Page 2 of Midnight Queen

A bold move on his part. At one point, he was my right hand. He knows what I’m capable of. He knows what his fate will be when I get my hands on him. If he thinks he’s earned a quick death, he’s wrong. I’m going to make him beg me for the peace of death and each time he does, I’m going to prolong his life longer so he can feel each agonizing second.

Gideon Rolfe is a name I haven’t so much as thought about in over a century. Once my business was done with him, he’d ceased to exist to me. I thought that by allowing him to live after he changed the human he’d fallen in love with, I was doing him a kindness. My act of kindness is now coming back to haunt me.

I stop in my tracks when I find Della standing in front of Duke’s room with a balled-up tissue held against her mouth and nose. Fat tears roll from under her glasses as she looks on at the man she’s cared for like a son. Her head turns in my direction, and she drops her hand from her face. “Silas.” Her bottom lip wobbles.

“Della,” I reply. I don’t know what I’m supposed to tell her right now to comfort her. Even if I did possess the ability to console someone, I’m not sure I’d have the words right now. I can’t think straight. “Is it finished?”

She was given a task that, under normal circumstances, I never would have asked her to do. It wasn’t fair of me, but I was out of choices. It’s a job that normally would have fallen to Duke if he wasn’t in his current indisposed state.

Della’s gray hair that is usually pulled into a neat updo is down, the curly ends wild around her shoulders. Her face is completely bare of any makeup, something I don’t think I’ve ever seen in all her years of service to me. “Yes, the team finished up and then I came straight here.” Her voice croaks as she speaks. “It’s all cleaned up. There isn’t a thing out of place or a drop of evidence. You’d never know that there was a shoot-out on the property or that...” she chokes on her words. “That Ira died in that room.”

I’ve lived through wars and plagues. I’ve seen more carnage and death that anyone should ever have to see in a lifetime but walking into Ira’s bedroom to find his cold body lying in a pool of his blood is a sight I won’t soon forget. My friend of over sixty years was not supposed to leave this earth like that. He was never supposed to be caught in the middle of the wars I fight in the shadows.

Neither was Quincey.

It was equally horrifying to discover that she was missing from my home. I should have been there with her. Had I not insisted on staying in the city to work, she would be safe, and Ira would be alive.

I vowed to keep them both safe and I failed them both.

“They took his body, I’m not sure where.” More tears fall. “Silas, how did this happen to him? How did any of this happen...”

I had Ira’s body collected and taken to a nearby morgue. It is where he will remain until we can give him the proper burial he deserves.

“Della, I can’t talk about Ira. We will mourn him when I have Quincey back. I cannot focus on anything other than that.” I don’t care if that makes me sound cold and apathetic to what’s happened to Ira. It’s what needs to be done. “We will feel the weight of his loss later.” I can’t allow myself the luxury of feeling anything other than anger right now. The anger will keep my focus sharp and mission clear. Bring her home.

With a tight, reluctant nod, Della agrees, “Okay.” She releases a long breath and wipes her face in a desperate attempt to get herself together. “How are we going to do that? Where would thisGideonhave taken her?” After getting Duke into the ambulance, I’d returned home to find my home and life in disarray. The unfortunate phone call to Della to inform her of what had transpired is one I never wanted to make.

It physically hurts me to say these words, “I don’t know.” And that’s why I’ve called them in. It’s not easy for me to ask for help, but I’m asking it from each of them. It’s not just me they’ll be helping. It’s everyone in a hundred-mile radius because if Quincey is killed, there is no telling what carnage I will inflict. Stopping me will be damn near impossible and that’s another reason why I’ve calledhimin after all these years. He may be the only one strong enough and willing to stop my destruction. “But I’ve made a few calls.”

My mom always said that monsters were real. I always believed that not only was she full of cheap tequila, but that she was also full of shit.

I learned the hard way that I was wrong.

So, so wrong.

Monsters are real and I gave my heart to one.

I knew it was dangerous to do so, but just like I did with the monster, I looked the danger in the eyes and laughed. I thought having the monster at my side I would always be safe and that he would always protect me. He promised me he would and I believed him with every fiber of my soul.

Mom was also wrong. She told me that all the monsters were evil. I’ve seen the good in the midnight eyes that will haunt me until my last breath. Those eyes send cold tendrils of fear down the strongest of men’s spine, but not mine. I don’t fear them, I find peace and safety in those dark orbs. I’d give anything to be staring into them right now instead of the stained ceiling above me.

It’s either the ceiling or the metal walls. The shackles around my wrists and ankles keep me from sitting up or moving from the hard table I lie on. I’m freezing. The pretty dress Della had picked out for me has been removed from my body. I don’t remember this happening. It had to have been while I was drugged.

There are events in life that you have to assume will only occur once. The odds of them happening more than that are just so highly unlikely you don’t consider them a possibility. Like getting struck by lightning more than once, I thought the chances of me being drugged and abductedagainwere slim to none.

But I was really fucking wrong.

Though as I lie here in nothing but the matching panties and bra I’d put on for my date with Silas, I have the sneaking suspicion that it’s not going to work out as well for me this time around.

The room is cold. A steady breeze of cool air flows over my exposed skin, causing goose bumps to rise and my body to shiver. I feel like I’m in a walk-in refrigerator.

I want to cry and scream, but I refuse to break and show how scared I am. If Ira can be brave in his terrifying last moments, I can be too. For him, I will be.

My chest physically aches as it constricts with emotion. Ira was the sweetest soul I’ve ever met. The world he lived in for the better part of sixty years could have hardened him like it has Silas, but he remained gentle and sweet. We were all blessed to have him in our lives.

Ira didn’t deserve the ending he got, but much like me, he was treated as a pawn on this sinister chessboard. He was used and then thrown away like his life meant nothing. Each second I spend strapped to this table, the more I’m afraid my fate will be the same.

I squeeze my eyes shut when angry tears threaten to fall. There have been many events in my life that I’ve been angry over, but none of them have consumed me with the amount of rage I feel now. I don’t like to live in anger. It’s exhausting and it’s not in my nature to do so, but right now, it’s like a dark fog seeping from my pores.

---