Meet Abby Banks VOLUMES: 1-3

by J. A. Cipriano

  “Abby,” he whispered, not bothering to look back in my direction though I could tell he wanted to do so.

  “Yeah?” I asked, suddenly worried. I tried to see past him, but between him and the darkness outside, I couldn’t make much out.

  “Get your gun,” he said, dropping to the ground to reveal the barrel of a shotgun about three inches from where his chest had been. It was a little odd because shouldn’t he have blasted Morris the second he’d tried to warn me, not let him drop?

  The big bruiser looking guy with scars running across his cheeks and an assortment of piercings in his ears smirked, casting a quick glance at Morris before moving to position his shotgun so it aimed at my head.

  My hand snapped out before I could even think about it, knocking the shotgun away as the blast ripped through the glass above us. Shards of razor-sharp doom fell from the archway above us as I stepped through the rain of shattered doom and slammed my palm into the guy’s chest. He stumbled backward as gunfire exploded all around me. Bullets pinged off my super suit as I reached out, tearing the shotgun from the thug’s grip while simultaneously driving one booted foot into his groin.

  The gun roared in my hands as I stepped outside, quickly surveying the surroundings and spinning to pump the rounds remaining in the gun into a squad of goons standing near a black tour bus. I dropped the now empty gun as silence filled the night sky for a split second before screams from behind me tore my eardrums asunder.

  I moved passed Morris who was laying crouched just to the left of me, not doing anything particularly helpful. “You’re kind of a wuss,” I said, happy my suit did in fact know how to stop bullets because if it hadn’t, Morris would have been zero help in this fight. When he didn’t respond, I glanced around. The street had snapped into focus at once, displaying heat signatures all around me. So there were more attackers still hidden here. Not good.

  My suit spit my gun into my hands as a motorcycle came barreling toward me. Machinegun fire ripped through the space between us as I calmly dropped into a shooting stance and fired three quick shots, my pistol barking in my hands. His bullets pinged harmlessly off my body armor. His leather jacket was less effective.

  The gunner cried out and fell backward off the bike as it came skidding toward me. I smirked, sprinting over to the vehicle and leaping atop it as a jeep filled with an assortment of men with guns and who knows whatever else came bounding over the hill. My suit made a grenade fill my hand, and I popped the top before flinging it over my shoulder while kicking the still intact motorcycle into action.

  An explosion filled the air behind me, the force of it strong enough to nearly knock my breath away. Morris looked up at me with shocked eyes as I pulled up toward him in a screech of burning rubber and held out my hand to him.

  “Come with me if you want to live,” I said as sirens split the night sky with their clarion call.

  Morris looked at me for a second before taking my hand and pulling himself up behind me. He wrapped his hands around my stomach as I punched it, sending us flying down the street.

  “I’d heard you were good, but wow,” Morris said, burying his head into my shoulder and speaking directly into my ear. His words were warm on my neck as he spoke which was a little weird because I was still covered by my suit.

  “So who were those guys?” I asked, ignoring his comment. I mean I liked being told how awesome I was, but now wasn’t exactly the place.

  “Those were members of Achilles. They’re one of the biggest drug gangs in Greece,” Morris said. “I’m not sure what you did to attract their attention, but they aren’t exactly boy scouts if you catch my drift.”

  “I didn’t even know they had drug gangs in Greece. And Achilles, really?” I added as an afterthought. “Seems a little, I don’t know, mythological.”

  Morris laughed against my neck, and it made a shiver run down my skin, which was a little weird. I tossed a glance back over my shoulder, using the opportunity to shake him off of me. While I couldn’t see the remains of the jeep, smoke billowed into the air. So much for staying low profile.

  “So how do I get to Flash and Bang?” I asked, hoping I could just ignore the pissed off drug dealers.

  “If you deal with Achilles, they will come out of the wood work,” Morris replied, his arms tightening around me as he scrunched himself toward me on the seat of the bike. It was a little disconcerting to say the least.

  “I don’t have time to deal with some random drug dealers,” I squawked suddenly annoyed. “And how do I know they weren’t after you?”

  “Me?” Morris said with mock disdain. “Why would they be after me?”

  “Well, unless someone told them to kill me, I can’t see why I’d have drawn their ire. I’ve been in Athens for all of an hour.” It was definitely something I’d need to think about later. I swung the bike to the left just as a truck came barreling out of the alleyway next to us and clipped our back wheel, launching me into the air.

  I hit the ground hard, the impact jarring my bones and snapping my teeth together as I lay there unable to move for a couple seconds. The truck skidded to a stop atop the motorcycle, reducing it to scrap metal. I shook the cobwebs from my brain as the vehicle’s doors opened and the heavy sound of boots on pavement filled my ears.

  Someone grabbed me under the arms and hauled me upward while another person jammed a gun into my ribs. “Don’t move, girly—”

  I smashed my head backward into what I hoped was my attacker’s nose. His grip loosened as the gun in my ribs fired. The impact knocked the breath out of me, and I knew I’d have a bruise in the morning. Still, it was better than being dead. I whirled around, grabbing the wrist attached to the gun as it continued to fire, the blasts rattling my insides.

  As I twisted my body, snapping the wrist holding the gun, I drove my heel into the gunner’s knee. Gunfire erupted from the direction of the truck as I spun back around, using the first attacker as cover. Bullets pummeled his body as my machinegun filled my hand.

  I let off a quick two second burst, filling the truck with lead and making the last couple attackers dive for cover. I released the body of the guy I’d been using for cover and stalked forward, letting off a few rounds here and there for good measure. When I reached the truck, I found Morris lying in the bed, somehow already bound and gagged. A bleeding thug was sprawled next to him.

  I’ll admit it, I contemplated putting a bullet in the thug’s brain as he went for his knife. Instead, I grabbed him by the collar and flung him to the pavement. I took a step past his fallen body and jerked the driver’s door open. A bloody woman lay slumped over the steering wheel, her gun still slung over her shoulders as thick crimson ooze gushed from several holes in her body.

  I shoved the feeling down even though it worried me because it was strangely easy to do. The first person I’d killed had haunted me for weeks and now? Now, I was killing people and feeling nearly nothing. That was most definitely not good.

  A bullet whizzed by my ear, snapping me from my contemplation, and without thinking, I fired back over my shoulder in the direction of the attacker. I wasn’t sure if I’d hit anything, but it didn’t matter really. I grabbed hold of the woman’s body and pulled her free of the truck’s cab. As her body hit the pavement, I pulled myself into her seat, still slick with blood and gore.

  A shudder wracked me as I threw the vehicle into gear even though I’d never driven a stick shift before and turned the key. The engine sputtered a bit before catching and roaring to life. I pressed on the gas pedal as I worked the clutch with my other foot, gearing up in a matter of moments as the insides of the vehicle ground and squealed.

  Bullets peppered the thin metal, and for a moment, I was worried one of them had hit Morris. I glanced back over my shoulder to see him crawling toward me. He knocked out the back window with his arm, scraping his flesh in the process and slipping inside.

  “You know, knocking away broken glass works better when you wear long sleeves,” I said as he buckled hims
elf in, face looking drawn and haggard as I turned down street after street.

  “Good to know,” he said. “Now make a left up there.”

  “Why?” I asked, glancing at him as I made the left.

  “Because we need to get out of the limelight for a bit, let things cool down. Unless you feel like taking on the entire Greek police force.” He shrugged. “Maybe you’re up for that.” He pointed out the window, and I glanced outward to see a helicopter coming toward us. “Stop up ahead.”

  Morris had a point even though I didn’t like it. I did not want to get in a slug fest with the police. Drug dealers were one thing. Innocent law enforcement officers were another thing entirely.

  “Fine, I’ll play it your way,” I replied, smashing down on the brake hard enough to make him jerk forward in the seat.” I unbuckled my seatbelt even though I didn’t remember putting it on and got out. Morris followed suit and began walking away. I ran after him, and as I did so, my suit morphed into a pair of jeans and a long sleeved shirt, which was good because I was pretty sure walking around in whatever body armor the suit looked like before was a poor idea.

  “We’ll circle the block and go to my friend’s house. He’s not home, house sitting in Paris. The lucky bastard. You can get cleaned up there while we figure out how to stop Achilles,” Morris said, turning down a corridor that took us between two extraordinarily tall buildings littered with graffiti.

  “I’m not worried about those guys. I need to find Flash and Bang.” I said, catching up to him and fixing him with my best ‘I just took out like six dudes with guns’ look. “Not mess with Achilles.”

  “Bang helps run Achilles, you idiot,” he whispered, his voice so low I could barely hear him over the roar of the chopper. “Now get in here before we’re spotted.” He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into a corridor as the police helicopter flew by overhead, its searchlight lighting up the alley.

  “So Bang is a drug dealer?” I asked as the light disappeared, leaving me blinking in the sudden darkness. “Seems a bit… experienced for a drug dealer.”

  “No. He is more of an absentee owner. His brother runs the show. Bang just shows up from time to time, mostly when he needs to launder money. But make no mistake. If he told Achilles to hunt you down, well, they’re going to do it.”

  I sighed. This day had just gone from worse to worse than that. “So how do I take down Achilles?”

  “That a girl,” Morris exclaimed, beaming at me. “It’ll be easy. Just infiltrate their subterranean lair and kill them all. Easy peasy.” Yet, even as the words left his mouth, I was pretty sure he was lying. I just wasn’t sure about what. Then again, he had just suggested taking out a bunch of hardened gang members on their own turf would be easy, so there was that.

  9

  “Relax, you look fine,” Morris said as we approached the nightclub. Even from the parking lot, I could hear music booming from inside.

  “I am relaxed,” I snapped, glaring at him.

  “Then why does your outfit keep changing every few seconds,” he asked innocently, but the devil in his eyes made me think he wasn’t quite as innocent as he was pretending to be.

  “It’s an experimental suit. It changes outfits on a whim,” I replied, shoving my hands into the pockets of my jeans as my top rippled and changed once again, this time into a low cut black blouse that somehow showed off my assets despite my natural lack of curves.

  “Mmm hmm,” Morris mumbled, glancing over at me as we were about to round the corner and step in front of the building. Even in the low light, this graffiti seemed a little different from the markings on all the other buildings. Something about it seemed more, I don’t know, done on purpose?

  “You think I want my outfit to keep changing?” I muttered as my clothing morphed into a black dress that fell to just above my knees and my boots changed into a pair of heels midstride. I stumbled, reaching out and grabbing onto Morris’s arm. He smirked, pulling me close to his body. The sudden nearness of him was unnerving, and as I tried to pull myself away from him, we stepped into the well-lit area in front of the club.

  “You must want to change subconsciously or it wouldn’t keep doing it. Try not to let it change while anyone is watching,” he whispered, breath hot on my ear as he leaned down close to me and spoke. “Also, remind me to pick up some lingerie catalogs… No reason in particular.”

  My cheeks burst into flames as I shook him away. I’d like to say I’d have said something, but his leering gaze made me suddenly speechless though I don’t know why. Still, the idea that he was thinking about me that way was a little… I don’t know… It wasn’t like I found Morris attractive or anything. He was too tall for one and rather scrawny for two. He wasn’t musclebound like the other agents I’d met out on assignment. Then again, he had said he wasn’t much of a field agent. Was that why he wasn’t built like a Greek God?

  I pushed the thought away as Morris watched me with his cool blue eyes before turning toward the doorman and waving at him.

  “Hey Dimitri, how goes it?” he asked, clapping a big burly man with a goatee and muscles big enough to scare a professional wrestler into submission on the shoulder. The man narrowed his hard grey eyes on Morris and snorted.

  “You aren’t supposed to come around here anymore, Morris,” Dimitri said in a voice that reminded me of legitimate tough guys in movies. It was made my knees quake even though I was pretty sure I could throw him through the glass wall behind him with minimal effort.

  Morris said something I didn’t catch and held out a handful of euros. I wasn’t quite sure how much it was, but it must have done the trick because the next thing I knew, Dimitri was waving us around the throng of people clustered outside. It seemed a little weird for there to still be a line since we were coming up on 2 AM, and this place supposedly closed at 4 AM. So why the line? Shouldn’t most people have given up by now?

  We were ushered inside, and the music hit me in the ears like an explosion. It was so loud, I could barely even think. I was glad Morris seemed to know where he was going as he dragged me forward into the club. He stopped suddenly and shifted his weight, suddenly writhing in front of me like a badly oiled robot. I stared at him wide-eyed as his smile dropped.

  “You better dance with me, Abby. Otherwise we’ll look suspicious,” he said, leaning down and practically screaming in my ear as he wrapped one hand around my waist and pulled me close to his body.

  He laughed as the horrible truth of his revelation dawned on me. I looked around, eyes going wide with fright. We were standing in the center of the dance floor with people going crazy all around us. It was nuts. I screamed. I couldn’t help it. I had no idea how to dance, and as Morris gyrated around me, I had the sudden urge to knee him in the groin and run away. I didn’t, but it was a near thing.

  “What are you doing?” I called but he just shrugged at me and pointed to his ears with one hand, indicating he couldn’t hear me. It was in that moment I knew I hated him, a lot.

  I started to shuffle along with the beat for lack of anything else to do and because people were starting to watch me. I didn’t quite know how I was supposed to dance to Euro-pop but somehow moving came naturally to me. The next thing I knew, there was a wide circle around me as I shifted through a series of complex dance steps I didn’t even know I knew how to do.

  A six-foot plus man with long blond hair and a white suit jacket open to reveal a chest covered with very nice to look at muscle stepped up to me and pushed Morris out of the way. He started to dance with me, moving to the beat along with me like we’d been dancing forever. I wasn’t quite sure why, but I started doing even more difficult moves, and the man kept up with me. It was kind of awesome.

  He sidled forward in a flourish and hoisted me into the air as we spun toward the DJ. The music built to a crescendo, the beats becoming quicker and louder as we moved until crashing to a stop at once.

  There was a pause between songs, and the silence seemed deafening and oppressive probably
because it seemed all the people in the club were gawking and pointing at us. I looked around for Morris but couldn’t find him among the throng of people. The man stood up and took my hand, bringing it to his lips with a flourish.

  He leaned in close, chest still heaving from effort. “Miss, I would love to take you back to the bar for a drink,” he whispered, his voice having a touch of an accent I couldn’t quite place.

  Was this guy for real? I mean, I was a teenager. I’d never even had guys look at me before I’d been dragged into the agency’s schemes and since then, pretty much everyone who had hit on me had been doing it as part of their job. This guy didn’t seem to be doing that… why?

  With that, he took my hand and began leading me away, no doubt taking my flushed cheeks and lack of a response for a yes. I swallowed, hardly able to believe how warm his hand felt in mine. I swear, I almost had a conscious thought as he pulled me through a beaded curtain and into a posh alcove I hadn’t noticed before.

  He pulled me down onto a scarlet couch and leaned forward, pulling a bottle of champagne from a bucket of ice even though there was an open one next to it.

  “Dom?” he asked, raising one perfect blond eyebrow into the air. When I didn’t respond because I was a total tool, he smiled at me and popped the top off.

  The boom of it was loud enough to make me jump, and I realized I couldn’t hear the music in here, which was a little weird because I was fairly certain the only thing separating this room from the outside world was the beaded curtains.

  He poured the golden liquid into a pair of flutes and offered me one. I took it hesitantly, watching him through the rising bubbles.

  “To new friendships,” he said, tilting his head back and draining his flute in a single gulp. It seemed like a weird thing to do given the champagne seemed expensive. Then again, what did I know? I nodded to him and took a sip.

  It was unlike anything I’d ever tasted and not in a good way. I’m sure it was yummy by champagne standards, but I’d never actually had the stuff before. I wasn’t sure I wanted to have any more from the taste of it either. So what did I do?