Rogue, Renegade And Rebel (In Her Paranormal Majesty’s Secret Service Book 1)

by Michael Anderle

  Given that the Tommy gun was a two-handed weapon, she was struggling even before the large, angry specter squished her.

  Baxter grabbed Frock’s functioning hand and pinned it to the ground, expecting her to yield the moment she realized she had been outmuscled.

  Instead, Frock began trying to bite Baxter as though she was a hungry jackal.

  Her teeth snapped near his ear as he moved away from her. “Yo, Worthington. If you could come over here and lend me a hand, that would be great.”

  But Worthington didn’t know what to do. Between the invisible specter pummeling Jennie’s face, and the rabid revolutionary wife gnashing at Baxter, the situation didn’t look all that great.

  “Hey! Mince-eater. Get your two-dollar ass over here before I make change!”

  Worthington was shaken into action. He ran over to help Baxter, trying his best to keep his back straight so his hat didn’t fall off his head.

  Jennie saw none of this, however. She was deep inside her head, feeling the energies around her. She could vaguely make out the shapes of Worthington, Baxter, and Frock in her peripheral vision, but that wasn’t where she was looking.

  A shape that had been hidden in the energies surrounding her burned like volcanic fire. She could see Pinstripe as though she was looking through an infrared scope.

  A small smirk appeared on her face, causing the invisible specter to hesitate.

  Perfect.

  It was all she needed. Now that she could see him, she could connect with him. She reached out to bind herself to him, and instantly felt the spectral energy flow within her. A moment later, her physical body disappeared from the alley as she plunged into the invisible sphere of the ethereal.

  The world around her moved as if viewed from a car window speeding through a tunnel. The only clear thing before her was now Pinstripe, who stared at her in alarm.

  “What are you?” he stuttered.

  “Your worst nightmare,” Jennie told him, punching him square in the nose. His nostrils exploded in a spray of spectral blood as the bridge was tweaked into a new position. She laughed. “Well, I never. Specters can bleed!”

  Pinstripe shook his head and blocked the next punch. He ducked and aimed an uppercut at Jennie’s midsection, but she was too quick.

  She responded with a left hook and two right jabs that opened the split on his nose wider.

  He stumbled back and tripped over his own feet.

  Jennie took the opportunity. She straddled his body and returned the beating he’d given her minutes before. She laid into Pinstripe with blow after blow until he looked as if he was about to pass out.

  “That’ll do.” She closed her eyes and converted his energy inside of her.

  Meanwhile, Worthington and Baxter wrestled with Frock. She was surprisingly strong, given that she only had one functioning hand, but soon enough, they managed to get control of her.

  Baxter held her arm pinned around her back while Worthington held the Tommy gun to her face, his hands shaking as his finger hovered over the trigger.

  Frock grinned at Baxter. “You know if your friend shoots me with that, you’re gonna catch the brunt of it?”

  Baxter met Worthington’s eyes. “If you so much as touch me with that thing, we’re going to have a big problem,” Baxter growled, causing Worthington to shake more. “You know, for one of the queen’s guards, you’re pretty uncertain when holding firearms.”

  “Just because I was charged with the protection of Elizabeth II in life and Queen Victoria in death, it doesn’t mean I like to hurt people,” he protested.

  Baxter shrugged. “I’m just saying. It might be a useful skill to learn how to hold a gun without shaking in your boots, y’know?”

  Worthington huffed and looked around the alley. “Where did Jennie go?”

  They scanned the alley and could see no sign of either Jennie or Pinstripe. Even Frock craned her neck to get a better look, alarm spreading on her face.

  “Is it possible that they both—” Worthington started, shutting off instantly when the figures of Jennie and Pinstripe reappeared suddenly in the alley.

  She was still straddling him, one hand bunching up the material around his collar as the other hovered in a fist over his face.

  “If you guys wanted some privacy, all you had to do was ask,” Worthington called.

  Jennie shook her head as if awaking from a dream. She looked down at Pinstripe. “Are you okay?”

  He nodded, clearly confused by what had just happened.

  “Good.” Jennie punched him once more in the face, then got off him. She pulled him to his feet and marched him over to Frock. “Good work keeping that bitch down,” she told Worthington and Baxter. “Now, if you two would be so kind as to tell us why you’ve been busy tagging the city, we can let you guys go and get on our merry way.”

  Pinstripe looked at Jennie with confusion. “Tagging?”

  “Oh, sorry. I forgot you’ve been encased in rock for decades. Maybe ‘tagging’ is too contemporary for you. How about ‘painting pictures on the fucking wall?’”

  Pinstripe shook his head. “They made us. I swear to God, they made us.”

  Jennie looked at Baxter and Worthington, their eyes meeting hers with the same curious expression. “Who made you?”

  “They did. The European ambassadors from the Winter Court,” Frock replied. “They caught us after we were looking around the city for a safe place to go. Lured us in and made us take the sacred pledge to the queen. We had no choice. There were too many of them.”

  “Too many of who?” Jennie asked, growing frustrated.

  “They wouldn’t tell us their names, only that they had the power to exorcise us if we didn’t comply. We were sent to recruit more specters and bring them to the crown on the orders of the queen. Being bound under our oath, what choice did we have?”

  “I smell bullshit,” Worthington mumbled without conviction.

  Jennie ignored him. “These specters you speak of. There must be a hideout or somewhere they gather. You’ve been there, yes? You can tell us where they are.”

  Pinstripe shook his head. “Why would we tell you? We’ve sworn fealty to Her Majesty the Queen. To break the sacred oath would be treason, leading to our exorcisms. You think we’d do that to ourselves?” His head lowered. “I was just beginning to enjoy life in the modern world.”

  Frock nodded. “Me too.”

  “You’ve got it all wrong,” Baxter told them, relaxing his grip on Frock slightly. “These two are from the Winter Court, aren’t you? They’ve both taken the oath themselves, which means you’re all on the same side, right?”

  Worthington reluctantly nodded, clearly not happy to be associating himself as someone on the same side as these two.

  Jennie remained quiet, her steely expression boring into the pair.

  “Is this true?” Pinstripe asked. “You’ve sworn allegiance to the crown?”

  Jennie didn’t answer. Instead, she waited for Worthington, who stuck his pompous nose in the air as he spoke. “We have. More than that, we report directly to Queen Victoria. Trusted advisors sent to this city to monitor the rising number of specters and ensuring that they serve the crown and commit to the queen’s rules and laws.”

  “But we saw you with the enemy,” Frock argued. “That night in Central Park? You were with them!”

  “Who do you think set you two free?” Jennie held her gun in the air, showing them the weapon from which the bullet to distract Lupe and allow the specters to run away had been fired.

  Pinstripe rose cautiously to his feet and brushed off his jacket. Already his nose was starting to move back into place, and the blood was drying up and disappearing. “So, we’re really all on the same side?”

  “It looks that way,” Baxter told him.

  Jennie held her gun for a moment longer before twirling it around her finger and replacing it in her holster. “At least for the time being. I would rather like to have a word with your superiors, though, and
find out what the fuck the disconnect is in this city, and why they’ve sent two goons to bully a girl into joining the supernatural court.” She turned to Worthington and raised a finger. “And before you open your mouth, something isn’t right here, and you know it.”

  Worthington closed his mouth and cast his eyes to the ground.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Brooklyn, New York City, Present Day

  Jennie felt herself burning under the intensity of the cab driver’s stare.

  She was used to it by now. Sure, she knew her outfit was somewhat provocative to hot-blooded men with no more brain cells than a dung beetle, but that didn’t mean she didn’t get annoyed all the same.

  It was a fashion choice. Not only did she want to look good while fighting, but the lack of bagginess also meant that enemies couldn’t use her clothing to their advantage.

  It also served a secondary purpose, too. Given that most of the scumbags she’d met in her life had been men leading organizations of men—even in the twenty-first century, how much of that had changed, really?—her little pieces of eye candy caused a great distraction to the guys who ogled her and underestimated her abilities when she went into action.

  Who said a woman couldn’t use her sexuality to her advantage?

  But now, sitting in the back of the cab and watching the cab driver’s eyes undress her, Jennie grew impatient. “Hey, eyes on the road, asshole,” she snapped, distracting the driver from his reverie.

  He clutched the steering wheel and jerked it to avoid drifting into the next lane.

  “You’d think he’d take one look at the guns on your hips and think twice about mentally undressing you,” Baxter remarked, sitting snuggly beside Jennie.

  To his left, Frock—who she had since learned was named Rita—sat on Pinstripe—Rico’s—lap, the two of them comically squashed against the window.

  “Surely he’s got more sense than that…” His voice trailed away as he looked at her hips and saw that her guns were gone.

  Jennie smiled and snapped her fingers, and her guns reappeared as though they had been there all along.

  Baxter gaped. “How did you…”

  Jennie nodded at Worthington, who, unbeknownst to the driver, sat in the passenger seat. Only the bottom part of his hat could be seen since the rest of it now poked out of the roof of the car like some kind of fuzzy antennae.

  “I can use my connection to Worthington to hide parts of me I don’t want people to see,” she replied quietly, aware that the cab driver was giving her a funny look again. She met his eye, and he looked sharply away. “It’s part of my gift and something that helps me get around armed to the teeth in broad daylight. Back in the day, I used to be able to walk around with my pistols and no one would bat an eyelid. But now?” She sighed. “Now everything has changed.”

  “For the better, though, right?” Baxter asked.

  Jennie didn’t answer.

  Rita leaned forward and pointed. The roads were quiet on this side of the Brooklyn Bridge, but now the taillights of the vehicles ahead blinked red as they approached a junction. “Take a left here.”

  Jennie repeated her instructions to the driver.

  The pair navigated them deep into the heart of Brooklyn. They turned off the Fort Hamilton Parkway and pulled into Forty-Eighth Street.

  The street was lined with suburban houses that had seen better days. Windows were cracked, and cars lined the streets. Several yards were bordered with mesh fences, and there was a smell of weed in the air.

  “This is it?” Jennie asked, looking up and down the street.

  “Not quite,” Rico replied. “It’s two blocks over, but we don’t want to draw attention to it by parking directly outside. Particularly you, a strange human. This used to be a good neighborhood, but it’s gone downhill in the last ten years. You’d get shot in a matter of seconds.”

  “That’s something you don’t hear every day,” Jennie remarked. “The queen’s people ready to blow out a stranger’s brains on sight.”

  She thanked the driver and tossed him some cash, leaning through the gap between the seats so her breasts pushed out in front of her. He half-turned, eyebrows going up in surprise as he looked down at them.

  “Hey, bozo, my eyes are up here.” Jennie pulled her gun and pressed it into his side. “Just a word of advice. You’re going to be a good little boy and keep your eyes and hands to yourself from now on. Capiche?”

  The cabbie nodded emphatically.

  Jennie lifted her gun and tapped the cab driver’s cheek with the barrel. “Good. Because the last thing I’d want to do is hear a report on the radio about a sexy young woman gone missing and think you were somehow connected to it. That would be bad news for you, indeed.”

  The cab driver nodded his understanding and kept his eyes on the steering wheel as Jennie exited the cab. The moment the door closed behind her, he revved the engine and sped off into the night.

  Baxter looked at her curiously. “What was that about?”

  Jennie shrugged. “Oh, just a bit of housekeeping.”

  Rico and Rita took Jennie, Worthington, and Baxter around the corner to an empty, run-down house. Jennie drew from Worthington and turned herself spectral to make the shortcut easier to navigate. They passed through an overgrown yard, complete with a rusted and broken trampoline, and emerged onto Forty-Seventh Street, which was a mirror reflection of Forty-Eighth Street.

  “They really need to invest some money in this neighborhood,” Baxter commented. “There’s so much money pumped into gambling, drinks, and narcotics, but these people have to live in poverty. It’s just not right.”

  Jennie chuckled. “Well, maybe when the spectral world reveals itself to the mortals, you could run for councilor and make a difference.”

  Baxter shrugged at her dismissal. “You laugh, but I almost took a role in politics back in my day. Was going to put my name down to run for mayor until I discovered a passion for something else entirely.”

  “Gadgets?” Worthington inquired.

  “Actually, no. That came later. It was my first wife.” He looked at the stars, eyes growing foggy with memory. “Ah, Christine. You were the only woman I ever loved.”

  “Aw, what happened?” Rita asked. “Lose her when you died?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” Baxter replied, suddenly looking embarrassed. “Truth was that she didn’t understand my passion for inventing, so she left me for the neighbor’s brother. Last I heard, they went to the West Coast and I haven’t heard from them since.”

  “That’s a shame,” Rita sympathized. “Everyone deserves to be in love.”

  “Oh, I loved.” Baxter grinned. “I loved with everything I had. I sometimes think I used all my love with Christine on a fire that burned so intensely that I had nothing left to give after a time.”

  “How long were you together?” she asked.

  “Eight months,” Baxter replied simply.

  Rita stared at him with an open mouth as he passed her.

  Jennie caught up with Rico as they passed through another house. This house was in a much better state than the previous one, although it was without many of the luxuries people found affordable. The floor was stained and filthy, and somewhere upstairs, someone snored.

  Jennie shook her head, unable to believe people lived like this.

  “That’s not a long time,” Pinstripe muttered.

  Baxter shrugged. “I guess. It was enough.”

  Rita sighed. “I wish I could still see my lover. Donavon Mayhew. He was a dreamboat.”

  “What happened to him?” Baxter asked.

  “It was more like what happened to me,” Rita replied. “On the day he set out to join the Revolution, I couldn’t let him go. I don’t know what came over me, but I trailed him and his cohort of soldiers too close to the battlefield. I loved him. That love was all-consuming, and I needed to know he was okay.

  “What I didn’t know was that the enemy had set up an ambush. A small group of their main f
orce peeled off and snuck behind our lines.” Her eyes narrowed. “I saw one of them pull out his rifle from a nearby bush, and I screamed like I’d never screamed before. Turns out they were ready to silence anyone who got in their way.”

  She placed a hand over the bullet wound on her chest and gave a nostalgic smile. “It should’ve hurt, but I think I was dead before the pain registered.”

  They made it to the back of the house, where Rico paused and placed an ear against the wall.

  Jennie was enraptured by Rita’s story. She wanted to find out more. There was one part she didn’t understand. “So, how did you find yourself encased in a boulder?” she asked, ignoring the surprised look from Baxter, who was hearing this for the first time. “Once a person dies, their spirit is set free. I’ve never heard of or seen what happened to you before.”

  Rita’s face grew dark. “Donavon tried to save my body and bring me back to life. There was a rumor that a gaggle of witches still remained from the end of the Salem trials some hundred years previous. I don’t know how he found them, and I can’t say for sure that they were witches, but whoever they were, there was dark magic there. They did something that sank my physical and spiritual body into that boulder and wouldn’t let me go.”

  “A similar thing happened to me,” Rico told them. “They said it was for my own good. That placing me inside the boulder would bring me immortality. That when I finally did break free, the world would be at peace, and I would unite with my mortal body and live forever.” He snorted. “Can’t believe I thought that might actually happen.”

  “Why would you want to return to a mortal body when you can live as a specter?” Baxter asked. “I’ve never been happier than I am now.”

  Rita and Rico looked at each other sadly. Rico sighed. “Because you can always guarantee you’ve got at least one extra shot at life.”

  Rico said no more on the matter, and Jennie and the others didn’t feel the need to press him.

  Worthington folded his arms and tapped his feet. “Are we finished with storytime? Because I thought we were here to achieve something tonight.”