Chapter 151
Raven
The smoke drifted lazily through the underground chamber like morning fog over a graveyard. Peaceful. Almost poetic.
If you ignored the bodies.
"Clear the room," the team leader barked. "Check every corpse. I want confirmation."
I pressed myself deeper into the shadows behind a marble column, watching through the haze as boots crunched over broken glass and spent shell casings. The guards moved with professional caution, rifles raised, sweeping their flashlight beams across the carnage.
One guard kicked over Pig mask's body. "Dead."
Another checked Wolf mask. "This one too."
They worked systematically, rolling corpses, checking pulses that had long since stopped. I counted their movements, catalogued their positions, calculated angles and distances with the same precision I'd use to solve a calculus problem.
Except calculus never tried to kill me back.
"Anything?" the team leader called from his position near the blown entrance.
"Nothing, sir. All hostiles down."
"What about the girl?"
A pause. The kind that stretches just a heartbeat too long.
"No body matching her description, sir."
"FUCK!" The team leader's voice cracked through the chamber. "She's a goddamn ghost! How the hell do you miss one target in a room this fucking small?!"
I smiled in the darkness. Ghost. That's cute.
From across the room, near the sealed blast door, Scarlet's voice rang out, light and amused. "Well!" She stepped into a pool of emergency lighting, her fox mask dangling from one hand. "She's a bit more troublesome than a ghost, I'm afraid."
Every rifle in the room swiveled toward her.
"Who the fuck—"
"Hands up!"
"Don't move!"
Scarlet raised her hands slowly, that infuriating smirk playing at the corners of her mouth. The same expression she'd worn when we'd first met in Prague, right before she'd stolen a Fabergé egg from under the nose of the Russian mafia.
"Gentlemen," she purred. "Before you do something regrettable—"
"We should've searched her at the door!" The team leader was already squeezing his trigger.
"—you might want to worry about what's behind you."
They turned.
I was already moving.
The dual Berettas felt like old friends in my hands—Miranda's personal weapons, lifted off her body while the guards were busy playing detective. Premium Italian engineering. Fifteen rounds each. Thirty opportunities to make my point.
I didn't need thirty.
The first guard's hand was reaching for his trigger when my bullet shattered his index finger. The scream that followed was chef's kiss material. His rifle clattered to the floor as he clutched his mangled hand.
Second guard dove for cover. Smart. Would've worked too, if his knee hadn't caught my next round. He went down hard, his armored vest utterly useless against the joint shot.
"SUPPRESSING FIRE!" the team leader roared.
They opened up. Muzzle flashes lit the smoke-filled chamber like a strobe light at the world's most violent nightclub. Bullets sparked off marble columns, shattered the remains of the crystal chandelier, punched holes through leather furniture.
Not a single one touched me.
Because you're telegraphing, I thought, sliding beneath a mahogany conference table as rounds chewed through the wood above my head. Every. Single. Shot.
Their training was good—military good, probably private military contractor level. But training has a rhythm. A pattern. And patterns?
Patterns could be read.
I popped up behind a granite pillar, squeezed off three shots. One guard's weapon hand. Another's exposed elbow. The third's shin, right below his knee pad.
More screaming. More panic.
"FLANK LEFT!"
"I CAN'T, SHE HIT MY—"
"WHERE IS SHE?!"
I was everywhere and nowhere. A ghost, like they'd said. Except ghosts don't smile this much.
The Berettas clicked empty.
Shit.
"SHE'S OUT! SHE'S OUT! RUSH HER!"
Twenty-three guards—I'd counted—surged forward like a wave of kevlar and fury. Their boots hammered against the floor, their voices rising in a crescendo of rage and bloodlust.
They wanted revenge.
They wanted blood.
They were about to be very, very disappointed.
"Raven!" Scarlet's voice cut through the chaos, bright and cheerful. "Stop hogging all the fun! Some of us came here to work too, you know!"
I dropped the empty pistols, my hand already moving to the KA-BAR strapped to my thigh. The blade sang as it left its sheath—a soft, deadly whisper that made my heart sing.
"Well!" I called back, rolling under a burst of automatic fire. "It's been a while since I've seen the Red Legend in action!"
The Red Legend. That's what they'd called her after Monaco. Fifty Russian mafia enforcers on a luxury yacht. One red-haired Irish girl with a fondness for throwing knives. By the time the coast guard arrived, the Mediterranean was stained crimson for half a mile, and Scarlet had vanished into the sunset with three million euros in bearer bonds.
They'd said her hair matched the water that day.
"YOU FUCKING BITCHES!" The nearest guard's face was purple with rage. "I'LL—"
He never finished the threat.
Scarlet's throwing knife sprouted from his throat like a grotesque flower. His eyes went wide, confused, and then he was falling, gurgling, drowning in his own blood.
The other guards froze for exactly one second.
One second too long.
"You know," I said conversationally, "I really prefer cold steel."
The KA-BAR felt like an extension of my arm as I moved. No—flowed. That's what Bloodline had drilled into me from age six. Don't fight the weapon. Become the weapon.
The first guard died before he could scream. Femoral artery. Three seconds to unconsciousness, thirty to death. I was already moving to the next target.
Slash. Pivot. Thrust.
Scarlet's knives whistled through the air, covering my blind spots, creating openings, forcing the guards to choose between protecting themselves and attacking me.
They chose poorly.
A guard charged with a combat knife—cute—thinking close quarters would give him an advantage. I let him come, stepped inside his guard, and opened him from sternum to navel. His intestines hit the floor before he did.
"Covering left!" Scarlet shouted.
I didn't look. Didn't need to. A knife thunked into the chest of a guard I hadn't even seen raising his rifle. We'd done this dance a hundred times. Budapest. Istanbul. That clusterfuck in Manila.
Trust your partner. Know your partner. Become one weapon.
Another guard tried to grab me from behind. Bold. I drove my elbow into his solar plexus, felt ribs crack, spun and slashed across his throat. Carotid artery this time. More dramatic, but just as effective.
The chamber was a symphony of death. Screams and gurgles and the wet sound of steel parting flesh. The smell of copper filled the air, thick and cloying. My hands were slick with blood.
I'd never felt more alive.
The last guard dropped, Scarlet's knife protruding from his eye socket.
Silence fell.
I stood in the center of the carnage, breathing hard, my KA-BAR dripping crimson onto the marble floor. Scarlet pulled off her fox mask, her red hair plastered to her face with sweat.
For a moment, we just looked at each other.
Then the world exploded.
Not literally—though the sound was close enough. A deep, rhythmic BOOM-BOOM-BOOM that shook dust from the ceiling and made my teeth vibrate.
Scarlet's expression shifted from exhilarated to grim in an instant. "That sound." She tilted her head, listening. "M32 rotary grenade launcher. Military grade. The door won't last ten seconds."
I pulled my rabbit mask back on, checked my knife. Still sharp. "M32? Cute." I twirled the blade between my fingers. "Someone's trying to impress me."
"FUCK, Raven!" Scarlet grabbed my arm. "You can't be serious! That's a goddamn grenade launcher! Even you can't dodge explosives!"
"Oh, I know the specs. Six-round cylinder, effective range of 400 meters, casualty radius of five meters per round." I tilted my head, listening to another BOOM rattle the door. "Read about it extensively. Never actually experienced one in person though." I paused. "Should be interesting."
"Interesting?!" Scarlet released my arm like I'd electrocuted her. "You're fucking mental!"
Another BOOM. The blast door groaned, buckling inward. Cracks spider-webbed across the reinforced steel.
Scarlet looked at me. Then at the pile of corpses. Then back at me.
"You know what?" She walked toward the bodies. "I'm out. You want to meet your maker? Fine. But I'm not dying because you're having an educational moment." She kicked a dead guard aside, testing the pile. "I'm playing dead. Maybe they'll think we all killed each other."