CHERUB: Brigands M.C. - Robert Muchamore Page 0,116
Dante said, making him jump.
James looked up, then behind before realising that Dante was slumped against the wall in the brick corridor between the house and garage. There was enough light escaping from the bedrooms upstairs to see that he looked pretty sad.
‘You OK?’ James asked, as he noticed a small crossbow pistol resting on Dante’s lap. ‘Where’d you get that from?’
‘On my second mission,’ James nodded. ‘I snatched his gun. It was him or me.’
It was only as James said this that his brain linked Dante’s hatred of the Führer with the fact that Dante had visited the Führer’s house and the fact that he had a crossbow pistol loaded with deadly metal bolts in his hand.
‘Dante, what the hell have you done?’ James gasped.
‘He was home alone,’ Dante explained. ‘I broke in, found the Führer laying on his bed. Lined him up in the crosshairs and went to pull the trigger, but I dunno … It wasn’t in me.’
James exhaled with relief, but couldn’t find any words. He agreed with the principle that CHERUB didn’t go around assassinating people, but knew he’d feel differently if the Führer had killed his family.
‘I had it all worked out,’ Dante said. ‘I made sure I wore the same trainers that I had on at Joe’s party, so my shoe prints wouldn’t prove anything. By using the Führer’s own weapon and leaving it at the scene there’d be nothing you could trace back to me. Zara and Chloe would have suspected, but unless I’d been severely unlucky with an eye witness, they never would have proved a thing.’
‘Maybe it’s for the best,’ James said softly. ‘I still wonder about the bloke I shot. It really plays on your mind.’
Dante got out of the gravel and looked thoroughly disgusted with himself. ‘I’m weak,’ he said. ‘If there’s an afterlife, my dad’s sitting up there now with his head in his hands because he just found out that I’m the biggest chicken-shit coward that ever lived.’
As Dante turned away, a rolled-up photograph dropped out of his sweatshirt. James picked it up.
‘Don’t you want this?’ James asked.
‘Bin it,’ Dante said bitterly, as he walked towards the back garden.
James opened out the photo and saw that it was a Brigands barbecue. He recognised the Führer in the middle, with Joe standing proudly in front of him. Dante looked very different with short red hair, but the teenage girl on the edge of the picture looked remarkably like him.
‘You know, Dante,’ James said, as he followed the younger boy on to the back lawn, ‘maybe the reason you couldn’t pull the trigger wasn’t because you’re a coward. It’s not like shooting someone in the head is something to be proud of, is it?’
They’d kept their voices down to avoid being heard by the girls inside the house, but now Dante shouted. ‘James, please just leave me alone.’
‘You couldn’t kill the Führer because you’re a better person than he is,’ James explained. He held out the photo for Dante to see. ‘Look at your mum and your sister in this picture. Do you think they’d want you to be torturing yourself over revenge, or to get on with your life?’
James wondered if his argument sounded too sappy, but Dante stopped walking and snatched the picture back.
‘Give us that,’ Dante said, managing a half smile. ‘It’s weird looking at Lizzie and thinking that she’d be twenty-one now. And I only remember her as my bossy big sister, but when I look at this picture you can see she was dead sexy. She was really funny as well.’
James nodded. ‘You know the weirdest thing about being a cherub? We get to do all this great stuff and our lives are amazing compared to ordinary kids, but I reckon most of us would go back to our boring old lives if we had the chance.’
‘In an instant,’ Dante nodded. ‘And at least the Führer’s gonna get a shock the next time he goes into his study.’
‘The missing picture,’ James nodded.
‘Not just that,’ Dante smiled. ‘I fired a crossbow bolt between the eyes of his Hitler painting and scratched Dante Scott is a Vengeful Bastard into his desktop with my hunting knife.’
James smiled, then smiled some more as the complexity of this message sunk in. ‘If he thinks you’re part of the Vengefuls and he knows that you were walking around his house with a crossbow …’