BlueK Dynasty: The 1st Seven Days (22 page)

There was chaos and
screams as the Jeers taunted them and roughed them up a bit. Kurma
went right along with it. She needed to find out who their leader
was and figure out where Nina was hiding. She had to be behind
this. Kurma knew she should have kicked her out when she had the
chance.
  

“
Nina
how could you!” screamed Jackie. She hated the Jeers and hated
Aaron even more. He had done some really mean things to her, and
she still hadn’t gotten over it.
  

Nina was off in a corner,
trying to disappear.
  

April found her brother
sitting on the bed, protected by his usual bodyguards. “Aaron,” she
pleaded. “Stop this!”
  

He held his hands up, and
the Jeers threw the girls against the wall and backed away. He
slowly stood up and faced the girls. “Are you ladies going
anywhere? I like your outfits. Don’t they look good,
guys?”
  

The Jeers yelled out
arrogantly, obnoxiously.
  

Rimselda shivered. She
wished she could take the dress off; it showed too much skin and
way too much cleavage.
  

Aaron pulled a huge knife
out of the back of his pants. “Tell me who Kurma is.” He knew who
she wasn’t. He’d had the privilege of sleeping with all of the
girls except April, his sister. So
 
Kurma must have been the tall,
Latin girl with the thick, long hair. She was exotic looking, with
wide lips and a beauty mark above them. Aaron could definitely see
himself getting this girl. If he hadn’t heard such bad things about
her, he would have taken a liking to her.
  

Kurma stood still and
waited for one of the girls to give her up. She would take whoever
even moved their eyes her way down with her.
  

April pleaded, “Brother,
whatever stories Nina told you aren’t true.”
  

“
Really?
So this Kurma girl can’t fly?” asked Aaron. “She didn’t turn
Rimselda and Jackie into winged monsters? She didn’t turn you
either, sister?”
  

April grew
quiet.
  

Aaron spoke again. “I’m
going to give you one chance to make this right, April. Come to me
and I’ll open my arms to you. Disown these girls and join me once
again.” He laced every word with menace. “Otherwise, sister, you
will die with them.”
  

“
April,
don’t do this,” pleaded O’bellaDonna. She knew how Aaron worked. He
was a manipulative bastard and sick in the
head.
  

Kurma’s eye twitched. She
didn’t want to give up one of her protégés—especially April, who
knew weaponry. She prepared for the worst, though. Blood was
thicker than water, and at the moment April wasn’t bonded with her
Raptor sisters as she was with her own brother.
  

April stepped forward, and
Kurma wanted to knock her head off. “April, he is going to kill all
of us!” she screamed.
  

“
Not
you, doll,” Aaron said to Kurma. “I’ll let the Jeers have you until
you beg me to kill you.”
  

Rimselda had had enough.
She was ready to fight her way out just as she had fought her
mother to get away. She wouldn’t let anyone hurt her ever again.
Her arms itched, and she prepared her daggers, ready for
anything.
  

April took another step
forward as the Jeers advanced on the girls. Aaron approached April
and put his arm around her. “Kill them all except Kurma. Leave her
to me.”
  

Chelsea screamed, and
O’bellaDonna pulled a short knife from inside her bra. Rimselda let
her daggers show and hissed between her teeth. Kurma was over it.
These boys were nothing to her. Guns, knives, none of it made any
difference. She was stronger and faster than they all were. She
turned into a full Raptor in seconds, clothes torn away and
hot-tempered. Her skin smoked as her temperature exceeded normal.
She slashed her daggers out and plunged one through April’s back
into Aaron’s stomach. She heard the Jeers come for her and stop.
Kurma twisted her daggers up and sideways. She wanted these
siblings to feel it. The pain of betrayal was costly when it came
to Kurma. She had taught her brothers, and she would show the girls
that disloyalty was paid in full. She peered at the girls, who
stared back at her in shock—and admiration.
  

Kurma pushed April off the
dagger and stood over her dead body. She kicked the corpse aside.
Aaron rolled in pain on the floor, blood from his wound spreading
on his shirt.
  

“
Rimselda, come here, please,” said
Kurma.
  

The Jeers parted for
Rimselda. They stood in shock as their leader squirmed on the
floor. Rimselda came forward with only her arms in the Raptor
state.
  

“
Do the
honors, babe,” Kurma said.
  

Rimselda was nervous. She
had never killed anyone before except her father, and that had been
an accident.
  

“
It’s
either you or him. He’ll get better and come after all of us. Do
you want to constantly be on the run?” Kurma
asked.
  

Rimselda looked at her
then looked down at Aaron. He had forced himself onto Rimselda
years ago, and she had fought him off. She didn’t want to keep
fighting him off at every turn. All of these girls had been
tormented by Aaron or the Jeers at some time in the past. She was
doing it for them, really. April had chosen him over them. She
wasn’t on the Raptors’ side. So there would be no one to
object.
  

Kurma thought Rimselda was
taking too long and contemplated finishing off the leader of the
Jeers herself. She raised her daggers, but Rimselda beat her to the
punch. She came down on Aaron’s chest wild and
furious.
  

“
Aaron,
nooooo!” one of the Jeers screamed, and the rest erupted as their
leader lay dead in his own blood.
  

The girls sprinted from
the flat, down the stairs in a stampede, and the Jeers chased right
after them, chains and bats beating against the station’s walls,
creating even more of a ruckus. They chased the girls out of
Snowhill and down the street but didn’t catch up to them. The best
they could do was to throw rocks and rubble at the backs of the
girls’ heads.
  

Kurma and the others ran
for dear life.
  

23.

Flee or
Fight
  

Chelsea was devastated.
The other girls had to drag her into the SUV before they fled
away.
  

Chelsea caught Kurma by
the neck and squeezed her windpipe tight. She was so distraught
that Kurma had killed her friend April.
  

Kurma let Chelsea take out
her frustrations on her. She held her breath and jerked her head
back and forth as Chelsea choked her. All the girls tried to pry
Chelsea’s hands from her neck, even O’bellaDonna, who was driving
and swerving.
  

“
You
gotta calm down, Chelsea,” screamed O’bellaDonna. “It was either us
or her. April made her decision and she chose her brother, just
like Nina chose the Jeers when she ratted us
out!”
  

O’bellaDonna sped past the
bike lanes and dodged in and out of the traffic. “Don’t turn on us
too, Chelsea. I mean that. I don’t want to lose you.” She peered
into her rearview mirror and saw Chelsea was calming
down.
  

Kurma massaged her neck
and tried to moisten her throat. Chelsea had a mean
grip.
  

“
Where
are we going now?” Rimselda asked.
  

“
I’m
going to that party,” answered
O’bellaDonna.
  

“
There’s
no way I’m going clubbing after one of my best friends was stabbed
in the back!” Chelsea screamed.
  

“
I’m the
one who’s driving! Not you.” O’bellaDonna veered onto the
expressway. “And I say I need a drink and an excuse to forget what
happened tonight.”
  

Rimselda didn’t think it
was right just to leave April like they had, but then again they
couldn’t take on all of the Jeers by themselves. The Jeers had come
out of their shock and looked to kill after Aaron died. At least
Aaron and April were both together in heaven. Well, April was in
heaven. Rimselda couldn’t say where Aaron was.
  

“
Who’s
with me?” asked O’bellaDonna.
  

“
I am,”
replied Jackie. She wanted to forget tonight, Aaron, and all the
blood that had run from April as she died. Jackie didn’t blame
Kurma. She just wished she could have killed Aaron without killing
April too. “I wanna get drunk, period.”
  

“
That’s
exactly what I plan to do.”
  

The girls sped off into
the night as the city of Alexandria crawled with something that was
worse than Jeers.
  

24.

L for Leon the
Lame
  

Leon stood outside of the
Trinidad Gym, reluctant to hop the fence. Men went in and out of
the front doors, and Leon had to wait for the coast to clear. He
had messed up big time, really bad, and there was no reversing it.
He didn’t want to face Santino and the guys, but he had no place to
go but back to them.
  

A couple of hours prior,
he had snuck out of the shed in the back. At the time he’d had good
reasons for leaving. He couldn’t go back to his parents’ house
because then they might be exposed. But he did have two older
brothers who might understand. He had gone to the second family
home, where his brothers and sister lived. He wanted to talk to
Derrick, the oldest, alone and explain what had happened to him,
then have Derrick tell their parents and friends not to worry too
much about Leon’s whereabouts. That was it—Leon’s plan had been
simply to confide in his brother to get his message to the right
people.
  

But it had gone terribly
wrong. Derrick hadn’t been home, and Stewart, the middle brother,
had opened the door. Stewart was a prankster who played around too
much. The kind of guy who still gave other guys knuckle sandwiches
and farted when someone pulled his finger. Stewart had gone to pull
Leon into a bear hug when he’d seen him. Leon had seen it happening
before it actually happened. He hadn’t meant to shove his brother
off, but he couldn’t touch him…and yet he had. Leon had run from
the house in a panic, and then turned to go back and try to fix
whatever he had messed up. It was too late, though. Stewart had
screamed for help, and his buddies who had been over to watch a
game came to the rescue, only to be contaminated by the toxins in
Stewart’s hands.
  

It was too much for Leon,
seeing all those bodies gasping for air, heaving in and out and
changing different colors. He had really run then, as fast as he
could. He’d felt a burning sensation in his eyes and thought it was
the wind.
  

Now, back at the gym, he
tried to figure out his story so he could tell Santino. The first
thing he thought about was why he hadn’t written a note and left it
on the stoop for his family to see. He hadn’t been thinking clearly
ever since accepting that he was a Phantom. His mind kept going
back and forth: human or Phantom. Which brain should he listen
to?
  

Leon crossed the street
and scaled a fence. He went around a corner and saw the bunker some
yards away. His heart skipped a beat. He approached it and turned
the doorknob, then walked into the tiny space.
  

Santino looked up. “Where
have you been since yesterday?” He had woken up to only two other
people, Leon not included.
  

Kosner, VIN, and Santino
had all been uptight since they’d found Leon missing. They didn’t
know if he had changed his mind and gone to tell the cops or if he
had gone rogue and left the city for good.
  

“
Santino, can I talk to you real quick?” asked
Leon.
  

“
Sure,
go ahead and explain.”
  

“
No, I
mean outside.”
  

“
No
outside until it’s fully dark. You shouldn’t be going out when
there are so many people around and it’s light out,” Santino
said.
  

“
I know,
but this is important.”
  

“
Just
tell us where you’ve been and what you did,” yelled VIN, then tried
to calm his voice a bit. “No one is going to be
mad.”