Royal Blood The Complete Collection

by Amity Cross

  Gandalf The White - The Return of The King, J.R.R. Tolkien

  Chapter 16

  Hawkes

  The rain was really starting to get under my skin.

  England was famous for its gray sky and soggy soil, and being a part of the woodwork meant you had to tolerate it by default, but when I was out on a job that required a lot of time in the open air, it pissed me the hell off.

  In all honesty, I never expected to hear from X or Mercy again, so when I heard Mercy’s voice on the other end of the phone, I knew something was wrong. More than the moment Lorelei Lansford contacted me after the bombing of that MI6 field office a week ago. My only duty had been to help Miss Lansford recover and to provide her safe passage out of the country.

  Still, I felt I owed Mercy for getting Lorelei out of that place before it blew up.

  Having worked with X on a number of occasions now, I understood a little about how he operated. He’d split from Mercy in order to protect her from his current target, and she would stay away from the meet in order to respect his wishes. Or, at least, for some reason that was important to their mission.

  Being an outside operative, I had the opportunity to watch over the scene like a perverted guardian angel. If things went sour, I’d be there to assist. It’d piss X off, but it was better he went back to Mercy alive.

  I watched the meet take place and the hard drive changing hands, then X emerged from the darkness, his gun raised. He didn’t take the shot, opting for a brief exchange with the man I assumed was the asshole everyone was after—Moltke. Take the fucking shot, X.

  The moment Moltke ran, I cursed out loud and followed their flight, mirroring their path the street over. I intended to cut them off before they reached the main road, but X’s target turned toward the river. Fuck, I was too far behind to catch them now.

  Following, I slammed into the bluestone wall that dropped sheer into the Thames below. At this hour, the tide had dropped low, the pebbled bank glistening in the artificial light of the city around me. Continuing down the path, I approached their location and scanned the shore and the bridge ahead. Surely Moltke wasn’t stupid enough to lure X out into an open space like that?

  Turned out he bloody was.

  I saw them fighting on the Millennium Bridge, obscured by the rain and the mist that had risen in the wake of such a sharp temperature drop. There was nothing I could do from this distance, so I advanced along the path, closing in on their location. That was the moment I heard the dull boom of a gunshot. To an untrained ear, it sounded like a door slamming, but I knew better.

  Glancing back at the bridge, I saw a man hauling a body over the railing, and somehow, I knew… X.

  He could be dead, or he could still be clinging on to life. Either way, I had to pull his sorry carcass out of the river. Below my position, there was a tiny dock with a speedboat lashed to the end. A man stood by the mooring, a hood drawn up over his head, the glow of a lit cigarette hanging out of his mouth. That would do just nicely.

  Sprinting down the jetty, I shoved the man to the side, and he flailed before falling into the water with a splash. Unhooking the rope, I vaulted into the speedboat, gunned the engine, and pulled out into the current.

  Powering toward the bridge, I couldn’t see the man I presumed was Moltke anymore. He’d disappeared into the wind and rain, leaving X to his fate.

  Following the current, I scanned the river, the weather causing visibility to drop drastically. It was nigh on impossible to spot anything in these conditions, let alone a man in dark clothing who may have already sunk below the surface.

  Scanning the choppy surface, I couldn’t see anything but the rolling waves of the Thames as its current was whipped into a frenzy by the worsening rain. X, where the fuck are you?

  Just when I was about to give up hope, I caught a glimpse of a mass in the water. Maneuvering the boat closer, I made out a body lying face down. Fuck!

  Coasting beside him, I flung myself over the edge of the boat, the life preserver around my waist keeping my heavy body afloat. Spitting out a mouthful of foul water, I swam over to X and flipped him onto his back. Definitely him, not that other motherfucker…

  Hooking my arms around his shoulders, I held his limp form against my chest and made my way back to the speedboat, my legs kicking with everything I had. When I felt the boat knock against my head and shoulders, I hauled him up onto the step at the stern. Climbing in, I pulled him the rest of the way, dumping his body onto the floor.

  Discarding the life preserver, I knelt beside his body, shoving down panic as I saw the awful shade of blue his skin had taken on. Placing my middle and index fingers against his neck, I closed my eyes and prayed, but nobody seemed to be listening to an old, washed-up henchman.

  No pulse.

  Rolling X flat on his back, I began CPR, counting the beats as I compressed his heart. I blew air into his mouth twice after the thirtieth, and then repeated the procedure.

  “C’mon, X,” I exclaimed, starting the next lot of compressions. “You’re tougher than this. Don’t fucking die now.”

  I breathed air into his lungs again, then thumped my palms over his heart. One, two, three, four, five, six…

  “X,” I yelled at his prone body. “Don’t you fucking dare leave her. Don’t you leave Mercy like this.”

  Suddenly, X began to cough, water pouring from his lips, and he rolled onto his side, wincing as the pain from his gunshot wound tore through his body.

  “Christ,” I said with a hiss, staring up at the lit dome of St Paul’s Cathedral. Talk about a close call.

  X moaned loudly and began to shiver violently.

  Finding a blanket in one of the compartments along the side of the boat, I propped him in the corner by the controls and wrapped it around his shivering form.

  “Hawkes?” he asked thorough chattering teeth.

  “Fuck, you’re a tough bastard to kill,” I replied, glad to see he had his wits about him.

  “Mercy.” He tried to push himself up, but all he did was make the boat rock.

  “All in good time, my friend,” I said. “I’ve got to get you to shore before you die of hypothermia. I’m not even going to start on that bullet wound.”

  “Moltke…”

  “He’s gone,” I said with a frown.

  “I need to go after him,” X exclaimed, trying to stand again.

  Shoving him back down, I shook my head. “All in good time. You can’t chase the fucker when you’re dead.”

  He sank back into the corner and clutched the blanket tighter around himself.

  Turning, I brought the engine to life and powered the speedboat back toward the shore. The current had brought us a long way while I fought to bring him back to life, the commercial wharfs of East London lit up on either side of us.

  “Mercy!” X moaned beside me, his voice audible above the engine noise.

  Glancing down at him, he looked like hell warmed up, or in his case, frozen over.

  “I’ll get you back to her, X,” I said. “Don’t you worry about that.”

  My safe house was dark when we arrived.

  X shivered in the backseat as he lay on his side bleeding all over the upholstery. I was going to have a grand time explaining that to the detailer when I went to get it cleaned.

  I practically dragged X inside, his arm flung over my shoulder, his feet scraping along the ground and up the stairs like a zombie.

  Helping him onto the kitchen table, I stripped his damp clothing off his body and cast it aside. He all but fell back onto the hard surface as I lay a blanket over him to help bring his temperature back up. Grabbing a reading lamp from the lounge room, I plugged it into the socket by the table and pointed the globe toward the wound, illuminating the true extent of the damage.

  Rolling X’s body to the side, I placed a clean sheet under his shoulder, then retrieved a box of latex gloves from the cupboard and pulled a pair on my large hands. It had been a long time since I had to administer this kind o
f first aid, but as the situation presented itself, the procedure came back to me like I’d never skipped a day.

  Feeling the wound with my fingers, I examined the location of the bullet. Common sense told me to leave it where it was, get the bleeding under control, and stitch him up…but that all depended on how deep the metal was embedded into his shoulder.

  I’d witnessed the fight from afar and through a sheet of rain, so I had no idea how close Moltke had been when he pulled that trigger. My finger hit rough metal, then tendon and bone, and I knew I had to do something about it. X could lose the functionality in his right arm, and he’d curse me to hell and back if he ended up a handicapped assassin.

  Grabbing my surgical kit, I pulled out my tools and selected a pair of long nose pliers. Back in the day, I’d been required to patch up a lot of guys on the go. Gunshots, blunt force trauma…and many more gruesome wounds that required a steady hand and an analytical mind to patch up without proper medical care. When you were in the employ of bad men, hospitals were a no-go zone. This old dog had picked up a lot of tricks in his day.

  Beginning my work, I dug into the wound, dabbing the blood that rushed to the surface with a wad of gauze in my left. X’s eyes flew open as I searched for the bullet, the tip of the pliers scraping against bone.

  He grunted, his mind obviously foggy with cold and the pain that was no doubt assaulting every nerve ending in his body.

  “Apologies,” I said as he gritted his teeth. “I’d leave it in, but it’s far too close to your shoulder. I assume you want to use your arm again.”

  X grunted, his hands tightening around the edge of the table. His eyes were glassy, but he held on, not uttering a single word.

  Resuming my task, I hooked the pliers around the bullet and plucked it from his flesh. It clinked as I dumped the little shard into a dish, blood clinging to the disfigured metal. Then I packed the wound with gauze, allowing the flow of blood to begin to clot before I attempted to sew it back together.

  “Some swan dive, X,” I said, holding my palm firmly against his shoulder. His gaze met mine, and I could see the anger plain as day. “I know your pride is hurt, but get the fuck over it.”

  He allowed his eyes to close, effectively ending the conversation. Pride and arrogance in his work was something he had in common with Vaughn.

  Checking to see if the blood flow had begun to clot, I peeled away the gauze and was satisfied there wasn’t too much damage. Time to sew him up, disinfect, and slap a bandage on it. That was the extent of what I or anyone else was able to do.

  In the space of fifteen minutes, he’d been shot and drowned…until I plucked his sorry ass from the drink. X had been lucky, all things considering.

  Readying a needle, I sat back onto a stool and fumbled for my glasses. Fucking old age.

  X’s eyes cracked open, and I shook my head in bewilderment. “You should have taken the fucking shot when you had the chance.”

  He grunted, his eyes rolling back into his head, and just like that, he was out again.

  Damn, X was one tough motherfucker.

  Chapter 17

  X

  When you’re good at everything you do, failing hurts more than just your pride.

  The faint patter of rain reached my ears first, droplets landing against a window to my left, and the soft sound of wind forcing its way through branches and leaves of a tree that stood just outside. That was the thing about being an assassin. Knowing your environment and the sounds it made, even through darkness, was a part of the whole. It was an item on a list that affected the accuracy of the shot.

  My shoulder felt tight. I felt the flesh pulsing, heat radiating from the wound like the searing flame from a furnace.

  Water rushed to meet my plummeting body, and I jerked upright, my eyes flying open.

  “Mercy!” Her name exploded from my lips, my heart hammering in my chest.

  I felt a hand on my chest and another pushing on my forehead, forcing me back down. I struggled at first, then I remembered the boat.

  “Easy,” Hawkes said, settling me back down onto a couch. “You don’t want to tear the stitches.”

  My limbs felt heavy, my movements sluggish at best, and I raised my good arm, placing my hand on my forehead. Hot.

  “Where am I?” I asked, my voice sounding faint and far away.

  “You’re safe,” he replied.

  “What…” I tried to remember what had happened, but it all got a little fuzzy after the bridge. I was fighting Moltke, and then I was here. A few blurry images and sensations filled in the gap, reminding me of a time in the not too distant past where I was remembering a life that I was conditioned to forget. The thought made me sick to the stomach, and I took a few deep breaths.

  “If you’re going to throw up, there’s a bucket,” Hawkes said, nodding toward the floor.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I drawled, the contents of my stomach beginning to settle.

  “Even the best of us blow at some point,” he said with a chuckle. “Glad to see you’re not dead.”

  I frowned.

  “I saw you fall from the bridge,” he went on. “Had to fish you out of the Thames…”

  He trailed off, and I knew he wasn’t telling me the whole story. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to know, but my chest felt tender. I’d probably drowned. The thought should have alarmed me, knowing if Hawkes hadn’t been there I’d be dead, and Mercy would be forced to face Moltke on her own, but I was still very much alive.

  Mercy… My mind turned to her, and my heart flared. I’d made her a promise. I’d planned to kill Moltke, and he’d all but killed me instead. I’d planned to return to her and…

  “Shall I contact Mercy?” Hawkes asked like he could read my fucking mind.

  “No.”

  “You don’t want to go back to her?”

  “No,” I snapped, pain searing through my shoulder. “No, I need to do this alone.”

  “Why?” he asked as he cleaned up his workbench. “After seeing you two work together when we tracked Lafayette, I don’t see the issue.”

  “I don’t need the lecture, Hawkes,” I said, pressing lightly on the bandage he’d wrapped around my shoulder. The white gauze was tinged with red, the area hot to the touch.

  “I see,” the old man mused, pushing his glasses up his nose. Since when did Hawkes wear glasses? “It’s about your pride.”

  Grimacing, I pushed to a seated position, my head spinning. “What did I say about the lecture?”

  “I see it going one of two ways,” he went on, ignoring my shitty tone of voice. “You go into this blindly, driven by your rage, and shoot at anything that moves in hopes you’ll find your target. Or you take your time, watch and listen, then line up your strategy and trap him in a corner.” He shook his head. “One is fast, the other takes time. I know enough about your training to know which is the more logical approach.”

  I rolled my eyes, my head beginning to pound with the mother of all headaches. “How long have I been here?”

  “About a day.”

  A day? Moltke could be anywhere, and Mercy… I needed to leave this place and settle the score before he went after her. He knew she hadn’t died that night at the wharf, but after my unexpected swim in the Thames, he couldn’t be so sure about me.

  “I need to leave,” I said, realizing I was pretty much naked underneath the blanket Hawkes had draped over me.

  The old man nodded at the armchair next to the couch behind me. “I washed your clothes.”

  At least he knew the stakes and wasn’t trying to keep me from leaving. I turned my gaze toward the chair where I saw the neatly folded stack of clothing and my boots drying out by the radiator.

  Hawkes was like a father figure for all of the wayward assassins and criminals that came out of London. I referred to him as an old man, but he couldn’t be anymore than fifty. For our kind of life, that was way past retirement age…and a fucking feat of strength and cunning to have survived that long
.

  He raised an eyebrow. “If you insist on leaving, you’ll want to at least wash up.” Gesturing to the hallway behind him, he added. “Bathroom’s through there.”

  Standing on shaky feet, I collected my clothes and shuffled down the hall to the bathroom. The room itself was a tiny little cubicle—as the usual minuscule flats in London tended to be. A shower over a bath, a toilet crammed into a corner, and a mirror and basin in the last remaining square inch. Still, the water was hot, and steam filled the space quickly.

  Rubbing my hand over the condensation on mirror, I pulled at the gauze, revealing Hawkes had stitched up the hole the bullet had torn through my flesh. Three little black loops pulled the puckered skin together. It was crude, but not half bad for an old guy with glasses.

  It would hinder my range of motion, but there was nothing I could do about that. The pain was manageable. I’d been through much worse and was here to talk about it. MI6 trained all of its high-level field agents to compartmentalize pain in the event of capture. I’d forgotten a lot of that training, but it was also something The Watchman had focused on. Pain was a driving force. It was a source of energy that could be manipulated and used toward the final goal.

  The pain could be managed.

  Stripping off my boxers, I stepped into the shower, hissing as the water stung against the wound, fueling my need to kill that fucking bastard Moltke.

  As the water pounded on my back, I anchored myself against the wall, my thoughts driven back to the river. I didn’t remember hitting the surface, nor did I remember being dragged away by the current. If I had been on the brink of death, my heart still in my chest, then what people said about there being a light at the end of the tunnel was all bullshit. My life didn’t flash before my eyes, either.

  Instead of there being fire and brimstone, was hell just a vast, empty nothingness? Darkness that stretched on forever and ever? Where souls were trapped for eternity?

  Was that what awaited me when I inevitably died? No matter the things I’d done to atone, learning to care and to love, protecting the woman I loved… Was it ever going to be enough?