by C. C. Mahon
The blonde lunged towards me, and I stopped deliberating.
22
The machete was heading straight for my face. I raised the sword reflexively to protect myself. The blades collided with a bang, and a spark was created when they connected. The shock reverberated up my arm to the injury on my back. But I held out, and the blonde leaped back, as light as a ballerina.
“Give me back my sword,” she spat, “and I might let you live.”
The anger caught me by surprise. I felt her stare burn into me, from the hand holding the sword to my feet firmly planted on the asphalt. Who did this girl think she was? To save Barbie, I was ready to risk losing the sword—my sword. If Barb wasn’t here…
“Tell me what you did with Barbie!”
In the pale moonlight, an ugly smile contorted Goldilocks’ face. “I killed your harpy, and now it’s your turn.”
This time, I saw red.
Barbie. My Barbie. Killed.
The rage pushed me to attack. At this moment, the pain in my back was only useless information, relegated to the back of my mind. The only things that mattered to me were my weapon, my adversary, and the space between us.
I raised the sword and let out a cry of rage. At the end of my arm, the metal was an extension of my soul. I let my fury take hold of it like it had taken hold of me. The metal was set ablaze.
I brought down the flaming sword, and the blonde blocked the blow with her machete before backing up again.
Seeing my sword suddenly engulfed in flames should’ve shocked me, but in the red haze of my fury, it seemed only natural. Since I was burning with rage, my sword was doing the same. Nothing strange there. Goldilocks wasn’t taking it so well.
“No!” she yelled. “It’s not real, it’s an illusion!”
She seemed outraged and lunged at me, wielding her machete as if it were a saber.
She moved more slowly now, and her movements seemed predictable.
My sword cut her machete in two, and the blonde let out a wail like a wounded animal.
The two pieces of her machete fell to the asphalt slowly, almost theatrically. Goldilocks gripped her stomach, and blood, black in the moonlight, beaded between her fingers. It wasn’t a bad wound, but she was treating it as if I’d gutted her.
“No mortal can wound me!” she roared. “Even with a sacred blade. Who are you?”
“I’m the woman who’s going to avenge Barbie,” I said.
I raised my sword and brought it down towards Goldilocks’ neck. At the last moment, a twinge of doubt slowed my arm. My enemy was unarmed and wounded. Killing her now was not honorable.
Honorable? I wasn’t in a samurai movie.
Kill this bitch and avenge Barb!
But that millisecond of hesitation was enough for my opponent to avoid my blade. She danced out of reach, like a gymnast, confirming that her wound was only superficial.
What a darling.
The darling in question picked up the pieces of her machete and brandished them like a pair of daggers. “I’m going to show you who’s worthy of wielding that sword!” she exclaimed.
Left, right, left, right: Goldilocks attacked me with no reprieve but slow enough that I could easily dodge and block. Then the fatigue hit me like a ton of bricks, and the fire of my sword died, and my fury died with it.
Barbie was dead.
Nothing would change that.
I froze, and a few steps in front of me, my opponent did the same.
I had inflicted several other wounds but none that were serious. However, she seemed out of breath, and for the first time uncertainty covered her face. She was no longer convinced she could beat me.
All the better.
Because from my end, I was painfully aware of the differences in strength.
It was the first time I had fought with a sword. I’d spent hours upon hours handling the object, but never as a weapon.
The idea was simple—hold the round end, hit with the pointy end—and my krav maga training gave me a good foundation. But my opponent obviously had years of combat experience. I could see it in the way she moved, in her calculated actions, and the effectiveness of her every movement.
I was but an amateur.
I wanted to go home and cry over my red-feathered harpy.
I wanted to be left alone.
But Barb’s murderer was in front of me, and nothing kept her from going after Matteo, Gertrude, or even Nate. Nothing except me.
I straightened my shoulders and tightened my grip on the hilt. What I’d thought was my blood pumping in the palm of my hand was actually coming from the sword. The weapon pulsated between my fingers, like a living being.
Let’s end this.
The fire spread again along the blade, reigniting a spark of panic in my opponent’s eyes.
I advanced on her, decided to plunge my weapon in her stomach.
Until now she’d always favored attacking over dodging. That’s why I understood all too late her move: instead of blocking my attack or attacking me herself, she dropped her two makeshift daggers and sprinted towards the bridge parapet. Without hesitation, she jumped into the Black Canyon and the tumultuous waters of the Colorado River, dozens of feet below.
It was suicide.
I shook off the stupor that had glued me in place and hurried over to where Goldilocks had disappeared.
The beam of my flashlight wasn’t strong enough to pierce the obscurity. The night had swallowed my enemy.
23
I returned to Vegas at a more reasonable speed then I’d left. In part because I wasn’t crunched for time. In part because I was exhausted. In part because the thought of having to break the news of Barbie’s death—and my failure—to the others terrified me.
I’d put down the sword on the passenger seat. It had stopped burning as soon as the blonde had disappeared into the canyon. I looked over at it often, looking for the faintest spark, the faintest sign of magic, but it was once again the ancient and rustic sword that I’d so often admired.
Had Goldilocks been telling the truth when she’d stated she wasn’t working for Callum?
The blonde seemed much more dangerous than my ex, but I wasn’t as scared of her as I was of him. Perverts had a special skill to warp reality to the point that their victims feared them more than anything else. Callum had often threatened to kill me. But he’d tried—and almost did—worse: to destroy me and to isolate me from the world and myself, as if I’d never existed. It wasn’t the blows or the torture that haunted my nightmares, but the certainty that just one word from him could cancel my existence.
But I wasn’t a victim anymore. I’d left; I’d regained my independence. I was alive, and I knew how to defend myself.
I shot a glance at the sword.
Why did Goldilocks think she was “the only one worthy of wielding this sword?”
Why had she called it a “sacred” sword? Sacred for what religion?
She’d mentioned the forges of…Brok? Who was Brok?
Too many questions and not enough energy to answer them. I decided to focus on the road. And especially not to think about Barbie anymore.
Have you ever tried to not think about a harpy that dyes her feathers red?
About a waitress able to assault with insults the first customer who dared put their hands on her but who’d take money out of her pay to cover a meal for a broke stranger?
Impossible.
Light was already coming up over the horizon when I stopped the truck in front of the hangar’s doors. My eyes closed on their own, and I couldn’t imagine myself getting out of the truck to open the door. I honked for someone to come open the door. There was no movement. My initial irritation was quickly replaced by fear: what had happened while I was gone? Had Goldilocks lured me to the dam so her accomplices could come after my employees? Was that why Callum wasn’t at the meeting?
I imagined my evil ex greeting me with his million-dollar smile surrounded by my employees’ bodies.
No way, I was just losing it.
I tried to be rational: Club 66 was protected by seven layers of high-quality enchantments. Nate and the others knew they weren’t supposed to open the door to anyone but me. Besides, that was probably the reason they weren’t moving.
I finally decided to get out of the truck. I could’ve rang the buzzer, but since I was standing, I might as well have unlocked the door myself.
Everything seemed calm in the hangar.
I parked Nate’s truck, immediately closed the door, and let out a long sigh. Now the hardest task of the night awaited me. I was going to have to tell my team that I’d failed to bring back Barbie.
I went down the stairs my steps heavy, sword in hand to give me courage.
I opened the door and was greeted by a scream.
“She’s back!” cried Gertrude.
“Finally!” exclaimed Nate. “I’ve been calling you for two hours. Don’t you ever answer your phone?”
My phone? I’d turned off my phone before getting to the dam. That’s the last thing I needed, an untimely phone call when I was trying to be discreet.
“Give her a break, would you?” declared another voice. A weak, tired voice, but still recognizable. Wrecked by cigarettes and sour like a wild apple.
“Barbie?”
The harpy was sitting in a velvet booth, behind what was left of a mountain of food and under the watchful eye of Matteo. Her features were still marred by bruises and injuries, but her cheeks had regained some of their color.
“You’re alive?” I stuttered. “But…she said… That bitch lied to me!”
“Don’t be too excited, boss,” answered the harpy.
She shot me a sideways smile, and I rushed over to hug her.
“Easy, my feathers hurt—and that’ not because of vodka.”
I held her at arms’ length to examine her from every angle. There was a fresh bandage on one of her wings, and Barb smelled strongly of cigarettes. She was really here, alive.
“What happened?” I asked. “Tell me!”
She sat back down, and I sat in front of her. “When you left with Nate,” she began, “the girl followed you. You’d started to undo that horrible metal wire, and I was able to free myself. I took off towards the roof and hid myself there. I heard when she came back and found that I was gone. She must’ve broken everything she could get her hands on. And then she left grumbling god knows what, and I took advantage of it to get back here. These guys told me that you’d just left to exchange a sword for me. What’s that about?”
Everyone’s eyes were focused on me. I assembled my courage and placed the sword on the table.
“That’s it?” said Gertrude in a deflated voice. “Is it worth a lot?”
“The man I took it from seemed to think so,” I replied.
“You stole that sword?” interjected Nate.
I looked him dead in the eyes. “This and a few other knick-knacks,” I said.
He scowled, crossed his arms across his massive chest, and I felt obligated to defend myself.
“A few years ago, I met this guy,” I said. “Handsome guy, charming, cultured, funny… Long story short, I fell in love. He was rich, and he introduced me to a whole new world. Vacations, hotels… He isolated me from my friends, cut me off from my family. I was really close to my little sister, but he pitted us against each other. By the time I understood what was happening, it was too late. This man was a manipulator, a sadist who needed to control others and make them suffer. I wanted to leave him, but he made it clear that that wasn’t an option. If I left, he would find me and make me regret it. He…”
I picked up the sword with both hands to keep my fingers from making their way to my old wounds, the scars I was hiding under my clothes.
“He hurt you,” said Matteo in a soft voice. “And you left?”
I nodded. “I let him think he’d won, that he’d broken me and that I belonged to him. But I knew I was running out of time. At the time, I knew enough about him to understand he would quickly get bored with a tamed woman. He was going to get rid of me as soon as he found a new prey. One day, he went on a trip, taking his head of security and most of his bodyguards with him. He only left behind one employee to watch over me. I took advantage of it. I ran. But I knew that to survive, I had to disappear. I couldn’t see my friends; I couldn’t contact my family. They had to believe I was dead.”
That was the worst part. Thinking of my parents, my sister, imagining their pain…
I composed myself, pushed those dark thoughts from my mind. Regrets wouldn’t change anything.
“I had to assume a new identity,” I said. “So I took a small war chest with me, to pay for my new life.”
Barb frowned. “But you didn’t sell everything.”
“Everything except the sword,” I said. “Honestly, I didn’t think it was that valuable. I brought it because I’d always liked it, and I refused to leave it with him. Barb, I’m so sorry. I knew there was a chance he’d find me some day, but I never thought he’d go after you.”
“Or Agatha,” breathed Barbie.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated, looking down.
“This guy,” cut in Nate, “does he have a name?”
I fiddled with the sword on the table. “Callum Carver,” I sighed.
“Was he there? With the blonde?” he asked.
I shook my head. “She was alone. She pretended not to know Callum. But she also said that she’d killed Barbie, so…”
“Tell us what happened,” said Nate.
I summed up the events, omitting the part about the flames that had taken over my sword.
“She jumped in the canyon?” cried Gertrude.
“That’s insane,” growled Nate. “Even a metamorph couldn’t survive a fall like that.”
“None of us know what she is,” pointed out Matteo. “Barb, do you have any ideas?”
“I’ve been wondering about that since she jumped me the other night. She’s strong and fast, but I don’t think she’s a metamorph. She’s too skilled with that machete.”
“We prefer to use our claws,” confirmed Nate.
“She knows a thing or two about wings,” continued Barbie. “She understands where to hit to cause pain and how to keep you from flying. The kind of things that your regular crawlers don’t usually know.”
“Do you think she’s a harpy hiding behind an illusion?” I asked.
Barb shook her head without hesitation. “Nope, not a harpy. As I said, I’ve been thinking about it since she jumped me. I observed her from every angle, and I even tried to get her to talk. Nada.”
“But she’s working for this Carver?” asked Matteo.
“That what I thought,” I said. “But now…now I don’t know.”
A reflexive silence fell over the room.
The phone ringing made us all jump. It was the club’s phone, an old bakelite unit hung on the wall behind the bar. Nate was closer than me and answered.
“It’s the wizard again,” he announced. “He wants to speak to Miss St. Gilles ‘urgently.’ ”
He handed me the receiver, which I pressed to my ear. I leaned over slightly to speak into the mic that was hung on the wall.
“I found Monsieur Carver,” announced Britannicus.
I’d only known the wizard for a short time, but this way of broaching the subject didn’t seem like him. Something was going on, and it must have been serious.
“Where?” I asked.
“In Chicago. In the morgue, to be precise.”
“What’s Callum doing at the morgue?” I asked without thinking.
“According to my sources, he’s occupying the space of a shoebox while we wait for city police to solve his murder. Which doesn’t seem to be going very well, I might add.”
I didn’t hear what came after that as the handset fell from my hands and dangled from its cord. My knees buckled under my weight, and Nate caught me as I followed the phone towards the ground. He made me sit down near
Barbie and kneeled in front of me.
“What is it?” he asked.
I opened my mouth to answer him and closed it again without saying anything. Too many emotions were stirring inside me.
Callum, dead?
I should’ve been relieved. Pleased, even. I finally had my vengeance, and I was free. I was done living in fear. I could go back to Chicago, see my family again…
Except that…
Except that I didn’t believe it. It was too good to be true, and at the very least, the timing was strange. Not to mention the absence of an identifiable body.
Matteo’s voice pulled my from my thoughts. “Carver is dead.”
He’d picked up the receiver and had obviously asked Britannicus for an explanation before hanging up.
“Dead?” repeated Nate. “But…that’s good news, isn’t it?”
“So why does the boss look like she’s about to faint?” murmured Gertrude.
“Because I don’t believe it,” I said.
“You think he faked his death?” asked Nate.
“To what end?” asked Matteo. He pulled up a chair and sat down, legs crossed, near me.
“To run from his enemies,” I said. “Or the police. Or the IRS.”
“Is he rich?” asked Matteo.
I nodded.
“In that case,” said the vampire, “he would have a contingency plan not to abandon his fortune. Looking into his finances might allow you to get some closure.”
“I really need an accountant,” I whispered.
Matteo smiled at me. “I could take a look, if you want. My father is also very attached his fortune, and he did everything he could to turn me into an expert on the subject.”
“I’ve been struggling with my income tax filings for three weeks now. You couldn’t have told me this sooner?”
“Just because I know how to do it doesn’t mean I enjoy it! But to give you peace of mind about this guy…”
He shrugged. He didn’t need to finish that sentence: he’d felt the fear that Callum caused me. That was our secret. Under the table, his hand met mine, and our fingers interlocked. I was no longer alone to face my nightmares.
