A crashing roar echoed through the valley.
Jess shifted, tried to get a better view on Nico. Flakes of ash fell like snow. The gap in the wall was a narrow slit, three feet high but not more than four inches wide, the opening swept back at a high angle from the outside to inside of the wall. She’d seen openings like this in castle walls a hundred times before on tours and imagined medieval archers angling their arrows out of them in some ancient battle.
But she never imagined that she’d be pointing a crossbow out of one.
Pumice raining from the sky, she and Giovanni had sprinted across the courtyard, ran up the steps into the museum containing the ancient swords, pikes, and crossbows. They smashed the glass cases, Giovanni retrieving crossbows refurbished by local artisans—new gut strings and oiled mechanisms—and grabbed as many bolts as they could carry.
Jess grabbed the Medici dagger on the way out. A small but lethal close combat weapon.
She spied through the gap in the wall, feeling the weight of the gold dagger in her back pocket. Shifting on her knee, she kept her eye low on the crossbow bolt, aiming down it at Nico. “Come on, come on,” she muttered, waiting to get a clear shot.
Nico scanned the tops of the walls. “Where’s our Jessica?”
“Down in the caves, with her mother,” Giovanni growled. The ground trembled.
“Just let him go,” Jess whispered, her bolt trained on Nico’s head. Sweat dribbled down her forehead, stinging her eyes. The light of the rising sun was fast being extinguished by the swirling black clouds overhead, even dimming the crackling aurora.
“Let her father go, and you can have me.” Giovanni took a step into the open, toward Nico, his hands up. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Nico scanned the walls again. He glanced at the man next to him and shrugged. “Yes, that’s what I want.” He let go of Ben, shoving him forward, and pointed his gun instead at Giovanni, not twenty feet away.
It was all Jess needed. Saying a small prayer, she squeezed the trigger on the ancient crossbow, aiming dead center on Nico’s chest. Thwack, the bolt loosed, the crossbow kicking back into Jess’s shoulder, knocking her off balance.
Overhead, the clouds closed together, sealing off the last of the sun’s rays and casting the courtyard into darkness. Regaining her footing, Jess peered through the slit as she put down the crossbow and picked up another one, preloaded with a bolt cocked back. In the sudden gloom, Jess wiped her eyes, squinted to see. Had she hit him?
Yes.
Nico staggered back, the crossbow bolt buried deep in his right chest, his right hand holding the gun dangling uselessly at his side. He looked down at his chest at the bolt sticking out of it, and wiped his mouth with his left hand. It came away dark red.
Giovanni roared, reaching behind his head to pull out a sword. He raised it above his head and charged at Nico.
One thing about crossbows—they were almost silent.
The big man next to Nico stared at him, still not sure what was happening. He was quick, though. He raised his gun from Roger’s head and aimed it at Giovanni as he ran at Nico, ready to bring the sword down and cleave Nico’s head from his body.
Swearing, Jess aimed the new crossbow bolt at the big man. Just as she pulled the trigger, Roger jerked to his feet to sprint away. The bolt caught him in the left shoulder, spinning him around into the big man who fired his gun in the same instant.
Jess watched in horror as blood sprayed into the air from Giovanni’s chest, the bullet’s impact knocking him sideways. Throwing her second crossbow down, she grabbed the third one, brought it up to the slit. Giovanni fell to his knees, the sword dropping from his hand. Roger fell back into the big man, who shoved him aside and brought his gun up again.
This time Jess didn’t miss.
The crossbow bolt snicked through the air straight into the big man’s neck. He dropped the gun and clawed at his neck, blood spurting across the gravel. Holding his shoulder, Roger staggered to his feet and ran to the wall, while Giovanni slumped to the dirt, blood pooling around him.
Nico had figured out where the attack was coming from. He snarled at the wall where Jess hid, but paused to smile at Giovanni in the dirt before turning to run, his right arm holding the gun dangling at his side. Jess grabbed her fourth preloaded crossbow, brought it up, but Nico made it into the cover of olive trees to the left of the driveway.
Cursing, Jess jumped to her feet and hopped down the winding stone staircase to the courtyard. At the bottom, she bounded to the open entrance door.