“You bitch!”
Jennie adjusted the aim to Yasmine’s face. “You want to say that again?”
For a moment, it looked as though Yasmine was seriously contemplating it. Then she turned away, hissing in pain.
Baxter shook his head but didn’t look away. “So, how do we get word of this lady to the palace?”
“That’s going to be the difficult part,” Jennie admitted. “We’re going to need a volunteer, a messenger to gain their attention and draw them out of hiding. Someone to infiltrate the palace and ensure we get to the right people.”
She turned to Angus.
His shoulders softened. “How did I know that was coming? Okay, tell me what I need to do.”
Buckingham Palace, London
Porter was ecstatic. He roamed through the hallways with a devilish grin on his face.
He had made some kind of progress in the hunt for Rogue. He’d captured a weedy little specter he was certain had information on her location.
The specter had been taken to a secure underground cell. When Victoria was finished with her current business, they would fetch the little piece of shit and interrogate him until he either spilled or went to his true death.
How delicious, Porter thought, already imagining the specter’s screams. He hardly ever got to play with the torture toys these days, and soon he would be able to break them out and play until the damn fool cracked.
Porter chuckled, moving quickly down the empty hallways until he came to his chambers.
“Yasmine, guess who’s got a surprise for…”
He trailed off as he opened the door and found the room empty. He laughed and shook his head, forgetting it would be some time before Yasmine was back. Porter had his side of the city to manage, and Yasmine had hers. Just because he had been successful, it didn’t mean she had found anything yet.
He shrugged, then left the room and climbed up a sweeping staircase to the higher reaches of the palace. He passed through attic rooms which had long ago been locked and forgotten, reveling in the musty smell of dust and decay as rats and mice scurried around the room, running from a threat they couldn’t see.
As he walked, he thought of Victoria and the situation they were facing. There hadn’t been a threat to Victoria or her throne in all of his years as a specter, not really.
Sure, they’d had their fair share of problems from across the world, shapeshifters in Japan, wraiths causing disturbances in Europe, hell, there had even been a few instances of ex-military specters turned Lawrence of Arabia in the Middle East.
But there had never been anything as close to home as this.
Rogue was a powerful ally, and an even deadlier foe. Porter had heard enough stories of her capabilities and had seen her return from too many impossible missions to underestimate her. They would need to find her, and they would need to do it faster if they were to minimize the amount of collateral damage she caused in the long run.
Porter passed through a locked door and emerged on the roof of the palace. From here, he could see everything for miles. Specters glowed as tiny dots all around him, looking like a terrestrial reflection of the stars.
He walked up to a sentry guard stationed nearby on the rooftop. The specter still wore his standard-issue camouflage. An SA80 was clutched loosely in his hands as his eyes scanned the perimeter.
Porter looked along the length of the palace, where several dozen ex-forces specters were stationed with a range of weaponry. More SA80s, all had GLOCK 17s, and a few had long-barreled firearms which Porter recognized to be sniper rifles.
“Quiet night?” Porter asked.
“Same as last night, sir,” the soldier responded.
Porter nodded and patted the soldier’s shoulder. “Be patient. Rogue is coming.”
“Affirmative, sir,” the soldier replied.
Porter strolled along the roofs, enjoying the peace the deep night brought. In the distance, he could see the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament, places he had once admired in life, but now saw as nothing more than tiresome tourist attractions.
Far off he heard the toll of Big Ben announcing one AM. He turned on his heels and was about to return downstairs, ready to check that Victoria was free, when the soldier called, “Sir?”
He returned to the front of the rooftop and saw the specter approaching down the center of the Birdcage Walk.
“Your lady-friend is home.”
Porter shot a look at the soldier, choosing to ignore the small grin pulling at the corner of his mouth.
“At ease, soldier.”
Porter met Yasmine as she melted through the doorway. “You’re back early.” He pulled her to him and planted a kiss firmly on her lips.
She pulled away and straightened her front. “Am I? Well, there was nothing more to do.”
Porter raised an eyebrow. “Nothing more to do? You had updates to receive from half the specters of London. You’re telling me that only took a couple of hours?”
Yasmine didn’t blink. She took a steadying breath. “Yes.”
“What’s gotten into you?” Porter asked with concern on his face.
Yasmine tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “It’s nothing. I’m just tired, is all. You know what it’s like being out there on the streets for hours on end. It makes you tired.”
Porter eyed her curiously. “True. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I just need a lie-down.” Yasmine smiled. “Come on, you can walk me to my room.”
Porter smirked. “You’ve forgotten where it is?”
Yasmine burst into laughter. “Yeah, right. Good one.” She took his hand and pulled him to the right. “Come on.”
Porter resisted. “It’s this way.”
Yasmine blushed. “Just testing you.” She kissed him deeply and stared into his eyes. One of her eyelids twitched. “Come on. You do want me, don’t you?”
Porter walked briskly through the palace leading Yasmin by the hand. He ignored the knowing looks cast by the guards roaming the halls. He led Yasmine up the stairs and, when they reached the doorway to her room, pushed her against the wood, his tongue finding its way into her mouth.
She moaned and passed through the wall, leaving Porter to kiss the door.
He entered the room, muttering. “Tease,” he accused before advancing on the woman sitting on the bed. “We’ll have to make this quick. Her Majesty will soon be calling for a prisoner we’ve taken who knows the location of Rogue. Nothing gets me hotter than a good interrogation.”
He took several steps toward the bed, then froze as the woman he knew as Yasmine began to transform before his eyes.
In the place of the specter he had been about to pounce on was a woman with red hair, round sunglasses, and a leather corset.
Jennie grinned at Porter. “Actually, that’s kind of what I needed to speak to you about.”
Chapter Seventy-One
Westminster, London
To give her credit, Yasmine had remained virtually silent the entire time Angus was gone.
Not that she hadn’t had a few words to say at seeing another specter turn into an exact copy of her. At first, she had commented that her face couldn’t be that bloated. But after confirmation from the others, she’d gone quiet.
Jennie had left the Obake in charge of guarding Yasmine, while she and her company awaited Angus’ return.
Jennie sat with her back to the wall, a small gold coin in her hand. She played with the coin and rolled it back and forth along her fingers.
“Nice trick,” Baxter told her, sitting beside her. Carolyn took the other side, resting her head on Jennie as she snoozed.
“It’s not a trick,” Jennie replied. “It just takes practice. There’s no illusion or mystery; it’s just training your muscles.”
“I was never able to do anything like that.” Baxter held up his hands. “Too big, see?”
“Here.” Jennie passed the coin to Baxter. He took it in the flat of his palms and examined it closely.
On one side was the head of a person Baxter had never seen in his life, and on the other was an ornate plant decoration. The edges were rough and nicked, and the words were all but faded.
“Trinidad and Tobago. 1799,” Jennie told him. “Not in mint condition, but then again, what coinage from that period is?”
“That’s before you were born,” Baxter marveled.
“You realize time existed before me?” Jennie smirked. “Just because I’m older than you, it doesn’t mean nothing is older than me.”
Baxter frowned. “That’s not what I meant…”
“I know what you meant,” Jennie retorted playfully. “My parents were hobbyist collectors. They enjoyed museums, they read up on their history, and they even collected a few trinkets along the way. There isn’t much of them left in the world, but this coin has lived in my pocket for decades. Sometimes I forget I have it, but when I actually have a moment to sit still, it always comes back to the forefront of my mind.”
“You loved your parents dearly,” Baxter stated, not a question but a fact.
Jennie smiled sadly. “I did and do.”
“I saw the dresser in your bedroom,” Baxter commented, placing the coin between the cracks of his knuckles and attempting to roll it to the next finger. “They clearly loved you, too.”
Jennie turned to Baxter suddenly. Carolyn snorted in her sleep but did not wake.
Jennie relaxed. “They did. They were the best parents I could have asked for, given the situation. I only wish I could’ve seen more of them before the whole spectral assassin thing happened.”
Baxter dropped the coin, and it clattered on the ground. He struggled to pick it up with his thick fingers.
Jennie chuckled and helped him, picking the coin up with ease.
“This is impossible,” Baxter complained, trying once more.
Jennie shook her head. “Nothing is impossible. You and me speaking should be impossible. An entire empire based around a dead monarch should be impossible. Wraiths haunting the grave should be impossible. Yet, here we are.”
“You’re bitter about those wraiths, aren’t you?” he asked.
“You have no idea,” Jennie replied.
Baxter tried to flip the coin between his knuckles for another few minutes, dropping the coin with every try. He gave up eventually. “Do you really think George will be okay?”
Jennie chewed her lip. Truthfully, she didn’t know what the outcome would be. In her heart, she believed he was far too valuable to be exorcised outright. “I believe so. As long as he doesn’t do anything stupid.”
“Like what?”
Jennie closed her eyes, trying her best to be patient as Angus got to work. Trying her best not to imagine the worst-case scenario, should George make a simple mistake.
Buckingham Palace, London
There aren’t a lot of people who are aware of the hidden vaults beneath the grandiose Buckingham Palace. Originally designed as panic rooms to guard the royal family in the eventuality of a sudden emergency, the impenetrable lead-and-steel lined rooms are linked by a series of interconnecting tunnels.
For those from a spectral background, only a handful was aware that these rooms had since been converted into spectral prisons—empty cubes, guarded by some of the deadliest specters to ever roam the streets of London.
The queen did not want these particular specters to be made public knowledge. These specters had certain abilities and no qualms with doing whatever was necessary to retain their prisoners and keep them incarcerated.
For many of them, the rank of Buckingham Palace prison guard was nothing more than a perverse form of entertainment for the screw-ups and criminals the world believed it had seen the back of.
George cried out in pain as he was thrown against the cell wall. “You bastards! You can’t keep me down here! I’m a respectable specter of the paranormal court! You’ve got to give me my rights.”
His words died in his mouth as he looked up at the giant guard.
The man’s shoulders were wider than the doorway. One hand gripped a spiked mace. “You’ve got no rights down here, sunshine. Down in the dungeon is where we play. If you step into our sandbox, you’re everyone’s fair game.”
George picked himself up off the floor and glared at the guard. Behind him stood two more guards, who grinned darkly.
George looked either side of him, then pushed back to pass through the wall a bit at a time.
Something crackled in the air. White-hot pain surged through his body as if electricity had just coursed through him. He was hurled across the room where he hit the brute’s stomach.
George fell to the floor and looked around for the source of his pain. He saw one of the guards standing with his palm held flat against the wall.
The guard looked at George as the metal lining the room sparked with jolts of blue electricity. “Try that again, and we’re going to stop playing nicely.”
“This is nice?” George countered.
The front guard leered. “You have no idea.”
“Oh, just tie him up,” another guard suggested. “He can’t run if he’s tied up.”
“True,” the first guard agreed. “But then that removes temptation, and I want the chance to beat this little fucker to a pulp.”
They all chuckled as they passed through the door and exited the room.
George was left alone in the gloom. The prison was lit by a series of small candles running along the corridor, and only a flicker of that light made its way into the cell. He remained seated, aware of the footsteps and passing silhouettes of the monsters outside of his cell.
The time seemed to pass slowly, although there was no way of knowing what the hour was. The darkness enclosed around him. Shouts of protest came from the other cell blocks as the night wore on.
George closed his eyes, drifting into an uneasy sleep. His head filled with dreams and visions of monstrous faces, heavy weapons, and the endless screaming of some horrible thing.
Porter stared intensely at Rogue, his heart beating fast. He was sitting quietly, not caring to admit he was frozen to the spot while Rogue told him she and a group of specters had Yasmine held hostage.
All it would take is for him to hand George back over to them, and to help Jennie get an audience with the queen, and she would go free. “So you want to make a bargain, is that it?”
“I didn’t say it was going to be easy,” Rogue told him. “But yes. A bargain. Like for like. Brownie points for getting me a short period of time alone with the queen.”
Porter’s face tightened. “You know I can’t do that.”
Rogue frowned. “The first bit, the last bit, or both?”
“The last bit,” he clarified.
Rogue grinned and leaned her elbows on her knees. “At least that’s something. How about we start there and see how we go?”
“You’re making a huge mistake,” Porter told her softly. “This entire place is surrounded by the finest specters we’ve got. The lower floors are protected by loyal-to-the-core beefeaters and guards, and the rooftops are lined with soldiers who died in combat and continued to serve. There’s no way out of this for you. Even coming here was a mistake.”
“A mistake which is worth the risk,” Rogue replied firmly.
“And then what?” Porter demanded. “What happens once you talk to Her Majesty? What then? Do you go on your merry way? Do you dissolve the court and rebuild it all from scratch? Every path is anarchy. Every path is destruction.”
Rogue leaned forward. “I will not let injustice rule.”
A silence passed between them both. Outside the chambers, footsteps echoed as guards patrolled the corridors.
Porter took a long breath. “What if I say no? What then? You’ll exorcise Yasmine? Very well. I’ll have you killed. You’re nothing more than human, remember? You rely on specters to perform your tricks. Without your specters, you are nothing.”
Rogue grinned, a twinkle flashing in her eye. “I got this far, didn’t I?�
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For the first time since Rogue appeared on his bed, Porter realized the mistake he’d made. Of all the powers he had known Rogue to have, she had never been able to transform into other shapes. Only the fabled Obake were able to take on the form of other specters.
Not only that, but she had arrived alone. Rogue needed to be accompanied by specters. That was why she was always gifted one from the queen. She was powerless without them.
“Who are you?” Porter asked.
Rogue shimmered and transformed into a perfect replica of Porter. “I’m you, of course.”
Porter grew angry. He stood up, fists clenched. “Who are you?”
“I am many people,” the specter replied, switching every few seconds into the form of specters they had passed. Once, for a brief second, he even transformed into Queen Victoria. “The only constant is that there is always change.”
Porter lunged at the specter and grabbed him by the throat. They dropped to the floor, wrestling as they rolled around on the antique woven rug.
“Whatever you think you know about me, know this for certain,” the specter managed through a constricted windpipe. “We do have Yasmine. I am with Rogue. We will get what we want.”
At the mention of Yasmine’s name, Porter slowed his attack and released the pressure on the specter’s throat. He thought long and hard, taking deep breaths to accommodate for his burst of exertion.
“Fine,” he conceded at last. “I’ll bring him to you. But you must promise not to touch a hair on her head.”
The specter rose to his feet and rubbed his neck. Now he was a perfect replica of Prince Charles. “Absolutely, dear fellow. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you. Now, if you would be so kind as to show me a way to get out of here without getting my head blown off by a hundred gunmen, that would be most appreciated.”
Alexandria stood in the darkness, enjoying the silence of Elizabeth’s chambers.
Royalty lived in the queen’s blood. It passed down through time and history, and now it was inside her, in the living monarch of England and all of her children thereafter. Even when abandoned, Alexandria could feel it in the room. Royalty was power, and power was a thing one had to hold close to one’s chest.
Rogue, Renegade And Rebel (In Her Paranormal Majesty’s Secret Service Book 1) Page 54