Killer Moves

First 10 Chapters of Killer Moves

Killer Moves

By Varsha Dixit

Copyright © Varsha Dixit 2018

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

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Chapter 1

10:05 pm, March 29, 1996

Sirsa, Madhya Pradesh

It wasa deathly storm—a storm that could kill, a storm that did.

The night was like the depths of the Mariana Trench—wet, stygian, and dangerous. The winds howled like a lusty pack of wolves and the raindrops pelted down with such force that they stung the rare person or animal that had not yet taken shelter. Thick treetops bent down, skimming their roots like old arthritic men tying shoelaces. Electric wires snapped like twigs all over the city. The entire town plunged into darkness.

The storm did not differentiate between the rich and the poor. It showed the same vengeance to tin roofs as it did to the pride of the state—Sirsa palace, a magnificent 150,000-square-foot sandstone creation on twenty acres of land!

"Kriti! Kriti! Answer me, Kriti!" The fifteen-year-old lanky boy with a narrow face and floppy hair walked around in the darkness, his hands outstretched in front. The boy was Prince Kabir—heir to the Sirsa royal lineage—and the girl he sought was his twin sister, Princess Kritika. For the last two days, the children were the acting adults to a bevy of servants and staff. Their parents and grandparents were out of town for the inauguration ceremony of a rehabilitation center for abused women in Bhopal.

Those who knew Princess Kritika also knew that the svelte and soft-spoken teenager did not blanche in the face of bungee jumps, sky dives, and the usual household crawlies. But darkness was her nemesis—a nemesis she was yet to defeat, unlike her brother.

Chitra Rana, Kabir and Kritika's grandmother, felt that the fear of the darkness had been planted in her granddaughter at the time of her birth. Kabir's birth had been fast and easy, his eagerness to move on to the next thing evident even as an infant. Kritika, however, had struggled in her mother's womb for excruciating minutes when the umbilical cord had wrapped itself around her delicate neck. She had emerged from the womb, her skin as blue as faded ink and mottled with ugly webs of red bumpy veins. But Kritika had survived. The doctors called her a miracle baby. It was an actual miracle that her grandfather, King Bhoopendra Rana, had not fired the doctors.

"Kriti! Kriti!"

All the outside noises were amplified in the quiet and large house, drowning Kabir's voice.

The glass door next to him shook as the wind slammed it from the outside.

A pale flickering light appeared in the room. "Prince! Prince!"

Kabir saw his nanny, Simi Miss, accompanied by two guards in the blue and white staff uniform embossed with the Rana's royal family insignia at the pocket—a red maple leaf inside a golden sphere.