The Girl Who Would Be King(106)

“Boys, do I have an offer for you,” is all I get out before all hell breaks loose.

Bullets are flying and every single dude in the room is yelling out something different. Totally unorganized. This behavior is just not going to fly under my rule. I run around the room so fast I’m nothing but a blur, knocking people out and taking guns – breaking a few fingers in the process – before stopping at the head of the table again and letting the guns clatter to the cement floor below me. A few bullets have grazed me, mostly by pure luck, and I’ve got one lodged in my shoulder. I figure I should use it to my advantage. “Now boys, you don’t want to kill me, I’m just what you need to take this little operation to the next level, but just so we can be clear here, you can’t kill me, so you might as well stop trying and open your goddamn ears.” I pull back the edge of my cat suit and show my bullet wound and concentrate for a long moment on pushing the bullet out of my shoulder and healing the hole in my flesh. The bullet plinks onto the table delicately. There’s some gasping and cussing and at least three of them cross themselves. Now that I have their attention, I levitate, hovering in the air gracefully as I break one of the machine guns over my knee. The gasping and cursing and crossing doubles, maybe triples. “So who’s in charge now that I took out this dumbass?” I ask, pointing with a handgun to the dead boss on the floor. There’s a long pause, and then some idiot stands up.

“I am,” he says.

I shoot him in the head.

“And now?” I ask, looking around the table at bowed heads. Someone clears his throat, “Yes?” I urge.

“Um, you?” he offers tentatively.

“Correct!” I yell out happily. “Now here’s the thing, guys, any of you are welcome to leave, the last thing I want is an unmotivated, uncommitted crew, but I’m not shitting you when I say I have the ability to make you rich and powerful beyond your wildest dreams. In fact, here’s a taste.” I pick the duffel up off the ground and dump the contents out on the table. It looks like a pirate treasure piñata busted open. Diamonds and other precious gems skid and scatter across the table. They seem pretty impressed – even if they don’t want to be – and I mentally remind myself to thank Liz. I can see a few fighters in the group though, and I steel myself up for the confrontation.

“You freak bitch,” comes a growl from the left side of the table. “You just killed my brother and you think you can buy me off with diamonds?!”

“Well, maybe not you,” I say, and put a bullet in his head too. I look at the rest of the group. “That bullet was for calling me a freak, which, though I may well be, is certainly not up to any of you to decide,” I sneer. A tentative and shockingly large hand near the end of the table raises.

“Yeah, you, uh, big hand.”

“Miss, no disrespect, but what ARE you?”

“Honestly Knuckles? I’ve got no goddamn idea but does it really matter? At the end of the day, I’m just the girl with the plan to take over Los Angeles.”



°

I wake up with one foot in the water, my body beaten and bruised, rocks cutting into my back, wet sand in my hair. It’s dark out, early morning, I think, and when I sit up my body screams.

There’s water lapping at my right hand so I pull my hand away from the water in something resembling slow motion. I scoot toward some large rocks and lean against them, breathing shallow breaths so as not to cause any more pain to my poor body. Up the river a few hundred yards, is the George Washington Bridge.

I have no idea what day it is or how I got here, or even how long I’ve been here. My mind races trying to grab onto something solid, but everything slips away.

I realize I don’t know my name.



I lay there for hours, until the sun is high and my clothes and the wallet I found in my jeans are dried out. There’s no identification inside, which is epically annoying, but there is some money and a MetroCard for the subway. I’ve also got two keys in my pocket. They look like house keys. It gives me hope that I have a home. The thing I don’t get is that obviously not everything is gone – I recognize the George Washington Bridge and the Hudson River, and I know that if I head inland, east, I’ll hit a subway station at 168th Street, which will take me downtown. How is it possible to know all of that and not know my name? I examine my clothing and pockets again. Sneakers that look like they’ve been drowned, jeans, and a white t-shirt. There’s also a silver I.D. bracelet, but frustratingly, there’s not actually a name on it.

It looks like it was rubbed off years ago.