Chapter 1 #4
Via an illegal backchannel, I’ve seen the photographs of men and women lynched from sturdy oaks, murdered for committing “crimes against nature.” It strikes a dissonant chord deep within me. “Evil doesn’t excuse evil.”
“What would you propose?” Momentarily stumped, I shrug. It’s not often anyone actually gives a shit what I think. “You are the next region leader, Miss Piccolo. You surely have some idea of how to negotiate, even with traitorous rebels.”
“Negotiation isn’t exactly strong in the Piccolo genes,” I reply. “What would you do?”
“I don’t matter.” She dances us out of the way of two guests drunkenly clawing each other with ravenous intent. We exchange a chuckle and continue our dance on the fringes of the floor. “You are the heir. It is what you think, what you do, that matters.”
“I…I don’t know.”
Based upon the little scoff she emits under her breath, Taylor doesn’t find this believable.
My involvement in running the region has steadily increased, especially as efforts to distract me with a suitor have been unsuccessful.
I want to do my duty, but the amount of power involved scares me to death.
And part of me isn’t afraid of the power. I don’t like that part of me.
“I suppose I would try to understand what the rebels want and reach a compromise without the bloodletting.”
Taylor smiles, her practiced feet coming to a slow stop. “And you said you didn’t know how to lead. You ably defused the situation between myself and Chief Jones.”
“That’s nothing. Being a good hostess is what proper ladies do,” I say with only a slight edge of sarcasm. “Not leaders.”
“Maybe you are both. Though, admittedly, I am not well versed in what proper ladies do.”
“No? You dance like one.”
“I am glad my form is acceptable, though I do not enjoy dancing.” Off my look, she elaborates, “Just because I can, does not mean I like to.”
This woman is a host of contradictions; she possesses Underclass sympathies, but she dances like someone well bred. She claims to not like dancing, but by how closely she’s holding me, I’d say she’s not hating it. “So, why are you dancing with me? Because I stopped Chief Jones from arresting you?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, please, I don’t believe for one second you’re only dancing with me to repay favors. I’ll find out who you really are, Taylor. And what you really want,” I say with a wink. “I can be very persuasive.”
Unperturbed by my flirting, she replies, “Is that because you are a leader, or a proper lady?”
“Don’t you remember? I’m both. Pay attention.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
If only Papa would emerge so I could see the puffed-up, reddened look on his face as he finds me in the arms of this strange, unfairly attractive woman.
And she certainly is attractive. Minimal makeup means her beauty is effortless, with striking facial features and two stunning eyes, the color a light brown closer to the yellow of a jungle cat than any familiar shade of wood.
A lithe, strong body is packed into her suit.
Her muscles soften and tense beneath my hands.
“Your suitor is practically green with envy,” she says, nodding toward Jimmy Junior, who’s being orbited like a neutron star by other young, angry men watching us.
“Is that why he’s green?”
“That or the twelve hundred appetizers he consumed since arriving,” she replies.
Chuckling, I tilt my head. “Keeping tabs on the guests? Isn’t that the host’s job?”
“Since Leader Piccolo has yet to notice a stranger took his daughter, I do not think he is too concerned with the gastrointestinal activities of your intended.”
“He is not my intended,” I object with a sharp look. “Besides—” I wet my lips and drop my voice. “It doesn’t count as being taken if I come willingly.”
A full blush creeps below her mask and she shakes her head, adjusting her grip as the music changes.
We seamlessly segue into a Viennese waltz, joined by others who nod deferentially in my direction, no doubt murmuring amongst themselves about the woman with whom I’ve chosen to dance.
This gossip is heightened by the stark intimacy of this waltz—we are close enough where I can breathe in her breath, see the faint dots of perspiration along her forehead, and the heat of our bodies could melt the gems right off my dress.
Despite this, or perhaps because of it, she often deflects and continuously scans the room.
Eventually, the lack of her undivided attention irks me. “You know, it doesn’t make a girl feel special when her dancing partner has their eyes glued on everyone in the room but her.”
“I was not aware it was my duty to make you feel special.” Her gaze settles on me, an unsettling stare. I wonder if her eyes always contain this coiled energy, like a scorpion poised to strike. “Are there not staff Leader Piccolo pays to do that?”
People love to squish me into boxes: spoiled daughter, socialite, or airhead heir. It appears Taylor has at least put me in the first one. “Is he paying you, hero?”
Reeling me in against her chest, I receive a plume of her scent when we touch—cool, like fresh snow. “No.”
“Good.” My heart thuds so loudly my chest, I hope she can’t hear it. “Because I’d tell him to demand his money back.”
She chuckles, breaking the tension. “Are you not enjoying yourself, Miss Piccolo?”
“Lucy.”
“Sure.”
“I didn’t say that. But I’m sure he would be incensed to know some rebel-sympathizing rabble-rouser accosted his only spawn.”
“As if that was not the precise reason you agreed to dance with me.” She’s not wrong, though getting me away from JJ made my decision easy. “Maybe you have some rebel in you.”
Blushing, I roll my eyes. “Everyone is brave behind a mask.”
Taylor appraises me, candlelight eyes twinkling. She tilts her head to catch my eye, hand touching the side of my mask. “Not everyone. Bravery is a choice.”
“Dancing isn’t brave.”
“It can be.”
Suddenly, I wish we weren’t wearing these masks.
I want to get to know this woman without this facade of distance.
I don’t care whose daughter she is. I am pulled to her like a compass rose toward true north.
And that’s not to mention the physical attraction, of which there is plenty.
The scandalous rapidity with which I would take her to bed is truly astonishing, even for me.
I’m mentally calculating how best to woo this woman into my bedroom when I see her eyes fixate upward and her body tenses beneath my hands.
Following her gaze, I’m perplexed to see the skylights nearly black—as if a thick layer of soot has overtaken them.
My dancing partner’s eyes fall back down with mine, but she isn’t confused.
Her eyes are wide in observation, like she’s trying to swallow the room with one look.
COs surreptitiously move closer to us, fingers pressed to their hidden earpieces, trying not to bump into any of the dancers.
Instinctively I look around for Papa, assuming he called them to attention.
Normally his absence is a blessing, but now I’m craving the sense of security that accompanies his power.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
“Lucy?” I nod dumbly as the hand around my back rises and grips my shoulder. “Get ready.”
“For what?”
Her hand on my shoulder disappears into her blazer, withdrawing a pistol.
Before any of the COs can reach us, her arm wraps tightly around my waist and her leg shimmies in between mine.
Pointing the gun at the sky, she pulls the trigger and a projectile attached to a long rope shatters the skylights and sends a shower of glass raining down on the dance floor, peppering the screaming women and men, including us.
Well, not us. I’m screaming. Taylor is silent.
She gives the rope an experimental tug, and her eyes traverse the length with stern focus.
As the COs reach us, we rocket into the air.
The hold I have on her tightens as we sail through the open, broken pane of glass, somehow managing to avoid gouging precious limbs on the remaining shards affixed to the structure.
The propulsion pushes us several feet above the skylights, and for a few seconds we float.
Taylor is solid as we land, and keeps her grip tight, holding me steady.
The grapple gun gets tucked away and exchanged for another pistol.
I doubt this one has a rope. Her stance shifts, and she positions herself between the COs and me.
Before they can reach or ready their weapons, she kills four guards with four eardrum-shattering gunshots.
One CO falls through the glass and makes a sickening thud, which triggers an additional round of screaming from the ballroom.
The other three collapse on the ground like marionettes whose puppeteers have snipped their strings.
There’s no convulsing, no agonizing death. She has hit them straight in the head.
It’s almost merciful, like an execution. It is an execution.
Three of our mansion’s own guards, a ragtag platoon of unarmed former police, burst from the roof access. Taylor backs into me, holsters her gun, then places her hand on my hip to coax me a few steps back. “Don’t move.”
“Really? Thought maybe I’d cannonball through the skylights.” It’s not like I can move anyway, immobile as I am in fear.
The other guards are unarmed—retrospectively a huge oversight on Papa’s part.
They descend upon her like vultures to a carcass, viciously punching and kicking her with such relentless brutality it sounds like tenderizing a steak.
One of Taylor’s kicks sends an assailant over the edge of the skylight, back inside.
I cover my ears. I’d rather not have two bodily thuds on playback in the stereo of my mind.
A guard snatches her in a chokehold and wrenches her from the others.
His knife glints in the light of the moon and my stomach tumbles.
The steel blade nicks the side of her face before she’s able to get away.
One of the others knocks her to her knees with a savage punch to the face.
Another guard kicks her in the stomach a few times, forcing her to curl into a ball.
I take a half step forward in an insane, suicidal, counterintuitive instinct to help her.
Taylor catches one of their feet in her hands before it strikes her again.
She twists the ankle with a bone-chilling crack, causing the guard to scream and crumble to the ground.
Taylor hastily gets to her feet, engaging one of the two guards left in impressive martial arts.
It is fluid and violent, precise and bloody.
I’m impressed, and I hate myself for it.
The last guard grips her coat from behind, and Taylor rolls her eyes and lets him come away with her suit jacket, revealing her torn button-down shirt and set of light blue suspenders.
He swipes at her another couple times with his knife, but she bends her body in such deceiving ways he doesn’t come close to her.
“I’ll kill you, you bitch,” he says with an ugly snarl.
You know what? I’m starting to doubt it.
He swipes at her again and she calmly disarms him. With her left hand on his face, she places the knife still at his throat and forcefully spins his body around to slice him across the jugular. Blood spews on her face and shirt as he collapses on the ground, holding his neck.
I throw up off to the side at the sound of the man’s dying gurgles. “Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you? These are real people you killed.”
Taylor wipes blood from her face with her sleeve. “As opposed to fake people?”
Before I can even fathom if she’s serious, the familiar, loud chop of a helicopter fills my ears and the wind picks up at my feet. I look up toward the sky. Rescue! Frantically, I wave to the copter with both arms.
“You’re going to pay for this,” I tell Taylor with a confidence in my voice the rest of my body does not possess.
The sleek navy-blue helicopter makes its landing and Taylor shoves me toward it.
Two pieces of information become rapidly apparent: this copter is not Force despite the telltale color and decal, and I am an idiot.
Taylor’s gun is leveled at my face when I turn to protest. Mask off, blond hair swirls around a deceptively gorgeous, unfriendly face.
“Get in.” Her voice loses its playful tone, her charming smile gone flat into firm grimace.
However, I am no easily taken bait. I lunge toward the gun with such laughable disgrace I’m disheartened even before she knocks away my hands, sweeps my feet, and forces me to land on my butt with a painful flop.
Her foot comes down and digs into my sternum, pushing me against the cold concrete of the roof.
“Never lunge toward a gun, Miss Piccolo.”
“Thanks for the tip.” Her boot remains pressed against my sternum. “Do you mind? Can’t exactly kidnap me if I’m pinned to the ground.”
She removes her foot, gun aimed at my head. “Get up, princess.”
“Don’t call me that.”
I dig my palms into the loose concrete and push myself up. Taylor takes me by the shoulder and spins me around, pressing the gun into my spine.
A hulking man hops off the copter and offers me his hand to step in.
Pointedly ignoring him, I climb in without assistance.
As soon as the three of us are strapped in, the helicopter ascends into the blackness.
My captor and I are provided ear protection, and Taylor removes her heels and flings them out of the open helicopter door before slamming it shut.
The man gives her a pair of work boots and a watch that looks like a handcuff.
She’s also provided a jacket, which I could use, but I doubt anyone cares.
The city disappears below us and I orient myself via the constellations out the window.
It takes me a while to make out the North Star, but I find it and determine we are going west. West over New Jersey, over Papa’s hazy gray factories pockmarking the otherwise lush greenery of the state.
Farther west over the Delaware River, over the smoking cities of Pennsylvania and toward dark forests.
I don’t know where they are taking me, but I think I know who they are.
Copters are expensive. This one is stolen, but they have enough money to finance its upkeep.
This was a highly organized effort, both in my extraction and however the hell this maniac snuck into the party.
Also, this maniac has rebel sympathies and is a complete murder machine.
So. Stolen aircraft. Organized effort. Rebel sympathies. Expert killing.
I am with the Order of Prometheus, and they are going to kill me.