A Queen's Pride

by N. D. Jones

  His friends’ bodies smashed to the floor over and again. Kendrick could do nothing but watch.

  Flaming arrows appeared from nowhere.

  Kendrick screamed.

  The arrows flew toward his friends.

  Thunk.

  Thunk.

  Thunk.

  Thunk.

  Heads exploded, a popping eruption of brain tissue and blood. The four flaming arrows hissed, slithered to the floor and walls, lapping up gory remains.

  Kendrick threw up in his mouth.

  “Rockmane—abuser of self. Darkstare—covetous. Spiritgrim—greed. Hellgaze—hypocrisy. Riggs Muller. Cree Aubrey. Zane LeRoy. Lennox West. You wanted to shoot me in my head. Will this do instead?” She nuzzled his neck and, were those whiskers he felt? “What do you think of the Seven Arrows of Sekhmet?”

  “S-seven?”

  “Ah, of course. How can I expect you to make an informed decision when I haven’t presented you with all of the facts?”

  She shoved him forward, knives scoring his back and the same invisible power that had dominated his friends had him in its grasp. It whipped him around and he saw the face of his temptress in red.

  Kendrick wished he hadn’t. Nothing like her should exist. But she did, and she’d tracked him and his friends to Salty Night Bar and Lounge. Kendrick thought of Jackie and their children. They were at home. He’d promised his wife he wouldn’t get drunk or stay out too late. She hadn’t believed him, but she’d nodded, kissed his cheek, and told him to, “have a good time and drive safely.”

  He cried. Seven Arrows of Sekhmet. The lion-headed woman had used only four. That left—his body flew through the air, propelled by the force of three flaming arrows sinking into him. He crashed into the wall behind him, a flaming arrow in each leg and one in his stomach.

  Kendrick couldn’t scream, move, or even choke on the blood that had gathered in his mouth.

  The creature floated up to him, her maw coated in blood. “Lusting after women. That is your sin among many, Mr. Widow Maker.”

  The arrows burned . . . and so too did Kendrick.

  Chapter 14: Lady of Transformations

  Kingdom of Shona

  Temple of Sekhmet

  “Where in the hell is she?” General Volt marched to the temple’s archway, hands on her hips and a growl in her throat. “I don’t see her.”

  “I don’t think that’s how it works.” Ekon finished rolling his sleeping bag. He still had a few more items to clear out of the temple, but his progress had been slowed by the general’s and Mafdet’s arrival. “Asha disappeared. She didn’t exit the temple like a normal person, so I doubt we’ll see her jogging up the path to meet the sun.”

  General Volt spun around, the bottom of her black suit jacket whistling upward with the harsh, abrupt movement. At this time of hour, why General Volt and Mafdet were dressed in their full Shieldmane uniforms, he had no idea. Ekon had foregone his suit, boots, and tie in exchange for comfortable sandals, shorts, and a T-shirt.

  Mafdet shook the trash bag she held in her left hand. “I’ll take this granodiorite mess to the house.”

  “That can wait. We need to figure out what to do about the sekhem.”

  “Don’t bark at me, Tamani. I’m not in the mood for your attitude.”

  “I wouldn’t have an attitude, if one of you had informed me of Asha’s plans before she vanished.”

  “She didn’t exactly vanish,” he interjected. “I mean, she did but we know where she’s gone.”

  “Do you really want to speak to me right now, Ekon?”

  “Asha invoking the spirit of Sekhmet isn’t his fault. She’s an adult and sekhem. If you were here, what would you have done differently?” Mafdet held up the trash bag to General Volt. “These pieces are all that’s left of a centuries-old statue. None of us thought it possible to truly call on the gods, but Asha did. She believed. Don’t be angry with him for going along with Asha’s plan.”

  Ekon took the trash bag from Mafdet. No need for them both to make a trip back to Asha’s house when he had to go down the hill to drop his supplies off in his truck.

  “I’m not angry with Ekon, but, shit, Asha goes from depressed and distant to calculating and vengeful in the blink of an eye.”

  “It wasn’t in the blink of an eye,” Mafdet said, voicing his thought. “Asha has been plotting this for a year. We all saw the wheels turning. Her extensive research. Her disappearances for hours. She eats but only to prevent me from complaining. As far as I know, she hasn’t been in her lion form since returning home. She speaks to her parents. I’m convinced she think she sees them. Asha roams the house at night when she should be asleep. She cries more than she’ll admit to anyone. And she swims in the ocean until exhausted because that’s the only place she feels she can release her anger without hurting herself or anyone else.”

  “I know, but—”

  With a shake of her head, Mafdet patted General Volt’s shoulder. “No offense, my friend, but you don’t know. You’ve never lived with Asha. If you had, you would truly understand the toll her parents’ deaths have taken on her. I don’t have to ask how you felt the day we saw what those monsters had done to Asha. Each of us would’ve killed to avenge her, along with Zarina, Bambara, and our Shieldmane brothers.”

  “It’s our duty to serve and to protect. But how can we do that if she won’t let us?”

  “Little of what she has done is about us.” Mafdet and General Volt turned to face Ekon. “Asha thinks she’s fulfilling her mother’s dying wish.”

  General Volt’s brows knitted together then an eyebrow arched. “Did Asha tell you her sekhem name?”

  “In a way.” Ekon nodded to the remnants of the crumbled statue in the trash bag he held. “We should’ve guessed it. Sekhem Zarina gave Asha the alpha name of Sekhmet. Considering it was bestowed before her mother was murdered, it makes sense Asha would assume her mother meant for her to avenge her parents as her first act as the new sekhem of Shona.”

  “Too much sense,” General Volt agreed. “She invoked the worst aspects of Sekhmet, I gather?”

  “That’s what Asha said. War, destruction, plagues.”

  “Divine retribution in its most awful forms. Sekhem Sekhmet.” General Volt sounded as if she was testing the title on her lips and found it not quite to her liking. “There’s a reason why sekhems aren’t traditionally named after the gods.” General Volt snorted a laugh, slapping Mafdet on the back. “But you’re named after a god, my friend, no wonder Zarina had no issue gifting her daughter with Sekhmet’s name. Goddess Mafdet—judgment and justice but also execution. That’s the problem with gods, they don’t know whether they want to help or hurt mortals. No wonder Asha is confused.”

  Ekon slung his sleeping bag over his shoulder. “I don’t think she’s confused. What Asha is doing in Vumaris is an attempt to staunch the bleeding in her heart. Until the humans who stole her innocence and security are no more, she’ll continue to be blinded to the real reason Sekhem Zarina named her after Sekhmet.”

  General Volt scanned him, as if taking his measure and finding whatever she sought in the gaze that didn’t flinch from her scrutiny. “Ah, now I remember why I didn’t complain . . . too much . . . when Zarina elevated you to Asha’s Second Shieldmane. You’ll make a fine khalid one day.”

  “I don’t care about becoming second alpha of Shona. My only goal is Asha’s happiness and safety.”

  “You made Tamani’s point but, like Asha, you can be blind to the obvious.” Mafdet pointed to the archway. “The sun has risen but our sekhem hasn’t returned. You said Asha had from sunrise to sunrise, correct?”

  “Yes. She must still be in Vumaris chasing her demons.”

  “Sekhmet’s bloodlust.” General Volt sighed, hands going to her hips. “If Sekhmet’s bloodlust has taken over, we may not be able to save Asha a second time.”

  In an uncharacteristic public display of affection, Mafdet granted General Volt a one-arm hug. “A wise but ann
oying person once told me to have faith in my sekhem. I return that advice. Have faith, Tamani.” Mafdet reached out her free hand to him, and he took the offer. “Have faith, Ekon. Asha will return to us. We’ll make sure we’re here when she does.”

  “What if, when she comes home, she’s more Sekhmet than Asha?” Ekon asked, terrified that would prove the case.

  “The sad, unforgivable truth is that we didn’t save Asha a year ago. That’s not who we brought home. We’ve spent the past year pretending otherwise. Sekhem Sekhmet has been with us all along. It was the goddess who set the sekhem free, not the other way around.”

  The Republic of Vumaris

  Lower West Ngaso

  “I knew you would come. I told Savannah you would be back. I told them all. But no one would listen.”

  Bam. Javier’s double-barrel shotgun exploded. Two perfect shots to the chest. He reloaded. Shot again. Again. Again. All dead center. None of them kill shots. He pulled a Glock from his waistband and unloaded the weapon—seventeen direct shots to the head.

  Perfect aim.

  Nothing.

  He kept shooting, moving from one gun to the next.

  Load. Shoot.

  Load. Shoot.

  What would it take? Fuck, what in the world would it take to kill her?

  “Why in the hell are you just standing there? Say something.” Javier shot again. Like all the other bullets, they went in and out. No entry or exit wounds. No blood. No damage except to his wall behind whatever in the hell had entered his home after he’d dozed off while waiting for Savannah to return home.

  While Javier may have never seen the lion-woman who’d materialized in his bedroom, he damn sure could figure out who was responsible for it being there. He didn’t know if Asha was somehow behind that lion’s mask or whether she’d summoned the creature to do her bidding.

  “Stop hiding and come out and face me.” He let his useless gun slip from his hand and onto the floor. He’d unloaded every bit of ammo he had into the creature. The second he’d run past her and out his bedroom door, without her moving a clawed hand to stop him, he had given up what little hope he’d had of fleeing his house. There was no escape to be found. Neither through a window nor out a door. He’d tried each one, and they had all led back to his bedroom and the silent but watchful creature within.

  She sat in a chair in the corner near the window. His chair. Many nights, including this one, he’d reclined there, a gun in his lap, waiting for Asha to return for her pound of Rogueshade flesh. Javier should’ve known the girl would choose the night of her parents’ deaths to come for him. Had she hunted the others too? From the dried blood on her face, hands, dress, hell, even on her toes, she’d made many stops before seeking him out.

  Javier glanced to the body in his bed. Not Savannah’s, although the person rested on his wife’s side of the bed. Rest wasn’t an accurate descriptor, though. Nothing as peaceful as that four-letter word could explain the condition of the damned soul taking up half of Javier’s marital bed.

  “Where’s Savannah and why did you bring Deputy Chief London here?”

  The devil’s spawn didn’t answer.

  “Talk to me. Did you kill my wife because you damn sure did something foul to London?”

  Not only had Javier awoken in his chair to find the creature in his room but a sweating and vomiting London in his bed. The older man had swollen lymph nodes over his entire naked body, groin included. He’d had two seizures since arriving. His jaw had stiffened but the rest of him had jerked in rapid succession. London’s face had turned blue and, for a minute, Javier thought the man would lose consciousness. It would’ve been a kinder fate if he had. Instead, Frank London was as awake and as cognizant as Javier.

  “He’s dying.”

  The creature had to know that, of course, but nothing in her countenance registered an ounce of sympathy.

  London groaned and, as much as Javier wanted to help him, he didn’t want to catch whatever plague he carried. Bubonic, based on the look of the swollen nodes.

  “You did this to him.”

  The accusation fell flat. Javier was scared shitless but a strange part of him suspected he would’ve felt better if he heard the spawn of the devil call him Mr. Stormbane. Instead, her golden eyes had closed, and her breathing had slowed.

  Not asleep but also unconcerned with him as a threat. For as many times as he’d shot her, her body no worse for his efforts, his threat level ranked up there with a gnat.

  Savannah wouldn’t be returning home, he realized. The thought of her death should’ve grieved him more but all he could muster was a depressing sense of relief. The fraud they’d called a marriage was finally over. Strangely, he had the inhuman creature to thank for his marital liberation.

  Javier slid down the wall on the same side of the room as a groaning London but across from his would-be killer.

  “You’re going to make me watch him die. That’s why you brought him here, isn’t it? You know the deputy chief is the one who sent us after you and your parents. All the intel we needed came from him. The zoo lions were also his idea. But you know that already. I know you do. To be so young, you have an evil streak.”

  Javier had spent the past twelve months looking over his shoulder for Sekhem Asha or one of her Shieldmanes. She’d all but told him she would return his cruelty with her own. Not a day had gone by without his mind revisiting the night at Sanctum Hotel and the two days at the riverside warehouse.

  During his time in the military, Javier had gone on many missions and killed countless people. They had no names worth remembering or faces he could recall. They had been targets in need of eliminating. Good soldiers followed orders. Javier Hernandez had always been an excellent soldier.

  Dressed in a tank top and jeans, Javier raised his knees to his chest. He didn’t know where to look, so he stared at his bare feet.

  Javier hadn’t been able to forget Asha’s name or her angelic face. Her defiant golden-brown eyes. Her sarcasm and deceptively sweet voice. He also hadn’t forgotten the sound of her pained cries or the acidic smell of her urine because he’d given an order for the guards not to permit her to use the bathroom. “If the stubborn devil’s spawn wants to relieve herself, she can piss where she sits.” With as much dignity as she could muster, she’d squatted and done her business in front of men and women who’d already thought her no better than an animal in the bush.

  No, Javier hadn’t been able to forget Sekhem Asha. Obviously, she hadn’t forgotten him either.

  “I’m sorry.” He’d spoken the apology low and more to his knees than to the creature. Javier lifted his head, cleared his throat, and repeated, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what we . . . for what I did to you, Asha. To your parents. To your friends. I’m truly sorry.”

  Eyes opened and, if Javier weren’t mistaken, they were less lion gold and more golden-brown like the Asha from his nightmares.

  Javier thought she would speak, perhaps tell him she could smell his fear but not his regret, as she’d done to Widow Maker. He had indeed come to regret his actions. But regrets changed little. They certainly couldn’t resurrect the dead or erase a girl’s memory of two days of unjustifiable brutality.

  Her only response to his apology were cold eyes that took in Javier then London.

  The deputy chief looked awful—swollen, pasty, and flushed. As he watched London, the man’s toes and fingers shifted from red to brown to black. Impossible. Gangrene didn’t kill body tissue in a matter of minutes. Then again, everything he’d seen since awaking should fall within the impossible category. But it didn’t. It was all too real. Horrifying but real.

  Javier couldn’t watch London suffer any longer, so he left his bedroom. Again, the lion-headed creature permitted him to exit. When he reached his living room and sat on the sofa, a shivering London appeared beside him. Javier moved to the dining room. The kitchen. The basement. Hell, even the half bath on the first floor. No matter where he went in his house, a plague-torture
d London soon appeared. Resigned to having to watch the man responsible for bringing hell to the Shona, Javier returned to his bedroom, sliding down the same wall where he’d taken refuge earlier.

  Seconds later, London materialized in front of his feet.

  “K-kill m-me. K-k-kill me.” Tongue licked dry, cracked lips and London repeated his plea.

  Javier had expended all his bullets on Asha’s lion demon. There was a sharp chef’s knife in the kitchen. Javier had never favored knives, but he knew how to kill an enemy with one. The deputy chief wasn’t his enemy, but the man was suffering.

  “You’ve made your point. You can let him die now.”

  A manila folder appeared in the small space between Javier’s feet and London’s prone form.

  He picked up the folder, opened it, and then swore. The fucking addendum to the treaty.

  The irony had Javier laughing and crying. She could’ve killed him while he slept. The same with Deputy Chief London. He didn’t doubt, however, that she would eventually take both of their lives.

  “Two days, huh?”

  Her eyes slipped closed again, her clawed hands folded in her lap, and her silence couldn’t have been more terrifying than if she would’ve come after him with her sharp teeth.

  Two days. They’d shot her. Starved her. Withheld fluids. They’d set real lions loose on her while chained and with no way of defending herself. He’d ordered his own version of waterboarding, spraying her with cold, dirty river water. She’d suffered their mockery and taunts, their insults and curses, their absolute disrespect of her personhood. The Rogueshade had treated Sekhem Asha as less than an animal. In Vumaris, animals had more rights and legal protections than that of the felidae of Shona.

  For two days, Javier stayed in his bedroom, using the closet as a makeshift bathroom. When he’d first had to take a piss, he’d opened the door to the upstairs bathroom but promptly slammed it shut before the group of lions feasting on a downed but not yet dead antelope spotted him. She had turned every room in his home into a supernatural highway, connecting his house to what he assumed were locales in Shona.