The Token (#10): Shepard (3 page)

Her lips flatten as she uses the same limb to jab his throat. That is easily done.

Next Juliette works her way through the pair of guards. First, she silences the one who voiced that she was
just a female
.

He hits the floor, soundly foot swept and now wearing a
crêpe
of ruined, bloodied flesh instead of a nose.

Juliette takes down the next guard, and Shepard moves forward.

He expects to take her easily, before Roi can return from the washroom. Instead, she fights him before he can speak. Explain.

He kisses her, one last time—feeding off her mouth like a man who arrives at an oasis.

Juliette bites him.

Shepard rears back, and she hangs onto the flesh of his lower lip like a pit bull.

He slaps her, though he has not harmed her in years.

She flies backward, and pivoting, she sprints to the door.

Blood trails down his jaw.
No,
he mouths—knowing Roi will enter where she attempts to exit.

And he does, swinging open the door just as Juliette intercepts him. He doesn't check his swing or appear to hesitate about what level of violence to bring. He smashes his fist into her face.

Juliette staggers backward—falling. But Shepard is there to catch her, though she bloodied him.

Roi jerks her from his arms.

Shepard allows this. He understands the timing must be perfect, but the waiting is the purest agony.

While Juliette hangs on to consciousness by the slimmest thread, the cop from the Black Rose crashes inside the room like an enraged bull.

“Thorn,” Juliette says in a slurred voice.

The cop's eyes flick back to her after a quick survey of the lounge, his gaze briefly taking in the fallen men.

Shepard sees much in their visual exchange.

“You have no jurisdiction here, cop.” Roi's smug voice rings in the suddenly tight space, Juliette trapped within his embrace.

Thorn does not seem like the kind of male who will abide teasing.

“Diplomatic immunity—there is nothing you can do.” Roi forcefully cranks Juliette's jaw, licking the side of her face that he abused.

Shepard tenses, biding his time. His chest is a bulging knot of anxiety.

Juliette struggles as Roi’s eyes find Thorn again. “However, you may watch as I break one of my whores.”

“I don't think so,
Dad
,” Thorn says.

Roi's body stiffens.

Shepard freezes. There is no stopping his shock.

Decades before, he'd heard the rumors of the exploits of Roi in this region. But his abuses to people had not been something Shepard could contemplate. He had been surviving the horror of the orphanage and cared not for whispered gossip.

Now—
now
Shepard gazes at Roi and the American, the man who resembles Roi like a dark ghost. The coincidence of Juliette finding a bastard of Roi's only confirms what Shepard has always thought: there are
no
coincidences.

Roi and Thorn look at each other for a bloated minute. Roi's face is fixed in his normal expression of absolute arrogance, and he yanks Juliette's face toward Thorn and the other cop to showcase her abused face. “She is beautiful, even wounded,
non
?”

Thorn charges. “She is mine!”

“Thorn! No—
fuck
!” A second cop bellows through the open door and lurches after him.

Roi squeezes Juliette, and she gasps.

Timing.
Shepard moves forward.

“I will break her neck. This fragile bird so many men care about.” His sharp eyes skate between Shepard, Thorn, and the other cop, who hovers at the door.

Roi
will
break her neck. But not before Shepard puts an end to the vilest man alive.

Roi seems to pause thoughtfully as Thorn circles them. He is a coiled snake of readiness, his muscles tightly wound and stark.

“Or—we can share in the breaking of this one,” Roi offers with a rueful half smile.

“You're a sick fuck,” Thorn says in French.

Roi's surprise is a sharp bark of laughter. “I know who you are. I've always known.”

The silence deafens them as Shepard inches closer to Roi while keeping his eyes on Thorn and the other cop.

“Your mother was a good lay,” Roi clucks.

Thorn gives a deep grunt of disgust.

Roi watches his son carefully, but the American doesn't rise to the challenge. He tilts his face, his hold on Juliette tightening like a vise. “I see your face go soft when you look at our Juliette. You love her.”

Roi strokes her cheek absently, like an apology to an unworthy pet.

Thorn is silent.

Roi nods. “You might love her less if you understand she belongs to another.”

Let Roi bear tales. He is a lover of drama.
It will serve as the distraction I need.

Thorn and Shepard both move forward as Juliette bites Roi's face.

He wails, dropping Juliette.

Shepard stands immobile as she stumbles into Thorn's arms. He drags her against him protectively.

In that singular moment, Shepard knows. Juliette is safe. Safe as long as she is with the son of Roi.
A prince.
The irony is not lost on Shepard.

Roi fingers his jaw, blood running freely from the bite. “Shepard?”

The other cop trains his weapon on Roi.

“Tell the good policeman and my wayward relative who Juliette belongs to.”

Shepard raises his chin and shoots his gaze at Thorn like a laser.

Juliette's grief at the coming revelation is etched on her face.

It is not what he had planned. But if the confession of truth adds time—prolongs the inevitable so Shepard might dispatch Roi—it will be worth it. “Juliette is my bride.”
A small lie.

Thorn's hands tighten around Juliette. They do not fall away but catch her head as it tips back.

Roi reaches for the gun that he keeps in the waistband of his slacks. Shepard knows what Roi will do, and he bends, grabbing his own weapon.

An explosion booms from behind.

Shepard instinctively ducks as Roi spins in a graceful spiral, spraying the arterial blood from his body like a fountain. The scarlet rain slaps Shepard's face in a bath of warm gore.

Shepard looks at Juliette a last time, his work here done. Retribution has been served but not by him.

By fate.

“Stop where you are!” the cop who put the first nail in Roi's coffin bellows at Shepard.

Sirens sing as he ignores the yelled command, sliding out the back door to the waiting car and leaving the dead king behind forever.

A sliver of view remains before the door latches.

Shepard catches a last glimpse of Juliette inside the cradle of Thorn's arms. He can't smile or feel happiness at the loss of her.

But for the first time in Shepard's wretched life, he feels something he never has before.

Right.

Marissa

One year later

My feet ache.

They ache every night. Being a waitress at a premier restaurant in downtown Seattle has a lot of perks. Free food.

Great tips. Nice environment and local color.

Hell, Pike Place Market is so close I can hear the fish land on the market’s tile floor. It’s a place where you could pay a few hundred dollars back in the ’80s and get somebody's name engraved on a tile so people walk on you all day long.

I laugh at the thought, my hand traveling to the nape of my neck, kneading the tired muscles.

This is a young woman's job. Of course, I
am
a young woman. Not even twenty-four, last time I gave shits enough to care.

Tonight I feel old. It's Sunday, which is technically my Friday, and I'm taking the train back home to Kent Station for the fifth time this week, and I'm so ready.

I have a book calling me—the kind that will give me a hangover after I’m through reading it—and a great big glass of merlot. I feel a contemplative frown line my forehead. Maybe two.

I groan softly, tipping my head back against the seat. I have my French class tomorrow morning.

I've been gaining eighteen credits per year. At that rate, I should have my French language degree at around... sixty-five years old. Actually, I'm on the eight-year plan.

Only three more to go.

I began in my high school's Running Start program, so I'm ahead of the game. It just doesn't feel as though I am.

I sigh. Our sister restaurant is located in France. Paris, specifically. I have to be tested for fluency before my boss will transfer me.

I'm not quite there yet, but my heart already is. My
grand-mère
was French, but she passed away before I could learn the language from a native speaker.

But my ears are “tuned up,” which is an expression meaning “French sounds familiar, but I can't speak that hot.”

So I trudge through my foreign-language degree while working as a waitress in expensive Seattle.

Where I can't live.

Instead, I live in Kent, fifteen minutes from downtown by Sound Transit. It's not an idle commute. I look at my French. Study. Read.

Sigh a lot.

Tonight I take a rare night off. Finals are in the bag. I don't even really need to go in tomorrow. I just want to. The semester ends this week, and I'm dreaming in French.

That's a good sign, right?

I give myself license to be a veggie right now. My head’s tipped back, my eyes are closed, and my ears are stuffed with buds. I'm listening to an Italian composer. His ethereal, melancholy notes spread and float in my brain like flakes of gold.

Inch by inch, my tired body relaxes. I slip the front of my clogs off and keep only my toes inside. I spread them, and they throb angrily.

Worked overtime tonight. Body's pissed.

A small sound pierces my headphone euphoria. I lift my head, my eyelids rising halfway like sleepy hoods, and take a look around at the mainly empty train.

On Sunday night, it’s typically bare of passengers. I love not having weekends off. I earn more tips than on any other day, and I don't fight other people on their days off because they have the weekend. Works.

What was that noise?
I search the lit screen above the sliding doors of the train. Words scroll across the surface like a colorful rainbow of letters.
Kent, ETA five minutes.

I gaze out the window, pressing my hand to the cold glass as the growing darkness presses back against the pane.

I drop my hand, lace my fingers together, and cup the back of my head, waiting for my stop.

I note there's only one other passenger, but his dark blond head is bent, facing the same direction I am.
He
couldn't have made the noise.

A nagging feeling uncoils inside me, then my stomach growls. God. Usually I eat at the store.

But I couldn’t even catch a breath before I had to be back at the train for my departure time. Didn't even have a sec to put in a ticket for the cook.

Dammit.
I guess I'll have to grab a gut bomb on the way to my apartment.

The train smoothly jerks to a stop, my body flowing forward slightly as the momentum ceases.

I stand, turning to retrieve my slim Euro-styled backpack from the seat beside me. I slide the black pack over my shoulders, and the body of it settles between my shoulder blades. I roll my shoulders a little, and the body of it shifts to perfection.

Pulling one earbud out, I move to the sliding doors and wait for all the safety bullshit to enact so I can exit.

I knot my almost kinky blond hair onto the top of my head and deftly extract the clawed hair thingie off the strap of my pack. I latch it onto the whole mess, and a stubborn piece of hair bounces out as the soft whoosh of the doors sounds behind me.

I bring my nose up and suck in some Kent air. Exhaust, food, and the smell of rain mingle in a tantalizing scent-trigger that's meant home for the last six years. 

I hear the question but don't immediately react. My first language is still English. Doesn't matter that I usually listen to French instead of music, read French books, listen to French TV.

I'm still American. And I am not advanced enough in French to have what my professor calls “passive listening.” That's where a person knows what someone else is saying, even if they're not paying attention.

I turn to the person who asked the question. The words I heard seconds before float and translate like loose alphabet soup in my mind. “Do you speak another language besides French and English?”

That's strange as hell.

I face the other passenger, frowning. At least, I think he's the other passenger. But now that I'm looking at his face, I realize he's a classmate from Green River College.

My heart rate accelerates. “Hi,” I say in slightly breathless French, because that's the language he used for his weird question.

His smile is wide and instant. “Salut,” he replies in casual French.

I'm definitely confused.
I do a quick scan of my surroundings. No people. Of course there's not. It's nearly ten o'clock on Sunday night. Gloom encroaches from all corners of the cement-and-glass depot.

Before I can question
why
a fellow student happens to be on the same train as me, he lifts his chin in what appears to be a silent greeting, looking at a point behind me.

My stomach turns, and the fine hairs at my nape lift. My instincts kick in, and I sink to my haunches. I feel the breeze over my head and roll, then leap to my feet and crouch.

I've never felt threatened before. I'm not one of those chicks who dig in my purse for my keys all the way to the car then get clobbered because I'm not aware of my surroundings.

French is not the only thing I studied, and I've never been so happy I put my hair up before I stepped off the train. It's long and would have impeded me or aided the two that face me now.

“You can make this hard or simple,” my fellow student says in curt French.

The other man, who gets nothing but an eye flick from me, is a criminal. The eyes that stare back at me are hard. Eager.

I swallow, keeping my hands loose, my knees relaxed and bent.

“Take this cunt,” the student from my class says in French.

Fear squeezes my throat, but I reply in English, “I'm not a cunt.”  Enough of what makes me who I am, remains. “I
have
a cunt,” I enunciate in clipped tones, “but I'm
not
one.”

Felon boy gives a derisive snort. “She will need breaking, like a horse.”

Adrenaline singes my fingertips and toes like a brushfire gone wild. I consider running and know they can take me.
Fuck it.
I raise my nondominant hand and flip off the greasy guy.

He issues a predictable roar, charging forward.

Amateur
. I sink hard where I stand, all the aches and pains vanishing with the wash of sudden adrenaline.

His arms are wide and try to scoop me like a klutzy bear.

I take the tip of my clog and hook his nutsack. He falls like a lump, cursing in bellowing French.

Uh-huh.

I smoothly pivot. The student is different. He sprints along my periphery. I catch the glint of a needle.

Hell
no.

I leap backward, nearly trip on dipshit there writhing on the ground, and fling my pack forward by tossing my arms straight in front of me. The backpack breaks from my body without obstruction.

He bats it away.

But the pack is heavyish.  A glass water bottle, extra shoes, and my solid French textbook weigh it down like a sack of boulders. The pack catches on his wrist and inadvertently jerks back the hand that holds the needle.

He wants to give me something.
And it's not a roofie we're talking about.

I spin on my toes, weighted by my footwear. Bare feet are the preferred dojo wear. Here on the street, I'm having to move with the encumbrance of the exact wrong kind of shoes in addition to clothes that aren't fitted enough for safety.

I sprint and hear his footsteps pound after me. My heavy clogs sound like a trotting horse on the cement.

Holy shit, he's gaining.

A lone figure is walking toward us at the end of the depot, and I pick up the pace.

Probably won't meet two weirdos in one night.

I only have time to notice he doesn't look like he's from Kent. Hell, he doesn't look American.

But he's not the dude whose bad breath is touchable and breathing down my neck. “Help!” I bellow as my lungs burn and my clogs slap the unforgiving concrete.

I almost run into him, and he grabs my shoulders, steadying me.

I'm no shrimp. I have junk in the trunk and stand five foot nine in my stocking feet. Every pound on me counts, and this man outweighs me by seventy and towers over me.
Six three if he's an inch,
I immediately assess.

His eyes are blacker than the night that bites the edges of our shared space.

“Shepard,” the asshole behind me says.

My stomach bottoms out.
Oh no—two weirdos after all
.

“Yes.” The man that has a vise grip on my shoulders answers.

“She is the newest cherry.”

What. The.
Hell
.

“I am aware, Hugo.”
Perfect English, hint of French accent.

Maybe my French plans aren't so great after all.

I can kick this new guy in the nuts.
There must be some tell in my body, because the guy swivels just as I move to bring my knee up.

“No, my skittish colt.” His cultured dulcet notes roll off his tongue, and I'm afraid.

Damn
, I am.

His grip tightens, and I fight to keep from mewling like a kitten in a trap.

Hugo says, “It is
our
pluck, Shepard. You are here to help, or step out of the way.”

Shepard turns me to face Hugo, my classmate-who-isn't.

I notice the felon's gotten up and is shaking his head from all the fun we just had. But he's moving our way, and I've completely lost the element of surprise.

“Let me go,” I seethe in French.

Shepard doesn't do what I ask.

“She speaks French,” Shepard says from my shoulder in clear surprise.

Hugo's brows come together, and he flicks his long bangs out of his face. “I have been on this acquisition for a year. She has aptitude for language, she is a virgin—we have very few Americans in the basket.
Mon Dieu
”—Hugo holds out his hand—“join us, Shepard. Roi is no more, and a new face now leads
la famille
.”'

How does this jerk know if I've had sex or not?
I feel a blush rise from my toes. But since my life still hangs in the balance, I'll just ignore my embarrassment for the moment.

Shepard pushes me aside, and Hugo smiles with an expression of satisfied calculation.

The barrel of a gun rises beside my face, and I flinch.

Hugo holds his hands out. “
Non
!”

My eyes sweep the area, and no one is here except Hugo—the loser whose balls I abused—and this guy with the weird name who is holding me.

With a gun in his hand.

Fire breaks from the end of the barrel, and a soft thump sounds as the impact from the bullet dives into Hugo's torso.

He staggers backward. A patch of red blooms on his chest like a flower opening to the sun.

Oh, shit.

I start to take off, and Shepard hits my vagus nerve with the butt of the gun he just shot.

His hand captures my shirt, easing the fall.