Free The Thirteenth Skull by Rick Yancey

come!”
    Nueve ignored him. He strode across the room to the window and pulled aside the curtains. He looked out, nodded, took one step back, and then slammed the gold head of his cane into the center of the glass. The window shattered on impact. Nueve cleared the remaining shards from the frame, then motioned to me.
    â€œQuickly,” he hissed.
    â€œWe’ll break our legs,” I said, and then I saw we were directly above the overhang for the emergency room entrance on the first floor. Only a half-story fall, but still far enough to snap an ankle if you hit it wrong.
    Behind us, the old man called, “Harriet! Harriet, don’t leave me!”
    Nueve’s eyebrow went up. “Well, Harriet?” he asked.
    Police sirens wailed in the distance. Somebody must have found the two dead guys in the elevator.
    â€œJump down , not out ,” Nueve cautioned me.
    I put one foot on the sill. The old man got mad.
    â€œAlways running out on me, Harriet!”
    At that moment the door flew open and three men rushed into the room. They wore black jumpsuits and black bandannas across their faces. Nueve smiled and nodded, as though he had expected them: Ah, of course, the ninjas have arrived! The blade leaped from the end of his cane.
    â€œGo, Alfred,” he said softly.
    He shoved me through the window. I tumbled into empty space as the old man screamed after me, “Good riddance to you, then, you old witch!”
    I hit the roof of the overhang feetfirst, bending my knees at the last second, so I managed to hit without breaking or twisting anything I really might need in the near future. I rolled a couple of times, coming to a stop at the edge, lay on my stomach for a second, then flipped over in time to see one of the ninjas coming through the window.
    He landed about three feet away and pulled a tapered dagger from some hidden pocket in his black jumper. I recognized that dagger: thin, black-bladed, with a dragon’s head on the hilt, its mouth open in a silent roar. The signature weapon of Mogart’s private army, the agents of darkness who had chased me from Knoxville to Canada, from Canada to France, from France to England.
    â€œOkay,” I said to him. “You got me. I give up.”
    I raised my hands in the air. He came toward me slowly, the dagger pointed at my gut.
    â€œJust make it quick, okay?” I asked.
    He lunged forward with a hoarse yell. I had two seconds before he was on me. I used those two seconds to rip the shawl off my shoulders. I dropped the shawl over his head, twisted the two ends to wrap it tight, and then slung him forward with a shot-putter-like motion. He sailed over the edge of the overhang.
    I turned back toward the building—where the heck was Nueve?—and saw another dagger-wielding AOD coming toward me. I got lucky with the first one but, based on the past, my good luck wasn’t going to hold.
    At that moment sirens screamed to life directly beneath us: an ambulance was leaving on a call. Maybe my luck hadn’t completely run out. I sprinted to one side of the overhang. I had a fifty-fifty chance this was the correct side. The AOD’s fingers tugged on the back of my dress as I threw myself over the side.
    I had guessed right: the ambulance burst into the open the moment we went down, and we tumbled head over heels onto its roof.
    The ambulance whipped hard to the right coming out of the parking lot, slinging us against the opposite edge. Then it began to accelerate toward the entrance ramp to I-40.
    He rushed me. I scooted backward until my butt smacked against the red spinning lights mounted near the front of the ambulance.
    We hit the on-ramp clocking sixty at least, and then he was on me. I drove my shoulder into his stomach, knocking the breath out of him. My momentum carried us toward the rear of the ambulance, where he finally went down, his head falling back over the edge. I landed on top of him and caught his wrist just as he