The Murdered World 16 (Patreon)

The wine cellar was as dark as it ever got, with the floodlights leaking illumination down through the hopper windows where the walls met the ceiling. Christina nursed both a bottle of Domaine Georges Roumier Échézeaux Grand Cru and the simmering pain in her cheek. She didn’t bother with a glass.

Nor did she bother trying to fool herself. She had pushed things as far as she could. Like a cat, she would maintain her willfulness, her independence, but when Angel came to her, she would accept his apology, letting him lavish bribery on her. Less to make up for what he’d done and more to punish himself for the loss of control by bleeding his bank account.

And if he fucked Emma too, what of it? It wasn’t like she could stop him, any more than she could prevent him from slapping the taste from her mouth. In a way, she was lucky to have a man who would rather fuck her sister than beat her. Perhaps Angel would lose so much interest in her that their only connection would be through his pocketbook.

She heard shouting outside, and then shooting, and assumed those idiots of Angel’s were fucking around. They’d probably seen a possum and taken that as an excuse to see who the best shot was. Next they would whip out their dicks and measure—

Christina heard the bellow of an engine, then a terrible squeal—a split-second of silence, horribly pregnant with anticipation—then it was like an earthquake somehow directly on the house, over her instead of under her, as if it mattered.

The wine racks tipped over, breaking so many bottles on the floor that it was like a tidal pool lapping at her ankles before Christina jumped onto the starting step of the staircase. She looked up, seeing the ceiling crack, then bulge downward like God was blowing a bubble with concrete. Every second it bent, the ceiling scratched out a million tiny rifts.

Unable to take her eyes off it, Christina backed up the staircase. The wine had its say, making her miss the next step and fall against the steps. Then, as if in vicious mockery, the ceiling fell with her.

A yacht plunged through the cellar and into the floor like an immense stalactite fallen from the top of the cavern, dashing its bow against the ground in shatter after shatter of mindless destruction.

Screaming, Christina fled on all fours up the stairs, feeling them shake beneath her with the shock of the ongoing impact. She got close enough to the door to reach for it, for salvation—and bullet holes stitched through the door, shells whizzing overhead to zing into the walls and ricochet around like a swarm of angry bees.

Blood spritzed Christina’s face; she thought she’d been hit for a moment before realizing the fluid had come through the door, carried alongside the bullets that had all but parted her hair.

Panic gripped her. Nothing else could hold the limp strands of her boozy, shocked thoughts. Against all reason, she threw herself up against the door and tried to open it. It refused to budge: the man whose blood had covered her was fallen in front of it.

In an unthinking fit of fear, Christina pounded on the door, crying out for help. Her fright spiked on by the sounds of the yacht settling behind her, debris from the mortally wounded mansion falling in after it and adding to the apocalyptic din.

Suddenly the door swung open. It took Christina a moment to realize she had managed to open it, that the obstruction was no longer in the way. Then she heard a noise like a side of beef being dropped from a great height. She looked over to see Idel sprawled on the hardwood floor, a bubbling froth of blood forced from his carcass by his brief ascent and final fall.

The person who had manhandled the great bulk of Idel’s weight, and in only an instant, towered over Christina. He wore a bulletproof vest over a Hawaiian shirt. He carried a matte-black rifle, smoke issuing from the barrel. It was lowered, not pointed at her, but alive in his hands like he could bring it to bear on her, or anything else in the room, within the blink of an eye.

Christina was speechless. Her jaw dropped low, her eyes shot wide open, and they only opened wider when she saw how the man’s boardshorts were distended, a massive tent at the crotch prying the fabric from the muscles of legs like tree trunks. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing—had never thought a man’s prick could be so long or so thick.

“Mrs. Mercader,” the man greeted her.

Christina thought she might faint.

***

Frank knew that Christina Mercader wasn’t much of an innocent, living the high life on a crime lord’s dime the way she had, but she wasn’t a threat, wasn’t a target. And he had zero tolerance for collateral damage. It was what made his crusade a war and not a slaughter.

He couldn’t let her wander around, though. She’d bumble straight into a trigger-happy gunman or take cover in one of the rooms he’d booby-trapped.

She would have to come along.

Frank grabbed Christina by the front of her dress—her sizable décolletage made it the easiest grappling point—and hauled her close to him. Face to face, her mouth shut and her eyes focused. She seemed able to make conversation now that she was only taking in his expression and not the rest of him.

“You wanna live? Stay behind me. Do exactly as I say.”

Christina blinked repeatedly; he could see she was trying hard to process how the evening had developed. “Y-you… you’re hard!”

“I was getting a blowjob,” Frank told her. “Didn’t finish.”

Frank looped the Commando’s shoulder strap around Christina, using it like a leash to pull her along. He held the rifle in his off-hand, drawing his Browning in the right.

The semi-automatic pistoled was chambered for .40 S&W; more stopping power than the usual 9MM. He’d still put two shots into any tango he encountered and they wouldn’t be any deader than if he used Parabellums, but if they had on body armor, he’d come to believe the .40 packed a punch that effectively negated Kevlar. They wouldn’t shrug off the 205-grain round before he finished the job.

Frank moved to the west side of the building and the spiral staircase to the second floor. He’d have to be careful to keep Christina moving in his direction without inadvertently using her as a human shield.

He kicked down a door into a long hallway. The spiral staircase loomed at the end of it; the high-ceilinged corridor showed how it climbed all the way to the third floor and how it now tilted off-center from one of the many explosions that had rocked the mansion.

Two guards, armed with shotguns and armored with Kevlar, started down the winding steps. Frank froze, halting Christina too with the length of the Colt Commando, and sent .40-caliber death flying from his Browning.

His first shots took one guard high in the sternum, sending him flopping over the guard railing on the express to the bottom floor. The second guard ducked behind the bulk of the staircase.

It was no good. As elegant as the Doussiè wood looked, it didn’t do a thing to stop the Browning’s fire. Punching through the steps in spurts of sawdust, the bullets hammered into the guard, leaving him a bleeding mess tumbling down the stairway.

Christina shrieked, but Frank sensed it wasn’t simple shock at seeing a man died. His head twisted and he saw a third guard coming up behind him. He leveled the Commando one-handed and squeezed the trigger. At full auto, his burst quickly recoiled its way off the target, but not before several rounds found a home in his center mass.

Without body armor, it was like taking an icepick to a snowman. The man jittered with the impacts, dancing away several pints of blood in rapid succession before the stream of bullets climbed above him and let him fall. Frank released the trigger.

Screaming again—this time most likely just from seeing a man die, or three—Christina slipped the sling of the Commando and ran. Frank uncocked the Browning and dropped it, trusting the single-action pistol not to go off. With that same hand, he grabbed Christina by the hair, stopping her short.

“Do you have to use the bathroom?”

“No,” Christina asked, sounding absolutely mystified.

“Good.”

Frank pulled her close enough to loop his left arm around her neck, then pressed the remote on his wrist. Plastique went off in the bathroom Christina had been about to pass, blowing the door off its hinges. Someone screamed inside the room. From the way the cry devolved into a series of hacking coughs, Frank doubted there was any need to go in for a killshot.

Slinging the Commando, he shoved Christina against the wall and held her there while he picked up the Browning. Ten rounds in the magazine. He’d used five. Frank popped the clip out, slid another one in, and shoved the old magazine between Christina’s breasts.

“Make yourself useful. Hold that for me.”

“What are you doing?” Christina demanded.

Frank gave a Roman salute to the landing on the second floor. He triggered the remote. Another boom, more screams, shreds of flaming wallpaper shooting through the bannisters and fluttering down to ground floor.

“Redecorating.”