Beloved Weapon
Page 32
Everything was still. The men flanking the door didn’t know what to think.
The shooter was standing there, trembling.
Then his body fell apart, split in twain, blood gushing from him in all directions.
The woman stood up and held the sword in front of her while her first victim practically spilled on the floor. She looked at the second man, and then the third, her face as calm as death.
“Shit! Shit!” one of the men hollered. “Engage! Engage!”
The woman twirled the blade in the air, its reflective edge leaving trails of light in its wake, and she dashed past them as soon as they pulled their triggers.
Their gunfire radiated outward, cutting up more of the bathroom and the surrounding walls. Then their bodies collapsed on the carpet, their heads sliding from their necks at the same time.
It would have taken an electron microscope to tell, but the blade was actually vibrating many thousands of times per second, fast enough to disrupt the molecular structure of whatever it met. Each time the blade moved through the air, it let out a high pitched whistle, every slash a song and dance of elegant decimation. The sword had no more difficulty slicing through flesh and bone than it did thin air, and it was in the hands of a young woman born with superhuman strength and agility.
“You…you crazy bitch!” the last man popped up from his hiding place behind the bed. But as soon as his head emerged, the red lacquer scabbard shot through the air and smashed into his night vision goggles like a bullet, shattering the lenses as he reeled back.
He staggered and regained his balance, pulled the destroyed goggles away from his head so hard he snapped the elastic strap securing them to his face. He gave the woman an insane glare through the eyelets of his ski mask.
She stood still and watched him the entire time, her face as calm as the night wind.
He outstretched his gun with one arm and squeezed the trigger.
She swung the sword in front of her in a circle, the blade spinning like a propeller, the gunshots pattering in front of her. The soldier stopped firing when he saw the futility of it.
The bullets fell to the floor, cut to shreds as the woman lowered her blade.
Then he lost it. He flipped the switch on the side of his MAC-11, setting his gun to full auto. Barely able to control the gun and blinded by rage, his concerns about accuracy and discretion were forgotten and automatic gunfire shredded everything in the room…
Except his target.
The soldier watched in awe as the woman pounced forward, planted both her bare feet on the bed, somersaulted off it and over him. His wildly-aimed bullets whizzed over her and under her but never touched her. She landed behind him, the wind whistling as she moved past him.
He screamed as his firing arm plopped on the floor, his trigger finger locked on the gun, suppressed automatic gunfire tearing up the bodies of his comrades even more until the clip was finally expended, the chattering sound of the automatic mechanism repeating endlessly.
The woman stood up and spun around to face the man, her sword arm moving with her, and the look of shock was frozen on his face as a diagonal cut divided his skull from brain to jaw and he fell dead.
The woman flicked her blade in the air, swiping the droplets of fresh blood from its heat-tempered edge. She picked up the scabbard and sheathed the sword.
She drew a fresh robe from a drawer, since the blood of her would-be assassins had spilled all over the one she’d dropped by the bathroom floor. She put the robe on over her shoulders, but didn’t bother to wrap or tie it around her body.
The woman walked toward the balcony and opened the glass doorway. She stood outside the hotel room, her hair and the open robe gently flying in the breeze of the high altitude. There was no point in hiding anything—she knew she was being watched the entire time.
She glared straight ahead, her powerful eyesight locking onto a figure several blocks away—a man standing on a rooftop, wearing a gray overcoat, with a cashmere sweater and slacks underneath. He carried a katana as well, sheathed inside a black and silver scabbard.
The man across the way lowered his binoculars, swept a hand through his albino hair and smiled calmly.
“So beautiful…” Darien Drakonis muttered to himself. “I’ll be seeing you again very soon, Miss Shauntia Black.”
About the Author
Jonathan Price lives in Philadelphia, PA with his wife and four children, and works in government administration.
The author’s creative joys go beyond just writing and transcend into visual arts as well. You can peruse Jonathan Price’s artwork at http://dualmask.deviantart.com.
In addition, the author is available on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Dualmask and on Facebook at http://facebook.com/Dualmask.
Thank you for purchasing this novel.