A Queen's Pride

by N. D. Jones

  A rain forest.

  A mountain peak.

  A savanna grassland.

  All dangerous. None routes to freedom.

  Faucets ran red with blood and all the food in his house had molded. She hadn’t missed anything, including turning ice cubes into small blocks of stainless-steel link chains.

  Not once, during the forty-eight hours she’d kept them hostage, did she move from the chair or open her eyes, not even when she’d used her powers to further torture London.

  Vomit, fever, shock, abdominal pain, cough, diarrhea, chills, weakness, Frank London was forced to endure them all. He should’ve died long ago, but she’d kept him alive, infecting him with one plague then another.

  Asha had to have hated Javier and London to subject them to such depraved treatment. Then again, hate hadn’t been the Rogueshades’ and the deputy chief’s motivations for what they’d done to the Shona.

  On his hands and knees, Javier crawled to the chair where Asha sat, sitting back on his haunches when he reached her. She gave no indication she knew he was there, but he hadn’t expected an acknowledgment. His fear hadn’t diminished. She could kill him at any moment. In fact, the two days had left Javier with nothing but time to torture himself thinking about when and how Asha would end his life.

  “I-I know you can smell truth from lies, just as my scent reveals my fear.” Javier scooted closer, his body inches from the woman he’d wronged. “I can’t see any of Sekhem Asha in the lion face you’re wearing, but I know, somewhere deep inside is the respectful, sarcastic, and stubborn young woman I helped to victimize. I know I’m going to die. I know I deserve everything you’ve done to me because I did worse to you and with far less provocation.”

  Javier didn’t know the exact time Asha’s plane had landed in Shona, but he assumed that had been the first time since her kidnapping that she’d felt her life returned to her. Not the same life she’d had when she’d left home, though, but the new life she had to forge from the ashes of her pain and loss.

  “R-R-oyster. G-guilty.”

  Javier didn’t bother looking back at London. Even at the end, the deputy chief refused to take responsibility for his crimes. Worse, he’d spent the last two days both cursing Royster’s absence from the hell Asha had turned Javier’s home into and reminding Asha of Chief Royster’s equal culpability.

  As far as Javier knew, Chief Royster could already be dead. If not, Javier wouldn’t do or say anything to hasten Royster’s judgment.

  Risking Asha’s wrath, Javier laid his hand atop hers. Despite the ferocious claws, her hand radiated heat, her skin smooth and soft.

  Lids parted and only Javier’s guilt and remorse kept him from withdrawing his touch.

  This close he could see she truly had the head of a lioness, while the rest of her body was that of a woman. A woman taller and stronger than the Asha he’d known but no less a version of the same girl who’d looked him in the face and refused to sign away her people’s land, knowing pain and indignity would follow.

  The lioness snarled, a shallow baring of teeth.

  Javier’s heart pounded so hard he felt it in his eyes, but he didn’t back away. He wouldn’t.

  “You have every right to despise my guts. What I did to you and what the Rogueshades took from you are unforgivable. Crimes. Sins. For years, I told myself I wasn’t a bad man despite doing bad things to awful people. But that was bullshit. I never cared who the person was on the other end of my bullet because I didn’t want to care. You can’t do my job if you look beyond the surface. Caring makes you soft and gets you killed. So I lived to fight other battles, go on other missions because I chose not to give a fuck about the blood I shed, the lives I denied, and the families I destroyed.”

  He caressed her hand, going so far as to travel the length of a finger down to the beginning of a claw.

  The rumble of sound in her throat had Javier withdrawing his hand but not his body.

  “I recorded a replay of the episode of DeGracey’s show with your General Volt. I have no idea how many times I’ve watched it.”

  Once he’d stopped lying to himself, he’d broken down, crying each time General Volt or DeGracey had displayed a picture of the smiling and happy Leothos family. He’d sobbed even harder and longer at the video footage of them taking Asha into custody. He’d been the driver of the SUV, although no one knew his identity thanks to the angle of the camera that caught only a portion of his arm.

  Javier recalled precisely what he’d been thinking when Asha had been shoved into the back of his truck—anger over her parents’ audacity to fight back but also a sense of privilege and entitlement as a human. How could humans not be superior to a race of people who loped through much of their lives in animal form?

  He’d come face-to-face with his racism and prejudice, the single-minded belief that led him to devalue the worth of an entire group of people to the point of having no compunction executing them for money.

  Javier had one final confession. Glancing over his shoulder, he met London’s watery green eyes. He must feel it too—death nearing. Our final judgment.

  He cleared his throat, more afraid than he’d ever been but never more committed to finishing something he’d started. “I was there, when your parents died.” No, that’s a cop-out. “I mean, I was part of the group that shot and killed your parents. Your father tried to protect his wife. He shielded her body with his. We shot him.” Javier lowered his eyes. Ashamed. “A lot. Until he died and shifted into his human form. By that time, your mother was close to death. She’d fought hard. They both did, but they were outnumbered and outgunned. I don’t know what her final words or thoughts were. At the time, I didn’t care. She wasn’t our mission. You were. So we fired on her.”

  After the number of bullets they’d pumped into her parents, he couldn’t imagine the Shona would’ve been able to have open-casket funerals for their murdered leaders. Had Asha seen what they’d done to her parents? Had a Shona medical examiner submitted a report to the new sekhem? Javier hoped not but a part of him suspected Asha would’ve wanted to know every detail of her parents’ deaths, no matter how much the knowledge would’ve gutted her.

  Taking a deep breath, Javier lifted his head, ready to die for his crimes against the royal Shona family. Asha’s lion would put him out of his misery. He deserved nothing less than her eternal scorn.

  Javier choked on the sight before him. Hell, tears fell, and he . . . shit. His heart hurt.

  No braids.

  No claws.

  No golden eyes.

  No lion’s head.

  Not a spawn of the devil but a beautiful young woman. An angel with golden-brown eyes.

  “Sekhem Asha.” Javier’s voice trembled; so too did his hands.

  “Mr. Stormbane.”

  That voice—sweet with a touch of vinegar.

  Javier’s deliverer.

  His Glock materialized in his right hand, and he knew what she wanted him to do and it wasn’t to grant London’s two-day wish. The deputy chief would die soon enough, his torture well-earned.

  So was mine.

  How many times had he contemplated disobeying orders and shooting Asha in cold blood? Worse, how many times had he threatened the eighteen-year-old with death by a bullet to her head?

  Once would’ve been too many, and Javier had threatened her more than a single time.

  He didn’t check the gun’s magazine clip to know it was full.

  Like Javier’s, tears ran down Asha’s face. He had no doubt she would mature into a wonderful woman and leader of her people. He would be years dead, but the thought of her living a long, happy life despite the wrongs done to her younger self, made the weight of the Glock that much lighter in his hand.

  Javier raised the barrel of the gun to his head and pressed it against his temple.

  His deliverer leaned back and closed her eyes. “Say my name, Mr. Stormbane, and I will live.”

  He smiled. His angel. His . . . “Sekhem Sekhmet.�
��

  “Thank you. I forgive you.”

  She forgives me. Me . . . Rogueshade. Stormbane. Sergeant Major Hernandez.

  Javier’s heart filled with relief. His lips formed a smile of contentment. His finger pulled the trigger.

  Bam.

  Chapter 15: Only One

  The Republic of Vumaris

  Upper West Minra

  “You don’t have to do this.” Silas stepped in front of the guest bedroom closet, throat tight, mind and heart racing. His breaths came in heavy pants. “Come on, don’t do this. I can’t believe you’re going to throw away twenty-three years of marriage.”

  “We’ve talked about this.”

  Claire crossed arms over her chest, cocked her head to the side, and glared at Silas with eyes so pale blue he could see the red of the heart he’d broken.

  “You talked. I never agreed to the temporary separation.”

  “You don’t have to agree, and it won’t be temporary. Once I’m settled, I’ll have my lawyer contact yours.”

  I thought this bump in our marriage would blow over.

  DeGracey’s show had started the ball rolling, and other media outlets had jumped on the bandwagon. Silas and Frank had been crucified in the media, and those damn pictures of the Shona family had been everywhere. Even a year later, Silas couldn’t go a week without a reminder of what had happened at Sanctum Hotel.

  “I told you, I didn’t have anything to do with the deaths.”

  Claire’s clicked tongue called him a liar. Her stomped retreat to her dresser expressed so much more. Yanking open the dresser drawers, she took no care in pulling out clothing and tossing it onto the bed and into her suitcase.

  “The two lion handlers from the local zoo confessed. They received a personal call from Frank.” Claire’s head snapped up from her packing. “I never liked Frank, but you picked him as your deputy chief, so I tried to be supportive. We watched the news program with the former zoo employees together. What kind of man is so arrogant as to call in that kind of crazy favor personally? Worse, what kind of sick, cruel asshole thinks up a plan to torture a child? I suppose the prick thought it funny to have actual lions attack a girl who could turn into a lion.” She threw a balled-up shirt at Silas, hitting him in the chest. “It isn’t fucking funny. It’s a sign of a warped mind. And you had that psycho in our home and with our daughter.”

  They’d gone from sporadic arguments to shouting matches—with Claire accusing him of awful things and Silas flat out denying each one. There were many upsides to a long marriage, such as the comfort that came with knowing your partner. Part of that knowing was . . . well, realizing when a spouse was feeding their partner a big helping of bullshit.

  Silas had lied.

  Claire had cried, yelled, swore.

  Silas had kept lying. Once he’d started, there was no way in hell he could confess, not after the awful way Claire and Audrey had spoken about the “amoral cretins” who’d “hurt the poor Shona princess and her parents.”

  He’d lied.

  Claire had moved out of their bedroom the day after they’d returned home from settling Audrey into her dorm room.

  “I told you, that was all Frank. Okay, okay, I’ll admit that Frank came to me after DeGracey’s interview with that Shona general.” Silas took a chance and moved around the bed separating them and closer to his wife, stopping at the foot of the guest room’s queen-size bed. “Frank said he was worried about us not being able to keep our campaign promises. I told you, Sekhem Zarina and Khalid Bambara wouldn’t sign the treaty’s addendum.”

  “You say that as if their stance was wrong. My god, Silas, what would you say if the president of . . . pick any country you want, all but demanded that you cede part of Vumaris? It would be offensive at best and arrogant at worst.” Claire shoved more clothing into her suitcase, not taking her normal care with her packing. “You keep trying to lay everything at Frank’s feet. I have no problem believing the idea of the addendum and everything that followed was that asshole’s brainchild.” She slammed the suitcase shut. “But you aren’t a stupid man, Silas. Far from it. Frank would’ve known better than to take action on that grand of a scale without the go-ahead from the chief. I’m not stupid either, so stop speaking to me as if I am.”

  After DeGracey had interviewed the two lion handlers and showed footage of the riverside warehouse where the Rogueshade had kept Asha, the public had called for Frank London’s resignation. The Rogueshade had cleared out of the warehouse long before DeGracey’s film crew even knew the warehouse existed. But they’d left two dead lions behind and a ton of other evidence that supported the lion handlers’ and General Volt’s claims. A surprising number of concerned Vumarians had wanted to know what had happened to Asha after her kidnapping. Where answers weren’t available, the public filled in the rest with wild speculations. As a result, the First Evolution Union Party’s approval rating, especially Silas’s, had tanked.

  No evidence existed that directly linked him to Sanctum Hotel, the Rogueshade, or the warehouse, so he had managed, barely, to keep his head out of the legal and social noose. He did worry about Frank, though, but the man, despite having resigned under a gray cloud, had maintained his innocence. Like Silas, Frank neither had the courage to retreat from his lies nor the stomach to accept the full ramifications of his actions.

  Silas slumped onto the bed, his mind grasping for words to change Claire’s mind and to salvage his marriage. He couldn’t lose his wife. Not like this. Not over a handful of dead felidae. Would Silas have made a different decision had he’d known Frank’s plan involved assassinating the leaders of Shona? Of course.

  What angered Silas, however, was everyone’s reaction, including Claire’s.

  “You have a doctorate in Vumarian history and are the chair of the history department at a college so expensive that, were you not an employee and entitled to tuition remission, we wouldn’t have been able to send our daughter there.”

  Claire tugged her suitcase off the bed and propped it next to the dresser with open drawers and scattered clothing. She managed to grab a second suitcase from under her bed and glare at him while doing it.

  He didn’t care. If she intended on moving out and divorcing him, he may just as well say what he’d been holding inside for months.

  “As a professor of our country’s history, tell me, Claire, how did humans come to have a nation of our own on this continent?”

  “What?”

  Claire flipped dark hair over her shoulder, but Silas wasn’t fooled by the display. She knew what in the hell he meant.

  “War, genocide, slavery, treaties? Tell me, how did humans come to create and rule Vumaris when felidae were here first?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I’m not, and you teach early Vumarian history. You’ve written dozens of scholarly articles on that time period.”

  Silas leaned against one of the bed’s columns, manufactured wood in a white finish, sadly enjoying the glint of shame that crossed his wife’s face.

  “Everything we have we secured through lies, manipulation, trickery, and outright violence. Those rough days of land grabs and broken treaties weren’t that long ago. You know the historical details better than I do. We celebrate Vumarian founders as “great men,” as “visionaries,” and as “brave pioneers.”

  “Don’t you dare.”

  “You wrote those words, Professor Royster. I only read them in a book that earned you the status of best-selling author. As a people, we grow, expand. Name one country whose founding didn’t involve a battle or disagreements.”

  “I can’t believe you’re actually sitting there justifying torturing a child the same age as our daughter.”

  “Yet you’re fine with viewing your husband of two decades as a villain when you’ve written glowing prose about men responsible for the near extinction of the cheetah and tiger nations. Men who broke every treaty they brokered with the felidae of Zafeo. Your great men of vision wanted this e
ntire continent as their own and only the might of the lion shifters of Shona stopped them. It was never my intention to hurt anyone, Claire. I was open to negotiations. I would’ve honored the addendum to the treaty. I would’ve—”

  The phone rang.

  “Don’t pick it up. We’re talking. It’s probably just . . .”

  Of course Claire answered the phone. She wouldn’t even grant him that small request.

  “Slow down, sweetie, I can’t understand what you’re saying. Yes, your father is right here. He’s fine. No, we aren’t watching the news.”

  Claire snapped her fingers, pointing to . . . ah, the remote control near his leg.

  “What channel?” Silas mouthed.

  “Audrey, sweetie, please calm down. What are you saying about Frank and dead bodies?”

  That had Silas scrambling off the bed and toward the other side of the room. He opened the television armoire, the white finish the same as the four-poster bed.

  “What channel?” he snapped.

  Wide eyes and a gaping mouth were his only responses from Claire. Fine, he’d just have to flip through . . . he turned on the television, then stumbled backward until his legs hit the foot of the bed. Silas wouldn’t have to flip through the stations.

  “I repeat, former Deputy Chief Frank Bartholomew London is dead at age forty-six. This is breaking news. We do not have all the details. What we do know is that the body of former Deputy Chief London was found on the lawn of a home belonging to a Javier and Savannah Hernandez. Mr. Hernandez was found dead in his home. We do not yet know the cause of death of either man. We also don’t know the whereabouts of Mrs. Hernandez who, according to police, wasn’t in the home with her husband.”

  Silas heard the remote control crash to the floor, but he was too stunned to register much beyond the reporter’s declaration of Frank’s death. Why hadn’t he been notified? Who in the hell approved the reporting of Frank’s death? He knew who—Governor Billings and Police Commissioner Aguilar. The men had taken advantage of Silas’s contentious relationship with their party to make moves that, if successful, would have their party tossing Royster on his ass come next election cycle, and sliding them onto the political ticket.