Dragon Gate (19 page)

“They’re killers.”

“I’m not saying I disagree, Jonathan. I’m simply saying this doesn’t sound like you.”

“I’ve got a clearer view of how to do things these days.”

“Just kill anyone who gets in the way?”

“When they deserve it.”

“And you’re the one to decide that?”

“Somebody has to.”

“How the hell did we switch roles?” Kelly asked.

Rayna shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

I turned to Rayna. “You have a problem with us killing them?”

She frowned. “I’m staying out of this.”

“You have a say, Rayna. We’re here to protect you. The Marshalls want to kill you, so I say we kill them first. What’s the trouble?”

“I don’t want to go into—”

“Go into it anyway,” I said.

She took a deep breath then turned to look into my eyes. “Very well. In my opinion, taking someone’s life shouldn’t be something you just toss out there as an item to cross off a to-do list. And certainly not a
group
of people. Shouldn’t life mean more than that?”

“It should.”

“But to you, it doesn’t?”

“It used to,” Kelly said.

“You’re talking about murder,” Rayna whispered even though we weren’t close enough to any other diners for them to overhear.

“They’ve made runs at you, so it’s time to end it before they succeed. Think of it as a preemptive strike, or think of it as retaliation. Whatever makes you sleep well at night.”

“You’re just so casual about it,” Rayna said. “You could be talking about ordering a salad, and telling the waiter to hold the cheese.”

“I’m doing it for you and your brother.”

“That’s why it bothers me.”

“You feel responsible?” Kelly asked.

She nodded. “They’re dying so I can live.”

“You’d rather die?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No, but I don’t think they should have to die either.”

“You have a better idea?”

“Send them back through the Dragon Gate, and seal it forever.”

“You want me to ask them politely to leave? Or maybe leave a trail of gingerbread crumbs to get them to follow? Tell them they can have you and Graham if they come to meet us at the gate?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t want to be the reason for anyone’s murder. That’s all.”

“They won’t give up.”

“I realize that. And yes, I know they killed my parents and Jenkins and Lucas’s girls. Life is cheap in the other world. Men die on hunts; people die from diseases or common colds. It’s a rough world, but under normal circumstances, we don’t murder each other.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“These aren’t normal circumstances.”

“In that case, it shouldn’t bother you that we go kill them.”

“Let me rephrase. To
them
these aren’t normal circumstances. They were wronged. They have valid reasons for wanting to kill us, Lucas in particular, but because of what he did, it means all his family must die too. They’re only enforcing the rules that have been in place for thousands of years.”

“What did Lucas do?”

Rayna looked down. “I’m not allowed to tell anyone. You wouldn’t understand it anyway. You’d say it’s stupid and it’s not a reason to kill someone. Or maybe you don’t need reasons. Hard for me to say.”

“I do need reasons, Rayna. But they’ve given me five reasons already. Your parents, Tess, Chantelle, and even though he drugged me, Jenkins.”

“By my count, you’ve killed four of Thomas’s sons.”

“Kelly killed one, so my score is only three.”

“Since Jenkins was a traitor, that should have things evened out, then. Right?”

“So you think we should try diplomacy?”

“I don’t know what you should try, but you should try
some
thing other than death. I want to go to my room.”

Kelly pushed away from the table and rose. She leaned close and whispered, “You sure have a way with the ladies these days.”

Back in my room, I tried to understand why Rayna took issue with my plan. They were trying to kill us, so it made sense to kill them first. Playing defense wasn’t doing us any good, so I wanted to take the battle to them. What was so wrong with that?

I knew that even a few months ago in this timeline, this would have seemed wrong to me, but a few months ago, I was an idiot. If you have enemies who want you dead, your best course of action is to kill them before they kill you.

The old me would be going into a spastic rage about how life is sacred and you only kill when there’s no other alternative, but that version of me had never seen what I’d seen—my friends exploded in front of my face—and I’d worked five long years to find a way back to change that. While they were unaware, I continued to relive that other timeline in my dreams. I kept watching Kelly die, and that was something I never wanted to see again. So yeah, I understood where Rayna was coming from on this, but my darker view of humanity overpowered her civilized pacifism. The Marshalls had to die.

KELLY CHAN

When Rayna and I were alone in her room, she sat on the bed and cried. I was used to seeing women cry. The women I trained often cried because of what they’d been through or because they knew they were finally safe or happy. Crying isn’t part of my nature, but I didn’t see it as a weakness. I saw it as being in touch with one’s feelings. While I didn’t need to cry, I knew many people did. Rayna, clearly, was one.

I sat on my bed and started writing in this stupid journal. After a time, Rayna stood and walked over to me. “Can you take me to the house?” she asked.

I looked up at her. “What do you need?”

“I need you and Jonathan to understand us.”

“And going back to the house helps in that regard?”

She nodded at the notebook in my lap. “You’re writing a journal?”

“Jonathan’s idea. Not mine.”

“I used to keep a journal. As I’m not allowed to tell you what happened, perhaps I can dig out my old diaries and let you and Jonathan
read
about it.”

“And you want me to take you? Jonathan might be better company because you need him to understand why you don’t want us to kill the Marshall Clan. Convince him. I don’t care one way or the other. I can kill them when they attack us, or I can go kill them if Jonathan feels that’s the way to go.”

“And you won’t lose sleep over it?”

I cocked a thumb toward my chest. “Assassin.”

She furrowed her brow. “How many people have you killed?”

“I haven’t kept a running tally.”

“Do you like it? The killing, I mean?”

I gazed into her eyes. “To be honest, yes, I do.”

“It makes you feel like a god?”

“There are no gods, Rayna. The truth is that when I kill people these days, they are always people who deserve to die. They attacked me or someone I care about or someone I’m paid to protect. I don’t go around killing people just because it’s fun.”

“I still want you to take me to the house.”

“It’s your call. I can take you.” I tossed the notebook on the nightstand, set my pen on top of it, and rose. “Shall we?”

oOo

The Noble mansion was quiet. Police tape stretched across the front door. Rayna tore it down, and we entered the house. The place was still a crime scene, and they hadn’t cleaned up the blood. The bodies were gone, but there was still blood on the floor where they had been.

“Try not to disturb anything,” I said.

“I don’t even want to look at it,” Rayna said. “Chantelle or Tess died right here.” She stared at the congealed blood. Most of it was dry, but some was still a little moist and sticky.

“Let’s get that diary and go,” I said.

She started up the stairs, but I touched her arm. “Let me go first. Just in case.”

She nodded.

I moved ahead of her and quickly went upstairs. Nothing moved in the house. There were no unusual sounds. The place felt empty. I moved into Rayna’s room and did a quick sweep to verify everything was all right. I motioned for her to enter.

“Can I turn on the light?”

“It’s your house.”

She clicked on the light.

Everything looked fine. Normal.

She moved to her dresser, knelt, and opened the bottom drawer. She rifled through some papers and notebooks until she found the one she wanted. “Here we go,” she said.

“Since we’re here, do you want to grab anything else? Clothes, toiletries?”

“Good idea. I’ll pack a bag for myself and one for Graham.” She pulled a suitcase out of the closet, set it on the bed, and opened it.

“I’ll double-check his room,” I said.

“Great.”

I left her in her room to pack, moved down the hall, and switched on the light in Graham’s room. I hadn’t been in there before. It was a large master bedroom with a king-sized bed. He had a massive walk-in closet. I turned on the light in the room then stepped into the master bathroom and hit the switch there too.

Something smelled rank in the bathroom.

I glanced over at the sink, a long marble affair with twin basins. In the second sink, I saw Jenkins’s head. Beneath the head was a foul green and brown slime. It smelled like rotten chicken. That didn’t make sense. The police would have checked the house. They’d have found the head.

That told me that the Marshalls had returned to the house. And they might still be here, watching.

We’d been turning on lights, so they would know where we were. I drew my sword and quickly moved down the hall to Rayna’s room. She was still packing. Good.

She glanced over at me in the doorway, saw the sword, and said, “Something wrong?”

“Maybe.”

I heard something outside. A whistle. Bird? Human?

Rayna started to turn toward me, but something crashed through her bedroom window. And when I say something, I mean some
thing.
It was large, covered in brown and white fur, and had a long snout with huge fangs. It moved on all fours and had massive claws that made me think of the comic book character Wolverine. It was one of the destroyers.

Rayna screamed.

Before she finished her scream, I darted into the room, grabbed her, and threw her behind me. I raised my sword as the beast got its bearings and scrambled toward me. It rose onto its hind legs, let out an inhuman howl, and took a swipe at me with those claws.

I moved to parry them with the sword, but its claws slashed right through the steel. I stared at my broken blade.

“Shit.” I liked that sword.

I threw the handle at the beast’s face.

“Run!” I said.

Rayna raced out of the room, and I heard a crash downstairs.

“Oh no!” she said.

The destroyer jumped forward and took another swipe at me, but I dodged and leaped backward out the door. I tried to pull the door closed behind myself, but the beast clawed through it, sending chunks and splinters of wood flying. A few splinters hit me, while others speared the wall, and the larger pieces bounced off and clattered to the floor.

I had to get Rayna to safety.

I darted in quickly and kicked the destroyer in the gonads. It hit me hard, and I found myself flying. I crashed into the wall, breaking the plaster and drywall. The destroyer charged at me and rammed into me headfirst. It drove me through the wall and pinned me to the floor.

“Get out of here, Rayna!” I yelled.

The monster slashed my arm so deeply, I worried it would tear completely off. If my arm came off, I wasn’t sure it could be reattached, and I didn’t want to learn the hard way.

I tried to push the beast away, but it was too heavy, and I had no leverage. It clawed my stomach open, and I saw my intestines flying against the wall. It bit into my shoulder. If I’d been a normal person, I’d have been dead. I’d never been damaged so severely, though. I found that I couldn’t use my left arm. My right arm was pinned beneath me, and I couldn’t use my legs because the monster, weighing in at nearly eight hundred pounds, was on top of them.

The beast clawed my chest open. Then it reared up to slash my head off, but that gave me the release I needed to get my right arm free. When the beast came down, I stabbed my fingers into its left eye. It howled in pain and scrambled off me.

I tried to get up, but I couldn’t move. I was too badly damaged. I opened my mouth to call out to Rayna, but my lungs didn’t work. I tried to breathe. Couldn’t get enough air.

My eyes blurred and everything faded away.

RAYNA NOBLE

Rayna knew the first destroyer had killed Kelly. Even a Sekutar stood no chance against one of these animals. But Kelly kept it occupied. Rayna raced toward the stairs, but a second destroyer crashed through the door. The doors flew off their hinges and clattered across the floor, coming to rest near the second staircase. The doors were three inches thick, but the destroyer knocked them aside as though they were made of balsa wood.