God Save the Queen Read online

  Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Quote

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Coming soon

  Meet the Authors

  Meet the Supers

  Free: Unlucky Charm

  GOD SAVE THE QUEEN

  by

  C.J. Weatherly &

  Kimberly Gordon

  Copyright © 2019 Kimberly Gordon

  All rights reserved.

  Book Preparation: ByDand Publishing

  Cover Art by Llynara.com

  To those who save us, and those who fix us when we are broken.

  Thank you.

  Acknowledgments

  From CJ:

  A big thanks to Oscar, the ultimate accountability buddy. Your suggestions haunt me. Literally.

  From Kim:

  A special thank you to all the crazy people who live with me, without whom, this book would’ve been published much sooner but wouldn’t be half as funny.

  Honorable mention: roosters that crow ceaselessly, kids that ask for things 500 times a day, hubby who revs loud cars while I’m taking dictation from Supers, and the crop duster guy who likes to dive-bomb my house while I’m on tight deadlines. Thanks. You’re all special. Really.

  Thank you Mom and Dad; for your unending love, patience, advice, friendship, guidance and expertise in all things, including writing and publishing. You are such a blessing to me.

  Special thanks to Denise Lewis, my “sister from another mister”, and partner in crime in all things creative.

  Fist bumps to Mike Keown, wonderful friend and cheerleader. HooRah!

  A huge and hearty thank you to Shaun Griffiths, who helps me keep Hugh in line (this is a full time job!)

  A big thanks to the 3D art community and the many talented artists there who have inspired me as well. You guys rock!

  Poetry Copyrights:

  “Stopping by Woods on a Snowing Evening” by Robert Frost

  Originally published 1923, in the public domain as of January 2019

  “God save our noble Queen…

  Scatter thine enemies

  And make them fall

  Confound their politics,

  Frustrate their knavish tricks,

  On thee our hopes we fix:

  God save us all.”

  Partial lyrics from

  The British National Anthem

  Prologue

  January 7, 2000

  New Orleans, Louisiana

  Thunder rumbled overhead as Hugh Harrison descended the abandoned bridge with the injured bounty hunter in his arms.

  She was strong and fierce for her size; a dynamo in go-go boots and a catsuit that had chased him relentlessly across several states. Now she was limp and bleeding, her breathing ragged, thanks to her crooked partner.

  “This is what they do to us, Kat,” Hugh huffed, the sound of gunfire still ringing in his ears. “This is what they always do.”

  The darkening skies opened up and rain began to fall in sheets, making his super suit sizzle and hiss.

  Something niggled in the back of his mind. A warning not to get it wet.

  It was not his main concern at the moment. Kat needed medical care, but the hospital was too far and out of the question. They were butchers compared to what Jacob and Desdemona could do; if he could just get there.

  Hugh glanced down the streets of the French Quarter, orienting himself, then covered them both with illusion and stepped out from the shadows.

  Street lights winked on in the historic district as night fell. Neon signs gleamed off the wet city streets, washed cleaned of the debris that often littered them. Street performers and tourists who were normally out at this time had been driven inside by the weather. The musty aromas of earth, people, fried food and less savory things still hung in the air, muted by the storm.

  Steam billowed from storm drains as Hugh passed them. Memories swirled up to greet him. Dark ones.

  A cage, a lab, a cypress swamp.

  Needles, death, poison.

  His heart raced and his body tensed, frozen in time by the images and sensations of his past.

  A police car sped by, sirens blaring, jolting him from that dark place.

  Hugh pulled back into the shadows, pulsating with adrenaline and pain as he leaned against a wall.

  He gazed down at Kat’s pale face. In it was the face of every Super killed simply for being what they were.

  A wave of exhaustion rolled over him, sapping his strength. He was tired of burying so many of his people. He felt like he was carrying the weight of them all.

  “This is what they do,” Hugh breathed, his throat tightening.

  He closed his eyes as the sky poured down on him and the earth wept, sharing his sentiments.

  After a long moment, he opened them again.

  “But it’s not what we do,” he said and pushed off the brick wall.

  He slipped into a maze of back alleys and wove his way to the safe house, like he’d done so many times before. The overhangs offered some protection from the weather, but not much.

  He was halfway to his destination when his suit fizzled out and pain overwhelmed him, driving him to his knees.

  He crouched down, fighting for control as he clutched Kat against him. She began to moan.

  He laid her carefully on the wet pavement and dropped all illusion, then flicked his hand, illuminating the darkness with a ball of light to examine her more closely.

  Her skin was cold and clammy, her face paler than before. She was losing too much blood.

  He froze for a moment. What could he do? What did he have to work with?

  He glanced down at the shiny fabric on his arms. Could it help her the way it had helped him?

  He ripped at his super suit, unsure what it was made of, watching with fascination as it quickly healed itself. He tore off a large piece from his bicep and rung it out. It began to glow as he stuffed it into the tight bodice of her torn, fake leather outfit.

  Kat stirred, the color returning to her face.

  Hugh let out a deep breath, unaware he’d been holding it.

  He would not let the darkness take her.

  No. He would save her, even if it took him.

  “Because this is what we do.”

  He touched her long, black hair, then lifted her in his arms and pressed on.

  Chapter One

  Katherine Car
ter was vaguely aware of being carried in strong arms, male ones. Her chest and shoulder burned with every step of his long gate, as if someone had lobbed a jumbo firecracker through it instead of a bullet. The rest of her was drenched.

  She blinked up blearily at the man. She could not make out his face, though his signal felt familiar.

  “Oh my God, she’s in bad shape,” he said, laying her on a hard table. It was not Hugh’s voice.

  She could make out two people standing over her in surgical attire.

  She concentrated harder, identifying them by their presence. It was the Glowing Man and the Island Lady from Hugh’s trial.

  Her vision came into focus as the dark woman leaned over Kat and pointed at her leather catsuit. “What is dhis thing?”

  “A Halloween costume.” The Glowing Man picked up a pair of shears with his gloved hands and began cutting it off.

  She hadn’t seen him since Vegas, when he’d thrown her across the street. She sure as hell didn’t want him touching her now.

  She tried to push him away, but her hands went right through him.

  He hesitated for a moment, as if sensing something, then continued.

  It was then that Kat realized she was now standing outside of her body, watching them examine it.

  She shivered. Tell me I’m just having one of those weird dreams again.

  The woman pulled away Kat’s tattered outfit to revealing a lumpy, blood-stained bra. “It’s full of…somedhing.”

  She tried to lift the fabric, but it was stuck tight.

  The man frowned. “See if you can soak that off, while I apply compression telekinetically.”

  Tele-what? Kat blinked at him, then watched in astonishment as the Island Lady waved a hand over a pan of warm water, directing the liquid into the air and over the bra and the wounds beneath. The garment loosened, and she slowly slid it off, revealing a wallet, a badge, a phone, and a glowing strip of fabric.

  The man’s mouth dropped open. “God, Dez, she’s got everything but the kitchen sink stuffed in there.”

  Kat bristled. Just the essentials. Purses slowed her down.

  The Glowing Man turned toward her and knitted his orange brows together, as if hearing her.

  Dez held up the cloth, examining it. “Dhis looks like it’s from Hugh’s suit.”

  He nodded. “He must’ve used it to staunch the bleeding.”

  She set it aside and flushed the blood from the wound in Kat’s upper chest.

  Kat’s stomach turned. If this was a dream, it was a graphic one.

  She shifted uncomfortably as the Glowing Man studied her bare chest for a few moments, then traced a line in the air, just above her skin.

  “She’s lucky,” he breathed. “The bullet just missed her heart and lungs. I think it bounced off her clavicle. That area looks weak. Gonna hurt like hell, too. Mine did.”

  The woman placed her hands carefully near the wound. “I sense a blockage in her right shoulder, like a damn in the river.”

  He nodded. “I think it’s lodged in the—”

  “Jacob! Hugh ees having some kind of seizure,” someone yelled from another room.

  The Glowing Man swore under his breath. “He’s gonna have to wait. I’ve gotta dig the bullet out of her first.”

  “Should I hold him down?”

  “No,” Jacob yelled back. “Is he on the floor or the bed?”

  “Oui.”

  “Which one, Cyrille?” asked Dez.

  “He fell off zee bed onto zee floor.”

  Jacob sighed. “Clear the space around him and don’t put anything near his mouth. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Certainement,” came the reply.

  Kat followed the voice down a stark hallway to another room.

  A huge man knelt on the tiled floor; a yellow ponytail trailing down his broad back. “Hang in zhere, my friend.”

  Another man lay nearby, his body racked by spasms. He had a shock of snowy hair and wore some kind of wet suit. His face was turned away from her.

  What did Hugh really look like? She wondered and stepped closer.

  He’d changed appearances numerous times while she’d been chasing him, throwing her off guard. She had no idea how he did it, or which face was actually his.

  Noises from the other room pulled her from her thoughts and she found herself back in the other room.

  “Dammit, I lost it,” the Glowing Man was saying. “I’ll try again.”

  She was suddenly yanked back into her body and everything exploded in darkness and pain.

  —»»««—

  Jacob Jackson groaned in frustration.

  He was trying not to zap his patient, but every time their skin accidentally touched, it seemed to spark some massive reaction. The same thing had happened in Cabrini-Green.

  He did not want to shock her to death. He thought the gloves were thick enough to protect her, but he was so worked up that he literally crackled with energy.

  His temples pounded. A nearby presence intruded on his thoughts, making it difficult to hear his own. Seeing the small, gorgeous woman half naked didn’t help either, and Hugh was still seizing in the next room. Normally he could fix two people at once, but their conditions were too complex.

  Trauma never seemed to happen in an orderly fashion. It was all or nothing. An assault on the senses, the nerves, and the mind while making split decisions that affected life and death. Act too fast, and you could lose the patient to a critical error. Act too slow, and you could lose the opportunity to save them in the first place. Timing and technique were everything.

  Breathe, Jacob told himself, and focused on the woman’s erratic energy patterns. The meridians that flowed through the right side of her torso were dark, as if being cut off from their power supply. Not good.

  He slowly retraced the path of the bullet’s destruction through her tissues.

  Each gunshot wound was unique, and depended on a wide variety of factors. Distance, force, caliber, angle…so many things. There was no telling where a bullet might burrow itself after it ping-ponged around inside the body. He’d seen people survive gunshots to the head and others die from ones to the hand. It all depended on the trajectory and the final destination.

  He squinted at a dark patch in the woman’s upper chest and pinged it with an energy wave. The patterns that bounced back indicated it was metallic. “It’s in her subclavian artery. I need you to reroute the blood in that area while I remove the bullet and seal the damage.”

  He was getting better at performing these surgeries, especially after performing one on himself, but they took precision, skill, and immense concentration. The slightest miscalculation and he could remove or seal off the wrong thing.

  Dez nodded. She was an aquakinetic, a water shifter, able to detect and manipulate liquids of all kinds. Her abilities complimented his skills with energy.

  Jacob continued pinging the bullet, narrowing down its whereabouts. When he was sure of its exact location, he quickly teleported it out of the patient’s body, dropping it in a tin pan on the counter beside them. It landed with a loud “clank!”

  Slowly, painstakingly, he cauterized the artery, then traced and repaired the damage to secondary arteries and capillaries one by one. He watched carefully as each accompanying energy meridian came back to life, plugged back in to its power source, the heart chakra.

  Finally, he was done.

  “Let her flow.”

  Desdemona relaxed her hold on the small woman, then tilted her head, listening.

  “I dhink you got it. Dee paths are flowing normally now.” She began dressing the wound carefully.

  Jacob raised his arms and wrapped their patient in a blanket of energy for good measure. She would need the deep, healing sleep of their kind before she began to feel better.

  He checked her over once more, then motioned to Dez. “Let’s go fix Hugh up. Again.”

  —»»««—

  Jacob and Desdemona stepped into Room Two, where
Hugh lay unconscious on the floor.

  Cyrille knelt beside him, looking shaken. “Zhe seizures seem to have stopped.”

  Jacob nodded. “Help me get him off the floor.”

  Together they lifted Hugh onto the examining table.

  Jacob frowned at what he saw. Dez had pulled the water from Hugh’s super suit just before he had collapsed. It appeared to be working, but beneath it, his energy systems were a train wreck.

  Hugh’s aura had dark spots all over it, especially around his head. His lower chakras were completely inflamed and his upper ones were spinning the wrong way.

  He looked at his friend in wonder. How was he still breathing? “He must’ve pushed himself incredibly hard.”

  “Hugh said he'd picked up Dale's signal, but he was being chased by a man and a woman,” Dez said. “He said she looked like Selena.”

  Jacob raised a brow. There was a resemblance.

  He watched in amazement as the spots in Hugh’s aura began to fade. He could see the suit drawing energy off of every living thing in the room, even Dez’s plants along the window ledge.

  Something shiny gleamed from a counter top nearby, an ornate dagger sheathed in a belt. “Do I even want to know what he was doing with that strapped to him?”

  “I lent it to him for protection,” Cyrille explained. “Eet was better zhan nothing.”

  “So Hugh runs off with a knife, and comes back with a woman in a catsuit who’s been shot,” Jacob speculated. It didn’t make any sense, but that was Hugh. “Wait. If there were two people chasing him, where’s the other one?”

  “No clue,” Cyrille said.

  Dez shook her dark head, her long, beaded braids clacking together as she studied the lacerations on his face. “I swear Hugh gets new scars every time he goes off on an adventure.”

  She reached into a cabinet and took out a container of skin balm, then set about cleansing his wounds with warm water.

  Cyrille brought her fresh towels and helped the best he could. He was a fighter, not a medic, but his love for his mate overrode everything else.