Chapter 24
The King
I’ve ordered executions, waged wars, withheld antidotes, neglected people into early graves, and now I’ve delivered death myself.
I didn’t see the soldiers as targets like Serenity advised. I saw them as people. And I didn’t distance myself from the violence like I know some killers do. I was there in that moment and I savored watching my enemies die.
Serenity is right to think I’m evil. The last salvaged bit of my soul burns for her. Other than that, I’m cruelty formed into the shape of a man, and I have no qualms about that.
“We need to leave the country immediately,” I say.
Serenity looks out the window and rubs her belly absently. It’s a knife to the gut, watching her come to terms with what is, and it’s making me want to pull over, hold her to me, and force her to rejoice over the news the way I did.
“The hangar may be compromised,” she says.
I nod. That very worry has plagued me since we left our villa.
Even if the airport isn’t compromised, we could be shot out of the sky.
“And you think all of this is because …” Serenity glances back down at her stomach.
She can’t bear to say it. As much as I would normally enjoy her being squeamish, right now it does nothing but worsen my mood. This is the last thing I want her uncomfortable with.
“You’re carrying our child. Is it really so hard to accept?”
She opens the hand that cradles her stomach, staring down at it like it holds the answers. “Yes,” she breathes. “I never wanted this.”
I give a caustic laugh that does nothing to lessen my blooming fury. “Well you better get used to it because neither of you are going anywhere.”
I am the king of the entire world; I picked her, a lowly former soldier and an emissary of one of the conquered lands to be my wife. Queen of the planet. Who is she to reject me and my child—her child?
She needs to fucking accept that this is the way things are.
Serenity
The king thinks he can keep me and this child of ours around. I still can’t think about the situation without a fresh wave of nausea passing through me.
“If Estes hasn’t already heard that we’ve survived, he will soon,” I say.
I can tell the king hates that I keep changing the subject. I don’t give a damn that he thinks I’m being subversive. He has no clue just how terrible the storm inside me is right now. I’m keeping it together only because we’re in danger.
“I have a safe house an hour from here,” he says.
“Do any South Americans know about it?” I ask.
“Some. You think it’s compromised?”
“The WUN—the Americas—don’t work the way the Eastern Empire does. Everyone here can be bought for a price, and if Estes is willing to fly in a fighter jet to gun us down, he sure as hell will be willing to pay off people for information.”
“I can pay more,” Montes argues.
He’s thinking like a rich foreigner.
“Yes,” I agree, “but Estes lives here. You don’t. This is someone else’s turf and the people here play by their rules, not ours. Trust me when I say that when we’re this close to death, people here are going to remain loyal to Estes for fear of his future retribution.”
“Then we’re going to have to kill him,” Montes says, grim.
“Yes.” If we cut off the head of the snake, the orders stop trickling down to Estes’s loyalists.
“Let’s be clear about one thing,” he says, “my first goal is to get you out of here alive. All our actions will stem from that.”
I reappraise my husband. He didn’t include himself in that statement. If we weren’t in the middle of a dire situation, the magnitude of his words might’ve hit me a little harder.
Something worse than my nausea rises up my throat. Something worse than grief and violence.
I love this broken, broken creature, and damn him to the pits of hell for making me feel it when I should hate him all over again. If I could reason or suppress it away, I would. If I could crush it by sheer force of will, I would.
“Alright,” I say, working to make my voice even, “we’re clear about that.”
“We need to strike before Estes has time to regroup.”
Now this is the king I’m familiar with.
Already the humidity of this place has my hair sticking to the nape of my neck. I squint my eyes and look at the horizon. “Let’s go pay the bastard a house call.”
By the time we near Estes’s estate, Montes and I have plotted out a rough strategy to kill the man. One that involves liberal use of explosives.
Neither of us know whether the man will be inside, but smug assholes like Estes are fairly predictable. Right now I’m both desperate enough and sure enough to bet all our lives on his being home.
I move back to the bed of the jeep and swap out the machine gun for a rifle. “If we live through this, I’m having a stiff drink,” I mutter.
“Better ask those stars of yours to grant your wish, nire bihotza,” Montes calls out behind me. “I’m not letting you anywhere near the alcohol cabinet when we get back.”
I smirk. I don’t know if the king’s aware of it or not, but banter like this calms my nerves before fights.
The car curves down the road, and ahead of us I catch sight of watchtowers posted on either side of the entrance to Estes’s estate. Two grim-faced guards manage them.
“Are you ready?” I say, lining up my sights. Once I shoot, things will happen very quickly.
“Do it.”
I pull the trigger.
It takes seconds to shoot down the guards. I watch as one of their bodies tumbles from its post.
“Hold on,” Montes warns.
I brace myself against the jeep’s frame as we barrel towards the gates. Our car rams into the wrought iron fence. Metal groans and then, with an agonizing shriek, it rips away completely.
It’s almost anti-climactic, driving guns a-blazing onto a quiet estate. But it doesn’t stop me from taking position once more. I begin picking off guards stationed outside the house one by one as they struggle to grab their weapons and take position themselves. I don’t give any of them time to aim. As soon as my sites lock on heads or chests, I shoot.
Our vehicle comes to a halt, and Montes joins me at the back of the Jeep. His normally coiffed hair is wild. Dirt and ash mar his skin and clothes. He has rolled up his shirt sleeves, and a bulletproof vest encases his chest. This Montes belongs on the battlefield; he looks like he was born to the profession. I definitely like this version of him better.
He bends and grabs a grenade. Flashing me a smile that looks even whiter than usual, he pulls the pin and launches it at one of the windows while I continue to take out anything that moves.
The glass shatters, and we hear a surprised shout. Then—
BOOM!
The explosion unfurls out the window, and I can only imagine what it’s doing inside.
Montes already has another grenade in his hand, and he drives this one towards a downstairs room.
The screams start soon after that.
I train my gun on the house’s main entrance. At some point, someone’s going to run out of that front door that might not be evil like the rest of us. My heart and my soul weep for them. All soldiers that have seen considerable action can tell you that there are always these situations—the questionable ones. And often the innocents get caught in the crossfire.
I hope that doesn’t happen today. I hope the people that have nothing to do with Estes’s power plays are far away from here by the time Montes and I level this building. Because we will level the building, and we aren’t taking any prisoners.
I draw in a steadying breath when the front door opens, and then I shoot.
Two guards and a woman I recognize from the meetings. No innocents so far.
I periodically flick my gaze to the windows and the sides of the house. That’s where counterattacks will come from.
Montes throws a third grenade, then a fourth. The screams are beginning to harmonize, and the house is catching fire.
Now people are pouring out of the building, some on fire. I shoot those ones first; it’s one thing to kill, another to watch a human being suffer, and even after all I’ve seen and done, I don’t have the stomach for it.
“I surrender! I surrender!” Over the roar of the fire, it’s hard to hear Estes’s voice. It comes from just inside the front door. “Don’t shoot!”
Like all good vermin, the rat managed to survive the explosions.
“Come out with your hands up!” I yell.
I cradle my trigger lovingly. I’d love nothing more than to pump this man full of bullets.
Through the smoke drifting out of the front door, I make out Estes’s form. Hands in the air, he leaves the shelter of his house. Too late I see the small gun he clutches.
His gun arm drops and he fires off a shot a split second before I fire at him.
I hear Montes shout. Next to me, he stumbles, then pitches forward into the seatbacks, clutching his hip.
I can’t breathe. This is my father all over again. The bullet, the blood, the emotion expanding, expanding, expanding inside of me. It’s too large to contain.
Loss, agony, it’s roaring, ripping through me, and I can no longer passively kill.
I lunge for Montes just as the South American dictator falls. I grab my husband, and there’s blood everywhere.
Not again, please God, not again.
But Montes is breathing. It’s shallow, and with every second that passes more blood slides out of him. I don’t know where he’s hit—whether it’s his thigh or his torso; muscle, artery, or organ.
I’m scared.
I don’t know when that happened—when this terrible man went from being someone I feared to someone I feared for.
Montes shakes his head as I try to help him. “Finish this,” he grits out.
I don’t want to. He could still die; every fiber inside me is warring with itself. My training demands that I stand and shoot, my heart is telling me to keep my husband alive.
Vengeance is a poison, and it slithers through my veins.
Estes tried to kill my husband. My monster. Father of my child.
Something cold and resolute settles on my shoulders. Montes will survive, and I will end this.
I lift my gun. The screams have turned into moans. I shoot at two more people who’ve caught flame. Everyone else is laying in pools of their own blood. Almost all are dead, and those that aren’t will soon be.
I train my weapon on Estes and approach him cautiously.
He’s been inching his way towards his gun, which rests several feet away from him. It must’ve slipped from his hand when he fell.
I reach his gun before he does, and I kick it away, keeping my aim trained on his heart.
The dictator watches me with angry eyes. “You won’t get out of here alive,” he says.
“We’ll see.”
I don’t shoot. Even though he tried to kill me and Montes, I don’t pull the trigger. Not yet.
For all his depravity, Estes is just one more WUN citizen who shares a past like my own.
“What?” he challenges when I don’t shoot. “Do you want to know why I did it?”
“No.”
I already know why. It’s the same reason behind my mother’s death, and my father’s, and my land’s. Power is the worst sort of drug. You can never have enough of it, and you’ll give up every last good thing for more.
“Then what are you waiting for?”
It’s a good question. I want him to redeem himself. I want proof that a soul as far gone as his—or mine, or the king’s—can repent.
But he’s not going to understand, and it’s not going to happen.
“Who are you working with?” I ask.
He tries to laugh but ends up grimacing instead. “You and I both know I won’t tell you.” He’s beginning to sweat. A gut wound is a painful way to go.
Estes has about seven minutes of life left in him. I won’t get answers from him willingly or unwillingly. We both know it.
“Did you really think you could ever do what I do?” he says. “You have no idea. You’re just a savage with a sad story. And the king wants you to rule the world? I won’t be the last—”
I pull the trigger before he can finish the sentence. The bullet hits him in between the eyes. One instant the man was aggressively alive, and the next he’s nothing more than bones and muscle and cartilage.
The smoke soaks into my clothes and the wind dries the blood on my skin as I stare down at him. The roar of flames is the only noise out here. The whole thing is a dark baptism.
I don’t want to be this way. Killing and killing and killing. I’m a prisoner to violence, and I’ll never be free.
I strap my gun back across my body and kneel before Estes. Threading my arms under his, I drag the dead dictator’s body to the jeep.
There are a lot of horrific things that I’ve had to do throughout the king’s war. This is just one more of them. The man’s body is our ticket out of here. Just as Estes wanted proof of our deaths, I’ll need proof of his to sway loyalists who would stop the king and me from leaving.
The stillness of the estate is eerie. All that’s left of Estes’s great scheming is me, a dying immortal king, and a whole lot of carnage.
I grunt as I pull the body along, pausing when I reach the back of the jeep to catch my breath.
Montes raises an eyebrow weakly.
I grunt again as I shove first Estes’s upper body and then his lower half into the back of the vehicle. Montes’s upper lip curls as he stares down at the dictator now lying next to him.
I round to the king’s side and remove his hand from his hip. There’s blood everywhere. My own hands are beginning to shake; they don’t usually do that, especially not in the heat of battle. That’s often when they’re steadiest.
I take a deep breath.
I still can’t tell what the bullet hit, and this is no place to doctor Montes back to health.
We need to get back to the hangar.
I hop onto the driver’s seat and press on the gas. Behind me, I hear Montes groan.
A bloody hand grabs my seatback. A moment later, Montes hauls himself over the center console.
“What are you doing?” I say, aghast. “Sit back down.”
“You are not leaving me to rot next to a dead man,” he says. He grits his teeth as he forces his broken body into the seat next to mine. He didn’t once cry out. The guy’s made of tougher stuff than I would’ve guessed.
When I reach the end of Estes’s property, I let the jeep idle.
“I don’t know how to get to the airport,” I say.
I can’t meet Montes’s eyes. I don’t want more proof that my monster-turned-lover is now nothing more than an injured man. He’s supposed to defy the laws of nature.
“I’ll get you there,” Montes whispers. “Just … look at me.”
I don’t want to.
“Serenity, please.”
I squeeze the steering wheel and force my gaze to meet his. He looks tired. Worn. Weak. All the things I feared I’d see in those eyes of his. And now these might be the last breaths of air he’ll take.
“Do you love me?” he asks.
I’m shaking my head. “No.”
“Liar.”
He can see right through me.
“Now’s your chance to kill me,” he says.
I work my jaw. “What do you want me to say? That I can no longer do it? I already admitted that to you.”
He gives me a wan smile. “Turn right.”
I take my eyes off of him to do so.
“There’s a Sleeper in my plane,” he says. “You want to save me, then get me inside it.”
I floor the gas pedal. Anger and guilt and confusion—they all vie for my attention. It’s one thing to protect the king from death, another to try to save him from its clutches. I’m truly abandoning my own promise right now. I won’t kill the king—not today, and not in the foreseeable future.
I grit my teeth against his groans as the vehicle hits rocks and potholes.
“Left,” he says, when the road tees off.
There’s a Sleeper at the end of this drive. I just need to get to the hangar, and then we can get Montes inside it. I even my breaths; I’m cool and collected, I can feel myself detaching from the situation.
Until I look over at the king. His head leans against the wall of the jeep, and his eyes are closed.
“Montes.” I reach over and shake him. “Stay with me.”
His head lolls as he tries to nod.
“I swear to God, I will fucking punch you in the dick if you don’t.”
That actually elicits a shadow of a smile. “Vicious … woman …”
Two minutes later, he slips away again. Luckily, I no longer need his instructions. I begin to recognize our surroundings—the skeletal remains of a home nature’s reclaiming, streets that are nearly covered by foliage. I can get us the rest of the way there.
By the time I pull into the hangar, Montes is completely unconscious. The place is bustling with activity. I have to assume that all these men are in Estes’s pocket. I hop out of the jeep, gun in hand.
“Estes is dead.” I point to the back of our vehicle with my free hand, where the dictator’s body lays. The men peer at the car, and some approach. “Whatever orders he gave you, they no longer apply. The king and I are getting on the king’s plane. Anyone who stands against us will be shot on sight. Those that help us will each receive half a year’s pay once we safely disembark.”
That gets them moving. Men rush around the hangar, preparing our plane for takeoff. Each discreetly looks at Estes as they pass the car.
Once the aircraft is ready to board, two men help me carry Montes onto the plane. His skin is paler than I’ve ever seen it, and his body is dead weight.
“El rey está muerto.” The man speaking has two fingers pressed to the pulse point beneath the king’s jaw.
“No.” I push aside his hand and place my own where his was. I wait for his pulse. It never comes.
I stare down at the king’s face. His head’s rolled back, like he’s fixated on the ceiling, but his eyes are closed and his mouth is slightly parted. Already the planes of his face are losing shape.
I cradle the side of his head. I don’t realize I’m crying until the first tear trickles into my mouth.
People are wrong to say that the dead look peaceful. They just look dead.
“No,” I repeat.
This man isn’t beyond saving. Not now that I’ve fallen for him, not now that I carry his child.
The men look at me strangely, but they nonetheless help haul the king into the plane. Montes told me that the Sleeper would be onboard, but I’ve never seen it before.
“The Sleeper—we need to get him into the Sleeper.”
Someone knows what I’m talking about because I begin to hear shouts of “Compartimiento de carga! La carga! El durmiente! Más rápido.”
We begin to move again, this time towards the plane’s cargo bay. Inside, I can already hear the hum of the machine as it idles. It’s bolted to the floor. My heart palpitates a little faster just locking eyes on it.
The king told me once that so long as the brain was intact, the Sleeper could bring the dead back to life. So it doesn’t make sense, this irrational dread I feel when I see it. Perhaps it’s that such technology seems just as unnatural as Montes. But right now I’m happy to set aside my superstitions if it means resurrecting a dead king.
We get him situated inside and I close the lid. I don’t know what to do next, but the machine has a “Power” button. On a whim, I press it.
The humming sound turns into a whirr as the Sleeper wakes up.
I watch the small readout as it begins to assess the king’s vitals—his now nonexistent ones. Then it begins scanning his body.
“Come,” one of the men says.
“Not yet.” I want to make sure that the machine is doing what I need it to. I know that means more time on the ground, more time for a potential counterattack should Estes’s allies decide to rise up. I don’t care.
It only takes a minute for the machine to get a respirator and something called a cardiopulmonary bypass device hooked up to the king. Five minutes after that, the machine begins cleaning the wound.
A gentle hand touches my upper arm. “Good?” one of the men asks.
I nod, backing away. Leaving is the last thing I want to do, but I need to arrange safe passage with the men here. If the machine can save Montes, it will.
If it can’t, then the world will know the undying king can, in fact, die.