by S King
I didn’t want to admit it, but I had to give Demir kudos for ignoring Karina’s insults as he stuck to his professional demeanor.
“That’s not a part of the order,” Demir crossed his arms over his chest in finality. Forcing me to raise a brow at him in question. Was he serious right now?
“Excuse me?” Karina snapped, half-turning away from the bloody leader to look at Demir. “I don’t take orders from you and I’ll be damned if this prick from Satan is allowed to not endure the same amount of pain he had inflicted on those poor animals.”
Demir raised a challenging brow to me, “you really don’t have control over your members, sect leader.”
“And you don’t seem to care about anything else other than your pride.” I snapped before something moved in the corner of my eye.
In a split second, my whip swung over his head, catching one of the other cult leaders trying to pull a sneak-and-greet on us. Leveling my gaze on Demir, I dragged the other man in front of us and waited for him to try to tell me what to do. However, the chance didn’t come. For once—since I had known her—Svenia took the initiative and speared the overweight bear of a man through the stomach before nodding once to me.
My whip uncoiled from the man’s neck as my eyes found Demir’s again, “why don’t you do what you should be doing and stay out of the way. It’s obvious yourself and Dristan don’t want to help, considering we females are doing all of the work.”
“Hey! Don’t put me in your bicker brawl, Silver, because I’m not the one.” Dristan snapped, stepping from the shadows.
“Where are the other two?” Karina asked still staring at the leader frantically looking between the five of us.
Dristan’s jaw clenched in irritation before he mumbled something under his breath and searched the pawn shop until he found what we were missing.
“Let’s just finish this,” I shook my head at the drama unfolding and turned to Karina, “red or black?”
“Red,” she said gleefully, circling the chair as she held her precious spike out to the man’s jugular. Any wrong move on his part and she’d drive that thing through the most vital vein in his body and not think twice about it
Taking up residence on the glass display case of overpriced used jewelry, I tilted my head at the man, “so, you like to abuse animals?”
“Don’t worry about what I like to do bitch,” he spit in a heavy country accent.
His dark brown eyes were dilated, hinting at his drug use prior to finding himself in this situation. Light brown hair with strands of gold rested in a shaggy style on the top of his head while a disgusting navel length beard caught his saliva drops.
If I had to take a guess, he was probably the most eligible heartthrob in the backwoods. Judging from his shitty prison tattoos and missing several teeth, it was hard not to give him a disapproving look of disgust.
“Name calling, how manly,” Karina rolled her eyes and shattered his shin with the steel pipe.
My whip cracked through the air as it wrapped around the man’s neck, pulling his head backward so he was forced to stare at me upside down, I smirked at him.
“I don’t like being called out of my name, Ned.”
His eyes bugged as I used his real name; apparently, he was one of the many who didn’t know about the special forces behind protecting civilized society at night. Good.
“Now, assuming you want to keep your head attached to your body for just a little bit longer.” I smiled sweetly at him, “you’re going to listen to your charges, take your punishment and, if you’re really smart, you won’t use such foul language in front of us ladies again. Understand?”
I didn’t know if it was the drugs raging through his veins or just good old fashion stupidity fueling his actions, because he did the very thing, I was expecting from someone like him.
Somehow, he had mustered the strength to breathe around the leather and razor wire. Staring at me with bugging eyes, he tried to look between me and Karina before nailing me with a beastly look and in a disgustingly hillbilly, dried out tone he wheezed.
“Suck my dick, cunt.”
“Well, you just shot your opportunity to shit, Ned Gillison,” Karina spun around as the skull came flying through the air toward the vulgar trash tied to the chair.
In a spilt second the thing had found its way around his waist and with a flick of our wrists, Ned Gillison was ripped into three different sections. His lower half slumped over while the top of his stomach up to his neck became haphazardly bound to the back of the chair. His head rolled next to Svenia’s boot, causing the GG member to slowly look between the carnage and Karina and me.
Dristan was the first to speak, staring at his own cult leader, he pointed to us, “you’re going to play nice with me. Or” he shrugged and made a face, “those two can ask you questions. Your poison and I’d advise you to choose wisely.”
Fear morphed the hardened criminal into that of a sniffling and cowering teenager.
Rapidly he shook his head and tried to back away from me and Karina. “I’m not dealing with those two bit—” he stopped himself as he caught sight of Karina’s skull retracting from the dismembered body. “Ladies,” he corrected quickly.
A slow malicious smile covered my lips as my whip allowed his buddy’s head to tumble in a corner, “are you sure?”
He vigorously nodded his head, twisting in Dristan’s hold.
“Fuck those bitches and these punk mother fuckers with mealworm dicks!” All of our heads snapped around to the man Svenia had knocked unconscious.
“Well that escalated quickly,” Karina narrowed her eyes on the small man braced against one of the display cases deeper in the shop. But it was Demir’s reaction that caused me to see him in a different light.
The man in question crossed the floor in a few strides, stabbing the weakest of the cult leaders through the groin and dragged the long blade up to his jaw. Blood poured from the singular wound and dripped on the floor in a sickening symphony in the silent room.
Dristan’s cult leader fainted, opting for unconsciousness instead of watching what was going to be done to his buddies. The final man gagged and sagged out from his hiding spot, not caring that he was the only other one alive in the quartet of assholes.
“Who wants him?” Karina motioned to the gagging man with her steel pipe and looked at me, Svenia, Demir and Dristan.
“I’ll handle it,” Svenia, the only one who hadn’t done anything major to any of the four jumped off the glass counter and stalked over to the man losing his stomach contents all over a tattered Persian rug.
It took me a moment to tear my eyes away from Demir and focus on the problem at hand, “he had a black order on him. What’s your justification to the courts?”
Demir wiped off his sword on the pant leg of his victim and shrugged, “don’t worry about it.”
“It will come back on all of us should you fail to justify it properly.”
He turned around with that devil may care smile covering his disgustingly handsome face. “You have such little faith in Gold, Silver angel.”
My eyes narrowed on the nickname I had been dubbed between the three guards and stared at him. It was one thing to pull such a stupid stunt like he had done in the alley, but now he was bringing up a nickname I hated with a blood boiling passion. Had it not been for the other three, him and I would be doing a different kind of dance around the shop. One with a lot of leather and razor wire along with his sword. Luckily, his friend had somehow known the limits of my patience and decided to be the bigger person.
Dristan was the one to break up the tension in the room while Svenia executed the man after reading him the list of charges he had escaped from in the daytime courts thanks to his lawyers and legal team as a whole.
“You have a way to get rid of the evidence?” He directed to Karina.
Rolling her light, storm blue eyes she allowed her head to roll onto her shoulder as she looked at him. “Unless you want to go up in flames with
this shop, you’ll be smart to get him and yourself out of the building.”
So, Demir and I weren’t the only one’s after each other’s throats. It seemed like my best friend and Dristan had their own unresolved issues.
“Let’s go, we’re burning oil right now,” Demir cut off the smartass reply Dristan had on the tip of his tongue and hauled up the unconscious man to a standing position. “Svenia.”
Like the lap dog she was, she flipped her hair over her shoulder and followed Demir and Dristan from the building without saying a thing to either Karina or me. Man, what I wouldn’t give to knock her teeth from her skull.
Svenia was the type of female other females—no matter their personality or outlook on life—hated. She should’ve been born as a snake instead of a two-legged female with an attitude out of this world.
Karina rolled her eyes again, “you’re welcome, jackasses.”
I laughed softly, throwing an arm over her shoulder as we headed out of the side exit. “Think of it this way, we don’t have to work with them anymore.”
She fished out the detonator to the C4 packs and shrugged, “true but you’d think they’d at least thank us for our help.”
“That’d be too much like right, Rina,” I raised a middle finger to the building as the explosion rocked the sleepy streets of the inner city and laughed with Karina at another night of utilizing our skills.
It didn’t take us long to get back to HQ without incident and thanks to Lovett being on desk duty the entire night, our side of the paperwork was halfway filled out and submitted. By the time I had finished signing off on different reports and assigning orders for tomorrow night I was the only one left in the office.
Leaning back into my chair, I rubbed the tips of my fingers over my lips as I remembered the heated kiss Demir and I had shared.
Why did I kiss him back? Why did he kiss me in the first place? What the actual fuck was going on with my hormones? Too many questions and not enough answers swam their way through my brain like piranhas munching on fresh food. Raking my nails over my scalp, I decided there was only one place where maybe I could find some answers. Even if I was the one supplying said answers.
Thirty minutes later, I was sitting on top of the cliffs edge watching the mountains two cities over shifting behind the clouds.
“Lumi?”
Glancing over my shoulder, I smirked before turning back to the mountains.
“What’re you doing up here?” Lovett came to sit beside me with his own lawn chair and got comfortable before staring off into space.
“Just thinking, what about you?” It was true. I was just thinking; about nothing in particular, but still it was nights like this I enjoyed to just stare at the scenery and allow my mind to wander.
He adjusted himself in the flimsy chair and sighed. “I needed some place to stay away from the blue court.”
I snorted, but kept my eyes on the mountains, “you’re going to have to marry her, Love. There’s no avoiding it.”
“We’re not a good fit.”
“Who is a good fit?” I asked, raising a brow at him, “we’re in Silver Guard. Every night is a gamble with our lives, especially after getting the chance to execute red and black orders.”
“I don’t understand their logic.”
“Who does?”
We fell silent for a moment. The black courts handled everything from red, black, and Diamond Orders to dealing with the dead members of the three guards. But what they didn’t handle were the unions of members. No, that little tidbit was up to the blue court otherwise known as the Royal Sapphire Courts.
When you’re created in a lab, trained to the point of being anything but human and forced to live in the shadows because of your abilities, different rules applied. That didn’t exclude the judicial system.
While the US daytime people had their executive, legislative and judicial branches of government. In turn, us lab rats and experiments gone wrong had just the Onyx Elite and Royal Sapphire Courts.
There were no presidents, house or senate, circuit or supreme courts. Maybe it was thanks to the scientists not knowing if their experiments were going to succeed in living normal lives. Maybe it was because we could easily escape the metal cuffs and cells society prided themselves on. Whatever the case may be, the blue court was probably the most feared between black and blue.
Namely and solely, because the blue court believed in creating a strong line of weapons when it came to guard members. If Lovett married a senior Silver member from a different sect and in turn produced kids, the kids would be regarded as a valuable asset. In truth, it was smart on the scientists and courts part to already have things planned out. But at the same time, we weren’t lab rats—even if we did call ourselves that—and being told who we were going to marry wasn’t exactly civilized.
“Why can’t we just be left alone?” Lovett blew a hard breath and pulled my attention away from my wandering thoughts.
I tilted my head, knowing my friend was hurting. What could I say though? I had been in the same position as him once upon a time. However, GG unknowingly had mercy on me and ended up killing my betrothed before our wedding. Which don’t get me wrong, I was more than thankful for their willingness to kill someone I didn’t love or wanted to marry. Needless to say, when word got back to the Royal Sapphire Courts. Well, they had deemed me as a risk to their perfect order and removed me from their roster.
Finally, I shrugged an idle shoulder and answered him, “I don’t know.” And I didn’t.
I had never understood why either court decided to insert themselves into the lives of guard members.
“You know what we should do?” Lovett’s voice stopped me from internally questioning the courts any further and looked at me with a dangerously giddy glint in his eye.
Leaning away from him, I crossed my arms over my chest. “What should we do?”
A slow smile covered his lips like what he was about to say was the best thing since sliced bread. “You and me, we should get married.”
Chapter 8 A Plan So Ridiculous the Gods Would Laugh
I pushed my muscles to the point of screaming as I punched the sand filled bag over and over, never losing any momentum. A roundhouse kick and an upper cut later, I had accomplished my mission in busting the thing open.
Staring at the sand grains silently piling on the floor, I grabbed my water bottle and downed half of the thing. Why did I have to sit up here and dance on the fine line of professional and dangerous? I’ll admit, when Luminous and I were standing in that alley alone, it was hard not to just throw caution to the wind and have my way with her. It would’ve been easy; she kissed me back and I can’t definitively say I didn’t feel her nails bite into my skin through my turtle neck. Granted, I was smart enough to back off when needed.
Idly I rubbed the side of my face, still feeling the sting of her bitch slap on my skin. The woman could hit like a man; although, I’d be a liar if I said the bite of pain wasn’t attractive and alluring.
With another roundhouse kick to the draining punching bag, I pushed thoughts of Luminous River to the back of my mind and headed for the showers. Thankfully, I didn’t have to worry about anyone from the training center complaining about me destroying a punching bag. They thrived at making sure anyone from Gold utilized their equipment. It meant we still had strength and stamina. Something to graciously report to the scientist still monitoring us from a distance.
I rolled my eyes on the notion of our inability to keep what the scientists had given us. As much fighting as all of us did, it was virtually impossible for anyone from any of the guards to lose their physiques or their stamina. However, on the rare occasion one did lose their scientific talents, the scientists would step in and handle the problem accordingly.
“Are you done?” Dristan emerged from his own training room drenched with sweat and shining like a new penny off the press. His shorter black and gold hair was plastered to his face while his gym short hung low on his hips.
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br /> Nodding, I glanced over my shoulder through the window of the room I had just left, “how many bags did you go through?”
He chucked his empty water bottle in the recycling bin and grabbed a towel from the cart outside of the showers. “Two and a half, you?”
“Just one today.” I released my soaked hair from the man bun and pushed the locks away from my face.
“Mind was preoccupied?”
“What makes you say that?”
“Just a question, you usually kill at least four of those things on a bad day.”
I went to my locker and kept my back to him, “nothing other than the normal. Do you have the agenda for the night?”
“Like Luminous?” He asked, avoiding the more important topic at the moment.
I slammed my locker and turned to him, “let it go, Drist.”
“Hey,” he raised his hands, “I’m not judging. In fact, I’ll let you in on a little secret of my own.”
Raising a brow at him, I waited for him to tell me about his latest conquest.
“You have to admit watching those two take out that bastard was the hottest thing on the face of this earth.”
He lost me. Completely lost me with that one statement. Frowning at him, I rubbed my temples, “what the fuck are you talking about now?”
“Luminous and her side kick,” a weird smile covered his lips as he nodded at me.
“Karina?” I supplied.
“Karina, Karma, whatever her name is,” he blew out an excited breath and shook his head, his eyes glazing over as he remembered last night’s events. “That was probably the sexist thing I’d ever seen on a red order execution. Then when she was walking away, and the bombs went off? Oh my god, that woman could start a fire in a snowstorm.”
I just stared at him, unable to believe what the fuck I was hearing.
Here he was continuously bringing up Luminous and bashing me about my somewhat hidden feelings for the Silver sect leader while he was fantasizing about her friend? No, I wasn’t buying it. Knowing Dristan, the way I did, I knew he was just trying to be relatable to me.