Queen of Hearts

by Michael-Scott Earle

  They’d know we were coming, but I was okay with that.

  I wanted them to feel fear before I killed them.

  “About twenty minutes,” Yuri said.

  “Ahh,” Sivaha replied. “That’s plenty of time for us all to have some fun. Would you all like to have some fun with me?” Her voice dripped with syrup, and the men leaned forward with rapt attention.

  Then I pulled my gun out from behind her leg and put a bullet through the head of the man holding my shotgun.

  His brains exploded on the back side of the limo and covered the closed privacy divider. The men in the car flinched with surprise, blinked, and then turned to me with dazed expressions on their faces.

  I was already moving to my next target, and so was Sivaha.

  I pointed my gun to my left and sent a bullet up through the chin of the man sitting next to me. The contents of his skull ejected from him and sprayed the ceiling of the limo as Sivaha shot the face off the man sitting beside her.

  “Leave Yuri alive,” I said as we both turned our pistols back to the rest of the men in the limo. They were all reaching for their guns now, but we already had ours out, and our fingers were already on the trigger.

  It was almost as if Sivaha and I had one mind. Our two pistols fired in unison, but we each picked different targets, and the goons who kidnapped us all died within a few seconds. I actually had one more man to kill than her, but she sent a trio of bullets into the privacy divider of the limousine, and the car skidded to a halt a second later.

  Yuri had finished fishing his pistol out of his belt holster, but I was in the process of jumping across dead bodies. My left hand caught his right wrist, and I slammed the barrel of my new pistol through his teeth and into his mouth. He screamed around the gun, but then I forced it farther down his throat until he choked on it.

  “I’ll take that,” Sivaha said as she used her fingers to bend Yuri’s hand off the handle of his weapon. The man’s eyes were opened wide with terror, and he began to whimper as soon as she disarmed him.

  “Simple question,” I said as I eased the pistol out of his mouth a little. “Where is my mother?”

  “I don’t know!” he gasped when I pulled the weapon away from his bloody mouth. “Bakeneko, please don’t kill me! I’m just following Father’s orders. You are my brot--”

  “Ahh, Ahh, Ahh,” I said as I shoved the gun in his mouth again. “I’m going to ask you once more, and then you need to give me a better answer.”

  “I don’t know! Father knows. You are making a huge mistake, Bake--” My bullet cut off his sentence, and I felt a small twinge of satisfaction when the back of the asshole’s skull covered the headrest and window behind him.

  “Grab my weap--” I began to ask Sivaha, but she has already retrieved my pistols and shotgun from the first man I killed. I stuffed the gun she had given me in my belt, grabbed my two larger pistols, slid them into their holsters, and then took the shrapnel sprayer from her fingers.

  “Which one of these fucks had the transponder?” I asked.

  “It caught a bullet,” she said as she pulled the ruined device out of the front coat pocket of the man sitting next to the Yuri. I’d actually fired the bullet at his chest, and I growled with annoyance.

  “Do you have a transponder on you?” I asked.

  “No, Husband,” she answered.

  “Can’t be helped,” I said as I moved to the exit doors of the limo. “Let’s go.” I didn’t like the idea of not being able to contact Persephone or the rest of the crew, but there was nothing I could do to fix that right now.

  If the security guards hadn’t noticed the limo stop in the middle of the long driveway, they would definitely notice both of us getting out of the car. I swept the bushes on the side of the driveway and then twisted my shotgun down toward the gates in case the guards there decided to come at us. The vermillion colored gates were still closed, so I reached down to help Sivaha get out. She didn’t really need my assistance, but she still took my hand when she climbed over the last dead body.

  “What now?” she asked, and her eyebrow raised suggestively.

  “Get up front in the shotgun seat,” I said as I moved to the other side of the car. When I got to the driver’s side, I yanked open the door with my free hand while I pointed my shotgun at him. Sivaha’s aim had been true though, and two of the bullets had gone through his eyes.

  The third bullet exited his chest right at the heart.

  “Damn,” I said as I glanced over to her. She winked at me before opening the shotgun seat door, and I yanked the dead driver out before I took his seat.

  “Gates are opening,” she said with a nod. “These windows are armored, we can plow through them.”

  “We aren’t leaving,” I said as I set my shotgun on the seat between us and threw the limo into reverse.

  “Oh?” she asked as she bit her lower lip.

  I could feel the pleasure slam into me like an ocean wave.

  “Nope,” I said as I looked down at the rearview camera on the car. “I’m not done killing these fools. I need to find my mother, and these fuckers need to pay.”

  “Yes,” she panted, and her right hand closed over my left. “Let us kill them all. You are a king, Husband, and they have defied you and taken your mother. I will help you annihilate every single last one of them, and then I will pull the information you need from Bosu.”

  “I think I’m starting to like you, Sivaha,” I said, and then I slammed my foot down on the accelerator pedal. The limo’s tires screeched, and we flew back up the driveway and toward the front door of the mansion.

  Chapter 8

  As the limo raced backward up the driveway, I let the screaming beast in my soul take over my flesh, blood, and skeleton. It only took about ten seconds for the limo to reach the castle, but my shift had completed in less than half that time, and I was more than prepared for the back trunk of the limo to plow through the large double doors like a battering ram.

  There was a massive crash, but the door didn’t put up as much resistance as I thought it would, and the limo plowed into the grand foyer like an axe blade through a rice-paper wall.

  Sivaha and I opened our doors at the same time and our pistols barked replies to each other as we drove our bullets through the first pair of guards we spotted. Screams of alarm echoed through the entire castle now, but it seemed like no one expected us to return so abruptly.

  It would give us a small edge, but I figured that there were at least eighty guards in the castle.

  “They are coming from the north side,” I said to Sivaha as I leaned over to grab my shrapnel sprayer.

  “I hear them,” she replied calmly as she pulled a submachine gun off the corpse of one of the guards we shot.

  “Fall back past the corner of the opposite hallway,” I said as I pulled off my long coat and nodded to a corner on the east side of the foyer. “My armor has a cloaking tech. I’ll stand over there and get the jump on them when they all run in. Start shooting after me.”

  “Understood,” Sivaha said as she grabbed two magazines from inside the guard’s coat. As soon as she seized them, she sprinted across the stone floor of the foyer. I noticed her feet were bare, and I saw her black high heels hanging off the strap of her newly acquired submachine gun.

  I moved to my position, pressed the button to activate my helmet, and then hit the cloak button on my new armor. I saw the green digital camo print shift to a grayish-white, and then I seemed to blend into the wall. It didn’t do anything for my weapons, but it was smart enough to know that they weren’t the background, and I noticed that I could hold my pistols behind my back and the armor didn’t reveal them.

  Ten yakuza guards ran into the room with their guns out. Two of the men held military looking auto shotguns, six carried submachine guns, and the other two just had pistols. The group split up to duck behind various pillars and furniture for cover, and then they advanced toward the wreckage of the limo.

  One of the men
moved past me without noticing, and I fought against a snarl. I thought he would keep moving to the column that was two meters to my right, but he stopped at a couch and kneeled down so that his back was within arm’s reach. The other men were circling around on the far side, and their positioning wasn’t quite good enough yet, so I waited for the perfect moment.

  And the perfect moment came only a dozen seconds later.

  Three of the men moved forward to poke their guns into the limo’s back seat. They let out a yell when they saw the carnage Sivaha and I had wrought, and then one shouted that Yuri was dead. The rest of the men looked shocked, and I decided to make my move.

  I holstered my pistols and stepped to the man who had has his back to me. The claws of my right hand extended as I pulled my arm away and then swung my hand across the nape of his neck. My claws weren’t quite long enough to lop his head off, but the razor-sharp nails tore through his spine, and his body crumpled like a rag doll. He opened his mouth to scream, but I kicked the toe of my boot out quickly, and his skull caved.

  No one noticed that I had just murdered the man, so I reached around to grab my shrapnel sprayer. As soon as I brought the terrifying weapon around my back, one of the men at the car noticed the movement, and he turned toward my shimmering image. It was too late though. I already had my finger on the trigger, and a blast of armor-piercing daggers tore through the air toward them.

  The shrapnel sprayer I got from Kuroda was absolutely overkill. The weapon was meant to be used against unarmored opponents, like the yakuza thugs, but I was firing armor-piercing versions of the ammo. The blades from one more shot tore through a trio of men standing next to the limo like they were made of red colored fog, and the back half of the car separated from the front half and fell into eight separate pieces.

  The other six men twisted around to aim their weapons at me, but Sivaha fired her submachine gun from her corner, and half of them went down.

  That just left me the last three. A single shot from my shrapnel sprayer cut two of them to ribbons, but the last man ducked behind one of the stone pillars. I recalled what my armor piercing ammo had done to the limo, so I sent a shot into the stone where I thought the man was. The blades took a massive bite out of the column, and a second shot tore the man’s body into sashimi along with the rest of the pillar.

  Sivaha’s submachine gun rolled again, but I couldn’t see her in the hallway. I guessed that she was firing on guards coming from the south hallway, but I heard shouts coming from the eastern hallway I stood next to, so I couldn’t move to assist her.

  I leaned around the corner of the corridor and pointed my shotgun toward the voices. Four of the men ran around the corner some twenty meters away, so I pulled the trigger. The blades turned them into pieces of a bloody jigsaw puzzle and I flipped around the corner to shoot up at a pair of men who came up from the top of the mezzanine stairs. Even though they had gotten a bit of a jump on me, they didn’t have weretiger reflexes, and I was able to fire my weapon before they could sight in on me. The shrapnel removed the top halves of both their bodies and the lower stumps tumbled down the stairs like bloody dominos.

  “Clear,” Sivaha said calmly from her position.

  “Clear,” I replied as I circled around the perimeter toward her. I kept my weapon trained on the other entrances to the great room, but I didn’t hear any more shouting.

  I turned the corner and saw Sivaha holding her submachine gun in her left hand as she examined her right arm. Her entire body was covered with the silvery-gray aegis armor, but the suit looked a bit different from Madalena’s and her crew. Sivaha’s was tighter around her body at the chest, but the metallic material was kind of in the shape of her high slit dress. Etches of feathers decorated the smooth surfaces of her arms, thighs, shins, and back, but the dress looked as if it was composed of interwoven heart shapes. Her fingers actually ended in sharp claws, and her helmet face seemed to be designed with feline aspects. The mouth part was open in a snarl, there were short ear lumps, and her eye holes possessed an iris shape.

  “My aegis has changed,” she said with a bit of surprise.

  “What do you mean?” I said as I turned my attention back to the foyer.

  “It is Vaish now,” she said.

  “I still don’t know what you mean,” I said as I twisted away from the foyer and moved down the hallway past her.

  “I was Skyad, and my armor represented that clan. It had designs of the boar. Now I have feathers like the crow.”

  “Your helmet looks like a cat’s head though,” I said as I leaned around the corner. I didn’t see anyone, so I sprinted ahead to the next turn.

  “It does?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “There is a mirror on the far wall. Take a look when we get there.

  “I shall,” she said as she sprinted past me and stopped before the mirror. I heard more voices shouting from the direction we were heading, and I realized that the corner up ahead would be a better place to keep from getting flanked from behind.

  “Let’s go,” I urged Sivaha, but she was absently touching her helmet’s face with her armored hand.

  “Sivaha!” I growled, and she turned to me.

  “Who are you?” she whispered through her helmet.

  “Huh?” I asked.

  “This shouldn’t--”

  “Fucking move!” I growled at her as I nodded to the end of the hallway, and she sprinted up ahead of me without saying anything else.

  I was right behind her, and she slid on her armored side toward the corner while I leaned around the corner over her. Our weapons fired in unison, and I marveled again at how our shots hammered into different Yakuza gunmen. It almost felt as if I was with Eve, since we consistently picked different targets, but the silver-haired Nordar woman was spraying her submachine gun with accuracy that paralleled Madalena.

  There were eight more guards in the next room, but they hid behind a stone fountain wall that connected with the indoor pool. The wall was at least two meters of solid limestone, and it was decorated with a glass tile mosaic of some forgotten Japanese shogun. I hesitated for a moment when I realized our gunfight would probably destroy the work of art, but then I remembered taking the fall for Yuri.

  I recalled all my time in prison, I remembered the agony of being experimented on. Finally, I recalled the feeling in my gut when Hanekawa told me that these fucks had not upheld their end of the deal.

  If they had just kept paying the money like they had promised, then they wouldn’t have angered the tiger.

  My shots cut through the mural like a chainsaw through old drywall. I didn’t know exactly where the men were, but I left no square centimeter of the wall free of spray, and I had emptied the contents of one cube magazine.

  “How many more?” Sivaha asked as she dashed back to check the corner behind us.

  “Sixty at least,” I said.

  “Should we move out to the courtyard and find Bosu?”

  “No,” I said. “There are snipers out there. We are heading to the garage. That is where he is heading.”

  “To escape?” she asked as she let out a spray of bullets. There was a scream down the hallway, and then she fired again, and the scream was cut off abruptly.

  “Maybe,” I said. “He’ll think about it, but if we trash all of his vehicles, that won’t be an option.”

  “Clear back here,” she called out as I ran toward the shattered wall.

  “Clear up here,” I replied as I turned the corner and saw the corpses.

  “Toss me a few magazines, Husband,” Sivaha called out as she ran toward me, and I grabbed some off the closest corpse before tossing them into her running path. She snatched them out of the air without missing a beat and then slid on armored knees to the next corner.

  Her weapon spat a staccato of lead and fire around the corner, and more men screamed. I rounded the corner as she ducked back to reload, and I peppered the edge of the far wall with my armor piercing shards. Again, I seemed to have r
ead her mind, and a pair of yakuza men that had ducked back there for cover fell into the hallway in a sliced up heap.

  “I like that weapon,” she said as she finished slamming the magazine into her weapon.

  “I do too,” I said.

  “You handle it well,” she purred at me.

  “You are also a good shot,” I replied. “I’m impressed.”

  “I am Nordar and queen,” she laughed. “I am an amazing shot.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” I said as I dashed around the corner. Sivaha followed close behind me, but the next hallway was empty.

  “The parking garage elevator is on the next right,” I said. “Cover me while I move up.”

  “I will,” she replied, but I was already sprinting to the end of the hallway.

  The next turn was a hard right, and I knew it was designed to allow the guards to defend the castle parking lot elevator easily. I didn’t know if there would be a group of men waiting for me on the other side, but I figured my shrapnel sprayer would liquidate anyone who was, so I held it around the corner and fired it blindly. There was a single scream, but no return fire, so I poked my helmeted head around and saw that there had been four men guarding at the end of the hallway turn before the elevator, but now they were spread across the floor and walls like spaghetti sauce.

  Sivaha fired a few more shots behind me, and more assholes shouted with pain. Staring down the hallway toward the elevator made me realize this was somewhat of a bad plan. Yes, I needed to go down to the garage and make sure that Bosu didn’t have an easy escape route, but the elevator and garage were significant choke points. We might make it down there, destroy the cars, and then get shot full of holes in the elevator. I knew that aegis armor was powerful, but Madalena had still gotten injured in the shoulder when one of the Black Heart mercenaries used armor-piercing rounds. My new armor looked fancy, but I didn’t know how well it would stand up to sustained bullet fire.

  “I’m going to head down the elevator to the garage,” I said. “Hold this position so they can’t come up behind us.”