by Lea Griffith
Arrow wondered if his wife and children were in residence. She could use them as leverage perhaps, should things veer off course. First though, she would free the children hovering in the cold beneath the house. Forced laborers, sold by their parents into service to a man with no conscience.
She would free them first, kill anyone who thought to stop her, and then Wang was hers.
The sound of cars approaching echoed up the valley and she increased her pace, practically flying over the terrain, her goal in sight. There was a single guard at the basement door and she zeroed in on him. He turned his back just as she crested the rise and she was on him.
It took no more than a second to incapacitate him.
“Nǐ shì yīgè hǎorén?” Are you a good man, she asked in Chinese.
He nodded but fear was an oily stench in her nostrils. He couldn’t be older than twenty, twenty-one, so she reached for his carotid, pinched it and he knocked out immediately. Cut off blood flow to his brain and he was going to be out, then too groggy to cause her any issues.
She moved him to the edge of the woods and headed back to the basement door. She stepped in and immediately sought the prisoners in the pitch-black interior. They were huddled close to one another. Their eyes were huge in their emaciated faces. Children, a few adults and possibly some teens. They were scared shitless.
“Yùnxíng,” she said. Run.
They did as she’d instructed. She took the steps to the next level, but encountered no other guards. Then she heard it, men above her shouting for all available guards to get to the courtyard.
What the hell was going on? Footsteps sounded above her and she waited until it was quiet. Then she hit the upper level and blended into the shadows. The house was opulent. Artifacts from the Ming Dynasty interspersed throughout, granite floors and gold fixtures attested to the importance of the man who lived here a few months out of the year. She hoped the people she’d freed returned here and looted the fuck out of it once she’d killed Wang.
Windows at the front of the residence showed several cars pulling into the courtyard but it was the man standing right in the middle that made her heart stop beating.
Adam.
Arrow pulled her yumi off her shoulder and notched a ya. What the hell was he doing here? His clothing was torn and dirty and he seemed to be bruised from head to toe. As she watched, a man walked up to him and struck him in the stomach with the butt of a rifle. Adam went to a knee and the guard kicked him in the head. Adam fell to the ground, but pushed himself back up.
A word from the man at the guard’s side stopped any further action and two more guards stepped up to hold Adam on his knees. She kicked the door open as the first guard used the rifle to butt Adam in the head this time. Arrow stepped into the fading light and every gun in the place turned and aimed on her.
Her arrow was locked on Wang.
“Let him go,” she said softly.
Wang threw his head back and guffawed. “Joseph! Look, your killer tells me what I should do,” he said as if it was the most hilarious thing he’d ever heard.
Then her nightmare stepped from one of the limousines and Arrow was conflicted. Wang or Joseph. No matter how many times she’d defeated Bullet at their game, no matter how many times she’d been faster, her ya could never fly quicker than a hail of bullets. She would be cut down and Adam would have no chance to escape before they killed him as well.
“Let. Him. Go,” she said again, softer now.
She felt it then, her sister’s attention, and she nodded once. They could not be in this place. Not now. Adam’s presence threw a huge kink in her plans, and while she would kill Wang here today, her life would be forfeit.
“I hold the cards, bitch,” Wang said slyly. “The cards and one of Trident, it would seem. Tell me Joseph, what will you pay for Mr. Collins?”
Joseph remained silent, his black gaze on Arrow. The setting sun held no warmth when his gaze was on her. Then he smiled and it was to her he addressed his words.
“What will you give me for his life?”
“I will give you the greatest gift I could offer,” she said with a smile.
His gaze went hard and his eyes narrowed. “What is that?”
“Death,” she whispered and let her arrow fly straight into the guard who struck Adam. She pierced his throat and he didn’t make a sound as he fell.
A single shot rang out and one of the guards holding Adam went down next. Bullet to the middle of the forehead.
A whistling sounded in the air once the report of the rifle ended. A blade embedded in the ear of the other guard who held Adam. As he fell, so too did Adam, though he pushed to his knees immediately.
She hoped her sisters would leave this place so they didn’t witness her death. She should have known they wouldn’t. So be it.
She refused to look at Adam. To meet his gaze would be the biggest mistake she could make here today.
“No!” Wang yelled and every single gun trained on Arrow.
She held another ya ready and it was trained on Wang.
“You will not kill him because I will take Mr. Collins’ head like I took your monk’s. Your sisters cannot make it to you in time, Arrow. Think about this,” Joseph murmured.
“My ya will fly straight and true, remember my given name, Joseph and know I will take you next.”
His face hardened and he spat at his feet.
“I can see your fear. It is a lovely sight. I can smell your terror. It is a beautiful scent. But it is not you I want here today, Joseph, it is Lei Wang whose name is written on my arrow today.”
“You will not kill me, bitch,” Wang screamed.
In the layers of his voice was the knowledge that she held his life in her hands. She blinked slowly then focused on the area below his chin.
“Which will it be, Joseph? You or Wang?”
“Kill her!” Wang shouted yet no one moved to do his bidding.
The threat of her sisters was too great. They did not like being in one place at the same time yet they had not abandoned her. She almost went to her knees. They had come for her. Her sisters and Adam.
“He is important to you then?” Joseph asked.
She drew in a breath through her nose and shrugged. “He is nothing to me.”
“Your eyes say something different, death-bringer. I will make you a deal, much as I made with your sister, Bullet. You come to me and I will let them all go free. Minton,” he called out.
She could not believe that Minton was here too. Something was here she’d missed. Was it the boy? Was the boy here?
Minton stepped from another limousine and scurried to Joseph’s side. Would that Bone could take him today. Would that this scenario played out differently.
“Tell them to scatter or Bullet will pick them off one by one,” Arrow said in a hard voice.
Joseph turned to Wang. “Do as she says. You have the eyes of the best sniper in the world on your men,” he said loud enough for them to all hear.
Wang didn’t have to say anything. His men scattered, with the exception of a few intrepid souls, running away from the courtyard as fast as they could.
She laughed. Wang cursed her.
“Take your kill then, Arrow. Minton? Take Mr. Collins,” Joseph said.
Arrow could not let Joseph have him. “No.”
“You would come in his place?” Joseph asked.
“I would,” she bit out.
“No!” Adam said hoarsely.
They had hurt him. From the corner of her eyes she saw blood dribbling down his forehead. His words were slurred. It seemed he’d been tortured.
The shock of that thought had her eyes narrowing on Joseph. “How long have you had him?”
“I did not. Mr. Wang did,” Joseph said with a smile.
Goddamn it.
“Make the kill, Arrow, and then come with me,” Joseph urged.
Her gaze switched back to Lei Wang. His eyes were wide and he was sweating.
“Do you
remember Ching Lan?” she asked him.
His eyes darted to the left and right, and Arrow felt a chill on her skin. Something was happening around them. She felt movement behind her and heard a single gunshot. A startled scream echoed back and Minton fell to the ground, writhing in agony, pleading for help. That wasn’t Bullet’s shot. She didn’t miss and Minton had been hit in the chest.
Joseph glanced around, cursed and got into his limousine between one blink of her eyes and the next. Wang smiled then and Arrow was attacked from behind, vicious strikes that forced her to lower her weapon as she turned to confront the attacker.
What she saw froze her blood and settled the need to kill firmly in her heart. She shut down and began defending. She cleared her immediate attacker and began her own assault. Men dressed all in black surrounded her and continued to stream from the forest beyond the house.
She saw Bone then, her body a tool that began cutting down adversaries left and right. Blade entered the fray, slashing with her sword, ripping with her knives. Bullet entered from the forest then and Arrow wanted to weep. Her sister wasn’t healed yet. Not fully.
Arrow pushed one of the men to the ground, saw Wang from the corner of her eye as he entered the house with several of his guard. He smiled at her—he thought he’d won.
But then the fight took all of her attention. Limousines departed, Minton continued to writhe on the ground but Joseph was gone.
She centered her mind even as she notched ya after ya and let them fly. They were overrun and she knew then what she had to do. Bullet was hurt. Bone and Blade were fierce, but they were outnumbered, and she had to get Adam to safety.
“Take him,” she yelled to Bone.
Bone glanced at her and what passed between them needed no words. Bone accepted Arrow’s decree and moved to Adam, helping him stand, and putting a shoulder under his arm.
“Go,” Arrow called to Blade and Bullet.
Both hesitated, but then a Jeep screamed into the courtyard and Rand Beckett was there, shooting down the men covered in black. But it was too little, too late as men continued to pour into the courtyard.
Wang had a secret guard and was using them to his fullest advantage. They had killed Ching Lan. Her fury was potent.
“Take them and leave,” she yelled to Beckett.
He didn’t hesitate, pulling Adam into the Jeep and then going for Bullet.
Blade and Bone looked back at her once. She nodded and then began defending herself in earnest. They were safe. No matter what happened to her, Adam and her sisters would be safe.
A bell rang in the distance and the men around her stopped fighting, running back to the forest and simply disappearing.
Wang stood in his doorway laughing. Her bow was smashed. She took only a moment to mourn before she felt the prick of a dart. Then her world faded as the black rushed up and over and took her under.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Watashi wa chūdan sa remasen,” Arrow said aloud.
I will not break.
She’d been in the dark for two days. She counted the seconds, minutes, and hours in her mind and had ticked off forty-eight hours two minutes ago. She’d had nothing to drink and nothing to eat. It was cold in the basement and condensation formed on the bars, so she licked it off periodically. Food she could live without. Water she could not.
Her reality was contrary to the words she’d spoken aloud. She was close to breaking. Born of the black swamp of death and she could no longer handle the darkness. She tried to remember Adam’s eyes, but this darkness wasn’t the shiny ebony of his. This dark held scurrying creatures and the echoes of pain.
While she tried to hold him in her thoughts, the black bled through and she was taken under time and time again. How many times had she sat in the darkness and wept for the light? How many times had she begged for surcease until her throat was dry and her voice was gone?
This was different, though. Different from the cell she’d been locked in as a child, different than the cell in North Korea. This black felt like the end.
She’d tasted the light and wanted it back. That she couldn’t have it was destroying her.
“Mōmoku no otoko wa hebi o osorete imasen,” she murmured as her hands tracked over the wall, looking for weaknesses. The blind man doesn’t fear the snake.
But she did. She was losing this fight.
There was little hope she’d make it out of here, and she needed to make her peace with that. She pushed her fear down. She would meet the end with dignity. And she would take as many with her as possible.
Her sisters were okay. Adam was okay. The boy had three other killers who would never stop searching until they found him and got him to safety. Bone, Blade, and Bullet would carry on when she was no more.
Still she honed a weapon from a one-inch piece of brick she’d found along the wall. It was sharp now. Arrow punctured her thumb to test it and she bled.
Should she get the chance to attack, it would be enough to take others with her when she fell to hell.
She’d learned a long time ago at the hands of her sohei how to control the black. At the hands of Joseph Bombardier her will had been crushed. When she’d finally learned to control the waters of her mind and not let the black intrude, he’d placed her in a new room with no light and made her suffer even more.
The screams from that night hadn’t been hers. They’d been another girl’s and they had been pain. Arrow endured them as she’d endured countless other punishments. And when that night was done, the girl’s scream dying to whimpers, the world had another killer born to the darkness.
That girl’s screams followed Arrow into sleep. The only time they’d lowered in volume was the night she’d slept with Adam. She’d had peace then. The peace of unrippled water.
She pushed her thoughts away. Longing for something she would never have was insanity. Arrow laughed out loud at that. Breaking? She was already broken. But she had a job to finish.
It pierced her over and over again. Her skin crawled as air weighted with shadows touched every inch of her body. Arrow sat in the darkness, breathing heavily, trying to overcome it and forced her mind to Minton. Who shot him two days ago? Was the bastard was still alive? He was Bone’s to take, but the world was a better place no matter how he left it.
Who shot him? The question played over and over. Bullet didn’t miss and the shot had come from behind Arrow. No, it hadn’t been Bullet. Was it the one who had been in the room with her and Blade in Arequipa all those years ago?
Footsteps sounded outside her cell and thoughts of Minton disappeared. The door opened and Wang stood there, smiling. His teeth shone white in the darkness and she laughed. He was a caricature to her. A tiny man who’d taken innocents and thought himself a god. She wanted to watch him eaten by the Oni. She laughed and laughed and he came to her and pulled her up by the hair of her head.
“Shut up, bitch!” Spit flew into her face and even that was funny. “She’s gone mad,” he said to someone behind him.
But the truth was she had not gone mad at all. She was full of rage and after two days in the darkness she could taste the light.
“Come closer,” she whispered through dry, cracked lips.
He pulled her hair harder instead and she palmed her weapon.
“Where’s the boy?” she managed to push past her dry throat.
He laughed again. It was evil. “That’s the question I’m supposed to ask you,” he cackled.
Joseph didn’t have the boy. Relief was a cool, calming wind through the darkened wasteland of her mind. “Come closer,” she said again, a bit stronger this time.
He moved his head closer and she struck then. Her fingers were numb, but the piece of brick she’d managed to hone into a sharp tip sank deep into his left eye. He screamed and released her and she was a whirlwind of fists and feet. He’d come into her cell with only one other man and she took him out with ease. A punch to throat and he lost his ability to breathe. Death followed swiftly.
“I waited for you Wang. Like a patient killer, I waited and here you are. The only thing missing are my yumi and ya. But that’s okay,” she whispered as she walked to his head and bent down. “I don’t need anything other than my hands to kill you.”
He whimpered and rage poured through her body. Her head heated, her hands clenched and she sank to her knees.
“Hush now, Lei Wang, the pain will go away soon. Tell me something, do you remember Ching Lan?”
“Stay away from me,” he screamed around his cries.
Arrow patted his face and lifted his head, resting it in her lap but never raising her voice. “I’m going to kill you, Lei Wang. Do you know why?”
He cried some more and Arrow tilted her head, the smell of his blood a benediction in the darkness.
“Your life is forfeit because you are not a good man.”
“Arrow,” a voice called to her from the black.
“I’m here, but I have a duty,” she replied softly. Her hands stroked Lei Wang’s hair and she thought of Ching Lan—her head severed from her body, long black hair lying in a puddle of even blacker blood. She thought of her master sohei—head severed from his body. She thought of Adam, broken and bleeding on the ground because of the man whose head she held in her lap right now.
“Please don’t kill me,” he pleaded.
“Arrow, don’t do this,” the voice urged.
“I have no choice,” she responded to them both. “He took an innocent. Has taken many more before and after Ching Lan. Lei Wang is mine. Joseph is mine. The boy is mine and I will protect him.”
“What boy is yours?” the voice asked.
She stared at Lei Wang, who stilled in her lap though his hand still covered his bleeding eye.
“The boy Joseph searches for. He is mine, Blade’s, Bone’s, and Bullet’s. He is ours.”
“We will find him. Come to me,” the voice urged.
“You are the light. I will come to you soon, but not yet. Not until I meet the dark,” she said as she lifted Lei Wang’s head.