Underworld Queen Read online

  “But Peter must have taught them how to turn, before he was killed?”

  “Yeah, they spent a lot of time in his office. And he came here, too.”

  Jonas looked out at the mob of people. One of the girls had gotten her leg caught in the grip of a huge dark angel. He had her body pulled against the cage, her flesh being pressed by the metal rods. Jonas could see the angel had a mind to rip her leg off for sport, an injury she wouldn’t likely survive.

  Not today.

  Crossing the room in one long leap, Jonas quickly grabbed the man’s shaved head and twisted it with a loud crack. The hulking body slumped to the floor.

  He looked at the girl, who was climbing down from the cage, limping. Blood was soaking the towel she held to her groin area. She hurried off without stopping to issue a thank you. Jonas hoped she would heal.

  Though the music blared on, the crowd stood still and glared at the man who’d just eliminated one of their favorites. Jonas was also the man their new Director had chosen to share her bed. As he looked from each hungry face to another, there wasn’t a friend among them.

  Until he saw a Cheshire smile coming towards him, wearing all black, sporting a silver medallion around his neck. His skin was light pink, but his hair was dark, like Peter’s. He looked to be almost Peter’s twin, but Jonas saw he was bigger built than the former Director. A large scar traversed his cheek and ran down to his jaw line. A deep groove encircled his neck as if the fellow had been hanged.

  This bastard is hard to kill. And he’s seen serious battle.

  The dark man looked around him, playing to the crowd, as he walked casually toward Jonas. Conversations resumed and the dance floor began to writhe again. The man stopped a short distance in front of Jonas and stuck out his arm.

  “Jonas Fucking Starling.”

  “That’s me. Am I supposed to know you?”

  The man smiled. “As charming as I thought you would be.”

  “There a point to all this bullshit, or do you just like to see which way your piss flies in the wind?”

  “Now there, you see?” He spoke to his smaller companions. “He’s got two good quips in on me, and I haven’t been able to land a single one.” His buddies stared back at Jonas, eyes wide.

  Jonas adjusted his stance so he could reach for the long blade he stored in his boot.

  “You’re a hard man to find.” The stranger matched Jonas’ open stance with one of his own. “We’ve been looking nearly three centuries for you. You are a living legend. Took us awhile, but we finally found out how to get here.”

  “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Rupert Blade, but then I think you already know that.”

  He’d have gone for his weapon, without thought for his own safety, since he had the approval of his Queen, but as much as he coveted this man’s death, he needed information more.

  Rupert must have seen the tenseness in Jonas’ upper body.

  “This isn’t a place or time to fight, my friend, if I can call you that.”

  “I’m not your friend.”

  “Acknowledged.” Rupert motioned Jonas to join him in one of the quiet anterooms, away from the crush of the dance floor and the awful cages. “You want something to drink? Some wheatgrass perhaps?” Jonas might have been surprised, but the look of Rupert’s smirk told him he was playing with him again.

  “John, go get us some Sexual Apricot.” Rupert’s dark eyes sparkled in the dimly lit room with the six-foot stone fireplace. He sat down on a dark leather couch, and motioned for Jonas to do the same across from him. Rupert watched him, then leaned over a black marble table, elbows on his knees. “I imagine you dally a bit when she’s gone?”

  “How do you know she’s gone?”

  “Because I happen to know she’s in Bakersfield as we speak.”

  This is not good. Jonas wished he’d just killed the man who knew fully where his soft spot was: Audray.

  “Okay, so you’ve got my attention. Why don’t you just spill it and we’ll both be on our way.” Jonas forced himself to relax, but his training kept him alert, heart beating fast, ready for anything. He left his knees wide and open, his back straight up.

  John arrived with a tray laden with a dozen shot glasses of pinkish-amber liquid. Two glasses were placed in front of Jonas, and two in front of Rupert. John and his companion each helped themselves to one, and took a seat near the fireplace, within earshot. The balance of the tray was left between Jonas and Rupert.

  Rupert tossed back his first shot. Jonas didn’t move a muscle.

  “I happen to know you love Sexual Apricot, or have your tastes changed in that direction as well?”

  “Like I said, why don’t you tell me what you came here to say? I know you enjoy the witty dialog, but it’s a little annoying, no offense.”

  “None taken.” Rupert leaned back on the couch, extending his arms to the sides and crossed his legs. “I’ll be honest with you, Jonas. I came here to find you but I’d rather kill you, and if you turn on me, I will.”

  Jonas jumped to his feet. Rupert didn’t flinch, looked back at him with a casual smile, signaling his two readied companions to seat themselves again. Jonas noted he was fully primed and ready for a death fight, something Jonas wanted to avoid.

  “Look, asshole, I’m tired of your games.” Jonas started to leave.

  “I want to make a deal, in exchange for your life and the safety of your woman.”

  “I don’t make deals.”

  “Oh, but I have it on good authority you do.”

  “Your information is wrong.”

  “You forget your past, sir. Remember when you were eighteen and the dandy of the ladies at court? Remember when the Queen and her cousin couldn’t get enough of you, even after she was well with child? Your child?”

  Jonas saw the peach and golden brocades of the Queen’s boudoir, her “Pleasure Palace” she had called it—a place even Charles himself was not allowed. She’d not gotten around to making it a nursery when the king died and she had to flee the castle. He’d spent half a year of his life screwing any woman who came to him there, on the Queen’s orders, under penalty of death. He’d stopped caring about his own life shortly after he arrived at Court. He did it to preserve the lives of his beloved Anne and both their families.

  “Ever wonder what became of the child?”

  Jonas assumed the child was stillborn, as the Queen’s other thirteen offspring had been. His hands balled into fists at his sides, as he remained standing.

  “I can introduce you to descendents of his. Yes. He was a male child. And he became a very rich and powerful man.” Rupert frowned. “Just not a king.”

  Despite himself, Jonas was curious, mesmerized by Rupert’s words. But he also felt his past reach up and grab him by the balls.

  Rupert got up and extended his hand again. “Welcome back to the family, cuz.”

  Chapter 10

  Now it was time for Burt. She wondered where his remains would wind up some day. Hopefully not in a well kept cemetery. She wished it would be at the bottom of a drainage canal or woods. He wouldn’t have a headstone. There would be no angel looking over him.

  The freeway was snarled with afternoon traffic. The hot, dusty and flat surroundings looked like hell itself, except for the lush green rows of crops that splayed out like spines of a fan as she drove by. She watched the automatic sprinklers spread their shimmery goodness over the green rows, spraying as if sugar-coating everything. She smiled and checked her rearview mirror. The only sweetness in this godforsaken place is long dead and buried.

  Traffic crept along until the turnoff to the VA Hospital, which must not have been a popular destination. The brown and cream two-story brick building looked like an old military base, complete with a jet fighter cemented into the dry crabgrass turnaround in front of the building. A few children were climbing up on its wings and trying to pry loose the bars keeping them from the cockpit.

  Audray was conscious that her car was att
racting attention everywhere she went. In LA she would be one of many. And at her home in Northern California, where she kept the car, a red Maserati wasn’t commonplace. But it wasn’t odd, like down here. Some of the wealthy farmers might be able to afford one, but would never even consider it. She’d always been taught that if you showed your bling in the Central Valley, you were putting your life in danger.

  The car chirped as she locked it and made her way up the concrete steps bordering a meandering ramp that zigzagged to the hospital entrance.

  The cool lobby was a welcome relief from the hot late afternoon, but it smelled of urine, disinfectant and dust. Audray’s heightened senses brought it in so fast she needed a surgery mask. The waiting room was filled with several patients and family members, some of both in wheelchairs.

  She felt instantly tired, not sure if she had the energy to do what she came to do. But she took a deep breath and walked up to speak to the black woman seated behind a window enclosure, dressed in a blue smock. The whites of her eyes were as yellow as her teeth.

  “Can I help you?” she gave Audray a rather murderous glare.

  “I’m here to visit a family member. His name is Burt Foreman.”

  The receptionist looked over a clipboard and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Foreman is not able to have visitors.” Her smile was wide, as if she enjoyed dishing out the news.

  “Yes, well I understand he is in rather poor shape, but it is urgent I see him.”

  “I’m sorry. Hospital rules.”

  Audray inhaled and blew over the woman while she pled her case again. The woman’s eyes half closed as she leaned back and almost tipped over in her padded rolling office chair.

  Audray continued staring down at the woman, breathing hard, adding another dose of her influence, due to the woman’s extra girth. At first she thought the receptionist would pass out. But then she shook her head.

  “Boy, is it hot in here?” She fanned her face with a stained file folder and looked back at Audray, who kept her jaw tense and allowed her eyes to rim in red, ready to flame her in an instant if it became necessary. She had no intention of going away until she got the permission to finish her deed. The woman exuded fear and confusion, her lower lip beginning to tremble. A tiny bit of spittle resided in the corner of her mouth.

  “Oh, what the hell. He’s gonna die any day now. I doubt you’ll be able to speak with him.” She stood up. The woman was easily six-foot-two and the size of a professional football player. “Five minutes.” She held up a hand that could palm a basketball, fingers spread wide. “You got five minutes, you hear?”

  More than enough time.

  The woman answered the phone and held up her five-minute sign like a small pizza platter. Audray was careful not to appear unnaturally quick, and entered the room Burt shared with three other male patients. Everyone was sleeping except for a younger man who was a double amputee, heavily medicated. He nodded as Audray passed him to get to Burt, whose bed was next to the window. Both televisions were blaring.

  She looked down at the gray face of the man she saw in her dreams as she cried herself to sleep in those early days. He wore death like a blanket all around him, and it wasn’t becoming. He had a tube down his nose secured with a white piece of tape. A yellowish green liquid was being sucked from inside him, ending up in a clear jar with an inch of the frothy buildup at the bottom. He was hooked up to an IV on the back of one hand, but his other flaccid arm had large purple and red bruises on the inside at the crook. One purple trail snaked up from the bruise almost an inch.

  That probably hurts. The thought gave her courage.

  Audray picked up the yellow plastic water pitcher and poured a stream over his face and onto his chest. Burt opened his rheumy eyes and mumbled, trying to wipe the water, getting his arm caught in the plastic tubing. His eyes got small as he squinted to see who was next to him.

  “Don’t have your glasses? Guess you don’t read much.”

  “Who…?”

  Audray leaned into him so that her face was no more than five inches from his. At first there was no reaction, but then his eyes became wide.

  “Bumblebee. My little bumblebee.”

  Audray looked up and out the window. It should have hurt, this reminder of what he used to call her in perhaps happier times before the rape. She noticed her heart was completely stone cold.

  “That all you can say to me after you what you did?”

  “I’m sorr… I couldn’t help…”

  “I’m not here for an apology. You’re beyond redemption.”

  She blew on his face, grimacing down at him. It doesn’t hurt a bit. Not anymore.

  “You want to live forever just like this?” she asked him.

  His eyes contained nothing but questions. Audray continued. “Yes, that could be one solution. I could let you live forever in a bed, hooked up to a tube, your ass wiped not as often as it should be so it gets nice and red.”

  “Wha?”

  “Or I could cut off your pecker with a pair of scissors I bet I could find. Maybe then the government might try to sew it back on, maybe backwards. I could arrange that if you like. Or make you leak like a punctured garden hose, hmmm?”

  She found a small pair of nippers for cutting surgical tape. “Now these look good. Nice and dull.”

  Burt was trying to scream, but was having difficulty mustering the energy, from the whoosh of air she deposited to his face. A buzzer started going off. Someone in the room was beginning to have tachycardia. It didn’t matter to her who it was.

  “I had more than enough reason to kill you. But yesterday, I found out you also killed my sister.” Audray reached under the sheets and pulled his hairy unit, yanking it sharply to the side, twisting it. Burt’s face got bright red, the veins in his neck and at his temples bulged, but no sound came out of his mouth as his eyes crossed.

  See what it feels like to be helpless? Can’t save yourself? Should I kill you?

  She released her grip and watched him fall back into the bed. She thought about leaving him alive to experience the bruising and pain in his cock with every muscle he tried to move, every breath he tried to take until his last day, which was coming up very soon. It wasn’t eternity, but it was the best she could do, and not nearly what he deserved. He wasn’t worth killing. Much better to let him suffer out the rest of his miserable days.

  She gave him a dose of her dark energy, causing his heart to start racing, which set off more alarms. Oh, how I wish I could rob ten years from you like you robbed me of mine. With satisfaction, she witnessed his grimace as his pecker began to harden, making a mound in the sheets at his lap. His eyeballs were bulging, but she’d silenced his tongue so his feeble efforts to speak only frustrated him more.

  “You won’t live out the day, but every minute of it will be in pain. You reap what you sow, Burt.”

  She heard staff coming down the hall so she shifted through the wall of the adjoining room, setting off another series of buzzers as the three older male patients were all awake watching the TV mounted on the wall above the spot she’d just walked through.

  Audray quickly took the other way around and back out to the lobby, passing the now-vacant reception area. She knew that he wouldn’t survive the heart attack that was racking his body. In those last few minutes, he’d be in the most excruciating pain of his miserable life, and he’d be lying there knowing she did it, got even, and wouldn’t be able to tell a soul. She hoped their attempts to resuscitate him were long and equally painful, and that he would die slowly.

  There was a guest bathroom down the hall, where she washed her hands to rid herself of any remains of the sack of flesh known as Burt.

  The red Maserati growled through the gates of Central Valley Cemetery, rumbling up the drive to the top of the hill. Her mother had said to look for the big Guardian angel statue holding a little lamb—the section where her sister was buried, next to her father.

  She parked the car under a hulking willow tree, its anci
ent branches hovering over and touching the red beast, hiding it in shadows. The afternoon’s heat was coming to a close. Puffs of dandelion seeds blew in the breeze, dotting the air, dancing with moths and flying insects, against the ever-present background noise of the freeway.

  It took her several seconds to exit the car. She saw no one, but she felt watched. Stepping out into the light of day, she noted the birds had stopped chirping. She expected something, not sure what it was. The hairs at the back of her neck and on her forearms bristled. She’d gotten her revenge, and it felt good to have that chapter of her life closed forever. But she also had the eerie feeling someone had been following, watching her every move. She felt like a target.

  Her lunch, what little of it she ate, hung undigested in her stomach. Her red boots ascended the crown of the hill and stopped just before the looming statue with wings, which protected the little lamb. The white marble had turned gray and was streaked as though crying. Birds had dallied there and an abandoned nest sat in the crook of the large angel’s arm next to the body of the lamb.

  Audray had never experienced grief before. This emotion had always been just out of reach. But the devoted expression on the face of the angel moved something inside, and she was surprised to find tears rolling down her cheeks. Something has been lost. Something is gone forever.

  She bit her lower lip as she leaned forward to read the inscriptions on the ground. To the left she read:

  Lt. W. Michael Steele

  December 25, 1945 to June 4, 1980

  Rest in Peace. Your earthly work is done.

  Husband, Father, Soldier

  Guardian of the Weak

  Protector of the Weary

  Audray’s eyes moved over to the right, and she gazed upon the gravestone of her sister:

  Claire A. Steele

  February 14, 1970 to June 1, 1992

  Gone to be with her father,

  Who will protect her throughout eternity.

  Rest in Peace, Little Guardian

  The warm wind caressed her cheek, chilling the tears streaking down her face as she realized something perhaps her psyche had known all along: that she loved her sister, who had given her life to protect her. In turn, her sister’s love for Daniel gave her a second chance as a human, and the love of the man Audray had tried to take away from her.