Black Queen, Dark Knight

by Amarie Avant

At the last high suite level, the doors open again. I move back toward the Latino, he’s here for me. Why wait?

  “Nice jacket.” I tell him. From my peripheral, his left hand is hidden inside the jacket. The Latino is too afraid to go for his gun, no, his finger is already clutching the trigger.

  “Nice button up,” he replies.

  The elevator coasts down the rest of the way, bypassing the lower levels. Jazz softly plays through the speaker system.

  The doors open.

  People shuffle out, and the bachelor crew is putting the moves on some girls. The women’s view of myself and Latino is blocked by the guys. The frat’s backs are to us as they start to exchange phone numbers. That’s when my forearm crunches against my enemy’s trachea, shattering his windpipe. Moving quickly so as not to give him a chance to begin wheezing, my fist slams into the pressure point at the side of his neck.

  His arm locks up. A 9-millimeter falls. I twist his neck just as the last person gets off.

  The trio of ladies finally head in. One smiling ear to ear with her cell phone in her hand. I can almost bet who's the next person she calls or texts.

  “Oh…” They almost twist their stilettos, while glancing at the dead fuck on the ground.

  “Excuse me ladies,” I offer a smile, “Little early to be drunk. I’ll go get someone. But I’m sure he’ll be harmless on your way up.” I wink. They laugh flirtatiously.

  I’m headed to the private valet when Harry stops me to apologize. “I’m checking out.”

  “We here at Aria would like to offer—”

  “I need my truck, Harry!” Forget his apology, Ava had to be behind the mix up.

  “What about your luggage and Mrs. Windhoek?”

  “You woke us up. She left early.” I shrug.

  “Oh, I’ll… I’m sorry..”

  “The truck.”

  He follows me out to valet. The location is at the side of the strip. There is already a crowd of tourists, like a school of fish, moving to and from the Mandarin Oriental. Harry tells the valet my room number.

  “Be prompt, this one is our royal guest.” Harry tries a smile for charm.

  From behind him, I notice a redneck with a helmet in his hand. Just like the Latino, it’s easy to guess what’s hidden beneath. He glares straight at me. Who does this? Who lets on their intentions? Ava’s request has pulled out the masses of wannabe’s who are vying for the same hit. In this case, it’s open season and the mark is gold.

  I shove Harry. A little harder than necessary… but hey, Mikayla is always harping about a life.

  My Magnum is out. Hammer cocked. The redneck is shot between his eyes before I can confirm he is indeed a hit man.

  The helmet and gun fall along with him.

  People run.

  From out of nowhere, I’m shot dead in the center of my chest.

  Guess the seasoned assassins in the area finally took note of the kill-head.

  Mikayla

  Two Days Later…

  My eyes are puffy with tears. Not sure which I’ve cried for more of the two very divergent pasts that I have left behind. I certainly miss my parents. My mother and I are quite the pair when it comes to ‘crying’ happy tears and sad ones, too. Hell, she’s probably crying with me now, for reasons that are vastly different than I am. Because my cheeks have wetted with thoughts of Jagger Johansson. Where is he? Time is a blur. The South African that I’m with has only given orders.

  Eat.

  Walk.

  Don’t speak.

  I have asked if he is Zihula or Nivean and my response is a hard laugh.

  If he nabbed me for Prince Fari, then why did I get a Las Vegas Excalibur T-shirt and sweats to wear? I’ve been in the same attire since I woke up from the cocktail he injected into me. Or I could suppose the man I’m to be married to was tired of waiting for my arrival… very far-fetched. However, my new abductor hasn’t treated me with much respect, more like disdain. If he’s from my nation, then the bastard needs to learn a thing or two about how to treat a woman, royal or not!

  We traveled by cargo plane and I was unable to keep up with his order to ‘eat.’ Everything he tried to give me as far as food goes, came straight back up. And his lips tensed even more with each attempt to offer sustenance.

  Now, my eyes are closed. I don’t know what is worse. Those night terrors that always escape my mind or dreams of pitch black nothingness. As I sleep, I can feel us moving. I tell myself to recuperate and save up my strength.

  If Jagger is alive, he’ll come for me. Then my mind runs rampant with another thought.

  If Jagger is alive… he’s grown tired of me. And when I didn’t murder Freedman the other night, he came to the conclusion that I’m not like the Sinclair woman. I’m not like them and unworthy of whatever psychotic thoughts he came up with.

  Or Jagger’s dead, and I can feel myself crying in my sleep at that thought.

  What’s worse? Jagger died, or he decided that a petty, judgmental, too-scary-to-pull-the-trigger woman like me was unworthy of his time?

  Maybe it was all a lie and he took my virginity for sport, now I’ve been thrown to the wolves like he planned all along! Or, he completed his mission… to sex traffic me!

  I gasp awake with a start. A crick in my neck forces me to wince in pain.

  “Iphupha elibi—eh, uh… bad dream?” He asks, spitting out the words.

  It’s on the tip of my tongue to reply that I’m a slave to my own cognition. Jagger didn’t complete his mission. Of all the faults that he has, selling a woman to captivity for the means to further deprecate her is not one of them.

  But he can’t be dead…

  Instead of responding, I glance out of the window of the Toyota Hilux we got into after leaving the airport. Unlike the start of our drive, there aren’t green mountain ranges depicting a coastal land, like before when my abductor began to drive. Flat gold terrain and occasional trees can be seen. Although, I didn’t research Nivean, I figure we have to be going toward my birth home.

  Umama ufile—mama’s dead… roams through my mind. It means nothing to me now, but I can recall the intense hurt, like an elephant sitting on my chest, when I mumbled those words as a child.

  “What’s your name?” I inquire. My eyelid twitches from all the tears that have fallen down my cheeks, and I commend myself for the question instead of more negative self-talk.

  Mikayla Bryant you have been through so much, further than you can even recall… and I know without a shadow of a doubt that you’ve endured worse than most can imagine. Focus on him and getting away from him.

  “Shaka.” He glances at me, “Shaka Mthembu.”

  I nod my head.

  “That means nothing to you?”

  “What?”

  “Mthembu.” Once again my new abductor gives me the once over like I’m a new experiment in his Bunsen burner. “Makuachukwa, her royal highness, Makuachukwa Mthembu, oh that is until she married.”

  “Makuachukwa,” a manly voice called out my mother by first name.

  Her spine stiffened. My tiny feet tripped over each other, as we stopped moving with a jolt. I gasped for air.

  The flash of memory fades to oblivion so quickly that I have no time to assess it. Shaka’s laughter grates against my ears.

  “That was my mother,” the words stumble out of my mouth before I’ve even thought of them.

  He slaps a hand against the steering wheel. “Yes, Makuachukwa was your mother until she married,” he ends with a frown.

  “I assume you’re related to my mother somehow?” And that my father must’ve ruined everything? I stop myself from the usual stereotype of my culture, man impregnates woman and either ruins her life for a while or perhaps they’re enjoying life somewhere.

  When Shaka peers over at me this time, his dark gaze isn’t masked with ridicule. He licks his thick lips and his shoulders dip. “I am your cousin. My father is the little brother of Makuachukwa.”

  A heaviness weighs down my
tongue. Though the terrors stopped when I was a child, I could recall all the nights I woke up screaming and instantly wishing I hadn’t. I didn’t want Joyce or Earl giving up on me.

  Joyce or Earl!

  I mean my parents. As far as I’m concerned, they are the only family that I have. I contemplate on the newspaper clipping and am ashamed at the racing thoughts I just had. My biological mother may or may not have ran off with my biological father. But she died. “Can you tell me about them?”

  The car has started on Route 34, I notice behind us is a city. Ahead of us is the tourist city of Johannesburg approximately 180 miles away.

  “What’s that?”

  “New Castle.” He replies reluctantly.

  “So where are we going?” I ask.

  “Home.”

  I wonder how safe I am with Shaka. What’s the use of veering off the main road, while navigating around cities? The past is scary enough. I’m not ready to re-break my heart with the truth about my birth parents.

  ***

  A little less than an hour later, Shaka has driven past homes with abstract colors my mom would have a thousand questions about, and that’s after we’ve stopped and taken selfies.

  “Those are Ndebele groups. They keep to themselves, mostly,” he says.

  I’m too choked up, wondering what my mom is thinking, to respond. A few minutes later, on each side of us is homes, not as artistic, but with various shades of blues and green hues, a few pinks sprinkled throughout. Each home has some sort of straw covering. There are goats, chickens, and other animals.

  Then we pass by what I’d assume are middle class homes, with rich stucco walls, and alluring trim fixtures.

  After another ten minutes of driving through a township, with a strip mall that seems out of place with the outdoor market a few miles away. The cultures are clashing, in my opinion.

  At last, Shaka’s car chugs up a hill like a wheezing train. Above us are palm trees and pops of pale yellow that still my beating heart. Butterflies take flight in my stomach with a long-ago familiarity. It’s like riding a bike. Place your feet back on the pedals and the memories come flooding in.

  “You know where we are, finally?” Shaka sneers.

  “I think so,” I murmur.

  Colorful birds chirp. Despite the company currently keeping me, a tiny laugh bubbles from my throat as giraffes eat the buds off some sort of tree. Mom, I wish you were here. We’d never get to see anything like this unless we were on a safari. Dad would be learning the language, as an English instructor, he took pleasure in learning tidbits about the languages of places we traveled. Mom, well, she would find her way into someone’s kitchen after she knew about everything her eyes landed on. I wipe back the tears of sadness.

  During our ascend, the valley becomes leveled out below. Further out there is more land. With my eyes squinted, the buildings look brick and colonized.

  Jagger had said my uncle sold off bits of the land. Something tells me that this place use to look like gold shimmering in the wind from grain crops. Now, it’s much like a halo, surrounding what has to be Nivean land from what use to be, and has transformed into a metro area.

  “Do you have a phone I can use? Just to tell my parents I’m alright.”

  “You’ve already asked, Mikayla,” his reply is short, again.

  My shoulders tense. If I got away from Jagger, technically I did the night the Armenians came, then I can get away from Shaka, too.

  The palace is yellow with white pillars and stretches much of the length of the hill, dominating the place above what is and was Nivean. Two flags, with black, yellow, and green, zig-zags, are posted on either side of the entrance. A double staircase leads down on either side to the circular driveway, with a few cars doting the area.

  In the front yard, the grass is cut short around the circular driveway. Two baby elephants are filling their trunks with water from a tiny pond, and squirting it out at a much larger, sluggish elephant, laying in the warm water. Their mother or father doesn’t appear to be amused by their antics. With the animals comfortable here, it settles my heart a little.

  “My father, the regency, will be home shortly.” Shaka pulls parallel between a Mercedes and Jaguar. “The servants, they are lazy. They should have come out to greet you, Princess Mikayla.”

  I tilt my head. “Oh, I’m princess now?”

  “You are.”

  “And how do you feel kidnapping a princess?” I bite out each word. “and what happened to Jagger?” My hands balls into fists. Damn it, he’s grown on me. I have to know that he’s safe.

  “As I’ve said, that devil is dead or dying. You were brought here the only possible way, as he has brainwashed you, just like your mother was…”

  THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

  My hands slam toward my ears. My eardrums pop. That sound. I know that sound.

  THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

  The night had been beautiful. Stars high in the sky, a milky full moon. But the image before me is clear. There’s a little girl, with thick, beautiful hair. She’s wearing a gem studded tiara and donning a dress that puffs out around her legs. The material of her dress is washed in blood as she clings to a woman, classy in a ball gown. The woman is eerily at peace. The crown on her head bobbles each time her body is yanked, by a man in suit, down another stair and out onto the gravel.

  The child keeps gulping back more tears.

  Shaka starts to get out of the car. “Mikayla, you will respect and listen to me…”

  “Tomorrow, our nation will mourn the end of an era. They will cry rivers because your parents were good. You too, will go away for a while.” The man grunted as he began to heft the queen onto the floor of the car.

  I can’t understand the words, but the young child is asking the man about his love for her. She doubts it now, because he’s torn out her heart and trampled it under foot.

  I want to close my eyes as he taps her nose with affection. I can’t walk toward her. I’ve gotten out of Shaka’s car, but my legs are rooted to the ground! I cannot help her.

  “Yes, of course I do love you, Princess Mikayla,” the man said.

  I blink. The humongous elephant from the pond is charging toward me. The damn animal is as big as a house, ears flopping, trumpeting as he comes. He can kill me!

  Are you ready to remember, Mikayla? The words rustle through the trees and whisper across my skin.

  Jagger

  Two days back….

  The shot to my chest felt like my mother’s God punched me straight in my heart. I’ve made Him angry before, and of course He’s only being obliging by doing the same in return. That’s the type of relationship we have.

  I point my Magnum to the asshole who forgot the golden rule. To get Jagger down, go for the fucking head. A .357 bullet rips through the skull of the guy. I step off the curb at the Aria valet and onto the very empty taxi lane where the man lays dead. Standing before him, I let off an entire round. With each shot, the man is even less identifiable.

  “Where the fuck is my truck?” I grunt.

  Sirens are wailing.

  Venom slams through my veins. No, not the kind Trick has. But I’m gonna have to thank the bastard for my button-up shirt. Had the shot been any higher, I’d be dead.

  My stomach grumbles while I reload my Magnum. No time for weaknesses, I growl at myself, moving toward the parking garage. Then I pull out my cell phone and press on my truck application.

  “Where are you?” I ask into the reviewer.

  “Do not move!” An authoritative voice shouts from behind me.

  I stop walking. That tricky friend of mine can keep me from dying in certain instances but feeling the effect of being shot in the back, most importantly my spine is a no go.

  “Place the gun on the ground and raise your hands!” He shouts. I close my eyes, and my ears perk. There’s more footsteps. His tone became more confident.

  There are three of them. With your standard .40 caliber or perhaps a .45? Nope, still no
desire to be shot in the back.

  I glance to my left. The people inside of the casino eye me with fear, I offer a slight nod. If you don’t have a gun, we don’t have a problem.

  “Place the gun on the ground, raise your hands in the air or you will be shot down!”

  “You can’t shoot me in the back,” I caution in a cocky voice while tossing my gun to the ground. I grimace somewhat. My beloved gun, discarded so hastily.

  “Now raise your hands in the air!”

  Fuck, I shake my head. My hands go into the air. They are taking forever. I need them to issue another command so that I can get away.

  “Down to the ground.”

  That’s what I need, to get low. I get down slowly, placing my palms onto the warm cement, which actually soothes my mending cuts. As I start to lay down, I grab my second Magnum from my waistband, turn onto my stomach. Before my eyes connect with the officer who spoke, I’ve shot where his mouth is.

  The bullet rips through his nose instead. Okay, so my target was off. Then to the left, the black cop beside him is shot in the head, and so is the redhead to his right. There’s no sweat off my back. I didn’t need to subdue them and if luck ran out, having one shoot me as a last heroic effort wasn’t something I was ready to gamble.

  They’re expired. Permanently.

  And I’m up, grabbing my Magnum just as I hear the sound of copters.

  The birds in the sky are always my worst enemy. Too hard to dodge.

  You may think that I’m backing myself into a corner by continuing to head toward the parking garage. On the contrary, I need a shield to leave this place. The lot is about fifty yards out. I see a pair of flip flops hiding behind the curve in the casino building.

  I point my gun and take a breath. It’s not someone ready to rectify this kill-head, but a young blond.

  “Have a good day,” I mumble, returning to my socially challenged nature.

  “Th-thanks,” she shakes out the word.

  I dodge over the railing of the parking garage at the last moment. Inside, I pull out my phone, again, and toggle to my truck app.

  “Where the fuck are you?”