Free Praetorian Series [3] A Hunter and His Legion by Edward Crichton Page A

to Helena who was in the process of reloading her pistol, her head directe d toward me, her mouth moving to form unheard words.  I shook my head and turned toward the rest of my team, noticing they’d taken up defensive positions behind trees or beneath benches, but in the next second, all I saw was blood.
    Like an image flickering to life from a faulty movie projector, the entire scene before me suddenly became clear.  One of my friends was already dead.  The body I saw was Wang’s, his chest perforated with a half dozen arrows and another through one of his eyes.  He sat against a tree almost casually, but his head hung lifelessly to the side, his pistol useless in his hands.  Seconds after realization set in, my attention was diverted to Vincent, who took an arrow to the stomach.  It hit with such force that it went clean through, not a life threatening injury, but it dropped the older man to a knee and out into the open.
    Time seemed to move in slow motion now, as it often did in combat, but never quite like this.  I felt myself trudging through reality at a pace that would have made a snail seem swift, and as time continued to unfold around me, more of my friends started going down.  Santino took an arrow to the knee, Stryker to the arm, and Brewster right in the chest.  I couldn’t believe what was happening, so I closed my eyes and forced time to pick up again, willed it to accelerate and go back to normal.
    I was rewarded with another sensation, however, when the pain in my head seemed to just disappear, and when I opened my eyes, everything had changed again.
    Wang was gone, as was Santino , Vincent, and Stryker.  Artie was no longer next to me but over by Archer and Helena, who was also no longer by my side.  Dazed, confused, and suddenly exhausted, I struggled to my feet, and continued my inspection of the area.  The scene was pristine and there was no blood, like nothing had happened at all, and I started wondering how long I had been sitting there with my eyes closed.
    A moment later, Helena noticed me rising to my feet and rushed over.  She grabbed me by the arms and helped me sit on the lip of the fountain again.
    “Jacob… Christ, are you all right?”
    “I , uh…” I started saying as I tried to think, “…I’m fine.  But what about Wang and…?”
    “What about me, mate?”
    I craned my neck to look behind me and saw the man who had been dead just seconds ago standing in a very non-dead like position, looking as healthy as ever.  My eyes narrowed and I looked at Wang in a state of utter shock before turning back to Helena, who looked very concerned.
    “What happened?”  I asked.
    “I was just going to ask you the same thing, Jacob,” she said, shifting her head from side to side gently, studying me.  “You passed out.”
    “I did?”
    “Yes, you did.  Just when Santino spotted the scout.”
    “I did?”  I asked again, unable to accept such a story.
    “Sure did, buddy,” I heard Santino say.  I turned again and saw him approaching from behind Wang, perfectly fine and without a mark on him.  He and Stryker were carrying a body between them.  “But don’t worry, sweetheart, I kept you safe.”
    I would have sneered at him if I wasn’t so confused.
    I turned back to Helena.  “What happened?”
    She didn’t seem eager to answer, but she did anyway.  “Santino spotted one of Agrippina’s ninjas who must have been a scout for his Octetus .  Cuyler took him out before any of us could react, but the rest of his group wasn’t far away, and everyone else went after them.”
    “ Two got away, the squirmy bastards,” Wang said as he took a seat beside me.
    “But not this guy,” Santino said as he dropped the body unceremoniously to the ground.  The man coughed as he hit, and Santino kicked him in the side to keep him down.  “You were just too slow, weren’t you, guy?”
    “Cuyler’s on the runners ,” Stryker reported.  “And Gaius and Marcus are