The White Knight & Black Valentine Series (Book 4): Kill Them All

by Brand, Kristen

  Then I was alone with my thoughts.

  My face hurt. The right side of it burned like I’d leaned too close to a stove, and there was nothing to distract me from it anymore. I relived the meeting with Electric Jane in my mind, thinking of a hundred things I could have done differently. I should have brought backup, should have scanned her mind instantly. How could I have been so sloppy and stupid? Maybe I’d gotten what I deserved.

  After midnight, when the floor was quiet except for the slow puffs of air coming from a breathing machine in another room and the soft footsteps of the nurses on the night shift, I crept out of bed. Slowly, I made my way to the bathroom, with its painfully white tile and wide shower area. Standing in front of the sink, I stared at my bandaged face in the mirror. The lighting wasn’t flattering, making my skin look sallow and highlighting the dark circle under my visible eye. The thick white bandages over half my face made me look as if I was halfway through putting on a mummy costume for Halloween, like I could unwrap it and find everything perfectly normal underneath.

  Taking a shaky breath, I reached up and began to remove the bandages. They were wound tightly, making it a slow task, and I was afraid to pull too hard. When I reached the bottom layer, it was like pulling up a piece of tape. Wincing, I pried it off carefully, but when I got my first glimpse of what lay beneath, my hand jerked and lost its grip.

  The long bandage fluttered to the floor as I stared. My skin was red and mottled, the once smooth surface twisted and rough. It looked like raw hamburger meat, like the monster in a horror movie. It couldn’t be me. A pained moan escaped my lips, and I desperately wished that this was only a nightmare, that I could go back to the day before like re-watching an old episode on television. This couldn’t be real.

  I bent down and fumbled for the bandages, wanting to cover myself up again and pretend I still had the same face I’d always had, that everything was normal. But my shaking hands couldn’t wrap them tightly enough, and they kept slipping down my head. Snarling, I chucked the bandages away and sank to the floor. I didn’t know how long I stayed there, hunched over on the cold tile, before a nurse found me. Saying soothing words that may as well have been a foreign language, she wrapped me back up and sent me to bed. Eventually, I must have gotten a few hours of sleep.

  Then my father showed up.

  It was far too early in the morning, earlier than visiting hours, but my father was an early riser and had ways of getting what he wanted. Gray-haired and gaunt, he wore a double-breasted navy suit that was old-fashioned in its cut. Known as the supervillain Mr. Lucifer, he’d once been able to possess the body of anyone around him. He’d use them for whatever he needed, abandoning them at the scene of the crime to take the fall. A pretty sweet deal, but it had ended when a team of DSA telepaths shut down his powers. After that, he was stuck in his own body, an aging one that was paralyzed from the waist down.

  Joey pushed his wheelchair into my room. Back then, he’d been my father’s bodyguard, chauffer, and all-around errand boy. His face paled when he saw me, the muscles around his mouth tightening. I figured I should probably get used to that expression. He looked as if he was about to say something, but my father’s coarse voice cut him off.

  “Some privacy, please.”

  Ever obedient, Joey nodded and briskly walked out. My father surveyed me, and I stared blankly back as the silence dragged on. Normally, his narrowed eyes and pronounced frown would goad me into speaking, but I was too drained to go through the effort. So, I waited.

  “How could you be such an idiot?” he snapped.

  “I’ll be fine, Dad. Thanks for your concern.”

  I’d been going for dry, but my voice came out dead.

  “Electric Jane?” he demanded as if I hadn’t spoken. “She’s a nobody, a two-bit minion. Flashy powers and no brains to use them properly. And you let her do this to you?”

  “Sure. I thought agonizing burns sounded fun, so I just sat back and let her do it.”

  “Yes, yes, make jokes about it.” His face puckered. “Because that’s all you are now, Valentina: a joke. Word has already spread. This is an embarrassment.”

  I turned my head so that I was looking at the ceiling instead of him. “And I feel awful about that. Worry about your reputation is definitely what kept me awake overnight.”

  He leaned forward, making the scent of mothballs clinging to his suit inescapable. “Fix this,” he hissed. “I don’t care how you do it or what resources you use. Make it showy. Make it messy. But get it done.”

  His voice turned to a growl, and even when he turned away, I could feel the force of his glare.

  “Don’t disappoint me again, Valentina.”

  I was breathing like I’d just finished doing pullups, and it took a moment before I felt I could fake indifference.

  “Sure, Dad. Good talk.”

  He paused to survey me (and—I feared—see right through me) before calling for Joey, who gave me a look as if he desperately wanted to say something. But he grasped the handles of my father’s wheelchair without speaking and escorted him from the room, giving me one last glance as he walked out the door.

  Alone, I stared up at the ceiling and noted that its bumpy surface looked a lot like the texture of my face. A deranged chuckle bubbled up from my throat, but it was weak and didn’t survive long. I squeezed shut my eyes, yet no tears fell. One of the first lessons I’d learned as a child was that crying only made things worse, and I’d never been able to teach myself differently.

  I could lie to my father, and I could lie to my sisters, but as good a liar as I was, I couldn’t trick myself into thinking this wasn’t so bad. The simple truth was that I’d never felt so despondent, not any of the times I’d been hurt, not even after my mother had died.

  As I lay in the cold, sterile room, part of me wished Electric Jane’s attack had just killed me.

  • • •

  Electric Jane hadn’t lasted a week after I got out of the hospital.

  I’d borrowed Joey and a few of my father’s other men, since I’d still worked for him all those years ago. After some interrogations and a liberal application of telepathy, I’d tracked her down to a cheap motel on the outskirts of Chicagoland and sent the boys to bring her in. I could’ve had her killed right there in her motel room, but why waste an opportunity to draw out her fear and dread?

  I waited for her at a construction site, one of my family’s assets that did some actual constructing in between all the money laundering. What mattered was that it was out of the way and abandoned at night. A cool breeze blew through the unfinished walls, making the tarps hanging from the ceiling billow like curtains. Wooden beams and tools lay scattered across the concrete floor, and everything was covered in a fine layer of dirt. I sat in a rolling chair I’d stolen from the site manager’s office, waiting as Joey and the boys dragged her in.

  Her hands were tied behind her back, and a bag covered her head. They must have grabbed her while she was sleeping, because she only wore panties and a camisole, which were wet and clung to her skin. Her entire body was soaked and dripping, and one of the men carried a bucket of water to dump on her again if needed. It was the only way to keep her from using her powers.

  Joey shoved her to her knees on the tarp spread out in front of me. (Bloodstains on the cement would be noticed tomorrow morning, and not everyone who worked for my father’s company was a criminal.) Then he ripped the bag off her head.

  Jane gasped, her face pale as she looked around. It didn’t take long for her eyes to find me.

  “Val,” she breathed.

  I said nothing. On a table next to me lay a pistol and some interesting construction equipment I’d found lying around: hammers, nail guns, electric screwdrivers, that kind of thing. When Jane spotted them, her body trembled.

  “Val,” she said again, “Look, it wasn’t— Madame Guillotine paid more than you. That’s all there is to it. It was nothing personal.”

  “It is now,” I replied.

/>   The bandages covering the right side of my face itched uncomfortably, and the dull, burning sensation hadn’t left my skin. I was happy to keep the bandages on for now, though. I’d seen more than enough of my ruined face in the mirror and didn’t have the courage yet to show anyone else.

  I hadn’t even shown Dave yet. He’d come to see me one night, sneaking past the hospital staff and risking exposure of our secret love affair. As he sat on the side of my bed and grasped my hand, it was the closest I’d come to breaking down. So, he held me and kissed me and murmured comforting lies that everything would be okay. He didn’t tell me it didn’t matter. I’d been hurt, and that mattered a lot to him, but his feelings hadn’t soured now that I was scarred.

  If this were a fairy tale, that would have been enough: a good man loving me and seeing my inner beauty or some other sickeningly sweet drivel. But I’d never based my self-worth on what a man thought of me, even one as kind and noble as Dave.

  Jane swallowed. “Val, please—”

  “I thought a lot about what I should do with you.” Ignoring her, I stood up and walked over to the table. “A splash of acid on your face was my first choice for a while. An eye for an eye and all that. But it just doesn’t seem like enough.”

  “Please don’t,” she whimpered, her gaze darting around for anyone or anything that could help her.

  I picked up a hacksaw from the table, surveying the grime and rust on it. “I told myself you needed to suffer more, and there are so many ways I could torture you.” I gently touched the saw’s edge, testing its sharpness. “Well, not me personally. I just got out of the hospital and shouldn’t exert myself. But I could give each of these gentlemen a different tool and tell them to go to town on you.”

  Trembling, Jane said nothing.

  I set the hacksaw back down. “Or I could stick with my strengths and telepathically rip your mind to shreds until you’re a gibbering wreck stuck in a hospital for the rest of your life.”

  Jane squeezed shut her eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. When she opened them again, she was trembling slightly less, and she lifted her chin defiantly. “Do whatever you want. I can’t stop you. But nothing you do is going to fix your face.”

  Joey charged forward to hit her, but I held up my hand.

  “You’re right.” I shrugged. “I came to the same conclusion.”

  Her eyebrows drew together, and she looked at me carefully, trying to figure out what I meant to do if not torture her. Maybe she even felt a brief flicker of hope that she’d get through this in one piece.

  “Drawing this out won’t change anything,” I said, “And to be honest, Jane? You’re not worth the effort.”

  I snatched the pistol from the table, and before Jane could open her mouth to scream, I shot her in the head.

  Her body slumped forward, blood leaking onto the tarp, and the echo of the gunshot faded to silence.

  “Take care of the body.” I waved a hand carelessly.

  The boys rolled up the tarp with Jane’s corpse inside and carried it out as briskly and professionally as movers unloading a carpet. Feeling oddly light-headed, I turned from them and braced my hands atop the table. It must have been the painkillers. For a few moments, I just focused on breathing in and out.

  “Valentina?”

  Turning around, I saw that everyone had left except Joey. He was an intimidating man, pounds of deadly muscle stuffed inside a designer suit. But while he hadn’t even blinked when I’d shot Jane, now he shifted his weight nervously.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Fine. Why?”

  If I’d asked that question to Bianca or Sonia, they’d answer with a list that would go on for a full minute, but this was Joey, and he backed down. I sighed, touched by his concern even if I’d never admit it.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of this dump.”

  As we ducked around the tarps and left the half-made building, I reflected on whether I’d lied when I’d said I was fine. I’d certainly come to better terms with the situation since I’d left the hospital. I wasn’t going to cry over what Jane had done to me, and I hadn’t been lying when I’d told her she wasn’t worth the effort of an elaborate revenge scheme. I felt no rage toward her, no regret that I’d killed her too quickly. But I didn’t feel better now that she was dead. Seeing her corpse had brought me no satisfaction, no relief like I’d hoped it would.

  I honestly didn’t feel much at all.

  Chapter 12

  By the time I got to the hospital, the exatrin had almost completely worn off. Panic hit me as I pulled into the parking lot, but for once, it wasn’t mine: it belonged to the crowed assembled outside the building. Huddled in groups, they were being kept back by police, and every emergency vehicle imaginable was on the scene. Ember’s attack must not have been subtle.

  Had Bianca fended her off? Were she and Dave okay in there? I couldn’t sense them in the crowd.

  My shoulder holsters were empty under my blazer thanks to Jean-Baptiste’s henchman, but luckily, Eddy had been the last person to drive this car. I popped the trunk, and voila: the small arsenal he never went anywhere without lay in wait for me. I loaded up and strode to the front doors.

  I didn’t telepathically force the crowd to part for me, not wanting to strain my powers so soon after getting them back. Pushing my way through instead, I stomped on toes with boots still wet from seawater. The crowd was a mix of staff, visitors, and patients in pale hospital gowns, but this couldn’t be everyone. Some people were bedridden, attached to life-support equipment, or mid-surgery. Even if Ember didn’t punch a single person with her armored, super-strong fist, she could still end up killing people, and I cursed Jean-Baptiste for sending her here.

  When I reached the police line, I pulled out my wallet. Thanks to my telepathy, the cops saw a DSA badge instead of my driver’s license and let me walk right past them. Even better, when I poked around in their heads, I found the best news I’d gotten all day: Julio was already inside.

  They’d seen Freezefire go in after Ember a few minutes ago, and as far as they knew, she hadn’t left. She could have killed Dave and just failed to make a clean getaway, but maybe—just maybe—Bianca and Julio were still holding her off.

  I walked into the lobby and passed the security desk where earlier this morning a guard had taken my picture and printed out a visitor’s pass bearing my name. The soft, soothing sound of falling water came from a fountain in the waiting area, completely failing to calm me. The emptiness of the place was eerie, even if I knew the reason why it had been abandoned. Not trusting the elevators, I pulled my gun and entered the stairwell.

  It was empty; my sight, hearing, and telepathy all confirmed it. I ascended the steps cautiously, straining all my senses. Jean-Baptiste had woven his web around me as expertly as a mythical spider god. If I didn’t expect a trap now, then I deserved to die. Except he didn’t want me dead, did he? His motives were inexplicable, making me want to unload my pistol into the wall in frustration. How could I outmaneuver him if I didn’t know his endgame?

  Reaching Dave’s floor, I gripped the doorknob and turned it slowly. Pastel walls and a floor so clean it gleamed lay on the other side, and I slipped into the hallway soundlessly. I pushed the big picture from my mind and focused only on what I had to do now: reach Dave, get him out of here, and destroy anyone who got in my way.

  A fire alarm shattered the silence, and I jerked so violently that my body ached. I was too tense, adrenaline and desperation coursing through me. It wasn’t smart to rush into a fight having had so little rest. It would slow my reactions and impair my judgment. But what choice did I have? The sound of the alarm came from ahead, near Dave’s room. Nothing could stop me from running toward it.

  I spread out my telepathic senses as I dashed, and fear slammed into my mind from every angle. A patient had locked herself in her tiny bathroom. I felt the cold, hard surface of the tub pressing against her elbows and knees as she desperately hoped
it would stop bullets. Another couldn’t hide; he wasn’t strong enough to move from bed. Someone else was praying, recitations of the Our Father threatening to overpower every other thought I could hear. I sorted through the chaos, searching for Ember amid the innocent bystanders.

  Instead, I found six of Jean-Baptiste’s men. I flitted from mind to mind, finding different variations of the same thoughts and sensations. Steam surrounded them, opening the pores of their faces as they sweated. Its whiteness shrouded the hallway, and as more water sprayed from the sprinkler system, the hot steam only grew thicker.

  Julio.

  I was too far away to sense him, but the King’s Men knew Freezefire was responsible. He was superheating the water to give himself cover. The men moved cautiously through the mist, not stupid enough to open fire when they couldn’t see.

  Even though I wanted to rush forward to get close enough to make telepathic contact with Julio, I slowed. The sound of my boots slamming against the floor presented too much of a target. As I crept, I used the extra time to dig deeper into their minds.

  A memory of Jean-Baptiste from earlier today, hunched over in a plush chair and rubbing his forehead. The goon was worried. He’d never seen the Prophet King like that before. Another man, chest tight with fear, was wondering what the hell had happened to Ember. This was supposed to be a quick job, in and out. They hadn’t counted on the Black Valentine being here.

  They knew I was here? How? Then I realized he was mistaking Bianca for me and smiled. Would it comfort him to know he’d been dealing with Lady Nightmare instead?

  The smile slipped from my face as I found another memory, one of a dark night and the smell of the ocean. The boat swayed beneath his feet as he hefted the rocket launcher over his shoulder, the weight pushing down on his spine. He aimed through the blackness at the last place he’d seen the target, pausing to account for the speed of the salty wind. Then he fired, and a second later, the explosion obliterated his night vision.