“I even got a souvenir.” His voice was now raspy, almost a death rattle. He only had seconds left. He held up a digital video camera. Queen recognized it immediately.
She roared like a feral beast, all her rage and frustration boiling over. Forsaking both of her weapons, she kicked the man square in his grinning mouth. Teeth shattered and blood sprayed his face. She kicked again and felt the satisfying crunch of breaking bone. She spun, putting all her power into the kick, and drove her heel into his temple. His neck snapped, and his head lolled to the side, the grotesque remnants of his last wicked grin lingering on his face.
She dashed into the locker room, still clinging to an irrational hope that the man had lied to her, but deep down, she knew it was not so. When the beam of her flashlight fell on Armina’s slumped figure, Queen’s throat tightened and her vision clouded. No! She would not cry! She had known pain all her life, and seen enough death for a hundred lifetimes. She would not let this break her.
She knelt down and drew Armina close to her. “I should have protected you,” she whispered. “You deserved better than this.” Dark memories of her own teen years came unbidden to her mind. She thought of her alcoholic father, her mother’s tragic passing and years of feeling like an outcast and an oddity. Miseries that led her down some dark paths before she found her way again. Life should not be that way. Children should be kept safe from the darkness of the real world. Armina had been almost a young woman, true, but she was still innocent.
Queen kissed the girl on the top of her head and laid her back down. She would ask Deep Blue to make sure Armina’s body was returned to her family, as well as Oleg’s to his family. Right now, though, she had unfinished business. She shined her light down on Armina, taking a long look at this innocent victim of Manifold’s wickedness. She let the anger wash over her, soaking her to the bone with righteous rage. She would see to it that this evil was punished.
She returned to the dead man and gave his body a quick search. He had nothing useful on him—his Kalshnikov was empty and any reloads he might have carried must have already been expended. He bore neither a knife nor a handgun. She was about to leave him when something caught her eye—a tiny headset. She slipped it off and held it up to her own ear. She heard nothing at first, but then someone spoke.
“Sweeper squad, do you copy? Anyone copy?”
“I copy,” Queen growled, pouring into her words every bit of anger and hatred she could muster.
“Who is this?” Surprise rang in every syllable.
She yanked off her bandana and used it to rub away the makeup concealing her bright red skull and star brand. Meant to scar her physically and emotionally, the brand had instead become a reminder of her strength—of what she could overcome. She embraced the symbol of the Death Volunteers and made it her own. “The Angel of Death,” she said. “And I’m coming for you.”
Chapter 9
Queen knew she was being much more reckless than she ought to, but they already knew she was here and, likely as not, they would be taking up defensive positions, hanging back and waiting for her. It had been impulsive to announce her presence and her intentions that way, but she wanted blood. Deep Blue could feel free to be as pissed off as he liked, but for her, this was no longer an intelligence-gathering mission.
The Ferris wheel, the amusement park’s most prominent feature, loomed up ahead, a dark silhouette in the moonlight. Everything around her was as silent as death.
“Where are you?” she whispered. She hoped her hunch about the amusement park was correct, and it would lead her to Manifold’s headquarters. She passed a dilapidated booth where jagged chunks of broken glass gleamed like fangs in the window casing. A graffiti artist had painted a sinister, yellow eye on the side of the booth below the window. She knew the Pripyat Funfair had never actually opened to the public, the Chernobyl disaster having forced the city to evacuate prior to its scheduled first day of operations. She wondered if excited children had watched its construction, just waiting for the moment they could walk up to this booth and buy their tickets for the rides—children who had no idea that death loomed just over the horizon. Kids like Armina, who never had cause to contemplate their mortality. She felt an ache deep within her soul. When had she gone so soft? How could a girl she scarcely knew have worked her way into Queen’s heart in so short a time? Maybe it was her worry over Rook that was twisting her insides.
Rook.
No, she was not going to think about that right now. She’d lose her focus, and that could mean death.