Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,92

man goes down.

Sweat beads on my temple, a sweep of red encroaching on my central vision. Not again. Not again. Familiar panic claws at my chest and I breathe hard through my nose. Ash rises from the destruction. It hangs like death in the air, drying my throat and stinging my eyes.

Relying on muscle memory, I aim, fire.

Another falls.

Under the cacophony, I hear someone yell “throw it!” and my gaze flickers over the shadows, trying to locate the source.

Something hard lands on my right, less than an arm’s length away.

I twist my head, the rifle still cradled to my chest, and spot the tear gas grenade, its safety pin already removed.

Fucking hell.

“Out!” I bark at Saxon. “Move, move, move.”

Grabbing the duffel bag, I hook the strap over my shoulder and launch to my feet. I run, bent at the waist, to keep low and to the shadows, then grasp Saxon by the arm and pull him along behind me. We zigzag through the ruins of The Bell & Hand and slip out into the night through one of the bare window frames.

In unison, we turn left down Fournier where Christ Church Spitalfields stands sentry to the chaos.

A round sings past my left ear, and I bite back a curse. “Take Wilkes,” I tell Saxon. “I’ll head for Brick.”

“Sod off,” comes his grunt, a second before he shoves me down Wilkes Street. The moonlit sky reveals crooked pavement and boarded up windows. Without exchanging a word, we make the first left, ducking into a narrow alley lined with cobblestones and cast-iron streetlamps.

It’s as good a place as any.

The duffel bag squishes behind me as I press my back against the brick.

“I should punch you all over again,” Saxon growls, settling in beside me. With his shoulders leveraged against the building, he swaps out the magazine clip of his pistol with perfunctory proficiency. “You knew you were being tailed.”

“I suspected it,” I mutter, fixing my gaze on the corner of Wilkes and Puma Court, “and now I know for sure. Thanks for the gear, by the way.”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“Does this mean that hug time is over?”

The barrel of a SA80 edges past the corner wall, and I lift my rifle and aim. A scream rips through the air, followed by another threat from Saxon: “There won’t be enough of you left to even show the queen when I’m done.” He pauses, then grits, “Christ, you’re bleeding.”

“It grazed me.”

“No, you’re bleeding.”

I twist my wrist so I can peer down at the back of my right arm. Sure enough, the sleeve of my jumper is hanging from my elbow to swing in the breeze. The skin is torn, too. There’s nothing but blood oozing from the wound, smeared across my elbow, nothing but the reoccurring nightmare of a very different day when I was immobile on the pavement, unable to scream, unable to shake myself free.

Paralyzed. Frozen.

A man who deserved better than to die with a sack pulled over his head, just a stone’s throw away from where his brother waited for him.

I hear the duffel bag hit the cobblestones as it slides from my wounded arm.

Hear Saxon shout my name, ordering me back to his side.

And then I hear nothing at all as I turn the corner onto Wilkes and walk straight into the line of fire.

No mercy.

Not today, not tomorrow.

Not until the day I die.

28

Rowena

One staggering step takes me away from the loo, and then yet another and another, until I’m running clear across my bedroom. My feet are bare, my naked flesh damp from a late night shower. It doesn’t stop me from throwing open the heavy drapes, heedless to wandering eyes down in the garden, and shoving my nose against the chilled glass.

Light cuts through the darkness.

A car winding through the dense sycamore trees that bracket Swain’s Lane.

I follow the glowing head lamps without blinking, terrified that if I do, it’ll prove to be only a mirage. A bout of wishful thinking after days of quashing every seed of hope within me. The car disappears a moment later, around the bend toward Highgate Cemetery, but it’s enough.

Enough for me to face the cavern-like darkness of my bedroom and make a break for it.

I dive for the desk and put greedy fingers to the lamp string. One tug and warm, yellow light splices across the wood. I stare at the varying shades of oak, my heart racing fast, fast, faster, before I’m rushing to each nightstand, and the switch