Queen of Quarantine

by Caroline Peckham

  But I didn't need that. I had the best motivation in the world to keep moving, keep going, keep living. She had hair that shone like sunlight and wouldn't for one second put up with me bitching out and giving in now. And I wasn't going to let her down.

  I opened my eyes, glaring into the mirror and looking at the darkness in them, seeing the monster in me more clearly than ever before as I gave myself to that part of my soul and let it take over. My gaze fell to the bullet hole and I was pleased to find I'd stopped that fucker in its tracks. No more blood. Which meant it was time to go.

  I took a deep breath, grabbed my knife and turned for the exit. The bag of guns was too much for my weakened body to deal with and I cursed as I grabbed a couple of pistols, shoving them in the back of my pants before opening the door.

  The room outside was lit up though thankfully empty and I could see it was a games room of some kind with poker tables laid out and unused.

  I stumbled through the wide space, trying to hear beyond the pounding of my own pulse to anything that might help me find the others.

  I was breathless by the time I made it across the room, and I stumbled before I made it to the door, smacking into a panel on the wall which popped open as I pushed myself upright again.

  I looked inside at the circuit breaker, my eyebrows going up as I searched for the main power switch. I may have been all kinds of fucked up, but I was still a predator. And I had to think I'd hunt best in the dark.

  My lips twitched as I reached out and flipped the switch, knocking the lights and every other electrical item in the building out of commission in one fell swoop.

  I was plunged into darkness and I laughed to myself, a bitter, broken sound which was all threat and no joy.

  I was coming for them now. And Lord help them when I arrived. Assuming I made it to them before my body gave out for good.

  I was plunged into darkness and I didn’t waste a single second to act as I latched onto this moment of potential salvation.

  I dove out of my seat, leaping in the direction of the guard, my hands locking around his machine gun as fury carved a line through my chest. I got my finger on the trigger before he could even try and stop me, twisting the barrel towards him blindly and squeezing my finger on it.

  An explosion of gunfire ripped through my ears and the man fell with a dying scream as hot blood splattered me and I was pulled down to the floor with him by the strap on the gun which was latched around his body. The sound of panicked shouts and people running for the door told me I had just seconds to act. Seconds to kill. And there wasn’t a chance in the whole universe that I was letting any of these murderous fuckers escape.

  I twisted the gun upright as best I could and started firing back in the direction I’d come, the rat-tat-tat of bullets drilling into my head as the sound filled up the small space and made a song with the gargling screams of my victims. The flare of fire from the gun barrel lit them up in a strobe effect as they died, and I grinned as I enjoyed this bloody disco of my own creation.

  I managed to find the clip on the strap and released the gun from the guard’s body as shots were fired in my direction. But I just kept my finger on the trigger as I sprayed my enemies with as much death as this gun could deliver until all movement in the room ceased.

  A burning sensation along my temple said I’d come closer to death than I’d liked and as blood slid down my face from the bullet graze, I wiped it away.

  I pushed to my feet, trembling in the dark as I hunted for anything to use as a light. I needed to be sure there was no one else alive in this room. That every last one of them no longer existed in this world.

  My foot bumped into a soft body and I reached down, hunting through their robes and pulling out a phone, my ears ringing heavily from the gunfire. I switched on the flashlight, shining it over the massacre as my heart beat unevenly. I’d never killed on a level like this. And as hard as my breaths were coming and as shocked as I was by the blood painting the walls, I revelled in it too. Because each bastard in this room had unspeakable crimes to answer for. And now I hoped they were standing before the Devil in hell, all power stripped from their hands as an eternity of suffering began.

  Karen’s blonde hair was spilled out across the floor where she lay beneath one of the other Grand Masters, blood wetting them both and I couldn’t find it in myself to feel even the slightest hint of regret over her demise.

  I turned to look out over the balcony, seeking out Blake and Nash beyond it as panic gnawed at my chest. I could just make them out through the gloom and Nash’s voice suddenly called to me in desperation. “Tatum! Tell me you’re alright!”

  The guy who’d been spinning the roulette was gone and I guessed he’d seen the fate that had befallen his friends. I’d sure like to fucking find him and make him suffer for what he’d done to my boys.

  “I’m okay! I killed the lot of them,” I cried back. “I’m coming. Hang on.”

  “You fucking angel,” Blake said with a manic sort of laugh. “Hurry your sweet ass up.”

  I turned to the door and my heart jolted as it opened and a woman flew out of it, a whip of blonde hair making me snarl furiously. Fucking Karen.

  I took chase, tearing after her into the hall and opening fire, but the goddamn ammunition belt was out. I’d shot every bullet in it and not one had secured her death.

  She ducked her head, firing blindly behind her with her handgun so I was forced to take cover back in the observation room. She dove around a corner and out of sight, but my gaze fell on a bloody trail she was leaving behind and a cold, calm decision fell over me. I’m coming, bitch. But not yet.

  I ran along the hall and down some steps, finding the door which must have led into the room where Blake and Nash were being kept and trying the handle. Locked. I stood back, angling the butt of the gun down at the lock and smacking it as hard as I could. It broke off and I shoved the door open, running inside and using the phone flashlight to find my boys as I tossed the empty machine gun away.

  My hands shook as I twisted the locks on Blake’s cuffs first, helping him down. He winced and I reached my fingers towards the burn on his side from the cattle prod and the bloody whip marks over his chest.

  “It’s alright. I’m okay,” he growled, but this would never be okay. The sight of his blood was like a red rag in front of a bull to me. And my horns were sharp, ready to kill in penance for this.

  I ran to Nash and let him down next, my heart clenching into a fist as he groaned his relief. The brand on his thigh was bad enough, but I’d had to watch as the guy beat him with knuckle dusters until his body was battered and bruised too. It was almost too much to see his beautiful body marked and branded with pain and a noise of anguish left me.

  He moved in front of me as I checked over his wounds, my fingers grazing his ribs and he winced.

  “I’m fine, princess,” he ground out.

  “Nothing about this is fine,” I choked out.

  Blake moved behind me and I pulled them close, allowing myself a moment in their arms as I just comforted myself with the knowledge they were here. They were still alive.

  For a moment my mind fell on Kyan, but the chasm of grief laying in those thoughts was too deep to lose myself in now. I had to focus. I had to finish this.

  “We need to kill that fucking bitch who gave birth to me,” I snarled.

  “We need clothes and weapons,” Blake growled.

  “They made us strip off out there,” Nash said darkly and I followed him through to an adjoining room which looked like a metal cell, all of us freezing as we spotted the roulette spinner cowering at the back of the room.

  “Oh no,” he squeaked, pointing at us with a knife he must have grabbed from his sick cart of torture devices.

  We moved toward him like the horsemen of the apocalypse and as he swung at me with the blade, I grabbed his wrist, twisting sharply and making him drop it. Nash pinned him to the wall by the throat and Blake grabbed the blade, driving it into his gut agai
n and again until his screams fell away and the life flickered out of his eyes. Nash dropped him, sneering at his corpse and I turned my back on it with a ripple of satisfaction.

  This place was primed to become a new kingdom of death. But there weren’t going to be any royal assholes to fill it by the time we were done. They were going to pay for killing Kyan. I wouldn’t rest until it was done. It was the only thing keeping me together, and I knew the second it was finished, I’d crumble over his loss and struggle to ever move forward.

  The guys quickly got dressed then I led them out into the hall, eyeing the blood Karen had dripped all along the plush cream carpet in the dim light.

  “The other Grand Masters had guns,” I said before leading them to the observation room where I’d had to watch my boys be hurt.

  Monroe led the way inside and let out a low whistle. “Ho-ly shit, princess. This is killing at its finest.”

  Blake tugged me close as we stepped inside, kissing me roughly on the top of my head before running his thumb beneath the cut on my temple to wipe the blood away. “If they weren’t dead already, I’d murder them all over again. Slowly, so they pissed themselves as they begged for mercy. But I wouldn’t offer any of them that for this mark on you alone, sweetheart.”

  “They got too quick of a death,” I agreed. “For all they did to so many people, to Kyan, to you both, they didn’t deserve a bullet, they deserved blades and fire.”

  “They were afraid at least, they knew what was happening,” Nash said as he grabbed four guns and handed two to Blake before passing another one to me which I tucked into my waistband. He pointed to the crowd of bodies which had all clearly been running for the door before they died. He was right, but it still didn’t feel like enough.

  “We’d better make sure they’re all dead,” Blake said grimly. “We can’t let any of these fuckers come back to rebuild Royaume D’élite.”

  “We do it for Kyan,” I said, my voice breaking. “Then I need to catch that bitch Karen and make her scream.” She might have been injured, but I didn’t know how badly or how far she could have gotten.

  “You two go ahead, I’ll catch up,” Nash urged before moving to press his newly acquired handgun to the back of one of their heads.

  “No, we can’t split up,” I growled and Blake nodded firmly.

  “Then let’s make it quick,” Nash said with a grimace and fired the shot into the man’s skull, the sound seeming to ricochet through my whole body. The work was dirty, but we managed it in under a minute and were soon racing down the halls after my whore of a mother.

  The lights suddenly flared back to life and I glanced at the others as we froze in the long hallway.

  “Hey!” a guard shouted at us from the end of the corridor.

  A loud bang rang in my head and my breathing stalled as the guard flew backwards, falling stone cold dead onto the floor with a heavy thump.

  Blake’s gun was raised and his jaw ticking, his eyes blazing with hellfire. He shone like a fucking star right then and I could barely tear my eyes away from him. I blinked and we were running again, following the bloody trail across the gleaming floorboards.

  I turned the flashlight off and tucked the phone into my pocket as we turned down an opulent staircase to our right, following the blood to the ground level.

  A cold breeze wafted against my cheek and I turned toward it, finding a door ajar with a bloody handle, the snow beyond it splashed with red under the moonlight.

  A dark hunger pulled at my gut as I stalked toward it, hunting my prey with two of my wolves at my sides. I could scent her death on the air. And it was mine.

  T he water stopped rushing over my face but the washcloth remained as I heaved and panted. My lungs were so desperate for pure air that I didn’t realise my hands were being untethered before I was shoved upright and they were locked together behind my back.

  I shook my head to dislodge the cloth, shivering uncontrollably from the freezing water that was running from my head down my back and over my shoulders, soaking into my shirt. I sucked in breaths as my racing heart thrashed like a trapped animal in a cage.

  "Up," Father snapped. "Get up, Saint."

  I blinked at him through the fog of my thoughts as I tried to align them and fully comprehend what was happening. The torture had left me short of oxygen and disoriented and I needed to get my bearings fast.

  Loud blasts rang out, seeming to echo around the inside of my skull before I finally realised what I was hearing were gunshots.

  A laugh tumbled from my lips as my ankles were freed from the cuffs on the spreader bar and my father dragged me off of the BDSM bed and onto my feet.

  "What's so funny?" he demanded and my smile widened because despite all of his efforts to hide it, I could see that he was rattled and the taste of that was so sweet on my tongue that I couldn't help but gloat.

  "I think you're about to realise exactly what my family are made of," I said in a low voice. "You said you couldn't understand what I saw in those people when I chose to align myself with them. Well, now you're about to find out. You set the hellhounds loose and they've got the scent of your blood."

  Father scoffed, grasping my arm and dragging me towards the door. I let him pull me along, not wanting to stay in this fucking room anyway.

  "Don't romanticise things, boy," he said dismissively. "Even if your friends have managed to cause some form of havoc, it won't last long. They can't possibly stand before the might of Royaume D’élite and survive. Just ask the dead O'Brien boy."

  Those words hurt like a blow to the heart and I sucked in a sharp breath at the thought of Kyan lying bloody and still on the floor. But I couldn’t allow myself to focus on that. I needed to stay sharp for the people I could still help.

  "Where are you taking me?" I demanded as he hauled me along a corridor towards the stairs.

  Three armed guards hurried to surround us and I sneered at them openly, not caring to hide my contempt from them as a gun was pointed at my head and they made me walk with them.

  We moved quickly, Father's brusque pace enough to let me know that he wasn't as calm as he was trying to pretend, and I tipped my head back as I shouted at the top of my lungs. "I am the dark in the dead of the night!"

  The asshole with the gun hit me in the temple and I hissed a curse at him, but I was almost sure that I heard the reply to those words shouted back to me from one of my brothers somewhere. It was impossible to be certain of who it had been, but just the suggestion that they were close, fighting, battling on, had my strength returning to me and hope swelling in my veins.

  I was shoved down the stairs with Father's fingers biting into my arm as he forced me to move faster and faster. The echoing sounds of gunshots chased us out of the building and I took great joy in seeing him scurry like a rat from a flooding drain.

  As we made it to the foot of the stairs by the front door, more gunshots sounded from even closer, making my ears ring as the sound resounded off of the brick walls.

  Father turned to look between the guards, a momentary slip in his composure showing real panic in his eyes and I grinned at him like a savage.

  "The three of you stay here and hold off anyone who tries to follow me," he barked, and they agreed instantly like the mindless goons they were, turning to stand their ground before the door.

  Father dragged me outside, taking the gun from the asshole who had been holding it to my head and jamming it against my skull in his place.

  "I want an heir, Saint," he growled as I dug my heels in. "But don't think that means I won't kill you. If you prove yourself beyond redemption by trying to escape me now, then I will put a bullet between your eyes and find a woman to cook me up a replacement in her womb. Don't test me on that."

  "I wouldn't dream of it," I replied, my voice thick with disdain as I allowed him to march me out into the snow where his Bentley was parked up before the house.

  Father wrenched the back door open as the sound of gunfire drew closer and he shoved me i
nto the back seat before slamming it again and getting into the front.

  A shot was fired from somewhere much closer just as he pulled away and I whirled around, my eyes widening in surprise and utter fucking joy as I spotted Kyan lunging out of the bushes and firing at us.

  "Hear me roar!" Kyan bellowed, his bloodstained chest gleaming in the headlights as Father twisted the car towards him and slammed his foot down on the accelerator.

  I lunged forward between the seats, head butting the side of my father's skull as the way my hands were tied made it impossible for me to do anything better, and he swerved violently as he fought to turn his gun on me.

  I threw myself down just as he fired a shot and the back window was blasted apart in a shower of shattering glass.

  "I warned you, Saint," Father growled as he yanked the wheel around, half concentrating on driving and half on trying to look back to aim his gun at me. "Mixing with low blooded heathens was never going to end well for you."

  A violent roar came from the rear of the car and I whirled around in time to see Kyan grab hold of the headrest as he leapt onto the trunk, firing wildly towards my father in the front of the car as he clung on for dear life.

  Windows shattered and the car swerved left and right in vicious motions that had me slamming against the door and smacking my head hard enough to make it spin.

  I pushed myself up onto the chairs, keeping low out of Kyan’s way as the car swerved over the icy tarmac.

  Father whirled around in his seat, lifting his own gun, aiming right for my brother's head and I lunged towards Kyan. My shoulder collided with him, knocking his grip loose and making him fall back onto the drive as the shot was fired and missed him by next to nothing.

  I leapt after him, diving headfirst out of the rear window and closing my eyes as I hit the ground hard, tumbling over and over as pain ricocheted through my body and the car slammed to a halt ahead of me.