Chapter 1: Bones
(Imagine Dragons)
The two men step out of the darkness like a dancing couple. The one closest to Blaire Nathara is short, with wide chest and thick arms. His physic and the way and moves reminds her of someone from home that worked in construction. The other is taller, slim in the waist, but has a cobra upper torso. Gym strong, obviously. They move as people who has done this many times before.
She smiles at them, hoping they think her clueless about the fact that they were waiting. She knows this because of the heap of cigarette butts where they were standing. Whether they were waiting for a soft target, or for her specifically is still unclear. She sweeps her hair out of her face, tucking it behind her left ear in a flirty way.
“Hey there,” she says with a breathy voice. “I’m so glad to see you. I’m new to the city and got myself lost.”
She giggles, fakes a stumble, and reaches out to the closest wall for support. In this position she can see the alley behind her too. There is nobody there.
Yet.
The bones in her head sings their song, reminding her of who she is. Blaire Nathara, grandchild of the King of the Snake Clan. She has abilities that these men know nothing about. That is, if they are just two men looking for a fun time with a drunk girl, or muggers wanting to be economically uplifted by some stranger’s purse. However, if they know who she is, they won’t be here alone, and will be prepared for her Dark Magic gifts.
They move closer, not answering. This is all she needs to understand that they know who she is, and waited for her specifically. They don’t look familiar, which means they are mercenaries hired by the Bull Tribe to find and kill her. Kill her in the most horrible way possible, too.
It is then that the others step into the alley. Four more men, all ready to claim the bounty on her. Even if they split it between them, a sixth of the price will keep a family alive for at least two years.
“Welcome to the party, boys,” she says to the newcomers, extending her arm and curling her finger into her palm. “Come closer. Play with a stick of dynamite.”
The bulky guy snorts at the words. The other men, closing in from the street where she came from, are ready for a fight. The one on the left is bald. He has a pocket knife in the right hand, which he flicks open and close as a threat. The one next to him is missing his right ear. He has a gun in a holster on his left hip. Left-handed, then. The third has dreadlocks. They swing into his face as he moves, blinding and side-tracking him. He is the least prepared for what is to come. The last one is the smallest and youngest. He also has a knife ready, pointing straight at her. His hand is shaking and his eyes move to the man next to him, expecting for some sign. Probably his first time out with the boys. She can smell his fear.
Bulky moves first, stepping closer with his hands up in boxer stance. She grasps that he likes to dispense pain with his own hands, not weapons. He prefers strangling people, not shooting them. He moves faster, almost running to her, and sweeps a right hook at her shoulder. She moves out of the way quickly, hearing his fist making contact with the brick wall.
From the street side, Dreadlocks move in, cutting off escape. She pivots on her left leg, hitting him with a roundhouse kick to the chest. He exhales loudly, eyes bulging out with shock at the power behind the hit. He stumbles backward, grabbing onto the wet-behind-the-ears kid.
Bulky reaches out and grabs her by the hair. She moves closer to him, leaning into him with her back and lifting both legs off the pavement to kick at Baldy, who is advancing. He leans back, but her left foot hits his wrist and the knife falls to the floor with the sound of bells. Blaire twists her hips as Bulky pushes her away. This time both feet hit Baldy squarely to the chest. Bulky let go of her hair and shoves her forward. She uses the forward momentum to drive Baldy off of his feet. He falls with her standing on his chest.
An arm enters her peripheral view and she ducks down, stepping away from Baldy before he can grab at her legs. The kid is right in front of her now, eyes large as plates and chest pumping air in and out with the rhythm of a V8 engine. Blaire smiles at him and then pushes him hard with a shoulder to his chest. He gasps, trotting backward and falls against the brick wall, sinking to the floor.
She points at him. “Stay down,” she says with as harsh a voice as she can muster.
Something hits her in the kidneys. She exhales with the pain, feeling all strength in her knees dissolve. Falling forward, she hits the poor kid full force in the torso. He doesn’t belong here. Whoever brought him along deserves to pay in the cruellest way. Her patience is waning. It’s time to burn this place to the ground, with these people in it.
“Run,” she tells the kid as she rises. “And don’t look back.”
She slips the knife out of her boot with the right hand. She pushes a little glass flask with poison out of one of the many loops on her belt, flipping off the cork with her left thumb. The kid scrambles away, still gasping for breath and clutching his chest. Inside her the blood burns like venom through veins. Snake Clan power courses through her body. Soon she’ll loose complete control of herself. These men don’t know who they are fucking with.
“I’m Blaire Nathara, and I have magic in my bones,” she sings as she flings the powder into Bulky’s face.
He is the most dangerous fighter here and needs to be eliminated before he causes serious damage. The yellow powder hit him full in the face, stinging eyes and throat as he draws a breath, sucking it into lungs. He bends over, rubbing at his face. This is the worst action he could possibly take, as his hands now also are covered with the poison. The skin shows blisters immediately. Dreadlocks moves forward, chanting karate words. With a loud yell he chops down from above with a hand. The intention must be to hit her in the soft spot of her neck, which will switch off her lights in ten seconds. Obviously, his fighting skills are learned from movies, as his arm lacks the proper velocity and the aim is way off target. The side of his hand hits her collarbone, and he screams in pain.
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She kicks him in the family jewels, enjoying the way he sinks to the floor. He lays there, gasping for breath, unable to decide if he should hold onto his hand or his jewels. She kicks him right on the temple, and his eyes turn up and up until he passes out.
Click.
A gun being cocked. She turns towards One Ear. He holds the gun with two hands, the killing hole pointed straight in her face. She lifts both hands into the air, faking fear. He smiles with the victory. She allows him to enjoy the moment because Tallman is directly behind her, ready to grab a hold.
Maybe they want to take me in alive?
“You are never going to take me out of here alive,” she whispers, spitting into One Ear’s face.
Tallman grabs her, pulling her arms back and twisting them up. She yelps, rising onto her toes to prevent the pain. One Ear wipes spit out of his face, and leans closer.
“Dead or alive,” he says, “I don’t fucking care which, you bitch. Either is fine with me.”
Blaire feels Tallman’s breathe on her neck, and head buds his face. The sound of bone breaking. Warm liquid splashes onto the back of her head and runs down her neck and back. The grip on her arms slacken and she pulls out of it with a twist. A gunshot rings in the narrow alley, hurting her ears. She moves to the left, away from the two men, and reaches for flasks from her belt with both hands. She manages to fling the powder into Tallman’s face, but One Ear has already moved from the spot he was before.
Another shot, this time she feels the bullet rush past her cheek with a red hot kiss before it slams into the wall next to her, spraying mortar and dust. Her eyes searches for the knife she dropped earlier. She moves quickly, leaning down to grab it as she rushes towards the street. Dreadlocks try to grab her legs, but she drops the other flask of yellow poison onto him and he screams, clutching at his neck and chest as burns rose on his skin.
She turns into the street and something hard hits her right eye. A fist. The man wielding it is huge, like a mountain bear, and ready for a fight. He grabs a hold of her skirt and her skirt and lifts her off the ground into the air. Then he flings her back into the alley. She hits the wall face first. It fucking hurts like hell.
Falling onto the floor like a bag of bones, she is disorientated for a few seconds. From the alley One Ear’s footsteps approaches. She has no time to think now. No time to even rise to run or fight. Her hand still has the knife, and she sweeps it forward, slashing his ankles. He screams, steps away from her. She rolls toward him, driving the knife deep into his thigh. The gun drops with a loud clutter and she reaches for it quickly. The man from the street is advancing fast, so Blaire shoots him just right of the center of his chest, where his heart is. He gasps, but drive forward, still waving fists and slurs at her.
“My patience is fucking waning, slut,” he screams.
“There’s magic in my bones,” she sings as she runs towards him. “Throw your fucking stones and taste the magic in my bones.”
She pulls the trigger again, but it jams. Flinging it to the floor, she runs into him with all the force she can muster, lifting him off his feet and slamming his body into the wall. He exhales with large eyes. She slips the knife into his belly, slicing down. Warm liquid spills over her hand. Blood. Dreadlocks rises to his feet, holding hands up into the air before he stumbles to the street.
Bear laughs in her face, spitting blood.
“Is this entertaining?” she asks.
He coughs more blood into her face.
“I’m done with this dance,” she says, pulling the knife out of his flesh and stepping away.
He topples forward, hitting the floor face first. She steps around him, wiping at her face with the sleeve of her shirt before picking up the gun and stepping into the street, holding the knife ready. There is no-one waiting. She turns left, away from the busier part of the street and runs, keeping close to the buildings.
She fights the urge to hail a taxi because she’s covered in blood and they won’t allow her into the vehicle, and it will attract attention she doesn’t need right now. The Bull Tribe reached out and tapped her on the shoulder tonight. No, they slapped her across the face with a glove, as if they were living in the medieval age. She is lucky to walk away alive.
Half an hour later she slips into her hotel room after circling the building twice, ensuring there are no unwanted eyes or lurking danger. She locks the door, pushing a chest of drawers against it before entering the bathroom. Stripping the bloody clothes off her painful body, she steps into the shower stall and opens the water. It runs off her in rivers of red. She waits until it runs clean before reaching for the soap.
After the shower, she inspects her face in the bathroom mirror. She hardly recognise herself. Her right eye is already a nice blue hue and swollen shut. There is a burn wound on one cheek where the bullet nicked her. Her jaw aches. On her shoulder, where Dreadlock’s karate chop failed to drop her, a bruise throbs. Her other shoulder and upper arm aches from where she hit the wall. She turns, noting several scrapes and cuts all over her body.
Fucking Bull Tribe shit.
This was a close call. She was negligent. A year ago she won’t have walked into trouble like this. She used to be careful, diligently so. Religiously careful. Tonight was a fucking dumpster fire. And it’s on her.
“Fuckety-fuck-fuck. I’m so tired.”
She looks into her face, her own eyes. Recognize the lie there. She’s not tired, she is hopeless. For ten years she’s waited for the Reaper to take her, but she’s still here. She doesn’t want to be here. She wants to die. She is ready to go.
“Then why did you just fight six men who wanted to kill you?” asks her inner voice that belongs to Red King, her grandfather.
She balls her right hand into a fist, slamming it into the wall next to the mirror.
“I deserve to die, but not like that,” she answers her inner voice.
“You think you deserve a good death, then?”
“What is good? What is bad? What is black or white? Even in Eden there was no right until there was wrong. Good or bad, white or black, its different sides of the same coin. Bad things happen to good folk in the same way that good things happen to bad people.”
The night is hot, so she drops her aching body on the bed naked, feeling the AC kissing her skin. She closes her eyes, finding herself in that alley again, seeing the vultures circling in. The fire is still burning in her veins. The indignity of it upsets her. If she is going to die for what she did, at least it should be by the hand of someone directly from the Bull Tribe, not a mercenary with no skin in the game. She wants to die at the hands of those she offended, period. She wants to die respectfully, not for fucking profit to a stranger she doesn’t know.
“That’s why I fought them,” she whispers.
She turns on her side, facing the wall. All around her mind, darkness closes in. Not the comfortable darkness of sleep and rest, but the darkness in which she falls into memories of the past. She knows that all night long, she’ll be turning the pages of her life, walking on those old paths like a million times before.
There will be no rest for her tonight. Her bed will burn until she rises with the morning light. In this familiar darkness, the voices of the past calls to her. Loved ones she cared for. Some she didn’t. She needs to kill them, these voices in her head. That’s what a therapist told her many years ago. Kill them and build a new city from their bones.
The voices fade. Their words become a meaningless hum. The bones of her people topple and fall with whispers and sighs.
Inside her mind, the bones sing.