Chapter 27: The Duel
The fight in the dark was entirely devoid of martial grace. It was an ugly, desperate struggle for survival, fought in the ruins of a billionaire’s palace.
Julian scrambled over Silas, his hands searching blindly in the dark for a throat, a pair of eyes—anything soft he could destroy. He found Silas’s tactical vest and gripped it, driving his knee upward. The movement flared the agonizing wound in his own shattered thigh, forcing a sharp cry from his lips, but he didn't stop.
Silas grunted, recovering quickly from the shock of the tackle. He was a master of close-quarters combat, but he was fighting a man who had completely lost his mind. Silas brought his heavy combat boot up, kicking Julian squarely in the chest. The force sent Julian flying backward, his back slamming brutally against the stone base of a towering, shattered marble pillar.
Julian gasped for air, his vision swimming with dark spots. He groped desperately at the floor around him. His fingers brushed against something sharp—a massive, jagged shard of the antique console table that had been blown apart in the initial breach. It was a jagged spike of heavy, polished mahogany, over a foot long and tapered to a lethal point.
Silas rose to his feet, drawing a serrated tactical combat knife from the sheath on his chest rig. The matte-black blade drank the faint moonlight filtering through the doorway. He lunged forward to finish the contract, driving the blade down toward Julian’s chest.
Julian rolled violently to the left. The combat knife sparked violently against the stone floor, chipping the marble.
With a scream of pure, desperate effort, Julian drove the jagged spike of mahogany upward, plunging it directly into the soft gap beneath Silas’s tactical vest, burying the splintered wood deep into the assassin’s side.
Silas’s breath hitched, his eyes going wide beneath his night-vision gear. A wet, tearing sound echoed in the quiet foyer as the wood punctured organs. But Silas didn't fall. With terrifying resilience, he grabbed Julian’s arm—the one holding the wooden shard—and twisted it with brutal, mechanical efficiency.
A sickening crack echoed through the room. Julian’s radius snapped.
Julian screamed, collapsing onto his side as his broken arm flopped uselessly against his chest. Silas stumbled backward, clutching the wooden stake protruding from his side. Blood immediately soaked his black tactical gear. He fell to one knee, his breathing ragged, his hand trembling as he dropped his combat knife. The assassin was immobilized, bleeding heavily internally.
Julian lay on the cold marble, wheezing, entirely broken. His leg was shattered, his arm snapped, and his ribs felt as though they had been crushed into powder. He crawled forward on his belly, dragging his useless limbs behind him like a crushed insect, his fingers finally closing around the grip of Silas’s dropped combat knife.
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"Where is she?" Julian choked out, pressing the point of the blade against Silas’s throat.
Silas looked down at him, his face pale behind the tactical gear, a bloody, grim smile touching his lips. "She's waiting for you, Julian. In the glass... the glass house."
