The Regent

by Marcus Richardson

  From the ground, Svea tossed that flame red hair over her shoulder and glared at Jayne. Her eyes were wide and bloodshot, rimmed in red. For the first time, Jayne noticed there was a faint trace of red under Svea's nose, as if she’d been bleeding and didn’t do a good job cleaning it off her face. She looked weak. She looked furious.

  Jayne’s smile widened. She looked infected.

  “Why, darling, did you happen to taste the little present I left for the good people of Edinburgh?” Jayne paced in front of Svea waiting for her to stand. “I do believe you did…you look like a little under the weather…”

  Svea's face stretched as her mouth widened in a snarl. Her teeth clenched, and she looked positively primal.

  Jayne didn’t lose sight of the fact that Svea was clenching her hands into the rubble on the ground. She ducked easily as Svea flicked her wrist and sent several rocks flying toward Jayne’s face. As payment for cheating, Jayne drove her left foot into Svea's sternum and smashed her back against the wall again.

  Jayne recovered from the kick and bounced back, slipping on the rubble. She threw her arms out to regain balance and glanced down at the sliding rubble pile, realizing she’d made a mistake. Svea barreled into her face first like a linebacker. They crashed to the ground in a cursing, flailing heap. Jayne pummeled her with fists and knees, then grabbed a handful of that beautiful red hair and yanked hard. She even heard some roots give way, but Svea didn’t seem to notice.

  Oh, you’re definitely infected…

  For the first time, a little uncertainty crept into Jayne’s confidence. She didn’t have enough data to know whether an infected person actually felt pain. She’d certainly seen enough evidence of them ripping each other to pieces over the past twenty-four hours, but she didn’t know if pain by itself would be enough to slow one down.

  Jayne decided to find out. The next time Svea lunged forward to strike, Jayne sidestepped her and backhanded her wounded shoulder. Svea grunted and moved away, but didn’t seem that bothered by the pain.

  That could have been your training. It also could’ve been the virus. Interesting…let’s try it again.

  Jayne danced back and forth on the slippery rocks, pretending to be off-balance. Svea fell for it and lunged forward again. Once more, Jayne sidestepped, but this time she threw an open-hand strike at the wound on her opponent’s shoulder. The punch drove Svea into the wall, but still the stubborn woman didn’t cry out.

  “Ma’am, I really don’t think we have time for this…” said the second of her men guarding Braaten.

  Jayne frowned. “Am I going to have to kill both of you?” She turned back to the task at hand.

  Over and over again, Jayne sidestepped Svea's increasingly clumsy punches and kicks, raining down punishment upon her lithe body—strike after strike with fists, elbows, knees, and boots. Jayne didn’t know how long it went on, but when she began to perspire, she realized she was not only working over Svea like a training dummy, but she was getting a great aerobic workout at the same time.

  Jayne bounced on the balls of her feet, ignoring the sliding rock pile under her. “Darling, I could do this all day, but I’m afraid I don’t have that much time…”

  Svea glared between clumps of red hair, her mouth swollen and split. Blood trickled from a cut at the corner of one eye, from her nose, and her swollen mouth. One ear was red and swollen where Jayne had boxed it. She had cuts on her lips and her shoulder was a bloody mess, but still she stood, defiant and at least in the right fighting pose.

  In the end, Jayne realized it was like smacking a piece of iron. Svea was just as tough as she was, had been through the same training. The possibility that the virus was dulling her senses finally drew Jayne to the ultimate conclusion that she would have to end the fight permanently.

  Jayne lowered her hands, enjoying the suspicious look on Svea's face. “I really am sorry we couldn’t go on longer. For a second there, I thought about letting you go, just so we could do this again someday.” Jayne wiped a trickle of sweat from her brow and exhaled. “But I’ve got to run.”

  “She’s got a knife!” called out Braaten.

  Jayne frowned as she drew the little kilt knife she took from Reginald’s castle from her concealed sheath at the small of her back. “Dammit all!” she said, her eyes still locked on Svea's. “You ruined the dramatic moment!” She pointed with the stubby Sgian Dubh at Braaten. “Why the fuck is he still standing here? I thought I told you booger-eaters to take him outside and kill him?”

  A scuffle ensued as it took both men to subdue the thrashing SEAL. Eventually they dragged him, screaming warnings for Svea out the hole in the wall.

  Jayne waited until she heard several rifle shots before she licked her lips again, tasting sweat. “Now it’s just you and me, princess.”

  Svea stared at her. “I’m going to kill you,” she said around her swollen lip in a raspy voice.

  Jayne laughed. “Defiant until the end.” She sighed, looking at her sister in arms over the tip of her gleaming little knife. “Why did you leave us, sweet Svea? We had some good times together, didn’t we? Mmmm….” Jayne said, remember several non-sanctioned encounters they’d had in the early days of their training. Back then, they’d found comfort where they could. They were dark days—as they were for every new recruit.

  Jayne touched the tip of the knife to her upper lip. “Was it because of what happened to your family? That nighttime raid when they took you away to join me and the others?” She watched for a reaction in Svea’s eyes and found nothing. “Perhaps it was what they did to your dear papa?”

  Svea’s bloodshot eyes narrowed.

  That’s what it was then…

  Jayne laughed. “All this time, Reginald thought you’d left because of your personal view that what we did was just plain morally bankrupt. And here it was simple bad-blood! Oh, dear sweet Svea…if you’d only said something to me…we could have avoided all this unpleasantness!” She put a hand on her hip. “I really did care for you, you know…in the beginning…”

  Svea spat a glob of bloody mucus on the rubble. “Spare me your lies, fitta.”

  “Well…how rude,” Jayne said, one hand over her chest. “I’m only trying to make conversation…you know, make your ending a little less painful, dear. You see, you’ve gone quite beyond the pale. There’s no coming back from this, Svea. You know I have to kill you.” She looked down at the Scottish knife in her hand.

  “Did you know Reginald gave me this thing? I never use it for fighting…it’s more…ceremonial, I suppose. He called it his mercy blade.” She snorted. “Do you know why?”

  “God, you’re a long-winded bitch, aren’t you?” rasped Svea.

  Jayne ignored the barb. “He used it to cut the throat of every person he killed. It belonged to his great-great-great-grandfather or some such hairy-assed Scottish chieftain from a thousand years ago or something,” she said waving her hand in the air. “That’s what he told me, at least.” She looked up from the little Sgian Dubh, rubbing her thumb over its intricate Celtic knot work carved into the handle. “Do you know who the last person who died under this blade was?”

  Svea glared at her, apparently lost in her own infection-addled thoughts.

  “Your father.”

  That got the response she was looking for. Svea roared and lunged at her, arms wide and hands clawing the air. Jayne moved forward and ducked under the first strike, intending to drive her blade up under Svea's ribcage.

  But the damn woman was fast—impossibly fast. She swung her arms down and knocked the Sgian Dubh off target—it embedded itself to the hilt in Svea's side, nowhere close to being a fatal wound.

  “Oh bother,” Jayne said, stepping back and staring at the knife handle sticking out of Svea's side. “Now that’s embarrassing.”

  46

  Reinforcements

  Cooper struggled against his two captors. Jayne was going to kill 13, he was sure of it. He’d never seen such hatred in someone’s eyes before. He knew
he had only seconds before they manhandled him outside for an impromptu execution, but he was going to make those seconds count.

  He dug his heels into the rubble and clawed with his hands. Both of his Russian captors were too close to fire a weapon—they might shoot each other—so he used that to his advantage, flinging elbows, knees, and even biting whatever was in reach.

  I’ll be damned if, after everything I’ve gone through, I’m going out at the hands of two asshats like you.

  He hooked his right boot on a large chunk of rubble, momentarily pausing their relentless, if slow, advance outside. Straining for all he was worth, Cooper used the momentum change to lash out with both arms. The closer they were to him, the more reluctant they’d be to shoot. His right hand found a chest strap or maybe part of a holster—he didn’t know and didn’t care—and his left hand grabbed a fist full of beard.

  Cooper performed his best chest fly and nearly succeeded in knocking his would-be executioners’ heads together. They cursed in Russian and one drove a fist into Cooper’s gut hoping to knock the wind from him, but it didn’t work. Cooper was already hunching up and had his mouth open, ready to tear a chunk from the bearded one’s neck.

  At a shout of warning from comrades who’d gathered to watch the spectacle, Cooper’s target pulled back just out of reach. Switching targets, Cooper rotated his hips, feigning a kick, and instead swung his left leg up and over the head of his second executioner.

  To the sounds of hoots and howls of laughter, Cooper managed to flip his body so he was suspended in the air like a bridge between the bearded man—still screaming in Cooper’s grip—and his partner, whose face was now between Cooper’s thighs.

  The former SEAL grinned and scissored his legs, squeezing. He watched with satisfaction as the Russian’s face changed color, heading toward the deeper end of red-purple.

  When Bearded Wonder tried to help, Cooper pulled and twisted hard, eliciting screams of pain and fists pounding into his exposed back. He grunted, clenching his teeth and praying to survive long enough to help 13. He could hear, over the choking, screaming, and laughing all around him, the smacks, grunts, and curses emanating from the ruined chapel.

  13’s face—her surprise, her dazed look—it all flashed through Cooper’s mind. Jayne would require everything she had to defeat, and he could tell by the way 13 looked she wasn’t firing on all cylinders. Whether it was the after-effects from the blast that ripped open the chapel, or maybe exposure to Jayne’s bioweapon, or…it didn’t matter. He was sure she wouldn’t survive the encounter if he couldn’t get in there and help.

  But first, he had to survive his own execution.

  Cooper screwed his eyes shut tight, concentrating on enduring the vicious hammer fist strikes to his spine long enough to knock out the man between his legs. The struggling back there was flagging—he could feel Jayne’s thug weakening with every second he was deprived of oxygen.

  Bearded Wonder, on the other hand, was mad as a badger in a wet sack.

  Over the laughter of the men gathered to watch, Cooper heard someone shout in a gruff Russian voice, “Just shoot the fucker already!”

  Nope.

  He let go of the beard with one hand and reached for the man’s genitals. Let’s see how you like this…

  Just as he opened his hand, a boot appeared under him and attempted to kick his spine through his stomach. Caught completely by surprise, all the air in Cooper’s lungs left him with a whoosh. His legs loosed just a little, and the man drove a fist in Cooper’s own crotch.

  The world went white, then red, and Cooper found himself writhing on the ground, seeing stars and gasping for air. When his vision cleared, he saw movement over the castle wall to the south. A black helicopter—dangerously close—swooped in, its rotors slicing through the air silent as a breeze. Cooper blinked. As close as it was, it should have sounded loud as hell, but over the commotion of his fight to survive, it sounded more like a ghost. He knew of only one type of helicopter that could do that.

  Well that escalated quickly.

  Whoever had kicked him, did it again in the ribs, and ripped his attention from the Stealth Hawk. Cooper wheezed in pain and rolled on his side. A quick check showed that the man he’d tried to choke to death was sitting on the ground a few feet away, with his friends laughing and slapping him on the back. His face was purple and his hands were at his throat, his bulging, bloodshot eyes shooting death in Cooper’s direction.

  Bearded Wonder was bent over, tears streaming down his face, his hands at his jaw, mumbling through his snot about pain. Cooper saw blood and one large patch of raw, ragged skin where a chunk of his beard had been ripped away. “Fucking American swine!”

  Cooper turned to see a third attacker send in yet another kick.

  “Not this time, asshole.” He grabbed the boot and twisted, throwing the man off-balance, then rolled on his back, toppling his attacker, who fell unceremoniously on top of him.

  His patience thoroughly worn through, Cooper reached up a hand for the man’s throat. Instead, his palm grazed the handle of a large knife. In less than a second, the knife was free and Cooper felt the warm spray of arterial blood wet his face.

  He shoved the still-twitching body off and rolled to his feet, ignoring the pain in his stomach, ribs, and everywhere else. He was in survival mode and ready to cut the throat of every man there to reach 13. From the sounds of it, she was at least fighting back, but he still didn’t think she had much of a chance.

  A man to Cooper’s left, wearing the same black outfit as the others, raised his rifle about ten feet away. In a flash, Cooper whipped his arm down and the mercenary fell to his knees with the knife handle protruding from his chest.

  Whoever the hell is in that helo needs to hurry the fuck up!

  Cooper turned and scooped up the rifle from the man with the slit throat, and then froze. A few feet away, two more mercenaries had their rifles already at their shoulders and fingers in the trigger guard.

  Still bent over, Cooper held on to his rifle, his mind ablaze, trying to come up with a way out of the predicament.

  “Drop it,” was the command in Russian.

  Movement behind the men brought a smile to Cooper’s face. “Why don’t you drop yours, bub?” Cooper said in flawless Russian.

  Their eyes widened in surprise at his language skills, then they died. The one on Cooper’s left staggered forward as three hollow-point rounds pummeled his exposed back. He opened his eyes in shock, took two steps, and face planted into the rubble.

  Most of his partner’s face exploded, spraying Cooper with a fine mist of blood and a fragment or two of skull. The open meat cavity pulsed with blood for a heartbeat, then the body fell in a heap, staining the ground red.

  Gunfire erupted all around him and in a handful of seconds, Jayne’s entire mercenary unit was erased. A handful of very dangerous men crouch-walked forward, checking sectors and taking up positions at the corners of the chapel and behind Mons Meg.

  Cooper wiped the blood from his face and blinked to clear his vision. “Fuck me…” he muttered. The man he assumed to be the leader of the mystery unit stepped forward and pulled down his simple black balaclava to expose the face of a friend.

  “Jesus, you look like shit that’s been twice through a goose, Hoss,” Charlie Marshal said through a face-splitting smile.

  Cooper could have kissed him. “Who sent you? I was doing just fine.”

  “Yeah, sure looked like it,” Charlie said, smirking.

  Cooper was about to reply when the big man at the corner of the chapel backpedaled and lowered his weapon to aim inside. “What the fuck is this?”

  “Jax!” Cooper hollered, bounding over the bodies and the rubble. “Don’t shoot!”

  13 staggered backward out of the gaping hole in the chapel and tripped on a rock. She almost went down, but caught herself and turned to face Cooper. A small knife handle stuck out of her side just above the left hip.

  Jayne appeared right behind her
, eyes locked on target, the face of a predator grinning out of the darkness. She hadn’t noticed that her friends had been cut down or that she was walking into a trap, and that fact made her all the more scary.

  47

  Vengeance is Mine

  Danika was so surprised by the revelation that Jayne was delivering the coup de grâce with the knife used to kill her own father, that even if the infection that raged through her system wasn’t already blocking her pain receptors, she still wouldn’t have felt the knife as it cut through the tender flesh of her side.

  She backpedaled under the impact and found herself blinking in the light. Her heel caught a rock, and she stumbled back, out of the chapel into a nightmare. Bodies lay all around her. She turned away from Jayne’s leering face and saw Braaten—who should’ve been dead—standing among a group of heavily armed men, all watching her.

  The look on his face told her everything she needed to know about how she was doing. She glanced down at the knife in her side.

  Oh, that’s not good.

  She didn’t even feel it. What she did feel was an all-consuming rage that had been simmering just below the surface, stronger than anything she’d ever felt, and it grew with every strike and punch that Jayne inflicted upon her bruised and battered body. To that point, she’d been able to rein it in—at least a little—but now…

  Controlling the infection’s influence on her actions was taking too much…it made her slow and open to attack. Jayne had been quick to take advantage of it, but Danika worried that if she relinquished control over the rage, she’d be too uncoordinated to fight back. She’d seen how the infected fought each other—it was like a rabid dog striking out at anything that moved. Jayne would destroy her in a heartbeat.

  But now…seeing the knife in her side and that smile on Jayne’s face…13 narrowed her eyes and unleashed the demon.