Authors: Felicia Jedlicka
She drew it and whipped it at his chest. The knife buried in just to the right of his sternum. There may have been residual brain activity, but for all intents and purposes, he was dead the second the knife sliced through his heart.
He didn’t fall to the floor, so much as crumple, but the result was still the same. He was face up on the white linoleum in an expanding pool of blood. Gypsy considered pulling the knife out to reuse it, but she thought it looked better right where it was.
She retrieved her gun which wasn’t far from Belus’s hand. He was so close. It was a good try, but alas, she was just too good.
Cori was slammed against the bars by eight anemic bodies of various strengths and sizes. She was disappointed to find that her electrified response was of little consequence against their blood lust. She managed to shock several hands and faces at once, but the overwhelming numbers only resulted in a rearrangement of immediate threat.
One set of teeth latched onto her wrist. Another latched on at her collarbone. She screamed but the exertion was pointless when there was no one around to help. She had smartly snuck out of the house so her absence would be less traumatizing. Ethan would surely be relieved to find her dead instead of just gone.
She pushed away three other faces that were trying to push into her flesh like nursing puppies. Puppies with very sharp teeth. It might have been the endless shuffling she was doing, but she thought she could feel the energy drain out with her blood. She had to do something.
She focused her thoughts on anger, and revenge, and anything else that would draw on her fickle ring power. She felt her hand ice over and the slobbery beast attached to her wrist pulled away from her distasteful coldness. With both hands free she pushed her neck sucker free and head-butted him. It wasn’t generally a move in her repertoire since her head wasn’t quite as protected as Ethan’s, but she knew vampires had notoriously fragile bones.
The creature was an easy knock out and his collapse left her room to kick and punch a few more away so she could activate her fire power. After two more singed creatures retaliated to lick their wounds, she started the process all over again with the remaining five.
Vampires may not have been strong, but in packs, they were as tenacious as werewolves.
On the way back through to the stairs Gypsy paused and looked toward the gym. She smirked and ran over to make a quick amendment to her plan. She pulled the lever to the hanger doors and impatiently waited for them to open.
The dragon slept blissfully within until Gypsy fired half her clip at her. The scales protected the creature from being riddled with bullet holes, but that didn’t mean it didn’t sting like a son of a bitch.
“Wake-y, wake-y,” she taunted. The creature moaned in complaint, but barely moved. Gypsy knew she had pissed her off, and in 20-30 minutes someone was going to find out just how much. Oh, boy howdy were they going to find out.
Gypsy headed back to the stairs to her next destination. She saved the animal level for later. She skipped the part-time level since there weren’t any werewolves available during this moon phase—oh, what a beautiful mess that would have made. She also skipped the transmorphs because she wanted to know exactly who was who. Not to mention, she was an original and damn if she was going to share this glory with anyone. She took the seducers level carte blanche, just to supplement the chaos. Most of the seducers had to remain locked up, since they were just as dangerous to her as everyone else.
She stepped into the room holding the time bubble. The massive half orb shimmered, the precursor to Efrat’s independent exit. The bubble expelled him allowing him the dignity of stepping away with barely a falter. He used a tuning fork he pulled from his back pocket to recover from his deafness. He slowly realized he wasn’t alone and stilled, prepared to defend himself.
Despite his preparation for battle, she only offered him a brief pause to note his arrival. “Efrat,” she said cordially as she passed him on her way to the lookout booth.
“Gypsy,” he countered with the same “what the hell” expression he always gave her when they met. She had discovered him on more than one occasion roaming free in the prison, but since she didn’t exactly want to draw attention to her own after-hours visits, she had never mentioned it to Danato. Naturally, he didn’t trust that she wasn’t going to tattle about his comings and goings, so he remained leery of her. At some point she did plan to capture him in exchange for a little suck up slack with Danato, but as of thirty minutes ago, she was well beyond ass kissing.
She climbed the navy style stairs to the booth. The man designated to watch the bubble had already been knocked out by Efrat, conveniently saving her time and a bullet. She looked over the system control panel, which was a veritable blur of screens, dials, and something-o-meters. The only thing remotely interpretable was the classic big red button. It was under locked glass, and as she understood it, was
NEVER
to be pushed.
“What are you doing?” Efrat asked back peddling into the room again.
Gypsy slammed the glass with her elbow, which resulted in a new bruise, but no breakage. “I’m pulling the plug.”
His eyes widened and he looked at the bubble beside him. “You’re letting the wizards out?”
“God no! Well, inadvertently perhaps, I’m just clamping the bitch’s feeding tube.” Gypsy hit the glass with the butt of her gun.
“Why would you do that?”
Gypsy paused and leaned on the control panel to search for the right words. She scratched her temple with the barrel of her gun, which probably said more about her state of mind, than her words could. “You know that tiny little thread of hope you have that keeps you from going certifiably insane. The one that lets you believe that maybe someday you’ll get out of this prison alive.”
“Yeah,” he agreed cautiously.
“Mine broke.” She batted her eyes at him and laughed at the disbelief on his face, before going back to accessing her big red button of doom.
“Well, mine is still intact, so I can’t let you do this.”
Gypsy chuckled again. She could feel the room alight with static, but it was too late for all that. “I like you Efrat,” she said looking at him straight on. The admission stalled his attack as she thought it would. “There’s something alleviating about knowing you’ll hurt me every time you touch me.” His confusion dimmed, and his usual self-pity inspired irritation returned. “We really should have hit a movie or something.”
She cut the crap out of her fingers trying to weasel them through the glass, but when she reached pay dirt, a massive bleating alarm started. While Efrat was trying to figure out what was happening, she unloaded a few shots into the panel to keep anyone from undoing her mayhem.
“Are you crazy?” Efrat yelled as she holstered her gun on her thigh and slid down the ladder leaving a trail of blood from her cut hand.
“Probably, but I think we’ve established that.” She crossed her arms and leaned back to offer her ultimatum. “Now, Efrat, you have two choices. You can try to escape while all holy hell is erupting. Or, you can use those magic hands of yours to feed this bitch, so she doesn’t start seeking out exterior sources of food. The choice is yours.”
She could tell he wanted to barbeque her with one shot, but something inside of him was still trying to be the hero. His cape had been ripped off and his pockets were filled with kryptonite, but he was still trying to fly. It was admirable, pointless, but still worthy of respect.
Gypsy stepped forward and kissed Efrat. He threw open his hands to avoid touching her, but he didn’t back away from the kiss. When she pulled away from him, his head was consciously or otherwise negating an unspoken question. “You are a fucking nut job.”
“Awe, you say the sweetest things. Better get to work hero.”
He glared at her but focused his electricity onto the time bubble, to keep the entity that maintained it happily fed.
Cori stumbled out of the elevator covered in scratches, bites, and the dreg from the basement floor. She didn’t even want to begin thinking about what diseases she might contract as a result of it. She committed herself to getting back to her own world so she could sterilize her skin.
The short trip to Danato’s office was even shorter since she ran the last few meters. “Belus!” Cori slid into base beside Belus, smearing her pants with blood. She checked for a pulse, but he was long gone. She stared down at her dead mentor for the second time in her life and cried.
She snapped out of her revelry and went in search of the lamp. She could undo it again. There was no reason Belus had to die. She could save him…again.
The lamp was gone. She looked around and in the desk, just to be sure, but it was gone. The puzzle pieces were only beginning to fall together when Danato and Ethan arrived. Ethan had his gun in hand and was prepared to shoot whoever had killed Belus. Cori raised her bloody hands defensively.
“I know what this looks like, but I didn’t kill him,” Cori stammered and wiped her hands on her shirt.
“I know you didn’t.” Danato stared down at Belus. Ethan lowered his gun as soon as Danato acknowledged it. “That’s Gypsy’s knife.” He and Ethan exchanged a look. Ethan ran off to find and apprehend her, but the rage on his face hinted at the condition she would be in when he returned with her.
Danato raised his eyes back to her. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, I went to see Cleos again before I left. The photophobes were out. I may have injured a few of them rather severely, but I don’t think I killed any.” He gave her a slight smile. “And the lamp is gone.”
His eyes bugged out and he scanned the room searching for it. “She’s trying to stop you from leaving. Belus must have tried to stop her.”
“He underestimated how determined she was.” She couldn’t help but let her eyes fall back to the knife in Belus’s chest.
“We all did. I need to—” Danato silenced when the office juddered as if it was sitting on a miniature fault line. Cori steadied herself against the desk. Danato seemed unaffected by the tremor outside of the door. The color drained from his face, and the rarest emotion seeped into his eyes—fear. “Oh, holy hell, she unplugged her.”
Danato disappeared down the hall. Cori had several questions about the event, but no time to get answers. Instead, she added them to her mental list of
things Danato won’t talk about
. She didn’t understand what was going on, but she assumed it was an extension of her life’s goal to attract pandemonium. Indirectly or otherwise, she had made a mess of things and she needed to undo it. She needed to get the lamp back by any means necessary.
On her way out the door, she paused over Belus’s body and let the image burn into her mind. She wondered if this might be the second occasion that she would have to willfully kill someone. Her rings offered a good defense, and offense, but she wasn’t sure she had the proficiency to compete with Gypsy’s acrobatic strength.
She reached down and pulled the knife out of Belus’s chest. The jagged edge caught on his rib cage and she gagged unable to be indifferent to the body she was pulling it from.
She heard the elevator ponk down the hall and she sprinted to catch up. “Danato!” She jumped the railing to skip the short steps just as he entered the lift. “Danato wait, I can help.”
Cori reached the open doors just in time to see the elevator phase out of existence along with Danato. She reached for him, but her hand hit a wall that shouldn’t have been there. “Danato?” She hammered on the cinder blocks with her fists, but there was no response from within. She felt the chipped, faded yellow paint on the wall. The elevator was gone or perhaps had never really been there.
More questions that needed to be answered, but not now.
She changed her approach to the stairs, but another thrumming vibration in the floor halted her. The rumble accompanying it culminated in the adjoining wall to the gym ripping open. Penelope bulldozed through the wall into the foyer space that was barely large enough for her. She roared furiously at the world and all who inhabited it.
Unfortunately, Cori was the only one around to take the punishment for whatever she was mad about.
Gypsy unleashed the Chromandi and watched them intermittently run, sniff, and run down the corridor. At first glance they appeared human, but they were worse than dogs. At least you could train a dog to be useful. The only thing the Chromandi did consistently was eat and they didn’t particularly glean the distinction between fresh meat, and living meat.
“Gypsy.” Ethan’s voice was low with threat, or perhaps it was promise. Either way, it made her breathe in the moment. She could smell him: un-bathed sex, lingering cologne, and that little something that made him a man. “Look at me!” His voice resonated through the high ceiling rafters.
She turned at her leisure to face him. He was still several meters away, but she knew he could make the distance in two muscular leaps. She expected to see anger on his face, but that was the least of his emotions. The disillusionment suffused with anguish deserved to be photographed and framed.
The nonverbal exchange between them was poised and reverent, but it was still a call to war for both of them. Any other man would have already been a minute into a tirade, but not Ethan. He was deathly still. He hadn’t even raised his gun to aim at her. It was planted against his hip, ready in a heartbeat.