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Chapter 14; The Knights Hospitaler
His glasses were broken. He could see a jagged lightning bolt of a cracked lens through eyes that hadn't closed when he'd hit the pavement. Everything was tilted ninety degrees. Desmond looking as if he were standing outward from the wall.
Rain splattered against the side of his face and distantly he was aware that Desmond was fighting. Practiced feints and blocks.
It was oddly like a ballet, and in his head Shaun heard muffled music conjured most likely from the concussion. A string quartet playing something eerie like music from a horror movie. It was beautiful and terrifying at the same time.
Desmond kept his fists at the ready, knife held in a reverse grip, he sliced at one man, kicked at another, his whole body transformed into a deadly weapon, trailing water like feathers on an exotic bird.
He seemed to be pulling his punches, not wanting to actually kill one of the men attacking him, but definitely injure them enough to make them think twice.
He took a hit to the ribs, followed the movement, and slammed his elbow into the man's face. Kick, slice, duck, punch. Shaun felt distantly proud that Desmond was mimicking a few jujitsu moves he'd actually used on the young PI. It made him feel a little better at least.
Desmond almost seemed to move in waves. One man down, crawling away holding his ribs, nose broken and bleeding profusely. Maybe they had a chance. Maybe Desmond would get away from them and they could finally confide in Altair as they had tried to do the night Chris died the night everything had gone to hell.
The second man pulled a knife, thrusting quickly toward Desmond's middle. Bouncing back like a dog after a ball or a boxer in a ring. The movements seemed clumsy, bumbling… Flashy.
And Desmond was easily distracted by flashy th—
Shaun tried to shout, tried to warn him, but he couldn't move. His mouth just opened and closed uselessly, the cold rain beating down on him, running into his ear and mouth.
The man who had clubbed him was rushing Desmond… And the weapon in his hands wasn't a gun, wasn't a knife…
It was an aluminum baseball bat.
He swung like he'd played in the major leagues. His upper body following it.
Desmond only had half a second between seeing the glint of wet metal and the impact. He made half a turn, which Shaun would later assume saved Desmond from a lifetime paralyzed from the waist down, but that would be after this… months away and all that went through Shaun's head at that moment was; 'Fuck that's going to hurt!'
Shaun could practically feel the blow, a wall like thing catching Desmond not in the head, or the chest, but in his left hip.
It happened instantly and Desmond was on the ground, knife skittering away in the street, but the sound seemed to echo. Playing over and over and over in Shaun's head. A wet, sick crunching noise, and a metallic ringing like the bastard had hit a home run.
Shaun thought, at first, that everything was OK, that Desmond was just faking it, but then the two men descended on him, grabbing him by the front of his jacket and dragging him toward their car.
Desmond's mouth came open and his hands clawed. And Shaun knew he was hurt. Knew he was hurt without even having to see that the younger man's left hip was mangled. That where before bone had jutted outward there was now a deep bloody dent.
Shaun knew because Desmond was quiet. And Desmond was never quiet unless there was something very wrong.
They threw him into the car and rushed back, hands out and fingers curled like monstrous claws.
Shaun tried to twist away from them, but his head swam and everything went black for a few seconds. Long enough for them to drag him to the car and toss him in also.
Lights flipped by the window in dazzling, blinding blurs, smeared and shattered by the rain.
Shaun found his face even with Desmond's ribs, could hear him breathing, whining and shivering. He made himself move, twisted, ignoring his own pain long enough to get his fingers in the younger man's hair, hoping to offer some kind of comfort that it would be OK, even if he knew it was a lie.
He wasn't sure how long they were in the car, or how far it drove. The next second it seemed they were stopping and he was being pulled out, falling and hanging between two of their attackers and letting the assholes drag him. He vaguely remembered doing something similar when he was a child and hadn't wanted to do as his parents had said, so he'd just gone limp and laid down in the middle of the supermarket and refused to move.
He figured he could have walked. Even if his right leg did feel like someone had rammed a lightning bolt through it and he felt weak from blood loss. He just wanted to make these bastards' jobs a little harder, so he played dead.
He was dragged up a staircase, the hard edges scraping his shins through his slacks, through what looked like an abandoned factory or something. Everything looked dilapidated. Chunks of plaster littered the floor, torn soiled paper, a smell like stale urine and old fungus.
Halfway up the stairs he heard a scream behind him. It was unlike anything he'd ever heard before.
No actor in any movie or TV drama he'd seen had ever sounded like that screaming in pain. This was something wholly new and frightening.
"Fuck, what'd you do to him! The boss isn't gonna be happy about this! He'll take it outta your hide!"
Shaun found himself dragged through what looked like an office, there was an old TV on the desk attached to a DVD player and a blonde man in a black Italian business suit was watching I Love Lucy while he cleaned a large caliber handgun. He glanced up as the two men dragged Shaun by.
"Who the fuck is that?"
"Breakfast."
The man in the suit leered at him in a way that was distinctly unpleasant and made Shaun sick to his stomach.
And then as he was carried into the room Desmond screamed again and the man at the desk was on his feet, glaring hatefully and shouting in shrill German.
Shaun didn't understand any of it, but he assumed the loud little man was not very happy that the young PI had been hurt.
He found himself, a few breaths later, dropped into a corner and seemingly forgotten while the loud blonde ordered the other men about and Desmond was pushed flat across the desk, his jeans rather uncaringly cut off with a large pair of scissors, his underwear shoved down low enough that he was barely covered and his injury prodded by firm unfriendly hands.
Shaun had to shut his eyes and grind his teeth against a groan of terror at the sight of the wound. Bruising that had already turned dark black purple around a 'U' shaped tear in the skin, his jeans and underwear were soaked with blood, and a red stain was spreading up over the lower side of his jacket. Both hands, where they grabbed and flailed and scratched were caked with gore and what looked like vomit.
The blonde stood up suddenly and grabbed the man who'd wielded the baseball bat by the hair, shaking him. "Do you know what you've done! You imbecile!" He pronounced it 'eem-bee-cile'. "Do you know how much he's worth! More than you'll ever see in your life!" He shook the man then jerked his head down and bashed his face against the back of a chair. "He is the last—The ONLY Untouched piece of Borgia's Menagerie! And you've—You've—" He screamed, grabbed the man's hair with both hands and started smashing his head into the edge of the desk like an enraged toddler breaking its toys. The other thugs tried to stop him but the damage had already been done.
While he was no longer pinned Desmond tried to roll away, grabbing for anything he could use as a weapon. He was disturbingly pale, so much so he appeared almost translucent and his brow was beaded with sweat.
Shaun moved slowly, hands shaking and praying he wasn't noticed while the men tried to stop the angry blonde from killing their friend, slipped his phone from his pocket, gagging because it was wet with his blood, and turned it on.
His sister had told him he was insane for buying it, a nine-hundred dollar calculator she'd called it, and practically said he was an idiot for downloading the 'ridiculous' apps like Twitter, Facebook, an app that turned the phone into a ghost detector, one that could identify a song simply by recording a few seconds of it heard over a speaker… and a locator app that showed your friends as little colored arrow points in relation to you on a map.
He'd done it on a whim to be truthful, so he would be able to watch his sister through the day and make sure she wasn't doing things she shouldn't be with the little Auditore brat, accidentally told Desmond about it and after he'd got back from the bathroom had found two new people on his map.
Altair and Desmond.
He felt blessed to have it now. Utterly and completely blessed, because when he slid his phone out of sight behind the ratty couch he'd been dropped beside, Altair's little arrow was moving.
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The little blonde man was pacing back and forth now, waving his gun around and cursing. And the thug whose head he'd bashed in on the desk was lying in a pool of his own blood twitching every few seconds as he slowly choked on his own brain tissue.
Two of the other men who'd been in the office were hovering over Desmond again, one wrestling with his arms, trying to pin them down and keep a hand over his mouth while the other was prodding his hip and gripping his leg as if maybe the man thought the young PI's hip was merely dislocated and if he shifted and shoved on it enough it would pop back into place and everything would be alright again.
Shaun didn't know what they were doing to him, but watching them, and hearing Desmond screaming behind that asshole's hand made the nausea from his concussion as well as from the blood loss build. His chest feeling tighter and tighter, he didn't know how much longer he could lay there playing dead like this.
"What do we do? The Collector will be here any minute… How do we explain this!"
The blonde growled, fingers tangled in his hair and turned on them; "SHUT UP! I'm trying to think! The bastard won't pay if he knows he's been damaged! He'll likely kill us all over it!"
The thug at Desmond's hip jerked his chin toward Shaun; "Give him that one as an apology and pray this can be fixed!" He dug his fingers mercilessly into the young PI's thigh, ignoring the muffled howl he got in return.
"No, The Old Man needs him, seems the little Bastard has information that shouldn't have been leaked… Not much worse than having to take out one of your own to protect your legacy," The blonde rubbed a hand through his hair and cursed loudly, violently sneering at someone near the door; "This is your fault! If you had just stuck to the plan—"
"MY FAULT! You told me you only wanted him!" The fourth thug, who had been leaning seemingly invisibly in the corner raised his voice and pointed right at Desmond; "I thought the other one was that Arab bastard! The one who fucked it up last time! AND at the bar! I wasn't going to let it happen again!" Then he pointed right at the blonde. "I was just doing what I was told to do! Take out that fucking Arab shit if he got in the way again! I thought he was there so I took a shot at him! If you've got a problem with it, you take it up with The Boss! Speaking of which, I think he's gonna be pretty interested to hear what you did to Mickey there." He motioned to the man in the floor. "The bastard may have been a fink but he was still gold in The Boss' eyes."
"I'm not paying you!" The blonde roared.
And suddenly the forth thug had a gun trained on the blonde, backing him against the wall. "Like hell you're not paying! We got him didn't we? Now give me the fucking money or some cop is gonna have a really good night… three internationally wanted sex criminals taken down in one go. Imagine that headline!"
The blonde growled like an animal and pulled a second handgun, identical to the one he'd been cleaning, from inside his jacket, pointing it at the man before him. He barked something in German. Shaun didn't know what he'd said, but it seemed to put the fear of God in the thug because he took a step backward. Half a breath later he advanced again, but before he could open his mouth there was another voice.
"What in God's name is going on here!"
There was a man standing in the doorway. His hair was white, cropped close to his head, and he had a slight beard. Rather innocent looking, just like any aging business man you'd meet on the street, he was wearing a slate gray suit and carrying a small duffle bag like you would expect someone who frequented a gym to have.
Shaun was opening his mouth to shout at the man to call the police that they'd been attacked. That Desmond was hurt and he himself had been shot and was probably bleeding to death as they just stood there like idiots gaping at one another.
The blonde dropped his weapon to his side and his back went ramrod straight. "W-we weren't expecting you so soon."
The older man turned and looked at him with an expression of hidden joy, then his eyes landed on Desmond and the joy bled out of his eyes, leaving behind something shocked, horrified… And angry.
"You found my missing boy I see… But what the hell am I supposed to do now that you've broken him?"
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