Royal Threat

by Michael Pierce

  Kale stood before the two bodies of the fallen soldiers. Each of them had a single bullet hole to the chest. Then I felt the presence of someone else, turned, and saw Gabriel with his rifle slung over his shoulder.

  “How did you…” I began, then saw a sports car parked a few hundred feet back.

  “I hotwired it from Mackenzie’s collection. I figure he won’t be needing it anymore,” Gabriel said.

  “Are they all dead?” Constance asked.

  “I don’t know,” Gabriel said. “I didn’t stick around long enough to find out.

  Kale was kneeling beside one of the soldiers and took back his cellphone. Standing, he put it to his ear and walked away from the group.

  “I hope they suffered,” Constance said. “For all the hell they put me through.”

  “They?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Constance scoffed. “The only thing worse than the Duke was the Duchess. “She was a complete schizo. The worst of the punishments came from her.”

  “But she seemed to care about you so much,” I said.

  “So she says… It was a deranged sort of love.”

  I left that alone for a moment and looked to see where Kale had gone. He was now pacing back toward us, his face full of anguish.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It was my mother who was calling earlier,” he said. “I can’t get through now. She’d left a message and… and she said one of you was there, in the camp. She said her name was Bethany and she was seeking shelter from the Queen. They took her in last night, then… The call was frantic. My mother said she just started killing people. Anyone. Everyone. She was like superhuman, slaughtering everyone. Then the line went dead.”

  “She said she was Bethany?”

  Kale nodded.

  If I hadn’t been convinced the girl at the Mackenzie estate wasn’t Bethany, I sure was now. There were currently two Bethany imposters, which left one more unaccounted for.

  “What’s our next move?” Gabriel asked.

  “I have to go to them,” Kale said. “I know my father was a—the target, but my mother and sister should—hopefully—have been spared. I have to go help them.”

  “I want to go with you,” I said, though a but hung in the air without me even having to say it.

  “But you have to go to the Queen,” Kale said.

  Returning to the Queen and Prince Byron was my first thought, but then I had the urge to return to the Mackenzie estate to find Lady Ramsey. Even though she didn’t—or couldn’t—stop what had happened to me at the hands of her husband for years, she cared for me more than anyone else in my life. And Mina would need her, especially now that we could all move on from her father’s reign of terror. Maybe Lady Ramsey would even be willing to care for Codie and Anabelle.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling the full weight of the apology. With everything he’d done for me, I wanted to return the favor. “You need to return to your mother and I need to return to mine. I hope you can understand.”

  “As much as I don’t want us to part ways, I do,” Kale said, his tone sad.

  “If we leave now, we can reach the fence just after dark,” Gabriel said.

  “I’d feel better if you stayed with the girls,” Kale said.

  “I won’t be welcomed back at the palace.”

  “But you can still help them get there.”

  Gabriel agreed and shook Kale’s hand. “We’ll see you soon. You’ve got my number. Call if you need anything.”

  “Until we meet again, sis,” Kale said. “That goes for both of you, I guess.”

  Constance’s face scrunched up like she’d eaten something sour.

  “Not really,” I told her as I gave Kale a hug.

  Kale stepped to Constance, and though she was not as forthcoming, she still returned the embrace. He didn’t linger, breaking out in a run toward the car after catching the keys from Gabriel. In a cloud of dust, the sports car spun and sped off, roaring down the road and disappearing beyond the trees.

  “I’ll drive,” Gabriel said, stalking toward the front of the limo. “I’ll just throw out the—never mind.”

  I walked around the back of the car and saw the driver’s side door wide open. “I’m guessing you found it like that.”

  Gabriel nodded and leaned down to look inside the cabin. “At least he left the keys in the ignition. Not that I need them, but it saves a few minutes. Climb in and we’ll get moving.”

  “I want to go back to the Mackenzie estate,” I said.

  Gabriel stared at me like I was crazy; Constance, less so. I was going to offer that Constance could stay in the car when we got there, but she sure didn’t need any persuasion from me.

  “You want to make sure they’re dead too?” she asked, sounding much sweeter than her words implied.

  “I want to make sure Lady Ramsey isn’t,” I corrected. “Though if we find Mackenzie’s body, then that would also help me sleep at night.”

  “Both of them.”

  “That wasn’t a joke? You really want to go back?” Gabriel asked.

  “I need to know if she’s alive,” I said. “Hopefully, Bethany and the others will be gone by the time we get back.”

  “If the limo’s still there, then we’ll turn around,” Gabriel said.

  Constance and I slid into the back seat while Gabriel started the engine. I clasped my sweaty hands together, anxious for what we’d find once we walked through the main living area of the estate. Voluntarily raising my hand to sift through dead bodies made me sick to my stomach. Constance stared absently at the far side of the limo, apparently contending with her own demons.

  The drive back seemed much longer than the drive away. The more I thought of what we’d discover, the more I dreaded exiting the vehicle. But I had to know. I had to.

  When we stopped before the estate, the rest of the roundabout was empty, so Bethany was gone. It was hard to determine whether that was good or bad.

  I apprehensively reached for the handle and let in the pastel radiance of twilight. As I scooted out the door, I turned back to Constance who had yet to move a muscle.

  “Are you coming?” I asked. I would have totally understood if she’d wanted to stay behind—that’s what I had planned to suggest earlier—but she had been so adamant about seeing Mackenzie for herself. Her face was awash with shadows, her lips pressed into a thin line. But as if snapped out of a trance, she finally answered. “Yeah… I’m coming.”

  Gabriel met me at the back of the limo and we waited for Constance to muster enough courage to step out from the car. When she did, I put a hand on her shoulder and looked her in the eyes. Neither of us had to say anything. My injuries burned—as I assumed hers did as well. Seeing him dead would not change what he’d done—but he wouldn’t be able to do it again—ever. I knew that firsthand. Now, it was her turn.

  The estate was impossibly quiet. The last sliver of the sun shone a band across the front door before disappearing behind the extended garage. No interior light spilled from the windows. Blood stains marked the asphalt, large puddles and scatterings of spray, but no bodies. I shivered as we approached and slowed to wait for Constance as Gabriel opened the front door. As expected, no one came to greet us.

  In the foyer, the bodies were left where they’d fallen, weapons and all. Multiple soldiers’ bodies littered the tiled floor, some fallen over one another, left in impossible poses.

  My hand flew up to cover my mouth and nose. My stomach was worlds better than the night before, but not stable enough to confidently handle this—if it ever would be. I was afraid who I’d be if this ever became easy.

  Constance gasped and turned to face the open door.

  Gabriel continued into the hallway, systematically scanning the floorplan, weapon at the ready. He flipped on light switches, sidestepping bodies as he cautiously continued deeper into the estate.

  “Constance, we should stick together,” I said, my voice muffled by the hand clamped over my mouth.

>   She nodded, turning back to face the carnage. The underside of her rounded collar now shielded her mouth and nose. Her eyes didn’t know where to rest their gaze. This was more than she really wanted to see.

  As we came to new rooms, the bodies of soldiers became replaced by the bodies of regular staff members—maids, cooks, assistants. They hadn’t been armed, hadn’t picked up the guns of fallen soldiers, but were simply slaughtered for being part of the household.

  “Lady Ramsey…” I whispered, not loud enough for anyone else to hear, as I feared the worse. “Mother.”

  Gabriel opened a door with a stairway beyond, descending into darkness.

  I was about to follow, when I recognized someone by a back door. I ran up to the mound of fabrics and fell to my knees beside Aunt Violet. I rolled her onto her back, revealing a bullet hole in her chest, which had drained her long ago. She was already stiff and cold, her skin gray and waxy. I was standing by the time Constance reached me. She kicked her dead mistress in the side and swore beneath the mask of her lifted collar.

  “She didn’t mean anything to you, did she?” Constance asked.

  I shook my head. I barely knew her, and after Constance’s revelation that sadism ran in the Ramsey family, it seemed I knew her even less.

  Then gazing through the glass door to the back lawn, I saw another heap of fabric that took my breath away.

  “No!” I cried, threw open the door, and rushed to the still body of Lady Ramsey.

  I dropped to her side and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. Blood streaked the blonde hair covering her face. When I pushed her onto her back, I noticed slight rises and falls of her chest. Then she coughed.

  I was so startled, I nearly fell over. Though there was blood on her face and neck, I didn’t see any obvious gunshot wounds. Much of the blood had dried.

  A hand rose to her head like she was massaging a severe headache, then pulled some of the hair from her face. Her eyes opened, though not much more than slits, like the waning light was still enough to burn her retinas.

  “Victoria,” she said hoarsely. “You’re really here.”

  “I am.” I brought a hand to her cheek, brushing away more matted hair. “Are you shot?”

  “I—I don’t think so. The Duke hit me—but that’s all I can remember.”

  After seeing his dead wife in the house, I didn’t know if Duke Mackenzie had intended to kill Lady Ramsey—or save her life.

  With unsteady and uneven movements, Lady Ramsey pushed to a seated position. She squinted at me and tested her head with a slight shake. She flexed the joints in her legs before folding them under her.

  “I think my head is the worst of my injuries,” she said. “Though my wrist might be sprained.”

  She could move it and the flesh around her thin wrist hadn’t swollen. With my worries about injuring her even more fading away, I hugged her and allowed the floodgate to open. My tears spilled onto her shoulder as I held her tight. She returned the crushing embrace like she was afraid I’d float away—fly back to the palace in the clouds and leave her there with the mere mortals. I cringed at the pressure against my back, tightening beneath her. She felt the shift and released me. Tears glistened in her eyes as well.

  Constance cleared her throat; she was now standing beside us.

  I gave them a proper introduction, though Constance hesitated before shaking Lady Ramsey’s hand.

  “Is anyone left alive?” Lady Ramsey asked.

  “Not that I could see,” Constance said. “It seems you’re the lucky last woman standing—left to tell the tale.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Lady Ramsey said, now shakily climbing to her feet.

  Gabriel trudged out the back door, into the sparse grass. “No one seems to have been left alive in there. Unless there are secret passages like the palace, I accounted for all the rooms. And there was no sign of Mackenzie.”

  “We were escaping out the back when the shooting began,” Lady Ramsey said. “I doubt he would have gone back in. We were headed that way.” She pointed into the field and the wall of trees beyond.

  “What about you?”

  “My dress was slowing my escape.”

  “And slowing his escape.”

  “He hit me over the head with the butt of his gun.”

  “Hoping that knocking you out would save you while he made his escape unencumbered,” I said.

  “What a hero,” Constance said, sardonically.

  “I’m alive,” Lady Ramsey said, threading her arm through mine to steady herself.

  “There’s not much else we can do here,” Gabriel said. “And it’s nearly nightfall.”

  “I don’t want to stay here the night,” Constance interjected.

  “I know where we can go,” I said.

  16

  Byron

  Kale wasn’t picking up his phone, and as far as I knew, Victoria’s phone was still in his camp. I had no way of reaching her. I had a general idea where they were hiding out—in a safe house near the deformed tree (the devil’s tree), close to the Outland border of the 24th Ward. If I couldn’t get hold of Kale by morning, I’d go to them. Things were stable enough now, where the Queen should have minimal objections to allowing me to leave for the day.

  I checked my phone for the hundredth time, then made sure the ringer was on and loud enough to wake me. This was also not the first time I’d checked the ringer.

  I placed my phone on the nightstand and draped my robe over the desk chair. I adjusted the drawstring of my cotton pajama pants before slipping under the covers and rolling onto my side, so I could still see the phone. My willing it to shine bright like a beacon on a stormy coast, did nothing but elongate time.

  When I tried to sleep just to reach morning faster, it also did everything to elude me. The minutes ticked by at an agonizingly slow pace. The only thing stopping me from swallowing sleeping pills or a few shots of whiskey—or vodka or tequila or whatever I could find—was the thought of sleeping through Kale’s call.

  The soft rattling of my doorknob took my attention off the clock. I’d locked my door before going to sleep, yet it opened with a low groan all the same.

  Instead of bolting upright, I watched the shadowed figure inch into the room and close the door. My pulse quickened and my muscles tightened, waiting for the right moment to reveal I was awake, and potentially strike.

  The intruder lingered near the doorway and it was too dark for me to tell where his attention fell. Then he crept inward and turned toward the bed. The approach was careful and quiet, fluid and deliberate. I was about to sit up when the shadowed figure sped up and pounced toward me.

  I pushed back, getting tangled in the bedcovers in the process, as something heavy struck the bed. I yelled as my upper body slid off the edge of the bed, my legs still stuck in the covers, rendering me upside-down and momentarily helpless. My legs thrashed to loosen the sheets until the rest of me fell to the floor.

  When I broke free of the covers’ hold, I scrambled to my feet to face my attacker, but he was already on the run. The billowing of a long robe passed the threshold in a hurry, like a ghost in the night. The door slammed shut.

  I raced to the door and down the hallway, which was already empty. I listened for the sounds of frantic footsteps or creaking doors, but the stillness and silence of the palace were all that was left.

  Maybe it really was a ghost. I thought I might be losing it. Maybe my midnight delirium had led to hallucinations.

  I continued down to the second floor, scanned the hallway, and called to the guards stationed at Princess Amelia’s door.

  “Did you see anyone come this way?” I called to them.

  “No, Your Highness,” each of them said.

  Frustrated, I continued to the ground floor for no other reason than just to say I had. The tile was wet and my feet nearly flew out from under me, forcing me to grab the banister for balance. A few feet away, a house maid with a bucket and sponge knelt wide-eyed. That was when I r
ealized I was merely wearing my cotton pajama pants.

  “You didn’t happen to see anyone else run by here within the last few minutes, have you?” I asked, already confident of the answer.

  The maid seemed to be only capable of shaking her head. Speech eluded her as the sponge dripped in her hand.

  “I’m sorry for the intrusion.” Then I saw the prints my bare feet had left on the area she’d already cleaned. “And the awful mess I’ve made of your work,” I said, taking elongated steps back to the stairs.

  I marched back toward my room, nodding to the guards on the way.

  “Any luck?” one of them asked.

  “No. Keep an eye out, okay?”

  “Do you have a description?”

  I didn’t. “Just be on the lookout for anything suspicious.”

  They both agreed and I stalked up the last flight of stairs. My door was still open and my adrenaline spiked as I entered. I flipped on the lights and scanned the room. No one here but me.

  My attention went to the bed where my pillow was slashed, its feathery guts spilling out onto the mattress. That slash was meant for me—my neck. I thought of Dr. Sosin lying in a pool of his own blood. If I hadn’t been awake, it wouldn’t be white feathers splattered about the mattress.

  I checked the rest of my room—the closet, shower, under the bed, the corner by the desk—all of which made me feel more paranoid. My pillow massacre aside, nothing else in the room was amiss.

  I was confident Dr. Sosin’s killer was the same person who’d attacked me. At the very least, the people behind the attacks were the same, even if the one carrying out the deed was different. I couldn’t think of what I had done to be lumped into the same expendable category as Dr. Sosin.

  Then I remembered the cameras. I didn’t think I’d ever be thankful for the Queen hiding cameras in my room, but now they just might prove themselves advantageous. I’d tell her first thing in the morning with the hope that the cameras picked up something identifiable.

  I locked the door out of habit—not that it did much good the first time—put on a shirt and retrieved my handgun from a dresser drawer. I threw the mangled pillow off the bed and grabbed another. The lights would also stay on. I didn’t expect to sleep, not tonight. But I’d lie here and rest… and wait… and yearn for the damn sun to rise.