Definitely Dead

couldn’t break free from Jade Flower’s hold, and her fingers were digging into the flesh of my ankle. Soon she would snap the bones, and then I wouldn’t be able to walk.
    With my free foot I kicked the little Asian woman in the face. I did it again and again. Her nose was bleeding, and her lips were, too, but she would not let go. I don’t think she even felt it.
    Then Bill jumped on her back, landing with enough force to break her spine, and her hold on my ankle relaxed. I scrambled away while he raised a carving knife very like the one the queen had had. He sank it into Jade Flower’s neck, over and over, and then her head was off and he was looking at me.
    He didn’t speak, just gave me that long, dark look. Then he was up and gone, and I had to get the hell out of there.
    The queen’s apartments were dark. That wasn’t good. Beyond where the light penetrated from the ballroom, who knew what could be lurking?
    There just had to be an outside door through here. The queen wouldn’t leave herself bottled up. She’d have a way to get outside. And if I was remembering the orientation of the building, I needed to walk straight ahead to reach the correct wall.
    I gathered myself and decided I’d just stride right on through. No more of this skulking around the wall. The hell with it.
    And to my surprise, it worked, up to a point. I went through one room—a sitting room, I figured—before I ended up in what must have been the queen’s bedroom. A whisper of movement in the room retriggered my fear switch, and I fumbled along the wall for the light. When I flipped it, I found I was in the room with Peter Threadgill. He was facing Andre. A bed was between them, and on the bed was the queen, who had been badly wounded. Andre didn’t have his sword, but then neither did Peter Threadgill. Andre did have a gun, and when I turned on the light, he shot the king right in the face. Twice.
    There was a door beyond the body of Peter Threadgill. It had to lead to the grounds. I began to sidle around the room, my back pressed against the wall. No one paid a bit of attention to me.
    “Andre, if you kill him,” the queen said quite calmly, “I’ll have to pay a huge fine.” She had a hand pressed to her side, and her beautiful orange dress was dark and wet with her blood.
    “But wouldn’t it be worth it, lady?”
    There was a thoughtful silence on the queen’s part, while I unlocked about six locks.
    “On the whole, yes,” Sophie-Anne said. “After all, money isn’t everything.”
    “Oh, good ,” Andre said happily, and raised the gun. He had a stake in the other hand, I saw. I didn’t stick around to see how Andre did the deed.
    I set off across the lawn in my green evening shoes. Amazingly, the evening shoes were still intact. In fact, they were in better shape than my ankle, which Jade Flower had hurt pretty badly. I was limping by the time I’d taken ten steps. “Watch out for the lion,” called the queen, and I looked behind me to see that Andre was carrying her out of the building. I wondered whose side the lion was on.
    Then the big cat appeared right in front of me. One minute my escape route was clear, and the next it was filled by a lion. The outside security lights were off, and in the moonlight the beast looked so beautiful and so deadly that fear pulled the air right out of my lungs.
    The lion made a low, guttural sound.
    “Go away,” I said. I had absolutely nothing to fight a lion with, and I was at the end of my rope. “Go away!” I yelled. “Get out of here!”
    And it slunk into the bushes.
    I don’t think that is typical lion behavior. Maybe it smelled the tiger coming, because a second or two later, Quinn appeared, moving like a huge silent dream across the grass. Quinn rubbed his big head against me, and we went over to the wall together. Andre laid down his queen and leaped up on top with grace and ease. For his queen, he pulled apart the razor wire with hands just barely cushioned with his torn coat. Then down he came and carefully lifted Sophie-Anne. He gathered himself and cleared the wall in a bound.
    “Well, I can’t do that,” I said, and even to my own ears, I sounded grumpy. “Can I stand on your back? I’ll take my heels off.” Quinn snugged up to the wall, and I ran my arm through the sandal straps. I didn’t want to hurt the tiger by putting a lot of weight on his back, but I also wanted to get out of there more than I’ve wanted anything, just about. So,