Page 84 of Skotos
Thomas veered around the stalled truck, clipping a vendor cart stacked with oranges. Fruit spilled everywhere in a citrus explosion.
We burst onto another street lined with tourists, scattering them like startled pigeons. Somewhere behind, a policeman shouted and blew his whistle, but his words were lost in the roar of the engine and the pounding of blood in my ears.
The black sedan was still ahead, weaving like a drunk, barreling through the Eternal City with reckless abandon.
A tram clanged toward an intersection.
The sedan didn’t slow. It gunned it, barely slipping past the crossing rails before the tram cut across behind it.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I shouted. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
Thomas didn’t hesitate, shooting forward, his jaw set, eyes locked on the path ahead.
The tram’s bell shrieked as we ducked beneath the crossing arm and raced over the tracks, narrowly avoiding disaster by mere inches. A woman’s scream from the side of the tram was all that marked our crossing.
The world around me passed too quickly to absorb.
We hit another patch of cobbles—larger ones this time, centuries old and laid by men who never dreamed of motorized transport. My spine took the brunt of the abuse—but so did my sense of balance. I clung to Thomas as though he was the only thing keeping me on the breathing side of life.
“If I die,” I hissed into Thomas’s ear, “tell the Vatican to invest in fucking asphalt.”
He didn’t look back, but I could tell he was grinning. “If you die, I’m driving this thing off the Tiber. We go together.”
Another hard turn.
The sedan clipped a bicycle, sending the rider tumbling. Thomas swerved to avoid him, nearly tipping us over, and I had to bite back a curse. My grip tightened on his jacket, my heart punching against my ribs like a battering ram.
The sedan was still in sight, but it was pulling away.
“Shortcut?” Thomas asked over the roar.
“Anything that doesn’t end with me face-planting into a statue of Caesar.”
“No promises!”
I could hear the smirk in his voice. The bastard was loving this, while I was just trying not to shit my undershorts.
We turned down a narrow alley barely wide enough for the bike. The walls closed in.
Old stone and plaster rushed past in a blur.
Laundry flapped above our heads like surrender flags.
A dog barked angrily from a balcony.
Thomas took a hard left, tires screeching as we cut between a pair of stopped cars. An old womanscreamed and dove out of the way, her baguette flying into the air.
We zipped past fountains, down another crooked lane, then across the narrow front steps of a café, forcing diners to leap aside.
The sedan made a sudden right onto a pedestrian walkway, scattering people in every direction. We followed. Horns blared behind us and people screamed, a chorus of chaos and panic.
We turned again and again—each alley growing narrower.
At one point, we barreled through a market stall, a hail of tomatoes bursting behind us. I ducked instinctively as a hanging awning smacked me in the back of the head. The city blurred into a frenzy of noise and color and danger.
Exhaust and garlic and sunbaked stone filled my lungs.
My knuckles were white where they gripped Thomas’s jacket, and my head throbbed from where I’d been smacked.
