“Hey. Acid.”
She looked up to see Danny looming.
“He’s done. It’s over.” His eyes were wide and unblinking, his face white, flecked with tiny droplets of blood. Behind him, the three girls cowered together, stiff with fear.
“Woah… I…” She peered down at herself. She was completely covered in blood, her dress, her arms and legs. A glance in the large mirror hanging above the stone fireplace to her right showed her face was the same. Covered in it. Thick claret, sticky and warm, but not a drop of it hers. Lying between her legs was Luis Delgado. At least, she assumed it was him. His face was so swollen and mashed up it was difficult to tell. A real mess and no mistake. As she got to her feet, aware now of the violent rise and fall of her chest, he let out a low, pathetic groan. Still alive. Just. Still panting she pointed the gun at his face, and as he raised one shaking hand in defiance, she pulled the trigger. To say it felt good did not do the euphoria flooding her soul justice.
And like that, she was back.
Whoever she was, whoever she’d needed to be, to do what she had to do. That person was back.
It felt good.
“Okay,” she said, taking in Danny and the girls. “Now it really is time to get out of here.”
Forty-Eight
Acid’s skin was still prickling with white heat energy as she and Danny herded the three girls away from the bloody carnage in the lounge and down the corridor. At the first corner she paused, holding her hand up for the rest of them to stay back while she moved around the side of the wall, leading with the Bersa.
“Clear,” she rasped. “Let’s go.”
She stayed back, letting the girls stagger past her and covering the rear in case any more guards should appear. Although, by her reckoning no one was coming. With the commotion and gunfire that had taken place over the last five minutes, they would have shown themselves by now. So either they were all dead or they’d legged it.
Regardless, she kept her senses in check and the gun raised as she side-stepped along the corridor, covering both directions. They’d almost reached the exit when she stopped in her tracks. Her aim snapped to attention as a familiar figure, dressed in black and holding an UZI (no doubt procured from the dead guard outside), stepped through the door. Magpie saw Acid at the same time and raised the submachine.
“Wait,” Acid yelled, her finger tense on the trigger of the Bersa and not taking her eyes off Magpie. “Not here. Let the girls go.”
The three young girls, still drugged and oblivious to proceedings, stumbled against each other like crane flies trying to negotiate a locked window.
Magpie raised her chin a fraction at the sight of Acid (covered as she was in so much blood), but kept a tight grip on the UZI, holding it at waist height and ready to cut the lot of them down. “Why should I?”
“The code,” Acid spat. “Our code. There’s no contract on them. They’re innocents. Not part of this.”
Magpie glanced over Acid’s head, before nodding at her appearance. “You killed Delgado?”
“I killed everyone, sweetie.” She threw up an eyebrow. “It’s what I do.”
Neither of them moved, each watching the other with stern expressions and rigid jaws.
“What you did,” Magpie growled. “You talk of the code, but what code? I have no code. You took that from me. I had it good. We all did.”
“You had it good? Wow. Because I don’t remember you cracking a smile once. And you know what they say, Mags, if you can’t be happy killing corrupt government officials and drug barons, when can you be?” She nodded at the silk satchel slung over Magpie’s shoulder. “Is that the other egg? The one you took from Danny?”
“The one he stole. The one I was hired to retrieve. You want it? Come get it.”
Acid didn’t flinch. “Let the girls go. Danny too. We’ll sort this like adults. Me and you. With honour.”
“Honour? Don’t talk like you know what that means. There is only right and wrong in this world. There are sinners and there are the righteous.”
“And which are you?” Acid asked, her grip slick with blood and sweat on the gun handle.
“I am the righteous,” Magpie screeched. “I am judgement.”
Acid ground her teeth, her finger heavy on the trigger. A tiny bit more pressure and she’d shoot the mad bitch through her eyeball. She remained still. Couldn’t risk it. “Let the girls go,” she said again.
Magpie narrowed her eyes. “Fine. Go. Quickly.” She beckoned the girls forward with a flick of her chin. They glanced about them for a moment before Danny shoved them forward and they tottered away arm in arm, heading for the open door.
Time slowed. Acid stayed poised and ready. She had one shot at this. Literally. Her arm was numb with tension as she raised the small handgun in front of her, trained in between Magpie’s eyes. The Bersa (small, inexpensive, what they called a Suicide Special, not her first choice of weapon) used a ten-round single-stack magazine, and in her blind fury she’d not counted how many she’d fired. Although, to be fair, she never did. If it was a Glock, or a Beretta even – a gun she knew like the back of her own hand – she might tell from the weight how many rounds she had left. But not today. She took a deep breath, slowing her heart rate as the girls shuffled past the grim figure of Sister Death. One shot. One go at this. She glanced at Danny who’d been staring at her the entire time.
He gestured with his eyes to a door on the right, a few feet in front of him. “Ya get me?”
Acid sniffed and shot her attention back to the door. As the last girl wobbled out past Magpie she faltered on her ridiculous heels and stumbled
