Saving the Princess Read online

  I opened my eyes.

  It was dim in the cabin. I could see Emerik and Jakov, the two guards who’d been on duty when I went to sleep. They were my favorites: one old and experienced, one young and dutiful. It was a pity they hated each other.

  I frowned. I had a hazy memory of someone asking who I was in a deep, slow, American accent, and Emerik being annoyed with him. Had that really happened?

  Emerik and Jakov were asleep in their seats so the other two guards must have taken over. I looked around for them—

  Movement in the shadows caught my eye. One of my guards seemed to be standing to attention, his body rigid and straining. Then he suddenly fell like a puppet with his strings cut and I saw the blood gushing from his throat.

  Oh Jesus.

  A man appeared from behind him, all dressed in black. He stepped over the dead guard and now I saw the second body beside it. Both the guards who’d been on duty were dead. And now the killer turned towards the sleeping Emerik and Jakov. No! Not them! I opened my mouth to shout a warning—

  My head was suddenly tugged back against my seat. I screamed, but a palm was pressed tight over my lips, muffling it. I looked up into the eyes of another man. He was dressed in black too, but his skin was bone-white, so pale it almost glowed in the dark cabin. His eyes were as coldly gray as a gravestone and he was staring down at me with absolute hatred. Not the way a person hates another person. The way a person hates cockroaches. I’d never seen hate like it.

  Wait. My stomach twisted. I’d seen it once. Five years ago. God, no. It can’t be!

  He moved around in front of me and pressed my head back even harder into the softness of my leather seat. I felt my neck stretch, my throat exposed. A knife flashed in his hand and I grabbed his wrist with both hands to keep it away from me. I was panic-breathing, now, but I could barely move air beneath that smothering hand. And he was strong, his forearm solid muscle and his hatred and fury making him even stronger.

  Inch by inch, the knife descended towards my throat. The edge gleamed, dipping and trembling as we struggled, but always moving inexorably downwards. I screamed, sobbed and pushed, but now it was so close I could feel the breeze on my skin each time it moved. Then the first touch of it, ice cold, but scoring a line of fire across my throat—

  A huge shape loomed behind the man in black. A monster, surely: too big to be a person. The man with the knife was suddenly lifted... and hurled, like he was nothing more than a toy. There was a thump as he hit the bulkhead at the front of the plane and slid to the floor.

  The shape moved forward into the light. God, he was huge, not just tall but wide, his shoulders twice the width of mine, his chest so solid and broad he put me in mind of a bull about to charge. He had thick, black hair, shaggy and unkempt, and his cheeks were dark with stubble. As soon as you saw him, you knew he’d been put on this earth to do one thing: fight.

  Brute. That’s what my mother would have called him. He was exactly the sort of man she’d always warned me about. I should have been terrified.

  And yet... his eyes. He was staring down at me and his eyes were as blue and clear and honest as a summer’s day. There was a hunger in those eyes, but there was more, too. Fury, that someone had tried to harm me. And a desperate need to stop it ever happening again.

  “You’re gonna be okay,” he told me in that strange, heavy American accent I’d half-heard in my sleep. Alien to me, and yet familiar. An accent that crept in through my ears and rumbled down through my body, going off like a hot bomb when it hit my groin. It was like an earthquake dipped in honey. It went with his face: God, he was gorgeous. Hard beautiful, not soft beautiful. Like a storm cloud or a mountain. His looks were totally unlike the men my mother had introduced me to: the princes with their looks refined through umpteen generations of proper breeding, all long noses and weak chins. Or the politicians and industrial tycoons with their broad, pink faces made soft by years of liquid lunches. This man was peasant stock, his heavy jaw stern and unyielding, his features hewn from granite. I pegged his age at about thirty. His strong brows set off those clear blue eyes, balancing out their tenderness. And his lips…. Wide and powerful, hard and yet gloriously soft. My eyes locked on that full lower lip and a tremor went through me. If he kissed you, you’d stay kissed.

  Then I glimpsed movement behind him and drew in my breath in fear. The man he’d thrown had gotten to his feet. He picked up his knife... and ran right at my rescuer.

  3

  Garrett

  I was panting, heart pounding from how close she’d come. I didn’t even know her, but the thought of something bad happening to her made my stomach knot. She was still terrified, staring up at me, eyes huge. I heard myself tell her she was going to be okay and she gave this tiny, almost imperceptible nod. Like she trusted me.

  Like she wasn’t scared of me.

  That feeling I had when I first saw her was back. Like something inside me had been caught and lifted by the wind. What was that? And the attraction... I’d felt it before, but now, looking into her eyes, it was ten times stronger, a force of goddamn nature. When I looked at her, I couldn’t stop. Those fine, delicate features. The lips, so soft, the creamy skin—

  Across her throat, I saw a hair-thin line of red where the knife had pressed. He’d marred her.

  I wheeled around with a growl, just in time to see the guy run at me, knife outstretched. Hot rage boiled up inside me and I took two big steps forward, my body filling the aisle, a protective wall between him and her. As he reached me, I roared right in his face and slammed a right hook into the side of the head. Get away from her!

  I knew this was risky. The memories were right there, hanging above me like a thousand ton weight, ready to descend. Fighting like this could bring them down on me and then I’d freeze and this bastard would kill me.

  But the only other option was to walk away. And I wasn’t going to let her be harmed. No way. I gave a low growl, dodged the knife, and thumped him again.

  The guy went staggering back, but stayed on his feet. He was tough: there weren’t many guys who’d still be standing after a punch from me. He wasn’t as big as me, but he seemed to be all lean, wiry muscle. And he knew how to use a knife. I saw now that he had a buddy, over on the other side of the cabin. That guy was struggling with the two guards I’d met earlier. Another two guards lay dead on the floor.

  This wasn’t some crazy guy with a knife. This was a professional hit. They’d waited until she was on a commercial flight, the one place her guards weren’t allowed to carry guns. Then they’d bided their time until the middle of the night, when half the guards could be silently killed in their sleep. Someone had planned to kill her. A vicious, cowardly attack... but well planned. It would have succeeded, if I hadn’t heard her scream. And the assassins were well trained. My eyes narrowed, an unsettling thought scratching at the back of my mind.

  The guy I was fighting stabbed at me again. I swayed back out of the way and as he stepped under a light, I got my first good look at his face. His skin was weirdly pale and stretched tight over his cheekbones. His dark hair was slicked back and plastered to his scalp with gel: it made him look almost skeletal.

  I landed a good hit on his ribs, feeling my training coming back. He panted in pain and his lips drew back in a snarl. “Who are you?!” His accent was thick, something guttural and European.

  I risked a glance at where the two guards were fighting the other assassin. The young guard had him in a headlock and the old guard had pried the knife from his fingers. “No one,” I muttered.

  There was one other person in first class, a woman about the same age as the Princess, her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her run over to the Princess, unfasten her seatbelt and help her up out of her seat. They started backing towards the curtain that led to economy. Yes. Good. Get her out of here. The guy I was fighting was tough, but I was holding my own. Once the Princess was safe, I should be able to take him down.

&
nbsp; The guy I was fighting could sense the tide turning. He looked at his buddy, already restrained. He looked at me and the murderous rage on my face. He looked at the Princess, backing away to safety….

  He pulled something from his belt and threw it. It hit the exit door in the side of the plane and stuck there. It was only when I saw the red light flashing on it that I realized what it was.

  I turned and ran at the Princess. Launched myself at her and bore her to the floor even as I screamed at her to get down!

  The force of the explosion knocked me forward, heat scorching my back. Then I was being pulled backwards by a howling, gale-force wind.

  I craned my head around and saw the ragged hole where the exit door used to be. The hole everything was now being sucked out of.

  4

  Kristina

  We forget. We sit in our cozy, pressurized cabins, insulated from sound and wind and cold, and it slips our minds that that’s the sky, out there. Air so thin you can’t breathe, so cold it freezes your lungs. A place humans can’t survive. And now, suddenly, the sky was right there, twenty feet away, reaching in through the gaping hole to claw everything warm and living out into the blackness.

  I’d wound up on my back in the aisle, my head towards the hole. My hair was streaming out, sucked so hard that the roots screamed in protest. My airline pajamas were rippling in the wind, the fabric snapping and jerking as if a giant was plucking at it. The air was getting thinner and what little there was was rushing past so fast, it was hard to snatch a breath.

  All around me, anything not bolted down was tumbling across the floor and shooting out of the hole. Life jackets, newspapers, pillows... a coffee cup flew across the cabin, clipped a seat and shattered, raining down fragments. There was a flash of silver as a fork shot past, missed the hole and embedded itself in the bulkhead like an arrow.

  But I didn’t move an inch. Because he was pinning me to the floor like a rock on a leaf. He was taking some of his weight on his forearms, so as not to crush me, but he had enough of his muscled form—

  I swallowed. On me...that I wasn’t going anywhere. His chest was pressed to my chest and god, it was like rock, not an inch of fat on him. My fingers and toes were already going numb from the cold, but the front of my body, where it touched him... that was so warm.

  Everything my mother had always told me to fear: a commoner and a huge, brutish one, more beast than man, with his threadbare clothes and dirty boots, pushing me down on the ground. Her voice in my head, men like that only want one thing—

  I looked up into his eyes and I saw it there. He did want that. And I wasn’t ready for the answering flush that started in my face and went right down through my body, a need I hadn’t even known I had, suddenly awakened. But that wasn’t all he wanted. Those blue eyes were burning as he glanced between me and the assassin who’d tried to kill me.

  He wanted to protect me. A different kind of warmth flooded my body. I reached up and instinctively clung onto his shoulders and it was like tethering myself to a sun-warmed rock. As long as I stayed there, I knew I’d be alright.

  Movement made me glance towards the hole. The assassin took three running steps towards it and then flung himself through. Just as he jumped, he looked right at me. That glare of pure hate again: I was nothing, an inferior species. Then he was gone, lost in the blackness.

  “Just hold on!” The man who’d saved me had to yell over the howl of the wind. “It’ll get easier as we go lower!”

  I nodded. He was right: we were descending, the floor tilting at a steeper and steeper angle. The pilot was taking us down to where the air would be thick enough to breathe. One assassin was gone and Emerik and Jakov had the other pinned to the floor. Just another few minutes and we’d all be alright—

  A scream split the air. I looked over my rescuer’s shoulder and my stomach lurched. Caroline, my maid, was clinging onto the top of a seat, her body entirely horizontal in mid air, flapping like a flag. And her grip was slipping. As I watched, her fingers failed and she shot past us, straight towards the hole. No!

  One of her feet clipped an overhead luggage bin and she spun sideways... and jerked to a stop. Her leg had wedged between two seats. But the wind was sucking at her, clawing her free, and her leg was sliding between the smooth leather. First her hip was gripped, then only her thigh, and she was slipping faster and faster. “Kristina!” she screamed, terrified.

  Caroline is twenty-two, the same age as me, and she’s been my maid since we were both teenagers. We’ve grown up almost like sisters. When I was fifteen and someone spiked my drink with vodka at a party, it was Caroline who got me out of there safely. When she was sixteen and knocked over and chipped a Ming vase on a visit to the French President’s house, I lied and said it was me. She’s the one person who tells me things straight, who doesn’t bow and scrape. She’s my only true friend. And now she was going to die because someone wanted to kill me.

  I started to wriggle out from under my rescuer. He looked down at me, horrified, and grabbed my shoulders. “No!”

  I twisted, breaking his grip and slithering out from under him. Immediately, the wind clutched at me, threatening to grab me and suck me straight out. I grabbed hold of the nearest seat and checked Caroline. Oh God, her leg was slipping between the seats: they only gripped her calf, now. Very cautiously, I got to my knees.

  That was a mistake. The suction got ten times worse. For one horrible second, my knees actually lifted off the ground.

  I slammed myself face-first, flat on the floor, heart thumping. Then I started to wriggle down the aisle towards Caroline. When I glanced back, the man who’d saved me was trying to crawl after me. “No!” I yelled over the ear-splitting screech of the wind. “Stay there! I’ll pass her to you!”

  He stared at me, face taut with worry, then reluctantly nodded. He’d realized the same thing as me: the suction got worse, the closer you were to the hole. He needed to stay where he was, so he could haul Caroline to safety: I’d never be able to pull her and fight the wind.

  I checked Caroline again and my stomach lurched. Her leg had slid through the seats to the ankle. Only her foot wedged her in place. I moved as fast as I could, but the air was thinner here: I could feel myself getting light-headed and every movement felt like an Olympic effort. Oxygen masks had dropped from the ceiling, but they hung tantalizingly out of reach. If I risked standing to grab one, I’d likely be sucked out. I gritted my teeth and kept going, bracing feet and hands against the seats, trying not to think about the howling, sucking hole or how it would only take one slip—

  There. I’d made it. I reached for Caroline’s leg—

  The wind twisted her slightly and her foot slithered through the gap—

  I screamed and shot forward and suddenly all I could see was the back of a seat. I was mashed up against it and I couldn’t see Caroline at all. I’ve lost her!

  Then I became aware of the burning pain in my fingers. My arm was buried between the seat backs, right up to the shoulder, and I couldn’t pull it back. Something was pulling on my hand. Two of my fingers had curled tight around something thin and soft that bit into my skin. I gripped it even tighter and then braced my knees on the seats and heaved.

  My arm gradually emerged. And when it reached my hand, I saw that I’d hooked my fingers around the ankle strap of Caroline’s shoe. Using both hands, I grabbed her foot and pulled her in, then wrestled her over the seat and down to the floor where the wind was tamer. We lay there for a moment, panting. If I hadn’t reached for her right then. If she’d been wearing different shoes….

  I helped her out from between the seats and up the aisle until my rescuer could grab her wrist and pull her to safety. When she was safely behind him, I let out a huge sigh of relief. Then I started pulling myself towards him, bracing myself on the seats so that I didn’t slip backwards. I was shaky and exhausted but I could do it. His outstretched hand was only a few feet away.

  And that was when the pilot must have decided we we
ren’t descending quickly enough, and pushed the nose down into a steeper dive.

  The floor tilted crazily under my feet.

  I grabbed for a handhold, but my oxygen-starved muscles were weak and slow. I fell backwards, tumbling head over heels. The wind grabbed me.

  And I was sucked out through the hole and into the dark sky.

  5

  Garrett

  I wasted precious seconds staring at the hole. Behind me, the blonde woman was wailing, yelling Kristina’s name over and over again.

  Think! Not what I’m good at. But I had to think of something because if I couldn’t, she was dead. And I wasn’t willing to accept that.

  I thought about the explosive the assassins had used. This must have been the plan all along: kill the Princess, then escape by blowing the door and jumping out.

  Which meant the assassin I’d fought, the one who’d jumped out, had been wearing a parachute.

  Which meant the other one must be wearing a parachute, too.

  I half-slid, half-scrambled down the aisle, my heavier body, making it easier for me to fight the wind. I hauled myself over to where the old guard and the young guard had restrained the other assassin. They were pretty much sitting on him, the only way they could pin him down and still have hands free to cling onto something themselves. Both of them were staring in horror at the hole. “Move!” I snapped.

  They were too shell-shocked by what had happened to argue. I wrestled the assassin onto his front. Bent over him and strained my eyes against the wind. Was it just a backpack, or…. Please be right, please be right—