Vengeful (Villains #2)(68)
Marcella pursed her lips. “Sounds messy.”
“Death is messy.”
She took back the gun, squared herself toward the target, and fired again. It tore the paper several inches to the right of the head.
“You missed,” said Marcus, as if that wasn’t obvious.
Marcella rolled her neck, exhaled, and then emptied the rest of the clip into the paper target. Some of the shots went wide, but a few punctured the paper head and chest, stomach, and groin.
“There,” she said, setting the gun down. “I think he’s dead.”
A moment later, Marcus’s mouth was on hers, their shuffling feet scattering the spent cartridges as he took her up against the back wall. The sex was brief, and rough, her nails leaving lines beneath his shirt, but Marcella’s attention kept sliding past her husband to the ruined target, hanging like a shadow at his back.
Marcella didn’t shoot any more that night. But she went back to the range alone, week after week, until her aim was perfect.
VII
THREE WEEKS AGO
THE HEIGHTS
THE elevator doors opened, and Marcella stepped out, one hand resting on the gun inside her bag. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a man walking casually toward her. He looked innocuous enough, dressed in a pullover and slacks, but black combat boots showed beneath the hems.
“Marcella Riggins?” he asked, continuing his slow advance.
She turned toward him. “Do I know you?”
“No, ma’am,” he said with a smile. “But I was hoping we could talk.”
“About what?” she asked.
His smile stiffened, set. “About what happened the other night.”
“What happened . . .” she echoed, as if wracking her memory. “Do you mean when my husband tried to burn our house down around me? Or when I melted his face off with my bare hands?”
The man’s expression stayed steady, even. His steps slowed, but didn’t stop, each stride closing the gap between them.
“I think you should stay there . . .” Marcella drew the gun from her bag, not all the way, just enough to let him see the chrome polish along the back of the barrel.
“Come on, now,” he said, lifting his hands as if she were a wild animal, something to be corralled. “You don’t want to make a scene.”
Marcella tipped her head. “What makes you think that?”
She swung the gun up and fired.
Her first shot took the man in the knee.
He gasped, buckled, and before he could even reach for the weapon holstered at his ankle, she fired a second shot into his head.
He collapsed, blood staining the runner.
She heard the steps behind her too late, and turned in time to see a dark figure, a soldier, armored head to toe in black tactical gear. Turned in time to see the arc of electricity leap from the end of a baton with a static hiss. Marcella’s hand shot up and caught the weapon just as it skimmed her shoulder. Pain tore through her, sudden and bright, but Marcella tightened her grip, fingers flaring red. The strange light wrapped up over her wrist, a perfect mirror of the rot spreading through the instrument, then the hand holding it.
The attacker let go and staggered back with a yelp, clutching their arm, and Marcella slammed her heel into their chest, sending them to the floor. She knelt on top of them, fingers closing around the front of the soldier’s helmet.
“Come on, darling,” she said, “let me see your face.”
The helmet warped, weakened, until she could tear the faceplate away.
A woman stared up at her, pain contorting the lines of her face.
Marcella tsked. “Not a good look,” she said, wrapping her hand around the woman’s exposed throat to stifle her scream as her body withered.
Then, the harsh metal sound of someone racking a round. Marcella looked up and saw a third soldier, his gun already leveled at her head. Her own weapon sat discarded several feet away—she’d dropped it when she went to catch the baton.
“Stand up,” ordered the soldier.
Marcella considered him.
He was so focused on her, he didn’t register the shape moving behind him, not until it reached out and wrapped an arm around his throat.
The shape—a man built like a heavyweight boxer—wrenched the soldier back, and the gun went off, a steel dart grazing Marcella’s cheek before burying itself in the wall behind her head.
The soldier didn’t get a chance to fire again. The other man gripped the soldier’s mask and wrenched it sideways, breaking his neck with an audible crack. When he let go, the soldier’s body crumpled to the floor.
Marcella hadn’t wasted any time. She was up again, the gun back in her hand and trained on the man who, for his part, seemed unfazed.
“Careful, now,” he said, in a broad, musical voice. “Shoot me and you’ll just kill a twenty-three-year-old from the suburbs who loves his ma.”
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“Well, now, that’s a little complicated.”
And then, in front of Marcella’s eyes, the man changed. Rippled, and was gone, replaced by a young woman with loose brown curls. “You can call me June.” Marcella’s eyes narrowed, and the woman smiled at her surprise. “Didn’t think you were that special, did you?” She looked down at the three corpses, arms crossed. “You shouldn’t leave these here for anyone to find.” She knelt, and just like that, she was the boxer again, getting his hands under a pair of shoulders.