Killer Queen

Chapter One

Chapter One

“Please! No, please!” he pleaded, hands clasped defensively over his heart, a wild, panicked expression lighting his features. It was either that or the street lamp we stood under.

He was backed up to the stone wall in the dead-end alley I’d herded him to.

Occasionally the stench of sweat and alcohol would waft over us, escaping from the pulsating nightclub down the road every time a door was opened.

“Please,” he begged, wide, teary black eyes flitting between the blade clenched in my hand, and my eyes.

The combination of his sheer helplessness and the chill in the cool night air sent shivers up my arm till the hairs on my neck prickled.

Just when I was starting to believe that he really was as helpless as he appeared, the switch flipped and his terror turned smug.

“You got me,” he smirked, shrugging his shoulders. His terror melting to confidence.

I instinctively clenched the handle of my blade a little tighter, waiting for him to react defensively.

“Quite the performer, eh?” he quipped, wiping the unshed tears from his eyes.

He was quite the performer but I would die before admitting that for a second, he had me fooled--had me doubting myself.

“So how’d you find me here?” he asked.

I didn’t miss the way his dark eyes darted around, calculating an escape route, slightly bending my knees in response, ready to move.

“She probably told you, huh? I should’ve known she’d know where I was. But what I don’t know is why she sent the little pixie after me. I mean, no offence--” he started, before holding a hand towards me, an apologetic expression underlining his insult. “But did she really think you’d stand a chance against me?”

I cocked my head in response, ears twitching at the sound of distant cars but thinking nothing of it. They sounded too far away. I’d be done by then.

He frowned ever so slightly, eyes darting behind at me at the sound of drunken girls stumbling past the mouth of the alley.

“Don’t you have vocal chords or something?” he scoffed after the girls had disappeared and I smiled.

I didn’t need vocal chords to do what I was going to do, and he must have sensed the change in my movement because he twitched when I sprang forwards, blade aimed straight towards him.

He grunted when I slammed him back against the stone wall, hand held over his mouth as I plunged the blade into his chest and straight through his heart.

Realisation dawned on him before the pain and his eyes widened as his body jerked, sending another wave of chills over my skin.

His life seeped out of his body, dripping and pooling on the floor and I let my hand go as his dead weight plummeted.

Little pixie? I thought, snorting.

“Freeze!”

My head snapped up.

The cars I’d heard were police.

“Put the weapon down and put your hands in the air!”

Every inch of my training flew through my head, attempting to calculate a way out of the situation. The only results coming through repeatedly were telling me I’d broken the first rule: don’t get caught. Like that helped me right now.

“Put the weapon down and put your hands in the air!” the officer repeated. Perversely, I noted the excited tone in his voice.

Probably the most fun he’d had his whole career.

“We will shoot!”

I inhaled deeply upon realising there was no way out of this. I’d been caught red handed killing a guy.

“Oops” I whispered under my breath before dropping my blade.

I heard a very tensed officer jump at the sound of the metal hitting the concrete, before I slowly raised my hands and turned around to the two police officers aiming their gun at me and the straggle of intrigued partiers peeping around the alley in drunken interest.

Double fuck.

What happened next seemed to take place in a series of snapshots: facing the police station, facing my clothes and belongings on the desk, facing the detectives and the two-way mirror, facing my jail cell, facing the judge.

I only really seemed to wake up when I found myself facing my prison cell…and my new room-mate.

And she was staring at me.

I winced as the cell door slammed behind me, before sighing and closing my eyes.

“I guess this is why they say ‘don’t do crime’,” my new room-mate quipped.

I failed to answer but thought ‘don’t get caught’ had a much smarter ring to it.

“What you in for?” she inquired and I opened my eyes to look at her. Really look at her and her greying, unwashed and un-brushed hair, the dull, dry and wrinkling skin. She looked and smelled older than she probably was and I resisted the urge to compare her appearance to my own, hoping that during my stint in here, my manicured nails wouldn’t become chipped and yellowing and my skin wouldn’t look as though it wanted to shrivel in on itself in shame and neglect.

And then I looked at her again and noticed she was waiting for a response.

“I got caught.”