Danika was so surprised by the revelation that Jayne was delivering the coup de grâce with the knife used to kill her own father, that even if the infection that raged through her system wasn’t already blocking her pain receptors, she still wouldn’t have felt the knife as it cut through the tender flesh of her side.
She backpedaled under the impact and found herself blinking in the light. Her heel caught a rock, and she stumbled back, out of the chapel into a nightmare. Bodies lay all around her. She turned away from Jayne’s leering face and saw Braaten—who should’ve been dead—standing among a group of heavily armed men, all watching her.
The look on his face told her everything she needed to know about how she was doing. She glanced down at the knife in her side.
Oh, that’s not good.
She didn’t even feel it. What she did feel was an all-consuming rage that had been simmering just below the surface, stronger than anything she’d ever felt, and it grew with every strike and punch that Jayne inflicted upon her bruised and battered body. To that point, she’d been able to rein it in—at least a little—but now…
Controlling the infection’s influence on her actions was taking too much…it made her slow and open to attack. Jayne had been quick to take advantage of it, but Danika worried that if she relinquished control over the rage, she’d be too uncoordinated to fight back. She’d seen how the infected fought each other—it was like a rabid dog striking out at anything that moved. Jayne would destroy her in a heartbeat.
But now…seeing the knife in her side and that smile on Jayne’s face…13 narrowed her eyes and unleashed the demon.
With a roar of abject fury, she swatted Jayne’s arm aside as if it were made of paper. The first punch she threw connected with Jayne’s open, surprised mouth and though her teeth cut into Danika’s knuckles, she didn’t care. She reveled in the blood that gushed from Jayne’s ruined mouth as her head snapped back. She threw a roundhouse kick that caught Jayne in the side of the head, knocking her to the ground.
The blonde woman opened her eyes immediately and began to rise, sputtering blood and cursing Danika’s parentage. Her eyes flicked down to the knife still embedded in Danika side.
Danika ignored the distant, echo of pain as it rippled across the background of her mind. Her vision shrank to a tunnel, tendrils of red swirling around Jayne’s head. Strength and power surged through the long muscles of her legs as she flung herself across the open space between them and drove her foot into Jayne’s stomach.
The Council’s most feared operative toppled backward over the pile of rocks Cooper had emerged from, her feet the only part visible. Danika calmly picked up a rock as Jayne struggled to get vertical again. When she reappeared, Danika flung the rock as hard as she could right at Jayne’s head.
The blonde bitch was quick as hell—she dodged just in time—but the rock clipped the corner of her face and sent her sprawling into the wall. She turned, screaming something, but Danika ignored it and the two of them threw themselves at each other.
Jayne met her charge head on, open, bloody mouth and hands clawing at the air. Danika ignored the scratches on her skin as Jayne sought purchase on her wounded shoulder. She flung her forehead down, connecting the thick bone at the top of her skull with Jayne’s delicate, aristocratic nose. A satisfying crunch of snapping celery sent Jayne reeling with blood spurting between the fingers on her face. She shrieked and howled in rage, tripped on a rock, and fell back on her ass.
Danika heard more gunshots outside, but ignored it. Cooper was likely dead. Whatever she’d felt flaring in her chest when thinking about the SEAL died with him. She flung her arms wide and roared, her voice tearing with emotion. She didn’t know how she crossed the space between them, but when she came to her senses and looked down, she had a handful of Jayne’s bloodied blonde hair tightly wound between her shredded knuckles.
Jayne’s eyes were closed as if in sleep. Her jaw hung as limp as the rest of her body. Danika look at her clenched fist, covered in gore. She had no idea how much of it was hers and how much of it was Jayne’s.
Revulsion and horror replaced the seething anger like a sudden flash in a pan. She let go of Jayne’s hair and her opponent’s head fell like a rag doll to the rocks. Danika stood, then staggered back, looking down at her bloodied hands and marveling at the rage that had coursed through her body just seconds…or was it minutes before?
She backed away from the body, not knowing if Jayne was still alive. Her eyes fell on Eli, the traitorous chief of staff.
Senator Tecumseh stood holding that ridiculous tomahawk with his mouth wide open. Time slowed down. One drunken, dreamlike step at a time, Danika stumbled over loose rocks on increasingly rubbery legs. She found herself outside the ruined chapel, eyes still locked on Jayne’s inert form.
When did we come outside?
Questions flooded her murky, rage-clouded mind. Had she finally ended Reginald’s protégé? Had she exorcised her demons? Had she atoned for all that she had done? Was the beating she allowed Jayne to inflict upon her part of that atonement?
“Fuck me…” Braaten muttered behind her. She turned, her vision blurring as if in a dream, until it stabilized on his face, flanked by two men. One was black, the other white and they looked very familiar, but their names floated just out of her reach. Both wore expressions of horror mixed with a good dose of admiration.
The only thing on Cooper’s face was concern. “My God…”
She smiled, noticing the pain from her lips for the first time. Glancing down at Jayne’s body, the smile faded.
I win, bitch.
The last of her infection-provided energy evaporated and Danika felt a tsunami of pain rush at her from all directions. A spear of white-hot pain stabbed at her waist. She knew she’d been stabbed, but it didn’t seem real until that second. She opened her eyes wide, then collapsed, unable even to scream.