by K. T. Tomb
His booming laugh that echoed around the high walled, stained glassed cathedral only added to the list of reasons why she should shoot Tony, yet her finger remained where it had been—on the verge, always.
“I thought so, Chyna,” he laughed again, and with those words, turned around and walked out of the cathedral, the click-clack of his shoes retreating across the marble floor resonating in her mind as she sank to her knees.
Chapter Eleven
RSS feed. Lana Ambrose, 2014
The New World: Although Isabella accomplished much during her reign, she is remembered most for her funding Cristoforo Colombo, Christopher Columbus. Today she is remembered as a devout woman, and there is a movement to canonize her into the Catholic faith. However, her role in the Inquisition is blocking the way for Isabel's entrance into sainthood.
Queen Isabella died on November 26, 1504, at the age of 53. Her body was wrapped in a Franciscan robe, which she thought would guarantee her entry into heaven. Her tomb is in the Royal Chapel at Granada, next to Fernando's, who died twelve years after his wife in 1516. They were succeeded by their daughter, Queen Juana, and their son-in-law, King Philip I.
***
Chyna stood frozen... and disappointed. Facing off with Tony had been one the easiest things in the world for her to play through in her mind, she had seen it a thousand times in her mind’s eye, rehearsed mentally what to say, what to do, whether to talk or just shoot him dead. She had drawn the gun and pointed it at him, ready to shoot just as she had imagined it. She had thought that she would have had the upper hand and that she could get under his skin. Little had she known that he was like a crocodile, covered in layers of scales and rock hard flesh, seemingly impossible to penetrate. Once again, Chyna Stone was left standing alone while her archenemy had walked right out of her hands, playing her weakness to his advantage.
“Chyna!” She felt a hand on her back—Tacho.
“Chyna, we need to follow them!” he insisted. “Hurry!”
Chyna knew she should move, but her feet were rooted. Would she ever be able to face him? Would she ever be able to extract her revenge? Would she ever get over him? Her present state was evidence to everything being exactly the opposite, which made her want to weep. She had never felt so weak, so beaten. She was sure that of all the weak points that could possibly break her, this was the worst—the knowledge of the fact that she wasn't strong enough, and might never be so.
“Chyna! Venga te!” Tacho pulled her hand, and she moved with him mechanically. Her brain was trying to grapple with her body and drive it into the chasms of pain and numbness. She somehow kept up with Tacho, but her mind was still stuck in that one moment—the moment when she had had the chance to take Tony out of the equation but had not had the strength to fulfil her destiny. It was shameful, embarrassing to admit, even to herself.
Tony's ambling silhouette was visible clearly in the light outside of the cathedral. He had his gun in his right hand, and his left was in the pocket of his pants without a care in the world, secure with his henchman, One Eye and the goons in police uniforms. He knew that he had damaged Chyna enough to guarantee that she would not be able to kill him and that seemed to him like the ultimate protection.
Chyna shouted a challenge for Tony to stop, but her voice was muffled by a vehicle screeching into the square from the avenue to the north. Chyna turned her head toward the sound and to her relief and surprise saw Tacho's minivan speeding toward them in a frenzy with Sirita at the wheel and Oscar beside her. Help had arrived, and they now had a snowball’s chance of retrieving what they had come for.
Tony, unfortunately, noticed the shift in power at the same time Chyna did, because the next thing she saw was him gesticulating toward his group and instructing them in Spanish. The men appeared scared for a moment, but their faces changed as Tony spoke. Almost immediately, they took out their handguns and in the next moment had opened fire at the van, which slewed and skidded, presenting the driver’s side of the vehicle to the assailants and giving the team at least some protection from small arms fire. The wheels spun, and the van took off toward the western exit to the square.
Seizing her opportunity to take advantage of a distracted foe, Chyna ran toward the group of firing men and crouched to minimize the target she would present under the light from the minivan’s whirling headlights. In her peripheral vision, she saw Tacho running for cover behind an external buttress of the cathedral and at the same time typing away on his phone. If he was making notes, Chyna thought it was a bad time and place to draft a story.
As she reached the closest of the men in police uniform, she took him from behind with a firm choking maneuver, preventing him from firing or crying out. She wrenched his cap away from his head, forced him to his knees and as her victim looked up she came face to face with the cop who had bounced off the windshield earlier that evening. His eyes bugged as he tried to gasp for breath and claw her arm away. Chyna hit him hard in the face with the butt of her pistol. Blood sprayed upward into her face, and the man screamed. Chyna released him and he fell forward onto his hands and knees. A sharp kick to the solar plexus and he ceased all noises and movements. One down.
She had just locked on to her next target when a crash resounded from her right. One Eye had fired a bullet through the windshield of van, causing Sirita, who was driving, to swerve and hit Fernando to avoid disaster. With a shock, Chyna realized that the crash had actually been Fernando landing face down on the rough floor of the cathedral square. With the way his body had been twisted and was now still, Chyna knew he was dead; killed because of the very thing he had been trying to protect. As Chyna ran toward him, she heard the sound of the bullets multiply. Sirita and Oscar had quit the van and were now fighting on foot, using their own pistols. Chyna rolled, coming up in a rifleman’s firing stance and put three rounds into another cop who was drawing down on Oscar from his blind side. Two. In a moment she was up and running toward the body, a hundred yards or more away and effectively in no man’s land between her team and Tony’s minions.
As she ran in the dark toward Fernando her mind was focused, clarity of purpose returning to her once again after so long. She realized then that she had almost forgotten the truth that kind of focus brought to her.
“When it feels like the air has completely filled your body and all you can hear is the beating of your own heart… pull the trigger so you can breathe again.”
She heard Rivka’s voice whispering in her ear, as loudly and clearly as she ever had when she had spent day after hot, unbearable day lying on the ground in the Israeli desert behind the sights of her sniper rifle.
Once again, she had reasons to exist; the survival of her team and obtaining the rosary. Tony could be dealt with later. The realization almost made Chyna stop and revel in the resurgent energy that coursed in her veins. She felt like she was finally back in the game, looking for the thrill and the adventure and feeling the excitement course through her. This was her territory, she realized, and she would mark it.
However, just as the thought had doubled the speed of her steps, she stepped on something and stopped short at the sight by her feet.
Chyna found herself staring down at a fine piece of jewelry strewn on the ground. A long chain of beautiful black and white beads, a perfect silver crucifix hanging at its apex; the rosary of Isabella was just lying there on the stones of the square beneath the soles of her shoes. Its box lay open a few feet away.
Now that the rosary was within arm's reach, Chyna acquired a new perspective on the battle that was ensuing around her. Bending down, she picked up the wooden box and gathered the rosary inside it. She was about to tuck it under her arm, but when she looked up, her eyes met Tony’s. He was trapped, pinned down, with his partner One Eye, between Oscar and Sirita on one side and herself on the other. His irises were a storm of anger, helplessness, and what looked like fear. Could it really be he was afraid? Of what, or more pertinently, whom? The feel of the box in her hand gave her a strength
that felt granted by the power of God himself. Now, it seemed as if her senses were alive, her hands and fingers moved of their own accord, aiming and shooting at the two remaining men in police uniform who were attempting to advance toward the inadvertent cage that the two pairs had trapped Tony and One Eye in. The sounds of bullets resounded in the air from all sides—even Tony and One Eye, who tried and failed to shoot their way out, found themselves too well entrenched by Sirita and Oscar.
Chyna concerned herself with keeping Tacho covered as he edged away from the conflict, and the rosary in her possession. As she worked on finishing off the fake cops who had accompanied Tony and One Eye to the scene, Sirita began to empty a clip into the bushes and fence that they were taking cover behind; splintering the wood and forcing them into the open. A volley of lead from Chyna’s nine millimeter followed and the only combatants left in the square were her team, Tony and One Eye.
Trapped between gunfire from two directions, it was only a matter of time before they would capture Tony, of that Chyna was sure. She checked on Tacho and repositioned herself to look out and scan the square for their location. That was when she saw him and One Eye retreating toward a narrow alley leading into the darkness, lit only at the entrance by a little street light. Tony was moving behind the cover of a now bullet-ridden Fiat Cinquecento, blocking any fire from Chyna’s position. She yelled a warning to Oscar, who did not look up from his braced and locked firing stance. One bullet rang out, and One Eye cried out and went down. The shot had passed right through the smashed rear windscreen of the little hatchback car and struck One Eye in the hip. Tony dropped all pretenses at subtlety and fired wildly, one handed, forcing Oscar and Sirita to again retreat for cover and Chyna to fling herself flat on the hard cobblestones, knocking all the wind out of her and leaving her gasping. In the few seconds it had taken her to raise herself to a knee, she found Oscar and Sirita already running toward One Eye. Too late to think about Tony, who seemed to have made good his escape; they would have to settle for whatever they could get. They could chase Tony later, but interrogating One Eye could lead to some idea about the intentions of Illuminati Reborn and, objectively, that was the important goal.
Chyna, however, was working on a different frequency. She had waited too long and suffered too much to let Tony get away at the brink of her success. She reasoned that having One Eye in their custody and behind bars, or dead, would not make too much of a difference. It was Tony who was the mastermind behind their plans. He was the one making the decisions and initiating the plays. One Eye was just a pawn in his schemes. If he wasn't, Tony would not have sacrificed him so easily.
She watched Tony's retreating form like a hawk and did not even have to think before picking up her gun. With her eye on Tony’s retreating silhouette, she aimed, surer of herself than she had been before Dresden. There were only sheer focus and a determination to bring him down that were working inside Chyna. She filled her lungs and waited to exhale. As soon as he reached a tiny spot of light cast by another dim overhead street lamp, her finger tightened reflexively and the hammer dropped. A flash and a cry rang out, and the running shadow went down, clutching at his leg. She breathed again and slowly lowered her weapon.
Chyna Stone found closure.
Epilogue
“Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.”
— Emperor Haile Selassie I
***
One Eye had bled out so much that when the ambulancia arrived, Oscar and Chyna were both elbow deep in his vital fluids. The paramedics stabilized him at the scene, and took him away under police guard. The real Spanish garda civil were understandably dismayed at the carnage wrought in the grounds of Barcelona’s most beloved building, and even more so when they discovered the bullets that had found their way into the brickwork of the La Catedral de Barcelona itself. Tony had been nowhere to be found, a trail of his blood in a dimly lit alleyway the only evidence that he had ever been in Spain at all.
Fortunately for the Found History team, Tacho proved most effective at negotiating their release from arrest, despite the multiple breaches of local and international law. The recovery of the Rosary of Isabella naturally smoothed the path to liberty, and when Cardinal Montego, head of the Catholic Church in Catalonia arrived to take possession of a relic that had been thought to be mythical or at least lost to history, their release was assured, provided the team surrendered their weapons, which they did gladly. At that point, Chyna was glad that she had left her beloved Sig Sauer in Geneva at Oscar’s suggestion to smuggle weapons into Spain.
In any event, the team did have to spend a night in the cells, and it was an exhausted and worn team who convened for a breakfast of torrijas and dark, sweet coffee the next morning. As the police station jail was segregated along gender lines, Chyna, Lara and Sirita had been separated from Oscar and Mark, who had clearly spent the night coming up with wild ideas, judging by the animated conversation that overrode their disheveled appearance and dark-ringed eyes.
“Ladies,” Oscar said, slurping his coffee. “Mark and I have decided that we need to go on a team building exercise.”
He emphasized the last three words with thumps on the table that rattled the china cups in their saucers. Lara groaned.
“Team building? You mean, going off to a sweat lodge and talking about how we can increase sales of vacuum cleaners in Ohio?”
Chyna burst out laughing, unable to get the visual out of her head of them sitting cross-legged in a steamy teepee, swaying from side to side. Lana had always had a knack with words.
Mark took up the tale.
“Not quite, Lana. I, well, we think it’s high time we took some time off, together, you know? Chyna had her break, and that, well, no offence boss, but it did you no good at all. More like a psychotic break, of sorts. So, this time we’re not letting you out of our sight, OK? Right. Where are we?”
Chyna was about to thank him for his clever wit and obvious concern and insist she was in fact fine, but the question stopped her mid-thought.
“We’re in a coffee shop,” she said.
“Very droll,” Oscar said. “I mean, geographically speaking, of course. We’re not even eight hundred kilometers from the champagne region in France…”
“That’s five hundred miles, y’all,” Oscar interjected, his Tennessee accent coming through plainly.
“So I was thinking, how about we go on a road trip? We made a map while we were in jail.” He pulled out a piece of legal paper on which was drawn a fairly accurate picture of southern Europe.
“We drive to the Pyrenees,” Oscar said, tracing the route with his teaspoon. “Then we hire bicycles and run the route all the way from here, through Andorra, hit Toulouse, then cycle through the wine country. Get all manner of drunk. Mark here reckons with a 4x4, his knee will hold up to drive as support vehicle. It’ll be fun!”
“Yeah, that’s a great idea!” Sirita said. “I’ve always wanted to do that, but we never have the chance, we’re always working. What do you say, Chyna?”
Chyna considered. On the one hand, Tony was still at large, but it would be some time before he was able to cause any more trouble, thanks to the bullet she had put in him, and she could use a break—a real break, this time, one not spent wallowing in self-pity and instead, getting hammered on good wine. Her team was looking at her expectantly and the look in their eyes said that they needed this as much as she did.
“Okay, we’ll do it; on one condition. First case of champagne is on me.”
The End
Chyna Stone returns in:
The Jeweled Crown
A Chyna Stone Adventure #8
Return to the Table of Contents
THE
JEWELED
CROWN
A Chyna Stone Adventure
#8
by
>
K.T. TOMB
The Jeweled Crown
Non rien de rien, Non je ne regrette rien!
Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait, Ni le mal; tout ça m'est bien égal!
C'est payé, balayé, oublié, Je me fous du passé!
Avec mes souvenirs, J'ai allumé le feu
Mes chagrins, mes plaisirs. Je n'ai plus besoin d'eux!
Balayées les amours, Avec leurs trémolos
Balayés pour toujours, Je repars à zero!
Non, rien de rien, Non, je ne regrette rien
Car ma vie, car mes joies. Aujourd'hui, ça commence avec toi.
—Edith Piaf, 1959.
Prologue
"Farewell, my dearest. Do so much good to the French people that they can say that I have sent them an angel."
—Empress Maria Theresa of Austria
Marie Antoinette was essentially a symbol of the French monarchy’s excesses and is widely thought to have been the main provocateur of the popular unrest which led to the French Revolution and the overthrow of the monarchy in August 1792.
She was born on November 2, 1755, in Vienna, Austria and at the tender age of twenty, the consort to Louis XVI and mother of four was beheaded on October 16, 1793; nine months after her husband met the same fate.
After the conclusion of the Seven Years' War in 1763, the preservation of an increasingly fragile alliance between Austria and France became a priority for Austrian Empress, Maria Theresa. At the time, cementing alliances through matrimonial connections was a common practice among European royal families and the Empress saw this as the easiest way to keep the peace. In 1765, Louis Ferdinand, the son of French monarch Louis XV, died, naming his 11-year-old grandson, Louis-Auguste as heir to the French throne, so Maria Theresa arranged for Marie Antoinette and Louis-Auguste to be pledged in marriage to each other and in May 1770, at the tender age of 14, Marie Antoinette set out for France to be married.