by S King
The woman was the very definition of ruthless and didn’t care for anything that resembled an excuse. When I got a cut on my hand or my face, she’d stare at me before slapping the injury and telling me to start again. Empathy and sympathy weren’t in her vocabulary or her heart—assuming she even had one. In truth, I had resented the older woman for keeping me away from my parents and sister during those crucial years and I had wanted her to feel the same empty pain I had felt during the time I was training.
“Ready?” Karina whispered in my ear, causing me to jump.
Looking at her over my shoulder, I scowled, “why didn’t you tell me you were coming down?”
“Because it’d be a waste of time we don’t have.” She nodded to the scientists in question, “want to take Heinz, I’ll take Dillons?”
“What about Zuri?”
“We can tag team him.”
I snorted and shook my head. Leave it to Karina to get the bright idea to take out one man with her steel pipe and my whip. Granted, it would be easier to kill two birds with one stone.
“On three,” I felt my muscles tighten.
“Why does it have to be three?”
Narrowing my eyes at her over my shoulder, I hissed, “are you seriously trying to argue about when we go?”
“I’m just saying, three is so cliché. Why can’t we go on two or one?”
Rolling my eyes, I pinched the bridge of my nose and took a deep breath. “How about this…” placing my hand in between the center of her back, I smiled, “go.”
Shoving her out from behind the stand, my whip flew out and caught the loving bitch who taught me the trick of my trade.
Shouts of surprise filled the room as Karina’s snapping skull shot out and wrapped around Jamicka Dillions’s throat. Wolf Zuri looked between the two women he had worked with for years on end before doing the only thing a coward would do. He ran.
“Why do they always run?” I asked Karina as I tugged on the whip before pulling it free and swung the thing above my head toward Zuri’s retreating back.
“Beats me,” Karina smiled venomously as Dillions dropped to the floor while the skull began to retract back to end of the steel pipe.
I grunted as the sharp end of the razor wire lashed across the good scientist’s back and dropped him to the floor. For the time being, he was going to attempt to regain his wits which would give me enough time to deal with Heinz.
Turning back to the scientist, I smirked as I stalked toward her. She was busy trying to control the bleeding my whip had forced upon her throat. Blood began to pool under her while she fruitlessly clawed her way with one arm toward the nearest exit.
“Not today, honey,” I whispered letting my whip snap out and catch her outstretched hand.
From my peripheral, I caught sight of Karina’s skull dragging Zuri from the door to the center of the room while Dillions choked and spasmed on the floor. Well, at least all of them would leave this place together.
Turning my attention back to Heinz, I tilted my head and stared at her for a moment. Never in my life did I think this day would come and now that it was here…what was I supposed to do? I mean, I knew I was supposed to execute her red order, but was I supposed to say something? Was I supposed to talk to her as I was dealing her death? I’d never been in this situation before and I didn’t know how to handle it.
“Lumi, I need a little help here,” Karina stabbed the sharpened end of her spike through Dillions’s knee and pointed to her. “Stay right there.”
Snapping my mind from the questioning thoughts toward Heinz, I spun around and let my whip fly through the air. The leather and razor wire caught Zuri around the throat and with a quick tug of my wrist, Wolf Zuri came flying across the room and landed in the shelving of beakers, test tubes and jars of something I didn’t want to decipher.
Looking at my best friend, I raised a brow, “better?”
She tucked one of her devices under the table and nodded, “thank you kindly.”
My head snapped around as I heard the sound of a gun cocking. Pulling my whip free of Zuri’s body, I cracked the whip around and amputated Heinz’s right hand.
“Not smart,” I narrowed my eyes on her and ripped Karina’s spike from Dillions’s knee. “Rina, I’m going to borrow this,” twirling the thing around, I smashed the skull across Heinz’s collar before tossing the thing over my shoulder back to my best friend as I stared at one of the key players who had helped designed me.
“Five till go,” Karina caught her spike and flipped the thing end over end as she looked over the carnage we had caused.
“Why are you doing this?” Both of our heads snapped toward Heinz’s agony filled voice.
“I’m going to finish mine,” Karina gave the mad scientist a once over before rolling her eyes and mumbling. “Acting like she doesn’t deserve it, ya jackass.”
I kept my face neutral as I kept an ear out for the timer on the bomb and knelt beside the scientist that practically raised me. “Do you not remember your little protégé?”
She frowned, searching my face for a second before—finally—realizing who I was and used her forearm to cover her mouth.
“Funny how time can change someone isn’t it?” I kept a hard grip on my whip as I watched her soak in the fact I was still breathing.
“Luminous River,” she breathed.
“In the flesh.”
“Why?”
“Because you pissed off the wrong courts and just so happened to draw the short end of the deal. Creating more people who belong in the shadows wasn’t a part of your job description. Nor was it approved by BC or the honor guard.”
“I did what was right.”
“Not to them.”
“You moved to Gold?”
“Never, you see,” I leaned in to whisper to her, “thanks to your merciless training and determination to make me a weapon of destruction. The courts didn’t think my skills were being utilized to their fullest. Not to mention, someone tried to frame me for GG senior member’s deaths.”
Her dark brown eyes paled as she searched my face. The last thing any of these scientists wanted to admit to was creating superhumans. Individuals who stalked the night and made love to the stars were dangerous; they didn’t obey any other rules except their own.
Karina and I were those very people the three scientists feared the most and there was nothing they could do—or say—to turn around their outcomes. Not after everything that had been done to us.
“You don’t want answers?” She finally asked, coming to grips with her imminent death.
“About?”
“Why you are the way you are and why you were born.”
I clenched my teeth, remembering the conversation I had had with her when I was training. I had ritually asked her why I was created, why I was even here. Why I was never enough for my family.
In turn, her infinite response was always the same. Time and time again, she would tell me to not focus on such trivial things and focus my time on getting better with my whip. So, I had done just that and didn’t bother with the questions anymore. Until now.
“Lumi, we’ve only got a minute left,” Karina warned, quickly killing Zuri and Dillions with her spike and skull.
“Look for the physician named Inara Rasmussen,” Heinz closed her eyes and breathed, “he knows everything about you and has the answers you were searching for back then.” Opening her eyes, she actually smiled at me.
Narrowing my eyes, I opened my mouth to say something when the timer went off on the bomb. In a split second, I jumped away from Heinz, spinning the whip in the air and let the thing fly. A quick whimper followed by a gasp left my former mentor as the whip she had given me decapitated her in one swift move.
When everyone in the room was dead, Karina grabbed my hand yanking me from the lab and shoved me from the building just as the bomb beeped its final warning and the night ignited in a ball of orange fire.
We rolled away from the falling debris wit
h Karina bursting into a fit of giggles and me choking on the ash of the building.
“What could you possibly be laughing at?” I pushed my hair from my face and looked at her soot covered face.
She rolled over to rest her weight on her forearms and tossed her head back to the burning building. “You know anything that goes boom excites me.”
I snorted, pushing off the ground and dusted off my jeans, “this is true.”
“By the way,” she sneezed and frowned, “what was Heinz talking about?”
Looking over my shoulder, I watched the two guards bolt upright and stare at the burning building they failed to protect.
“Nothing worth mentioning,” I jerked my head toward the back roads we had taken to get to the lab. “Come on, we need to get back.”
“And you need to get new links added to that thing,” she motioned to my whip as I wrapped the thing up and tucked the leather in my coat.
“Like you’re not going to have Pop add links to your spike.”
She nodded, falling in step beside me, “fat cat facts. You know what sounds good right now.”
“What’s that?”
“A doughnut,” Karina narrowed her eyes as she stared ahead, “maybe a jelly doughnut or a box of doughnut holes.”
“Just get both and call it a night.”
“Think Pop will accept it as payment?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me.”
We fell silent for a moment before she looked at me and twisted her mouth.
“What, Rina?” I braced myself for the onslaught of questions that were filling my best friend’s mind.
She never had a filter and didn’t think about her statements before throwing them out for anyone to catch. So, when she went silent and chose her words carefully, I got worried and fast.
“What’s going to happen if the courts decide to rescind the stay on your Diamond Order?”
I clenched my teeth, not wanting to think about what would happen should the honorable judges of BC decide to push my Diamond Order through. I’ll admit I was thankful for their olive branch, but in the back of my mind I was always looking over my shoulder for the honor guard evert waking moment.
“Well,” I smiled at her as I threw an arm over her shoulder. “All else fails and they rescind, then I’ll go down on my own terms. Just make sure you put Death by Rock and Roll on my tombstone. Ok?”
She laughed even though I saw the unshed tears in her eyes. We had been through too much to be swayed by a death order, but I understood where she was coming from. If the tables were turned, I’d easily switch places with her without a second thought.
“You demented bitch,” she gave me a hug as we stood in front of Silver Guard HQ.
“Yeah, but you love me.”
“Like a fat kid loves chocolate.”
I smiled as I left her to finish her reports at the office while I headed to old man Lemon for my whip.
The cold air bit angerly at my skin as I started trudging my way through the sleepy streets. Nobody from the day time would bat a lash at the lab exploding. Afterall, the building was in plain view of anyone with a pair of working eyes and the scientists had created the guise for the building to be recognized as a medical research lab.
Needless to say, with the explosion and the history behind the building; social media outlets, news channels and the investigators would come up with a simple explanation and theory as to what happened tonight. Too many scientists, chemicals and flame points never equaled to anything other than a bad idea, hence the explosion. In turn, Karina and I wouldn’t have to worry about anything other than collecting our payment for the incident.
Castlehedge’s finest would barely look at a crime scene and write the case off as it appeared. Suicide, robbery gone wrong, whatever they were a team of lazy son of a bitches that weren’t worth their weight in salt.
Pushing the thoughts aside, I glanced over my shoulder before ducking into the alley. Old man Lemon was a hermit of sorts; he liked to hide away from any stupid drunks or horny teenagers.
He was a man who was crafty when it came to hiding in plain view. His little bunker was tucked behind several dumpsters and if you didn’t know where exactly to enter, you weren’t going to get in.
I slipped past three of the dumpsters and lifted the small door in what looked like a normal back wall. Dropping my body through the small opening, my boots hit the soft carpet of his living room.
“Oh, it’s you,” old man Lemon made a face at me and started turning around to go back to his CNN report.
I smirked, taking off my boots, “you say that as if I’m not supposed to be here right now.”
“No, no, no,” he waved a withered hand at me over his shoulder and hobbled to his La-Z-Boy.
“Are you not happy to see me?” I mocked a fake pout as I sat down in the chair across from him and tossed my whip on his carved coffee table.
“It’s three in the morning, I’m not happy to see anyone.” He groaned as he sat down in his chair and took off his glasses. “I heard your order was halted for the time being.”
I took off my gloves and rubbed my hands over my face, “it was.”
“Did you hear who was supposed to carry it out?”
“No.”
“Do you want to know?”
“Not exactly,” I rested my cheek on my fist as I blindly stared at the TV.
Lemon was like the grandfather to the Silver Guard members. He didn’t judge, didn’t tell you how to live your life. He simply listened to what you had to say, asked if you wanted his opinion and offered a shoulder when needed.
With thin white hair flying in all different directions and gentle gold flecked hazel eyes, he looked like one of those fictional characters from a Disney movie. Unlike the judges of BC, Lemon’s skin was wrinkled and showed the life he had lived before becoming the grandfather of Silver.
“Lumi,” he coughed in his elbow and adjusted himself in his chair as I caught his eye. “How many did you take in tonight?”
I smirked and glanced back at the news report, “I didn’t.”
“Then why in the hell are you here?”
“Because, old man,” I nudged the whip toward him, “BC gave Silver clearance to handle an otherwise Gold order.”
His sharp eyes looked over the brim of his thin glasses, “are you saying you killed some people tonight?”
“Yes sir,” I leaned forward, tearing my gaze away from the TV. “In fact, I even came face-to-face with Heinz.”
He made a face, turning off the TV to give me his full attention. “And how did that feel?”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly as I stared at my hands.
Ursyla Heinz had nearly raised me when my mother wasn’t around; between telling me about the birds and the bees, to being there when my heart was broken for the first and the last time. In truth—whether I wanted to acknowledge the fact or not—she was the only mother I had ever really known. Sure, she was a callous bitch on her worst days and an somewhat less callous bitch on her best days.
“What’s on your mind kid?”
I shrugged, frowning at the lines on my hand, “hey, do you by chance know anyone named Inara Rasmussen?”
“That’s a rabbit hole you don’t want to jump down, Lumi.”
“Ok, but do you know him?” I asked, looking up to the only form of a grandfather I had ever known.
Lemon twisted his mouth for a moment before getting out of his chair and grabbed my whip from the table.
“How many were on the roster tonight?”
“Come on, old man.” I followed him through the house, taking in the Indian patterns on the floor and tribal pieces sitting on stands against the walls. Lemon had strong bloodlines to different tribes, but I had never taken the time to ask.
Lemon stepped down in his den and flipped on the light, “sometimes, kid, ignorance is bliss.” He grabbed his stitching gloves and the ring of razor wire.
Falling into the seat on the other
side of the table, I rubbed my hands together, “what does he have on me that I don’t know? I don’t think that’s a bad thing to want to know.”
He grunted and turned on the light in his worktable. Old man Lemon was notorious for holding information on something you really wanted to know about. He was like an old willow tree that had seen some shit; Lemon wouldn’t say anything that would hinder a psyche or force someone to fall into a rabbit hole with no escape route. But I was different. I was his favorite.
“Lemon come on. She dangled the carrot and passed it onto you before she died.”
Another noncommittal grunt as he sat down and started pulling apart my whip at the tail.
I pushed forward, “explain something to me, how are—”
My phone ringing stopped me from pushing Lemon for more information.
“What?” I rubbed my eyes as I answered my phone.
“You’re never going to believe this.” By the tone of Lovett’s shocked yet excited tone, I knew Heinz’s statement and carrot were going to be the least of my concerns.
Chapter 6 Karma Two Times over
Forcing my eyes open, I looked through my hair at the setting sun. While I had been asleep the snow decided to blanket the small city in nothing but white; not that I was complaining. It was just going to make it difficult for the night’s events.
Pushing myself from the bed, I sat up and rubbed my hands over my face, thinking about Luminous. Why was this woman the first thing on my mind in the morning and the last thing I thought about before I went to sleep? It didn’t matter what I did or how I tried to justify it, I knew the only reason she was on my mind constantly was because she had been the only woman to ever challenge me on such a degree.
In reality, I didn’t know how I was supposed to handle it. Every time I tried to go against her Silver Guard, I just couldn’t bring myself to cross the line. Maybe it was because I had never bested her and vice versa. Maybe it was due to my attraction to her. Maybe I was just a horny bastard and pissed off because she didn’t fawn over me like some schoolgirl with a cupid bow stuck in her butt.
Grumbling about the absurdity of my reasoning, I got off the bed and headed for the bathroom.