Realm of the Runes: Blood Right

Chapter XII

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The grey Audi had been deserted in favor of a more appropriate vehicle. Driving in an electric storm was dangerous enough, without having to negotiate icy roads and snow blasting on gale force winds, with a car designed for a quiet city street.

Rich gripped the heavy-duty steering wheel of the big black Hummer firmly, Ryaki slouched beside him in the passengers seat, and Dennis buckled tightly into the back, a large tinfoil-covered package on his lap. 

Ryaki checked the knives sheathed in her sturdy fur-lined boots, the lazer pistols holstered on her belt, and stretched her arms languorously. 

“Let me know when you want to swap,” she said, and drifted off to sleep.

“How can she sleep at a time like this?” Dennis grumbled. “This is the most dangerous part of the operation!”

Rich laughed under his breath. “Haven’t you learnt after all these years it’s her coping mechanism?”

“Yeah, yeah. I think she’s so tough it’s not even that. She wants her beauty sleep so she looks good if she has to kick butt.”

“You could be right,” Rich mused. “Never though about it like that.” 

Deep inside he knew that the weight of their safety took its toll on her small body. He might be tall and strong, able to hold his own during a fist fight, and shoot straight as a die, but she was the one who could get them out of tricky situations, kick some serious butt in hand to hand combat, throw knives like a pro, think like a criminal, and infiltrate any network in London with minimal effort. 

She’s only seventeen, he reminded himself. And we’ve been doing this for three years.

Ryaki’s father had been a government programmer and intelligence officer for the UN, sending his five year old daughter to the best programming and coding schools in the world. She’d graduated at twelve, and attended high school against her parents wishes, desperate to make some friends.

Her father had been caught cheating on his wife just before her fourteenth birthday, and her mother had committed suicide the day she found out. Ryaki had arrived on Rich’s doorstep carrying a small black bag, her normally sleek hair in disarray, and her eyes swollen with tears. 

I’ve never actually seen her cry. She was determined to take down crooks from the moment she set up her gear in the corner of my bedroom. 

He swerved around a scorched area of the road, where a lightning bolt had ripped apart the concrete seal. The Hummer bumped uncomfortably across the rough ground, before he pulled back onto the road. The chains were doing their job of giving traction on the ice-coated road, but he still eyed the terrain warily.

It’d be more than a stroke of bad luck if I rolled this thing and we lost the precious cargo on Dennis’ lap.

Ryaki murmured in her sleep, and the guys chuckled.

“Not so tough in her dreams, huh?”

Dennis snorted. “Whatever. You drool like a Saint Bernard.”

“And you whimper like a lost puppy!”

“What’s with the dog insults?” Ryaki complained, stretching uncomfortably and blinking like an owl.

“Nothing!”

She rolled her eyes. “It has something to do with me, doesn’t it. Fine.”

“What you don’t know can’t hurt you,” Rich teased, grappling with the steering wheel as he hit a patch of particularly slick ice.