A Queen's Pride

by N. D. Jones

  Other SUVs joined the one Asha had climbed out of, and she realized the driver had been waiting for the others. Ten trucks in total, with five Rogueshades in each, not counting the four who had been in the truck with her.

  They piled out, wearing a combination of tactical gear and stolen hotel uniforms. Asha grieved for not only her parents and Shieldmanes, but also for the human hotel employees who had the misfortune of working the shift that put them in the path of the Rogueshade.

  No one touched her. They didn’t have to. The guns pointing at her delivered their message. She’d deduced they’d been given a two-part mission. Her capture had been part one. Her signature on the addendum of the 1902 boundary treaty between her kingdom and Vumaris would be part two. She had no intention of signing. They had no way of knowing that, of course, but they soon would. Where would that then leave her?

  Would they try torturing her into submission? Probably.

  Would she escape the warehouse before they did irreparable damage to her body or mind? Maybe.

  Would she slaughter every Rogueshade, whether in the warehouse or elsewhere, if she survived? Definitely.

  Asha had her own two-part mission. One, to learn as much as she could about Rogueshade and their connection to Royster and London. Two, to stay alive. Come morning, Ms. Choi would arrive at Sanctum Hotel. Ekon would’ve already freed himself from the freezer. He would’ve also contacted General Tamani Volt, leader of the Shieldmane Panthera Leos. She would remind him of emergency protocols, and he would relay, hopefully, Asha’s message about Ms. Choi. Tamani had never met Ms. Choi but she’d been briefed. With Bambara and Zarina dead, only Asha and Ms. Choi, however, knew the finer details of their alliance. With Tamani’s assistance, Ekon would arrange to have their fallen returned home. He wouldn’t return with them, though. She wished he would, but Ekon wouldn’t leave Vumaris until he found and rescued her or, if the worst happened, recovered her body.

  Playing the role of compliant hostage, Asha walked into the warehouse. Dirt-covered windows spanned the width of the upper level of the building, cement floors the lower level. She couldn’t detect any odor in the room she recognized as to what had once been stored there, but she could smell rats, roaches, and what both left behind. She also smelled lions but dismissed the thought as absurd. Asha wore no shoes, but her feet weren’t cold, and it would take more than walking around a filthy warehouse to cut them.

  She eyed the single chair in the center of the room and wondered if Rogueshade could get more movie cliché. Perhaps, in one of the upstairs rooms they had a cattle prod for her lion form, rope to string her up with, not that she’d seen a beam in the warehouse. Or maybe they would see how long she could hold her breath underwater or how many cuts to her tough felidae skin it would take before she cried and begged and then gave them what they wanted.

  Of all her years of sekhem training, none of them included torture. Felidae had a high pain threshold. When it came to torture, that truth could prove a blessing or a curse.

  The Rogueshade behind Asha shoved her toward the wooden chair. “Sit your ass down, and don’t speak.”

  Considering she hadn’t uttered a word since she let the brutes capture her, staying quiet wouldn’t be an issue. Asha sat, hands on her knees. She waited for what would come next.

  Except for the Rogueshade who’d shoved her, the driver from the SUV she’d been driven there in, the others took up posts on both levels. Perhaps even a few stationed themselves outside. She did hear the door behind her creak open then close.

  “You’re a pretty little thing. Young too. A princess.”

  “Hafsa Sekhem, not a princess.”

  “What?”

  “Hafsa Sekhem of the Kingdom of Shona. That’s my title.” The sound of her mother’s dying voice in her head threatened to flood her eyes with tears. Asha forced them down. She would not show weakness in front of this male or any other human. “That was my title before my parents were murdered. I’m now Sekhem of the Kingdom of Shona.”

  A sentence she’d thought she wouldn’t say for at least two decades. The words felt wrong. The feeling they invoked nauseating.

  The Rogueshade grinned at her. He had perfect white teeth. His dentist should be proud. Asha would make the grinning Rogueshade swallow every one of those teeth. She would also break his wide nose, pluck his dark brown eyes from their sockets, and cut his spine from his back.

  Asha returned his smile, showing him her own straight white teeth.

  “That’s a fancy title for a little girl. I’m glad you know it because you’ll need it for the paperwork.”

  A female Rogueshade jogged up to them. They all had a rigid, almost uniform way of walking, talking, and handling weapons that screamed human military. Whether active duty or freelance, Asha neither knew nor cared. Their fate would be the same.

  The woman handed the man a manila folder and a ballpoint pen. “He wants her signature on all three pages. Make sure she signs legibly.” The woman rounded on Asha. “For the trouble your parents caused, for the good soldiers they killed, we should feed your ass to real lions.”

  So, she had smelled lions. Asha should’ve trusted her senses, even though there was nothing logical about having lions in a warehouse, even ones accustomed to being around humans.

  The female Rogueshade leaned close enough to Asha for her to smell alcohol on her breath and whoever’s penis she’d had in her mouth before leaving on the Rogueshade’s murderous mission. She also detected two distinct male scents on the female—one of which was the male in front of her, the other of a male she’d scented back at the hotel.

  “Nighthide. Don’t.”

  “We should make her sign then let the lions have her.” The female . . . Nighthide, punched Asha in the face. For code names, the woman could’ve chosen better. As for her punch, it barely registered. If they were going to torture Asha, they would have to do better than attacks on the level of a human’s strength.

  “It took some doing, but London got two lions from the local zoo. They aren’t as big as your daddy, whose head I would’ve loved to have stuffed and mounted to my wall, but the motherfucker turned back into his human form when his ass finally kicked the bucket.”

  “Nighthide.”

  She ignored the man’s gravelly voiced warning.

  “Not as big as dead daddy but still big.” With a thumb over her shoulder, Nighthide pointed to the upper level. “We had to tranq them, but they’ll be awake soon. Awake and hungry.”

  “That’s enough.”

  “What, Stormbane? We lost friends tonight, and it’s all her damn fault.”

  Nighthide struck Asha again. The same kind of punch, to the same left cheek, and with the same effect. She raised her hand to level another weak blow.

  Stormbane caught Nighthide’s wrist. “Leave the girl alone. We follow orders. Right now, the only order we have is to have her sign the papers you just brought me. If she doesn’t . . .” He shrugged wide shoulders. “We’ll wait for orders to tell us how he wants it handled.”

  “We know how to handle her kind.” With a hard tug, Nighthide yanked her arm free of Stormbane’s hold. With how much bigger the male was to the female, he’d either not been holding her wrist tightly or he’d loosened his grip so she could have the win.

  “Matching bands.” Asha nodded to the couple. “Until he grabbed your arm, I hadn’t noticed the twin gold bands.”

  Nighthide’s eyes narrowed and her lips twisted. “Shut up and mind your damn business.”

  “You’re right. Your marriage is none of my business. I only mentioned it because you reek of a human male I encountered at the hotel.”

  “Don’t push it. My wife told you to shut up.”

  “Of course, but do you not wonder who it is that I smell on your wife? She wasn’t with you before you attacked my family and friends, was she? Maybe your group left first. Or perhaps she and he snuck away in one of those rooms I can see from here while you were preoccupied.”

  Sto
rmbane’s jaw tightened, and Nighthide’s eyes flashed.

  “Blond ponytail. He tricked me into opening my suite door for him.” Asha granted Nighthide the same perfect white teeth smile she’d given to her husband—a prelude to the claws that would rip them apart. “He’s dead now. But you know that because he didn’t return with the rest of your murderous group. You know he’s dead, the same way I know my parents and friends are. I would say that makes us even, but that wouldn’t be true.”

  “She’s lying.”

  “About Brightstrike being dead?” Stormbane closed the short distance between his wife’s body and his own. “He’s not here with us, so I count him among the fatalities. Or did you mean she’s lying about you fucking that son of a bitch behind my back?”

  “Can’t you see what she’s doing? She’s trying to turn us against one another.”

  “Yeah, I know what the girl is doing. But I also know your lying, cheating ass. I had a feeling something was going on . . . that you were up to your old shit.”

  “It was her breath that gave her away,” Asha interjected smoothly. “I’ve never engaged in fellatio, mind you, so I’m not positive about post-oral sex procedures. I assume there’s brushing of teeth and tongue involved. Perhaps the use of mouthwash. I doubt either are in stock here. From what I can smell coming from your wife’s mouth, she used alcohol to hide the scent. Or to minimize the taste of his cum, if she’s into swallowing. I saw a woman do that on a porno I watched last night.” She shook her head, as if she’d gotten lost in an erotic memory. “Anyway, I don’t know what kind of alcohol she used. But I’m sure you know what she likes to drink, other than from the penis of your friend Brightstrike.”

  Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

  The flurry of punches didn’t surprise Asha. What had surprised her was how long it had taken for Nighthide to retaliate.

  Asha’s chair tipped back, but the strength of her legs prevented her and the chair from toppling over.

  “How much do you love your wife?” Asha asked Stormbane, unbothered by the punches to her face and chest that left Nighthide winded but her unfazed.

  “Not enough to keep putting up with her lying and bullshit.”

  Good answer. Asha stood, swung upward and connected with the underside of Nighthide’s chin.

  The woman’s mouth fell open, and Asha could see three inches of her lion’s claws sticking through the female’s tongue.

  She yanked forward, the movement bringing with it half of the human’s tongue, lower lip, and part of her chin.

  For the second time that day, the barrel of a gun pressed to her head.

  “You said you were tired of putting up with her lying and bullshit.” Asha lifted her clawed hand to Stormbane, offering him his wife’s bloody tongue. “Now you won’t have to.”

  Nighthide crumpled to the ground—sobbing and bleeding.

  “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. I should kill you.”

  “You probably should, but you won’t. Not yet, anyway.” Asha tossed the partial tongue to a retreating Nighthide, aided by another Rogueshade soldier who half carried, half dragged her away from Asha. “I won’t sign those papers, by the way.”

  The barrel pressed harder against the side of her head.

  Using a fistful of her dress, Asha wiped her hand clean. Well, as clean as she could without soap and water. There was still a little blood and skin under her fingernails.

  Asha sat in the chair, crossed her legs, and showed Stormbane her white teeth again. “Get a video recorder. I have a message for Chief Royster and Deputy Chief London.”

  Chapter 7: Lady of the Many Faces

  “You have completely lost your mind.” Silas slammed the conference room door behind him, stalked to Frank and grabbed the shorter man by his suit lapels and onto his tiptoes. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Any idea what Shona will do when they learn their alphas are dead?”

  “Get your hands off me.”

  “I wish I could shake some sense into you.” With a hard shove, Silas pushed Frank away from him. His second-in-command stumbled and fell over the chairs behind him. “Even if I could shake sense into you, it’s already too late.”

  Frank stared up at Silas with those big owl eyes of his, face defiant and attitude all wrong. “That will be the last time you touch me.” Using the arm of a chair, Frank got to his feet. “We had a plan. You agreed to it. Don’t pretend you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t agree to your hit squad assassinating leaders of a sovereign nation.”

  Silas kicked a chair, sending it rolling to the other side of the room. Needing to put distance between himself and a man who, with each passing day, he regretted forming an alliance with, Silas marched away from Frank. Too agitated to sit, he paced.

  “One of your Rogueshade reported in. I had to drag myself out of bed to meet with him. Do you know what he showed me?” Silas didn’t wait for Frank to answer. “I bet you do know. You and your damn pictures. Blood was everywhere, and the khalid and sekhem were dead.” Palms slammed on the table. “Dead, Frank. Both of them.”

  “About four dozen of my Rogueshades died during the mission. You sound like you care more about the dead felidae than our human patriots.”

  “You said your group would use a felidae gas to weaken them so they could snatch the girl. That’s what you said. That’s what I agreed to.” Silas waved his hands over his head, unsure what in the hell it meant but needing to physically express his frustration over an international incident he had no idea how to manage. “I didn’t sanction the slaughter of respected world leaders.” Palms slammed back down.

  Frank’s eyes narrowed as he took a seat and he tsk-tsked. “This is why you came to me, and why your party couldn’t win without mine. You and your party lack a spine to make tough decisions.” Elbows going to the table, Frank leaned forward, sneering up at him. “Your naïveté is a pain in my ass, Silas. You want power, money, and influence, but you turn a blind eye as to what it takes to get and maintain them. Yes, you agreed to have the Rogueshade sent to Sanctum Hotel to kidnap the hafsa sekhem.”

  Frank stood, planted his palms on the table like Silas, and asked with so much condescension Silas wanted to shake Frank like a rag doll, “How in the hell did you think that would play out, even with the use of the Basilisk Smoke? Did you really think the mission would go that smoothly? That felidae older than a century would be so easily controlled? That they wouldn’t put up one hell of a fight to protect their daughter? Even your spineless ass would fight if someone came into your home wanting to take Audrey away from you and your wife.” A finger rose and pointed at Silas. “We both know I’m right. The difference between the two of us is that I’m honest enough to admit it. I sent eleven Rogueshade squads and, from what I’ve been told, about half of them returned to the warehouse. Half,” Frank repeated, his gaze hard. “So, excuse the fuck out of me if I don’t shed a tear over the recently departed Khalid Bambara and Sekhem Zarina.”

  From opposite sides of the table, but not as far apart in ideology as Silas tried to convince himself they were, they glared at each other. This bell couldn’t be unrung. “No war, Frank. We can’t send Vumarian soldiers into war against the Shona.”

  “Why not? They have claws and fangs, but we have real weapons of war.”

  “If you think a nation older and richer than ours doesn’t have modern weapons, then you’re the naïve one. We would be fighting a blind war because we have little to no intel on the military capability of the kingdom. When have you seen footage of any kind from inside Shona? Pictures? Documentaries? Interviews? Primary or even secondary accounts? Shona leaders travel to other countries for a reason. Their borders are closed to non-Shona, but the international community accepts that foreign policy stance because they say no to everyone, including felidae from other countries. But where their borders are closed to immigrants and tourists, their financial institutions are not.”

  “Those facts change nothing. The felidae are ani
mals, Silas. Animals don’t deserve the same considerations and rights as humans.”

  Silas pulled a chair to him and sat. Listening to Frank’s racism gave him a migraine. He could mention that humans also had the felidae gene, though inactive. Did their inability to transmutate into a predatory cat make them less of an animal? “We killed a girl’s parents. I think that makes us the real beasts of prey. Do you have no remorse for turning the hafsa sekhem into an orphan?”

  Frank also claimed a chair, sitting with a calm grace unsuited to the man. “What I made her was a queen. For our purposes, it’ll be much easier dealing with an eighteen-year-old girl than her obstinate, arrogant parents.” Frank’s smirk made Silas want to jump across the table and punch him in his face. “You’re welcome, by the way. Northern Shona will be ours in . . .” He looked at the watch on his right wrist. “Five minutes.”

  “What do you mean ‘northern Shona?’ ”

  “I added a couple of more pages to the treaty’s addendum to include all of Shona above the twenty-eighth parallel north.” The smirk deepened, as did Silas’s rage. “Don’t look at me like that.”

  “That’s a third of Shona.”

  “I know. Think what we’ll be able to do with that additional land and resources. Our party will be unrivaled, our legacy set for centuries to come.”

  “You’re delusional.”

  “I’m a visionary.”

  “The girl won’t sign away a third of her ancestral land.”

  “You’re wrong. Like you said, she’s eighteen and alone for the first time. I asked you to meet me here because I spoke with one of my men. He has a recorded message from the girl.”

  Silas looked around the conference room, spotting a carafe of coffee on the sideboard. He thanked the nameless worker who saved him from imprisonment after he pummeled his second-in-command to death. With the cup to keep his hands busy, the coffee to keep his insides warm, and the caffeine to keep his body relaxed, he might be able to stomach the rest of the conversation.