BlueK Dynasty: The 1st Seven Days (26 page)

“
Give me
my brother back.”
  

Two of the Phantoms moved.
Santino looked restless and put his hands in his pockets. “I don’t
think that would be wise.”
  

“
I don’t
give a damn what you think,” Kurma screamed. She inched down the
deck toward them.
  

Santino almost jumped at
her scent. She smelled so good—good enough to eat. He gulped deep
and said, “Don’t come any closer. Your brother has to stay with me.
Do you understand?”
  

“
Over my
dead body, you sadistic freak!”
  

“
Kurma,
listen to me. It’s not what you think.” Santino couldn’t tell her
the truth. She would hate him forever. He couldn’t tell her that
Leon had gotten away and gone on a Phantom-spreading spree. He
couldn’t tell her they had tracked him down hiding out in the Flora
Plume Club, where her brothers happened to be. He absolutely
couldn’t tell her that because of Leon, her brother was now a
Phantom halfway through his transmutation. Santino would have to
clean up Leon’s mess. He was an older brother; he had done things
like this before, and he would do it
again.
  

“
I’m
going to give you five seconds to let me take my brother,”
threatened Kurma. If she had to slice through every one of these
souped-up freaks then she would. She would take the blond one
first, the one she had seen in the club attacking her brother, then
Santino because he had done nothing to stop it. She and Santino had
some unfinished business to settle too, but that would come later.
“Otherwise all of you will be at the bottom of this waterfront.
Even the seagulls won’t touch you.”
  

“
How are
you going to do that?” VIN yelled out from the pack. “There’s only
one of you, doll, and about five more than you can
handle.”
  

“
Five.”
Kurma ignored the bulky one’s comment. “Four,
three—”
  

“
Kurma,
don’t make this any worse,” pleaded Santino. He felt his stomach
growling at the thought of her. He did not want to eat her like
this.
  

“
Two,
one.” Kurma prepared to morph. She zeroed in on her brother’s
lifeless body and knew she would have to fly him up out of the
brawl. He would weigh so much more than
Rimselda.
  

Oh well
, Kurma thought. “Zero!” She ran at the men screaming, and
they yelled back.
  

31.

The
guardian
  

Rimselda watched Kurma
from afar and ran down the dock, her feet pounding on the old wood.
Jackie and O’bellaDonna were right behind her as she caught up to
Kurma, who was full Raptor, fighting what looked like goonies on
steroids. Rimselda changed on command and flew the rest of the way
down the dock; it was so much faster than
running.
  

All the Phantoms had were
their nails and teeth. Kurma had daggers—very long daggers that
punched holes in skin and sliced through bones. Two of the Phantoms
had already run off, afraid of dying by Kurma’s hands. Only three
men and Santino remained. Kurma was too quick for the bulky one; he
was big but slow, and he swung hard but couldn’t connect. The
patchy-blond one was hiding behind the one with the quick legs, who
could duck and dodge her blades but couldn’t block. Kurma got a few
slices in.
  

Santino had barely lifted
a finger but hung by her brother as if he were his guardian. Kurma
was Allie’s guardian, not Santino! She stopped chasing after the
quick one, let the slow one come to her, and waited for the sneaky
one to get comfortable. She wanted him most of all; everyone else
was trying to kill her, but not him. He was only trying to save his
own neck. Kurma wanted to ring it for him like the chicken he
was.
  

The big one stepped out in
front and aimed for Kurma’s midsection. Big
mistake.
  

“
Watch
out for her feet!” Santino saw it happening before it
did.
  

Kurma levitated in the air
with her wings, and with both clawed feet kicked VIN in the temple
as he tried to maneuver around. He hit the ground with a thud. This
left Leon open, and he almost peed his pants. He didn’t like this
bird-bat woman. She was too quick like a cat, cunning like a rat,
and slivered like a snack. She was an abomination, and Leon was
angry at
 
Santino for never revealing to him and the guys that his
little girlfriend had been changed as well, only she had wings and
they didn’t!
  

Santino stepped in. He
hated Leon, was angry at him for all the right reasons, but he
wouldn’t let Kurma kill him or any of his Phantoms for that matter.
Santino raised a huge hand that would have come crashing down on
her head had it not been for a metal dagger that pierced his thick
wrist. Santino froze in place as the pain shot up his arm. How
could this be? Even the cops’ bullets hadn’t pierced his skin. Only
Kurma’s daggers had any effect on him.
  

She stood a few feet away,
slicing Leon’s head off.
  

“
Nooooo!” screamed Santino. Another dagger pierced his other
wrist, and both arms were pulled up high over his head so his body
lifted and his feet left the ground. Something wasn’t right…he was
losing! Santino had never lost a thing in his
life.
  

32.

I Declare
War
  

Kurma grabbed Leon’s
throat while he thrashed about. He tried to bite at her a couple of
times, but she didn’t care. He squeezed her flesh, his nails
puncturing her hair and skin. All the more reason not to care. She
steadied her arm and raised her dagger. It was Allie’s life for
Leon’s. She sawed his head off; she felt the bone and gristle as
she moved her arm back and forth. His cries of pain were cut off as
she severed his windpipe.
  

Kosner would have tried to
help if it hadn’t been for two girls bending his arms behind him to
the point that they popped out of their sockets. Blood rushed to
his face, and he groaned in pain. The girls bore their weight down
on him, and he tried not to buckle. VIN was knocked out cold—all of
that muscle for no reason. Leon was beheaded. Santino was being
held hostage by a redhead that flew. Kosner wasn’t dreaming. She
was a redhead with fiery lipstick, one of the prettiest things he
had ever seen. It was too bad she was on the wrong team. He
couldn’t imagine cross-species dating—that would be odd. Well, he
would if she would…
  

“
Stay
down, you creep,” Jackie yelled at him. She had changed into her
Raptor state after Rimselda did. She didn’t know how to fly or how
to bring her daggers out, but she was bigger and stronger this way.
She needed to get on Kurma’s and Rimselda’s level
fast.
  

Kurma peeled Leon’s head
back away from its body and held on to the stringy hair that hadn’t
fallen out.
  

“
Kurma,
what have you done?” Santino yelled. His mouth was full of spit. He
couldn’t breathe or swallow; he felt his air being sucked from him.
The pain in his arms was almost unbearable. Whatever was in those
daggers was crippling him, and he wanted to rip them from his
captor’s body. “I will kill you for that, I swear to
God!”
  

Kurma wasn’t moved by his
weak threat. “Chelsea, can you be a dear and pop this sucker’s body
into the bay?”
  

Chelsea jumped at her
name. She ran over to the lump of meat formerly known as Leon and
began to roll it over and over to the edge of the
pier.
  

“
Just
like that, right over the edge,” Kurma instructed. She giggled a
little bit to herself.
  

“
Kurma,
you are dead. I promise you. All of you!”
  

“
Keep a
tight hold on him for me, please, Rimy,” said
Kurma.
  

“
No
problem,” Rimselda said as she tightened her
grip.
  

Kurma walked over to Allie
and rubbed his back. His body was trembling and moist with sweat.
Kurma heard Leon’s body hit the water and heard her brother’s heart
beating. She was so happy she could have cried. He was alive. She
tried to lift his body up.
  

“
Don’t
touch him. He’s like me—a Phantom!”
  

Now Kurma had heard it
all. “What?”
  

Santino grumbled and
dangled his feet; he just needed to catch his footing so he could
better his aim at whatever was holding him.
  

“
Answer
me,” commanded Kurma. “What have you done to my
brother?”
  

“
Kurma,
we should go,” O’bellaDonna shouted. “I can hear sirens coming our
way.”
  

Kurma walked closer to
Santino and looked him in the eyes. “You call yourselves Phantoms.
Are you telling me my brother will be like you?”
  

Santino tried to stop his
breathing so he didn’t inhale her scent. “All I’m saying is that
when he wakes up he won’t be the same. He won’t have the same
appetite. He won’t look the same or even act the same.” He shook
his arms, which only made the pain worse. He hated this feeling of
being trapped with no way out. VIN was down, Kosner was being
pinned down, Leon
 
was down for the count, and Leon’s two friends had been no
help at all. Santino wished VIN would wake up. “You have to believe
me.”
  

Kurma held her tears back
so that the girls wouldn’t think she was weak. She held them back
because if they fell she would fall with them. Santino and his
spawns of hell were her mortal enemies. And now her brother would
be too. Santino would need to stay alive to protect Allie; Kurma
couldn’t be there for him. She had no idea how to help him. She
understood why Santino had dragged him out of the club and stood
watching over him, but that didn’t make the situation any easier to
accept.
  

Kurma backed away. She ran
over to her brother and hugged him close, sure to have no
skin-to-skin contact. “I love you, baby brother. I hope you can
remember this somehow when you wake up,” she whispered in his
ear.
  

She walked over to the guy
being held down by Jackie and O’bellaDonna. “What’s your
name?”
  

Kosner spoke up, not
afraid for the first time in his life. “Call me Daddy.” He laughed
in her face.
  

“
Daddy,
huh?” Kurma booted him in the chest so hard she heard a crack as he
crumbled underneath the pressure. Jackie and O’bellaDonna let
Kosner go and went to stand by Chelsea, wrapping their arms around
her. Kurma turned to face Santino one more time. She looked up into
his black eyes and saw her own
reflection.
  

“
I want
you to know that I hate you. I hate you for what you’ve done and
the things you’re going to do,” she said. “I’m only sparing your
life because my brother will want answers when he wakes up and
realizes he can’t go home. But just remember that we have some
unfinished business to take care of.”
  

“
Don’t
go getting your panties in a bunch, Kurma,” said Santino as he hung
limply. “You think I give a damn about some vendetta you have
against me?”
  

“
Not
you, Santino. All of you. I will make it my mission to kill all of
you Phantoms.”
  

Santino tried once more to
get free. He wanted to rip Kurma’s head off. He was beginning to
hate this new person. She was too cocky and too arrogant—too much
like him.
  

Kurma picked up Leon’s
head as she turned to leave. She caught a scent of the blood, and
sniffed again and again. Her stomach growled. She was hungry all
the time now. Kurma put her nose to the open wound of Leon’s neck.
She felt her throat tense as she opened her mouth. What was
happening to her? She didn’t eat people like Santino…or did she?
She stuck her tongue out and tasted the dripping silver, and
savored the flavor.
  

“
No!”
Santino struggled again. “Don’t you dare do
it.”
  

Kurma did. She almost
ripped the corners of her mouth wide as she bit into the meat. She
had never tasted anything like it; it was ten times better than
bugs. She ate Phantoms—that was to be her food source. Now she had
an even better reason to kill them.
  

“
Rimselda,” she screamed, waving the head high. “I’m going to
save you some!”
  

Rimselda wasn’t so sure
about eating people’s body parts. She would stick to
bugs.