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THIRTY-ONE

Like Lions

“Kusukela Kudala Kuloku Kuthiwa Uyimbube.”

—Solomon Linda,
Mbube

Antonio had done a number on the long hallway before retreating. Those bulky guys I had seen guarding the penthouse’s entrance were all dead, and half of the elegant crystal wall lamps had been shot. Dries was looking at a huge quote from his contractor to fix up his crib.

For all their differences, March seemed to respect Antonio’s skills, and appeared convinced that his mentor wouldn’t have been able to make it past the bazooka and into the elevator. A brief text on March’s watch confirmed this, along with the fact that Antonio had made it safely out of the building and to March’s car. Barely ten seconds after this, the LCD screen lit up again, indicating that another text had arrived. I wasn’t able to read it, but I think I know what Antonio asked. We made our way back to the living room to start searching the place, I managed to peek just long enough to see March’s answer scroll on his watch: “NO U CAN’T KEEP IT.”

We checked the evil lair’s rooms one by one, and I followed March around, freezing whenever he gestured for me to do so. We found nothing in that cathedral of a kitchen, and those spaceship-like bathrooms were clear as well—we even checked the toilets. Soon the only room left to explore was Dries’s bedroom, whose French doors were ajar.

March approached the doors in silence before he slammed them open with his foot, gun in hand. The room was just as empty as the rest of apartment. A massive four-poster bed with gorgeous white silk sheets stood in the center—I gathered thread count was of great importance to Dries—and the only piece of furniture that really stood out was a big golden Napoleon III mirror against the wall opposite to the door. It looked even taller than March, and I stared at our reflection in the cool glass for a few seconds—at him, bruised, with his bloody shirt and wrinkled black jacket, and me, disheveled, covered in plaster, floating in his navy-blue jacket so deep that my hands weren’t visible and my jeans-clad legs looked like sticks.

We were about to leave when a detail caught my attention on the smooth concrete floor on which the mirror rested. There were faint scrape marks on the surface. Pursing my lips, I walked to the antique. It was a truly remarkable piece, with its intricate golden leaves twirling around the frame.

“Can you help me move it?” I asked March, who took hold of the frame while I pulled on it as well.

That thing was heavy! Even March seemed to struggle a little at first, but soon the elegant mirror had moved enough to reveal a locked door. He took a few steps back, pushing me aside. Before I could blink, he casually fired a few shots into the lock. The gray metal door gave way, revealing a narrow security staircase that I figured led to the building’s roof.

“Wait for me here, biscuit. If you hear gunshots, run away,” March said as he started climbing the stairs.

Struggling to keep calm, I watched him disappear up the staircase.

How long had it been? Seconds? Minutes already? I waited and waited. There weren’t any sounds coming from the stairs, but March wasn’t coming down either. I turned my head to the bedroom’s bay windows. A light October drizzle had started to fall, covering the translucent surface with thousands of shiny drops. Soon it intensified into rain, but there was still no sight of March.

Unable to resist any longer, I took a series of tentative steps toward the security door until I was almost on the stairs. March had said to wait, and, according to the rules of our arrangement, I had to comply. But what if he was . . . dead? I couldn’t stand here like this. I
needed
to know what was going on up there. I entered the concrete spiral staircase and made my way up.

When I reached the last step, I found myself standing in front of a roof door that looked a lot like the previous one, except March hadn’t needed to shoot this one. It was ajar already. I flattened my body against a cold and humid wall, trying my best to peek through the door without risking being seen. Through the rain, I could hear voices. March and Dries. He was still alive.

I pressed a hand on my chest in an attempt to calm my racing heart, and I strained my ears.

“I have no idea why Léa suddenly decided to try to return the stone to the Board. She wrote she didn’t want me to have it no matter what . . . I thought she understood what kind of power we could become. Our strength, our honor, imagine these at the scale of a country, perhaps even several! Millions of men like you, men we could train and educate!” Dries was evidently trying to make a point, talking heatedly to his former disciple.

“Our
honor
? Really, Dries?” March spat.

Undeterred, Dries went on, and I risked a peek. They were standing in front of each other under the rain, March less than a dozen feet away from the door I was leaning against, Dries much farther to the
right, golden eyes boring into blue ones, guns lowered in rigid hands, so engrossed in their exchange that neither of them had noticed me yet. Dries had the Cullinan in his left hand, holding it with an iron grip. “Don’t you want to be
more
than this? I see you teaming up with a piece of trash like Antonio Romos, risking everything to fix old mistakes . . . and it breaks my heart, March. This”—Dries pointed at him—“is not the man I
carved
!”

“Then so be it! You betrayed the Board, nearly got your own daughter killed—she is, am I right? I can’t believe I didn’t realize it ten years ago when I first looked at her! All this for some insane dream!” March shouted.

Dries seemed to choke in astonishment. “A
dream
? Can’t you see this is so much more?”

“Yes, a dream! The Lions are a necessary evil, nothing else. We feed on beasts worse than ourselves because someone has to; we’re never going to rule anything, Dries!” March roared.

“We
already
are! And the Cullinan is just another resource for this dream to come true! Come back with me, let me show you what we’ve accomplished. Don’t go wasting your talent when there’s so much to fight for, March.”

Okay. Dries believed that he and his pals—whoever they might be—were God’s gift to the world, and March thought he was just a beast meant to clean up after other beasts: that broke
my
heart.

“You’re the one who taught me that Lions didn’t need a cause because their honor mattered more than any sort of creed,” March told Dries through gritted teeth as he started circling away slowly, his index finger tightening on the trigger of his gun. “I don’t care about your dream. My honor is to
always
finish the job.”

With this, Dries seemed to figure he was going nowhere fast with his former protégé, and he raised his gun. March plunged to his side in time, shooting back at his old mentor as he did so. The man had indeed taught him everything: I did see March’s first shot impact Dries’s gray
jacket before he took refuge behind one of the roof’s vents, but the projectile accomplished nothing otherwise. Did these two share the same tailor for bulletproof jackets on top of the rest?

After the first two bullets had been fired, both men managed to establish sufficient distance between each other, March having disappeared behind a roof vent as well. I couldn’t see them anymore; I only heard occasional gunshots that seemed to be getting closer. Footsteps resounded to my right. One of them had, in fact, moved and taken cover against one of the sides of the roof exit. My lungs contracted in my chest when that someone took a few cautious steps forward, and I realized it was Dries. He was now inches from me, just outside the door I was hiding behind.

I took a chance.

My shoulder hit the metal hard as I rammed into the door with all my strength, slamming it against Dries’s back. Taken aback—quite literally so—he dropped the Cullinan, which landed a few feet away from me. March ran toward the source of the noise, and there was a moment of confusion during which both men froze, registering my presence. I ignored them to lunge for the stone, grab it, and curl my body around it protectively.

I heard two more gunshots, a clicking sound, and I peeked up to see that the game was over. March was pointing his gun at Dries, whose own weapon was empty. I cast a pleading look in March’s direction, begging him not to end my father like this.

He seemed to understand.

But not in the way I thought.

Slowly, March lowered his gun. He then removed his jacket and folded it carefully before kneeling to place the garment and the gun on the ground. When he got up, there was an intensity in his eyes that gave me chills. Locking his gaze with Dries, his nostrils flaring, March said only three words.

“Soos Leeus, Dries.”
Like Lions, Dries.

Dries smirked and shook his head. “As you like. Let’s end this like Lions.”

Oh God. Was this the best time for a bare-hands fight? I could understand March’s point. He had a history with Dries and didn’t want to kill him like some mere client, but I didn’t like the glint in Dries’s eyes. This was a terrible idea. Neither of them cared to consult me, though, and all I could do was watch as they prepared to fight.

I’m not a sports commenter, and I was on the ground, fingers still curled around the Cullinan, so I guess I won’t be able to explain what happened all that well, but I’ll try anyway. One might think that it wasn’t such a fair fight, since Dries seemed to be pushing fifty while March was thirty-two and in great physical condition—regardless of what the old prune had said back in Paris. Much like Madonna, however, Dries was still kicking. Not only that, but he had taught March his moves, and it showed.

I watched in fascinated horror as the men lunged at each other under the rain—a puppet braving its maker. Animalistic growls rose from their throats with each brutal strike, muscles rippling under the drenched fabric of their shirts, feet slamming against the concrete in an effort to brace themselves for the next hit. I understood then what March had tried to tell Dries, that the Lions were better left in the shadows to do the dirty work. In that moment, he and Dries hardly seemed human anymore.

When the first drops of blood splattered on the wet ground—March’s? Dries’s? I had no idea—I felt my stomach heave in fear and disgust. Part of me wanted to stop this, but I was petrified, too damn weak to do anything.

Strength-wise, March was a notch above Dries, and he landed a few nasty hits, especially one elbow kick that managed to make me feel bad for Dries. I think most of my internal organs would have burst like water balloons if I had been on the receiving end of that one. It wasn’t
enough, though: unlike me, Dries could take a serious beating and remain standing. Once he was fully reacquainted with March’s style, it became easier for him to dodge each attack, his broad frame bending every time a leg or a fist threatened to ram into his flesh.

The rain helped Dries too, I think. March’s white shirt was drenched, exposing the bandages covering his bruises from the club, white areas on his stomach, side, and back that Dries started aiming at in priority. March sustained a few vicious blows, and I thought he could win until I realized that one swift jab aimed by Dries at the center of March’s chest had made him spit a little blood. For some reason, I thought of that horrible sorcerer in
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
, the one who removes people’s hearts with his bare hand. I got scared that Dries was going to try that jab thing again and pull March’s heart out. My own heart jounced inside my rib cage as if it was going to burst out, and my breath started coming in short pants.

I didn’t think.

I know I should have, but I just didn’t think.

I got on my feet and took a few steps toward them, one of my hands still hugging the Cullinan against my chest, and the other raised defensively in front of me. As if I could break their fight by crabbing my way in between them.

March’s worried eyes darted to check on me, and the swift punch he had thrown missed Dries’s face. Carried by a powerful momentum, March’s entire body tilted forward, and before he could regain his balance, Dries grabbed his neck and held him in a headlock as he struck the large bandage on his stomach with his knee repeatedly.

March fell to the ground with a strangled groan, and I nearly cried when our eyes met. Was he even seeing me through all this rage? I could read the agony and determination distorting his features, the will to stand up and keep fighting, and the frustration that his body wouldn’t follow.

After a few seconds, he found the strength to overcome the pain and started to get up. Dries didn’t move at first, and I thought he was
waiting for March to stand so he could finish him honorably, “like a Lion.” Instead, he took a step toward March, and his right leg flew to throw another vicious kick in his adversary’s stomach, to ensure March wouldn’t get up.

There was the rain, its scent in the air, the blood on the humid concrete, Dries’s long, black, pointy oxfords, but all I really focused on, all I can still see before my eyes when I close them are March’s teeth. Gritted so hard I thought they would shatter, red trickles staining the white enamel. In that instant, I remember thinking that this was it; he had reached his limit. No matter how tenacious March was, Curly-prune had been right. He didn’t heal miraculously, and he couldn’t take any more hits on those horrible bruises, even less so if the ribs underneath had been cracked.

Taking in the sight of his former student kneeling on the ground and gasping for air, Dries shook his head, strode to where March had previously laid his gun and jacket, and took the black semiautomatic. March was still struggling to recover by the time Dries went back to his crouching form. I remembered Rislow and his men in the woods, the small brown gun, and the blood.

All the blood.

“Please stop! Please . . . please!” I screamed, my voice cracking into a sob.

Dries cast me a strange, sad look as he aimed at his “brother.”

I heard March’s voice, hoarse, almost pleading. “Island . . . don’t—”

Don’t—what, exactly? Don’t step in? It was already too late, and it was my fault if Dries had been given an opening to beat him anyway. Don’t give that evil douche the diamond? With March dead, I wouldn’t stand a chance against Dries. He wanted the stone? Let him have it. I lunged toward Dries, placing myself in front of the gun. It had worked for Antonio. Why wouldn’t it work again? Truth is, I could see many reasons why it wouldn’t, but I figured once Dries held the stone, he would forget about everything else, us included. I handed him the precious cargo, my
gaze locked on his. A sun ray tore briefly between two dark clouds, casting the golden light of the late afternoon on me and the Cullinan. For an instant, soft colors reflected on the ground as light passed through the stone, creating faint rainbow-colored spots on the wet concrete. I ignored them to focus on Dries, who took the stone with his left hand, without ever detaching his gaze from March. Once he had the Cullinan, Dries flashed me a satisfied smile before looking at March over my shoulder. “I’m pleased to discover that she’s more reasonable than you or Léa.”