Chapter Seventeen
“The blade is six inches long. The handle four point three.” Leo carefully turned the knife over, handling it as though it was made of china, not stainless steel. The silver blade flashed azure as it caught the blue light shining from the hanging, naked light bulbs. “You’ll want to be careful with these,” he warned.
“No shit,” Omar said, reaching out a meaty hand so he could take the knife from Leo. Leo let him, watching him with eyes like a snake’s. “These look sharp enough to cleave your ass cheek right off if you sit on it.”
“Then don’t sit on it, bright spark.” Vara rolled her eyes before she grabbed the knife from him. She moved her hand to and fro, testing out the knife. It was light, like the blade was as wooden as the handle, and there was a good balance to it. Easy to handle, despite the length and the wicked curve of the blade. Which was always a good thing.
“You wanna stop waving that thing about?” Kerr grumbled, shuffling backwards so he wasn’t so close to Vara.
“You wanna shut up before this thing gets rammed down your throat?”
Leo held out his hand for the knife and Vara reluctantly handed it back to him. The fact that Leo was armed and she wasn’t made her feel like she had an ant colony crawling all over her body.
“This,” Leo began, “fits in here.” He slotted the knife into one of the scabbards criss-crossed over the bullet-proof vest he wore. There were two scabbards, crossed over one another like the bones on the Jolly Roger. Leo pointed to the knife and then the cover he’d just put it in, acting like he was showing a bunch of two year olds that the star shape did not fit in the triangle hole.
Vara crossed her arms over her chest. Awkwardly. The bullet-proof vests they were wearing were slimmer and easier to move about in than the police ones, but as they were designed for the male members of the Black Dragons, they weren’t accustomed to having to give a little bit more in the chest area. Breathing was already hard enough; having her arms constricting her chest even more was like a sumo wrestler inviting his cousins to come and help him suffocate her.
“Problem?” Leo asked, pausing in whatever he was explaining about to peer at her, arching his eyebrow in amusement.
Vara let her arms drop to her side and took a deep breath. “No. You?”
Leo ignored her and stared at her for a little while longer, like a kid studying the smeared remains of an unusual spider on his shoe.
The armoury room lights flickered and Vara tensed, still not a hundred percent at ease with the grungy, claustrophobic rooms, the maze of corridors… You couldn’t help but imagine the room was going to plunge into darkness just as their enemies stormed the building. Which was a ridiculous thought as the master’s house was the best impenetrable fortress you could ever hope to dream of.
Leo looked away from her and down at the armoury table. He began to pick the knives off of it and hand them out, two for each person. Vara snatched hers from him, annoyed at him for trying to intimidate her again.
Once they’d all put the knives in their holders, Leo turned back to the table. When he turned around to face them once more, he was holding up another knife, but this one was the size of a pencil. On one end of the blade it was round and blunt, marred only by a set of deep scratches, like it was some kind of file. The other was as sharp as the last knife and sanded down into a fine point, like a real life pencil.
“You get trapped somewhere, or tied up or whatever else may happen to you, this is going to come in handy.” Leo shook the pencil knife. “It’s small enough that it can go nearly undetected when hidden and easier to slip unnoticed from its hiding place. The file end here,” Leo pointed a finger at the blunt end, “is exactly that: a file. The sharper end,” again, Leo pointed to the part he was talking about, except he was a bit more careful with that bit, “is good for cutting through rope or sawing through wood.”
Kerr frowned and squinted at the pencil knife. Leo saw he was wondering how good the pencil end would be and squeezed the blunt part. Immediately a jagged, saw-like blade popped out of the end of the file section, making everyone jump.
“That’s the part you cut through wood with.” Leo shoved the saw against his hand, pushing the blunt end of the saw so it slipped back into the pencil knife.
He handed them out to everyone along with an ankle tie, one per person. Then turned again to the table. In the next ten minutes they were armed with a gun, which hung in the holster at their hip, a belt of smoke and gas bombs, a small axe, which also hung on the other side of the hip, and a small, simple knife which they strapped to their calf.
Leo turned to face them, holding up the last item on the table. A ring. “This is a last resort.” His face was sombre, but his eyes were alert, attentive to the smallest of their reactions.
“What does it do?” Kerr asked eagerly, like he was expecting some kind of James Bond device.
“It’s quite simple.” Leo’s voice was calm, detached, but his lip kept twitching like it was having a hard time keeping the evil smile from forming. “You open the lid,” he popped open the lid with his thumb nail, “and use what’s inside.”
Everyone stepped forward to look, even Darius craned his neck. Inside the silvery container were two small, white pills. Disappointment filled everyone’s faces.
“That’s it?” Kerr asked with a scowl.
“When you have done everything you can but the enemy is still upon you, these pills will be the most important thing in the world.” Leo ran his moist tongue over his dry, cracked lips. “Swallow them and the enemy will never get to you.”
Vara didn’t like how bright his eyes had gotten. “It’s poison?” she asked, hating the wavering in her voice.
“Yes.” He hissed the ‘s’ like a snake. Goosebumps broke out on Vara’s arms. “It’s the last resort.”
“No shit,” Omar grunted. He crossed his arms over his chest and shuffled from foot to foot when Leo swung his face around to stare at him.
“Do we get one each?” Vara asked.
“That’s all you need.”
When Vara was given hers, she stared at it for a long time before slipping it onto one of her fingers. She was going to have to run out of every option before the thought of the ring even entered her mind. Committing suicide felt too much like giving up to her and she just hated doing that. Things would have to be dire before she would even glance at the ring.
There was a knock on the door.
Immediately, everyone’s hand went to their new weapons, but when James’ voice sounded, asking for permission to enter, those hands relaxed.
Omar shuffled over and pulled back the door. Emily slipped past him, turning white as she did so. Well, Omar wasn’t the smallest of the bunch, so that was a reasonable reaction for a girl like her.
“Sorry I’m late,” she mumbled to Leo, coming to stand by Vara’s side.
Vara didn’t know if she should feel touched or anything by that unconscious gesture. Obviously Emily felt safe with Vara, which was … odd. Vara wasn’t used to being someone’s guardian angel. Still, the only other options were the bone-crushing giant, the arrogant genius, the manic depressant and the guy whose stare packed in more chill than your everyday freezer.
Vara supposed she got where Emily was coming from.
“It’s nine thirty five,” Leo informed her, his face so cold it might as well have been chipped out of a block of ice.
“I-I’m sorry.” Emily lifted her chin and met his stare head on. “I didn’t know if I was going to come or if I should-”
“Go home? Yes, that’s what you want to do, isn’t it?” Leo stepped closer to Emily. Vara couldn’t stop her eyebrows from rising when Emily stood her ground.
“Maybe you should go back to your safe, little suburban street? The jungle isn’t the best place for a fluffy little bunny like yourself.”
“I’m helping Kieran.”
Vara’s eyebrows shot straight down into a frown. There was something about the look in Emily’s face when she said that. The iron resolve, the excitement burning in her eyes… Damn, that didn’t all happen over night, did it?
Leo looked up over Emily’s shoulder at James standing in the doorway. “You may go now,” he hissed.
James didn’t hang about.
Leo turned to Vara. “You were supposed to be watching her. You were supposed to stay with her. Not him.”
“I-”
“What were you doing that was more important than the master’s orders? What were you sneaking off to do?”
Red patches appeared on Vara’s cheeks. “I wasn’t sneaking anywhere-”
“Then where were you going? You were told not to leave Emily alone. The master ordered that you remain with her at all times. Why did you-”
“I was training! We’re leaving to go God knows where in about half an hour and I didn’t feel like I was fit enough. I crammed in some sessions so I could feel confident in my ability to perform in whatever situation that … that … comes about. I figured since Emily’s not a baby she didn’t need me watching her while she slept. Besides, what can she get up to in her sleep?”
From the corner of her eye, Vara saw Emily duck her head to hide a smile. A paranoid thought shot to the centre of Vara’s mind that Emily had gotten up to something last night, but she locked it away before Leo saw it in her eyes.
“How are you so sure that nothing happened?” Leo hissed, stepping closer to Vara.
“How are you so sure something has?” she countered, not moving an inch.
Leo narrowed his eyes at her. Omar cleared his throat uncomfortably and stepped forwards. “Errr… Leo? It’s time to go soon. Does Emily need all of what we’ve got? She might take a while getting it all on…”
At once the anger left Leo’s eyes like a discarded mask. “No,” he replied, keeping his eyes on Vara for a second more. He walked past her, knocking her hard with his shoulder.
Vara shut her eyes tightly for a moment, fighting the urge to reach back and poke his white, creepy eyes out. When the blood had stopped roaring in her ears, she glanced over her shoulder and saw Leo pulling out a set of keys. He slotted them into a keyhole in the middle of a white box hanging on the stained wall and unlocked it. Inside the box was a small black screen which flickered to life as soon as the lid of the box had been yanked away. Kerr got his James Bond moment when Leo pressed his thumb against the screen and waited for his print to be scanned through.
“Is that really a-”
“Kerr,” Vara said in the sweetest voice she could muster. “Shut up.”
Kerr’s withering glare was interrupted by part of the wall splitting in half. Leo took his thumb off the screen as the white box slowly moved to his left, slipping away with the one half of the wall it was attached to. They all watched as the doors parted slowly to reveal another hidden room. It reminded Vara of an automatic garage door, except instead of sliding upwards, the doors moved to the side. And instead of there being a sleek, expensive car patiently waiting for its owner, there were cabinets and table tops filled with weapons. It was every mobster’s dream.
“Don’t follow,” Leo warned in a growl, stepping inside of the room as soon as the doors slid to a stop.
Vara smirked as Kerr and Omar’s faces fell and ducked her head to hide it. A creaking sound made her look back up and she saw Leo pulling open a closet door. Bullet proof vests, black trousers, black tops and black hoodies were hanging up inside it. Leo snatched one of each and slammed the door shut before he turned around and made his way back to them.
Vara wasn’t watching him, though. Her gaze was locked on something just behind Leo, a glass case on top of one of the axe cabinets pushed against the wall. She craned her neck, trying to get a better view of what was in the glass box. It was a metal tube with an inch or two of glass at the top, showing the green substance locked in it.
The doors shuddered and began to close. Vara blinked, breaking out of her trance, and saw that Leo was standing by the white box, watching her with narrowed eyes.
“Don’t I get any of the things you’ve got?” Emily’s voice broke the staring contest.
“No. Just these.” Leo chucked the clothes and bullet proof vest at her. “Get changed. We’ll be waiting outside for you.”
“Why don’t I get-”
“You don’t get any weapons so you don’t get the chance to shoot yourself in the foot. Don’t take your time changing. The master will be waiting.”
