The Girl Who Would Be King(22)

Ah, screw the thinking, I’m made of pure badass action.

I snap the padlock off the skylight pull up the window and drop down through the ceiling. I have deliberately not cleaned myself up, since I look like I’ve been half-devoured by dogs and figure the sight of me alone will instill some horror. To their credit, nobody faints, though Adrian looks like he might.

“Hello gang. Nice night to be eaten alive by dogs, isn’t it?”

“Jesus, Lola,” Enrico says

“Dios mio,” Jorge breathes while crossing himself. He looks the most frightened, next to Adrian, maybe because he’s the most religious. Melvin is the first to say something ridiculous, true to form.

“Well, Lola girl. Thank God you’re all right,” he says, putting a firm hand on my shoulder, the one not still torn apart by dogs. I shake it off.

“Yeah, no thanks to any of you on that front,” I say cutting Adrian a look. He squirms and then curls up like a kitten, incapable of processing any more information. I don’t want to kill him but I admit I’m upset he doesn’t seem happy, or even relieved, to see me. Silly me to expect a romantic reunion   scene. Jorge is the only one that seems to feel any need to explain anything.

“But Lola, we…we saw those dogs attack you, we knew you couldn’t survive that, nobody could!”

“Well, surprise surprise, I guess.”

Felice steps forward. “How did you survive, Lola?”

“None of your business,” I say sharply. They all stand there dumbfounded. I don’t even feel much like killing them anymore, now that they look like stupid sheep, but I am taking the loot and moving on, without them. Being left for dead has earned me at least a sweet severance package. I point to the box I’ve just been nearly killed for. “I’ll be taking that.”

“Oh really?” Melvin says more than asks.

“Yes. I’m pretty sure I’ve earned it.”

Jorge steps back, not wanting to get caught in whatever is going to happen. Enrico steps forward to try to stop whatever is going to happen and Albert starts bellyaching that there is no way he isn’t taking his cut. Just as I’m about to let things get physical (I have this whole idea about leapfrogging over Melvin, grabbing the box and then kind of Spider-man-ing out the skylight with the box in hand) I get hit in the back of the head with something horrible. I stumble but catch myself on a table and pick up a gun lying there innocently. I point it at Felice, who is, no big surprise, standing there with a bloody tire iron in her hand. She raises her hands, dropping the tire iron, which clangs to the ground obnoxiously. My vision swims and Albert makes a move for the gun, but I elbow him in the face, breaking a few bones, knocking him out. “Don’t even,” I say, my words slurring together slightly. Just as I’m about to put a bullet in Felice I get hit from behind again, and since Adrian’s the only one behind me, I know it’s him.

I honestly can’t believe it – so much for love conquering all.

I fall forward hard, blackness trying to swallow me on all sides. My eyelids flutter trying to beat back the black and I feel Adrian’s strong hands rolling me over.

Melvin speaks, bastard that he is. “Good work, kid.”

“I…I didn’t want to,” Adrian says, his voice cracking.

“It was her or me, mi hermano,” Felice says.

“You did the right thing,” Enrico adds quietly.

I hate all these bastards.

“If those dogs didn’t kill her then two blows to the back of the head aren’t going to either,” Melvin says, his words floating around me like deadly butterflies. “We better make sure she’s done.”

The last thing I see is Melvin picking up a huge shiny blade. It glints brightly when it catches the light. The thing must be at least nine inches long. He plunges it into my stomach as if he’s gutting a fish.

Then everything’s black.



°

I wake up tied to a chair, wire cutting into my wrists painfully. The blood’s flowing freely and my hands are sticky with it. My vision’s blurry but I can see I’m alone. The room I’m in is bare, with only an alarming amount of my blood pooling in the tread of my shoes and spreading across the hardwood beneath me. It’s night, but I have no idea how late and the room I’m in is an empty black. There’s a bare bulb overhead but the light is off, only a sliver of light under the doorway gives any hint of shapes around me. Pulling on my wrists to see about freeing them is excruciating and so I stop doing it. I can hear arguing in another room.

“I thought you just wanted to hurt her,” says a male voice.