Once he has tightened the knot, he twists the forceps, pulling the tourniquet tighter and tighter, until the bleeding seems to stop. He clips the forceps to the fabric to secure it.

"Neat trick," I say.

I can tell he wants to brag again, but he says nothing. I appreciate that even more than the tourniquet.

"I still can't believe you killed me," I say. "For someone who claims to be so miserable, you sure seem to want to live. Hey! " He lists sideways and I grab him, shake him back awake. "Don't fall asleep." I need to keep him awake, and this could be the last time we ever talk. So I might as well tell him the truth. "You know, I really like you."

"Hmm," he says, either doubtful or on the verge of passing out.

"Do you like me?"

"I love you," he corrects, and then he lets his head drop onto my good shoulder. He nuzzles his nose into my neck. His breath is warm against my skin. "That's why I had to kill you." His voice sounds far away, and I'm not sure if it's because I'm dying or because he is.

"I get it," I say. I do. I understand. There's a thin line between love and murder.

I stare out into the hazy, graying streets. The buildings seem to throb with my blood, like the whole world is bleeding out, losing all its chaos and color and meaning. The only thing that stays, the only thing that lasts, is my ever-pumping heart.

"It's scary," I say. "It's not even that you're afraid of getting hurt. You're afraid of hurting someone else. And you know that you will. That you're dangerous. A killer. And the ones you love are the ones you hurt the most."

His body sags against mine. His breath is so shallow, I'm not even sure he's breathing anymore.

Only then, in the quiet between the fights, between the passion and the arguments, in those moments when we are holding our breath, do I realize how much I could lose if I lose him. I didn't think that I would ever find someone like him. Someone I didn't have to make myself smaller for, or sweeter for, or more normal for.

I have been apologizing for myself all my life, and I finally found the one person I don't have to apologize to and I was willing to kill him—for what? Survival? What the fuck is the point of surviving if I'm not even living?

I've been alone for so long that I thought that was the only option. I was sure there was no one in the world who could really love me, who I could love. I've been living without hope for so long that I couldn't even recognize it in him.

"Wake up, buddy." I nudge him, softly and then harder. "Come on. Jonathan." He falls onto my lap. My blood seeps into his hair. "I love you, too," I tell him.

I don't know if he hears it, but I hear it.

I don't remember anything after that, except Paris. The old gray buildings and the misty yellow lights and the cobblestone streets. I remember them.