Revenge Games

She crept down the corridor, her back to the wall, gun pointed at the ceiling. She could smell the stink of stale sweat, unwashed bodies and leather. Engine grease from the Harleys outside. The grunts and sounds of flesh impacting flesh reverberated down the corridor, covering the whisper of her shoes on the concrete. Fighting and fucking. Something about this didn't feel right- it had been too easy. If Stone Villalobos was inside here, he was probably packing heat, waiting for someone to walk around the corner and eat lead.

Gaining entry had been like a walk in the park. If this place was as big a secret as she'd been told, it should have been harder. An icy finger of dread trailed down her spine, making her pause, making her shudder. Thunder rumbled overhead, ominously, adding fuel to the fires of her sudden paranoia.

"Get a grip," she mumbled to herself as she pushed off the wall, forcing her feet to continue down the corridor. She tossed her damp hair over her shoulder, disliking the feeling of the wet strands touching her neck. She looked back over her shoulder, and her face was visible in the dim light as she crept from shadow to shadow. Her green eyes were wide, filled with equal measures of fear and determination, almost the same color as cat's eyes. Her skin was pale, accentuating the still red scars on her cheeks that pulled the corners of her lips into a sick little smile.

She hesitated again, considering her next actions. She had a plan, and so far, hadn't deviated much from the original details. She was here, because he was supposed to be. There was something she needed to fix, and getting herself out of her debt to the Mayans was the first. For reasons she didn't understand, she felt compelled to kill Villalobos. She knew what it was, recognized the urge and dismissed it. If she won, she'd have a lot of money. If she lost, she could at least go out with a bang. She knew this was where he ran the guns from, she knew the money was kept hidden here, in the safe in his office. Men like Stone, like Brad Jackson and all the other self-important monsters loved their pillow talk, after all. If she could walk out alive with the money, she'd have the funds she needed to pick up the fragments of her shattered mind.

Like a junkie, she was in need of a fix. She leaned back, drawing her foot back as she drew the other pistol from beneath her jacket. She kicked the door inward, and rolled into the room with both guns blazing. Two men were locked in hand to hand combat, already bloody. When they fell, it was impossible to tell where she'd hit them. A whore straddled a man on a filthy sofa, moaning, oblivious to the Death about to be handed down. The bullet blew her brains all over the wall. A strangely beautiful tapestry, those bodies, still locked in their dances of death, their games cut short.

Three men, accounted for. All dead before they hit the floor. The sudden silence was eerie, broken only by the sound of the spent shells clattering to the floor. She sat there, still crouched, still holding the smoking guns out, and breathing slowly, shallowly. She'd seen four. Someone was missing. The man she'd come for.

A voice in the back of her mind reasoned that maybe she'd counted wrong when she watched them come in here tonight, but she didn't think so. Her gut instinct said otherwise, and she'd learned years ago not to doubt that.

She let her gaze roam the room, taking in the carnage she'd wrought, dismissing it. It didn't faze her now; they meant nothing, just a means to an end. Expendable. She wondered then, as she smelled the slaughterhouse reek of blood and the almost ozone-like smell of gunpowder, if she'd ever really been a wrestler. Somehow that life seemed really far away, as if it had only existed in her mind.

Her eyes drifted past the door at the end of the room, with the hand-lettered sign marked private-drifted past, and then returned. The door was ajar.

"Shit," she murmured, wincing at her own stupidity. He could be back there, even now, with an Uzi pointed at her head. She ducked behind a pillar, straining her ears for any sounds over the pounding of her heart. All she could hear was the rain and the thunder, muted sounds of the storm that was raging outside.

She contemplated running. It was only one man… one… man. She could take him down any day. She threw her head back and laughed breathlessly, her eyes gleaming with an almost feral light.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are." Kitty's voice was a sing-song, "I know you're here, Stone. Your boys are all dead." 

Stone Villalobos stood in the shadows beyond the door, his hand wrapped around the gun. His lips were skinned back from his teeth in a snarl. His shoulders slumped as he leaned on the icy metal, his fingers splayed for support.

"Pretty Kitty," his whisper was pained, almost as though it was killing him to say it, "you should have stayed away."

Nothing but silence answered her taunting remark. She shook her head, cursing softly. Fine. He didn't want to do it the easy way; it could be done the hard way.

She sprinted across the room, keeping herself low to the ground. Smaller target. She stopped beside the door, listening and hearing nothing. She eased the door open, waiting out of sight, but nothing happened. She let her fingers drift to the triggers of both guns, poised as she eased over the threshold.

An office. The room beyond the door was an office, complete with heavy desk, and leather swivel chair. An open safe sat on the floor behind the desk, opened partially, stacks of bills and the gleam of precious stones visible in the light. She hesitated there, in the doorway, her gaze immediately drawn to the chair, which was facing away from her. She saw a tendril of smoke curl up from behind it, and smelled the unmistakable scent of cigarette smoke. Someone was there.

She pointed both guns, and was about to open fire on the chair's back, when she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. She whirled around, and found nothing there, nothing but the room filled with dead bodies.

Nothing there, she thought to herself, as she turned back to the desk. She gulped, and then jumped when the door slammed shut behind her with violent force. Before she had a chance to rethink this entire scenario, she opened fire on the chair, emptying both clips. The bullets slammed into it, tearing open the leather, letting stuffing and springs fly and then all was silent again, save her ragged breathing. She took one step, then another, on legs that felt as reliable as matchsticks, as the chair slowly turned towards her, propelled by the momentum of the lead slugs. At first, she thought it was occupied. A dead body, but as the candles revealed the face, she knew she'd been had. It was a crude dummy. The face nothing more than a burlap sack, with stitched x's for eyes. Cigarette smoke still curled up from the crystal ashtray balanced between the dummy's stuffed legs.

"What the…" Laughter echoed in her ears, shrill as the solid weight of a body crashed against her. Villalobos' raspy voice filled her ears.

"You shouldn't be here," he murmured, his hands tightening on his wrists as the guns fell from her grip.

"Yeah." She said it with a hint of sarcasm, "that's what people keep telling me." She let him roll her over, tossing her head back so he could see her face. It was almost hilarious to see his eyes widen, that look of sick hopeless pity filling his face.

"Chica," he muttered, still pinning her to the floor, "what happened to your face?"

The cheeks quivered, smile widening. "I had a little work done. You like?"

"Who did it to you?" His voice rang with anger; she could feel it all through his hard body. She could feel something else too, jabbing into her thigh. It wasn't a gun and she had to suppress a shiver of revulsion. Why did all the sickos in her life get off on seeing her like this?

"Remember that guy I told you about?" Villalobos nodded and the lie slipped from her lips, sweet as candy. "He did it. His name is Brad Jackson…"

The look in his eyes promised a thousand grisly possibilities as he licked his lips. Kitty said nothing, letting the silence weave a better narrative than her words ever could. She blinked finally, tears falling down her cheeks from having her eyes open wide too long. She bit her lip, averting her gaze, knowing what it would do to him. The pressure abated and she could draw a proper breath even as rough fingers touched her cheek. 

"He will die."