“Wait. Repeat that for the record!” Kendra had been fighting with Dexter’s phone trying to figure out its mic function in her fear clouded mind. She rolled out of the car and onto the street, thrusting it out, tossing her windblown hair out of her eyes.
“Come on, kiddo. It’s your dad talking. How can you say no, huh?”
“Understand something. I buried my father a decade ago.” Leaf’s flames were starting to shoot and whistle through his skin. He gnashed his teeth, growling from the out-of-control pain.
“Ah, I see. You always were a mule-headed one, weren’t ya? Took after your common white-trash mom. Mr. Fulton, explain to my son what kind of glorious opportunity this is.” Cyrus snapped his fingers. The Bugatti’s other passenger stepped up.
“You boys probably recognize me, but I’ll introduce myself properly nonetheless. My name is Theodore Fulton and I’m the owner of the Fulton Enterprises and all those companies which Mrs. Kelley has bought out. Including the Prometheus Automotive Innovation and the Midas Cinematic Institute. Those big names should garner your attentions, my young friends. See, firstly, I’m the wealthiest man in the world and with your automotive genius, Sergeant, and with the both of your elaborate transformation, you could have large prospects in the future of my company.” He paused to roll a cigarette.
“No, thanks. We had enough of prospects when we were in Leona’s horror castle.” Derek grimaced.
“Ah, yes. Leona. That’s the second part of my offer that’s so big. You probably wondered how I came to know her. How she came to practically be the ghost CEO of my entire enterprise. Not hard to figure. See, she was my son’s first love. The champion of his dreams. After he died, she was devastated, but she always held his beliefs. Always believed she could bring his fantasy to life. Then after her spur of the moment marriage to young Harrison Kelley, it finally seemed possible.” Mr. Fulton took a long pull from the cigarette, with a smug smirk.
“Ha! It’s just like Leona to leave out the part where she killed your son so she could pilot his fantasy herself.” Jane hopped out of the car, training her rifle to Fulton. Dexter gasped and scrambled after her.
“Ms. Lewis. I won’t hesitate to have you shot.” Cyrus’ hands were shaking. Jane smirked, finger twirling playfully around the trigger.
“Have me shot. I’m already dead.”
There was sudden terror from the pirate ranks and the ground quaked. Andromeda and the She-Hitler touched down, leaving a crater half a mile long that flashed and burned. The sidewalk pulled up like a belt, snapping into a hundred different pieces, overtaking fleeing pirates and doubles alike, pummeling them in their wake. Sewer pipes were exposed, water shooting up like blood from the jugular. Whole buildings down the block began to crack like porcelain frames and slide like melting butter to the streets behind and below them. A quarter of the City began to landslide, pushing each the other building in a downward slope like dominoes.
Leona Kelley stood face to face with Theodore Fulton for a strange, fire-purring moment. She tossed her head, voice rattling in her throat’s base like a toucan.
“Why so shocked? Kill is what we do. You knew about it, even then. You were the one that furnished us with the stage-supplies to perform the murders adequately, Midas.” She winked one of her flaming eyes, barber’s razor swinging in a now volcanic hand.
“I kill anyone I can to get ahead. Once there was a method to my madness. Yet today I find it’s time to return to my roots of anarchy. Sweet, vertiginous madness made me who I am. Not Keith after all…Now it’s time to clean house and begin again with a blank slate. She can make me that powerful. The Andromeda is the answer.” She took one stride forward. The Andromeda spun on her heel and looked at Joseph. The old man realized instantly what was on her mind.
“Get back in the car, kids!” They reached and grappled each other’s arms, swinging, jumping and landing with a thud against the upholstery. The Geryon screamed as Andromeda leaped on the hood, hissing like a rattlesnake. Dexter shrieked. Jane thrust out her hands.
“Stop!”
“Do you really think you can control me, offshoot? I buried you!” The Andromeda grit her teeth, tilting her head. There was a crackling sound coming from her neck. Jane swung around her other hand, letting the rifle slide with a thud into the floorboards. ‘
“You can’t bury me, idiot! I am you!” Jane’s eyes began to bleed from the strain of trying to reign the Andromeda in from the outside.
“Do that Harlem Shake and Great Balls of Fire thing, boys! Anything could help right about now, huh?” Joseph kicked the gas, jerking the wheel in serpentine shapes.
“On the roof.” Derek grabbed the window frame and swung himself up.
“Right.” Leaf mirrored him.
“Dex, I’m gonna need a trigger man up in the front. Jane’s a little busy now.” Joseph’s eyes flashed in the mirror. Dexter hopped to his knees.
“Right. Uh, aim down the sight, point, shoot.”
“That’s my boy, Dex…” Jane tossed her hair out of her eyes, laughing against the strain of her physiological battle with self.
“Oh God, we’re gonna die!” Matthews jumped as a pirate was thrown from the chaos on the street and smashed the glass of one of the back passenger windows. Reilly appeared on the back of a café racer in the fallen pirate’s place.
“I wouldn’t sell myself so short so soon if I were you, sir.” She winked.
Another Harley came shrieking up the street.
“Hey, Mr. President. No worries. Zombie’s to the rescue.” It was Harrison, sporting shades and a Makarov.
“Yeah, sure. Now that Mr. Kelley got his piece after all.” Reilly tossed her head, craning her neck toward the chaos on the sidewalks.
“Zombies and ten-year-olds!” The President jabbed his knuckles into his mouth.
“I’m a mature ten!” Reilly swung the bike around the nose of the car, shooting Andromeda in the back of the leg. She howled, dropping Derek who she’d been holding by the throat. Jane cursed as she’d lost concentration, but now she lifted her arms and tried again. Leaf pounced on Andromeda’s back, trying to hold her down under Jane’s magnetic struggle as she attempted to levitate again into the airways. The Andromeda shrieked as Leaf’s fire roasted her shoulders. She hissed and bit into his wrist.
“Oh God!” He threw his head back, eyes rolling, mouth foaming rabidly as Andromeda’s radioactive poison mixed with his slightly less volatile concoction.
“Leaf!” Derek tore forward only to receive a bite as well, straight in the neck. He staggered, electric sparks shooting from his ears like the cartoon spouts of steam.
“Good God!” Joseph fought the wheel as electricity began to hail against the New Yorker’s body, warping the chassis like a wadded ball of tin foil. Matthews screamed from the back and scrambled for something to hang onto.
A gator harpoon sailed through the air, fired from the barrel of a rocket launcher. It struck Andromeda in the small of her back. Taylor yanked her into the street. She was tossed up under his gang, as they shot various chain link nets at her. She wailed, hissing and scratching, as they swooped in to contain her.
“Alright, everybody. This goes a lot smoother if you just stay calm.” Taylor rolled up on a Sportster 48. He grinned at Joseph who brought the New Yorker to a smoking halt. Taylor laughed at the look on his face and winked.
“No worries, man. Our boys here are gonna be just fine. I might not have the cure for cancer, but I know a few tricks after surviving my sister (or actually not) all these years.”
*****
Chapter 25
The heat rolling from the altar singed Kingsley’s eyes shut for a moment. His mouth was full of ashes thick as peanut butter. He coughed, sputtered, thrashed his arms, trying to catch the syringe and protect it from the surge of fire rising from this pit. Kiara dove in and pulled him back, taking a stick and scraping the ashes free of his teeth.
“It spits. It’s like a viper. I should know…” She bowed her hea
d. Somehow between the lab and here she’d steeled herself to face her demons.
Jessop climbed up on a petrified stump. Far away a pack of wolves howled. The forest just outside of Centralia had grown deathly quiet save only for the roar of its eternal fire and the lonely song of nature.
“Gaze at the Dark Altar in all its glory. This is where we all died for her sins, Doctor Kingsley. Gone was the boyish smirk on his face. Jessop was a hundred years old in the light of the place of his death. He seemed to be covered in a shadow. Kingsley jumped. He thought he’d hallucinated it, but it lingered. A crow had fallen out of the sky and landed comfortably on the boy’s leather-clad shoulder. Jessop reached back a hand and petted it atop its head. He turned to look thoughtfully at the couple that had come fearful to his door.
“Dr. Kingsley, this may come as a surprise for you, but Caroline Riveaulx, or just Leona if you will, was the first person to prove to herself and to anyone who would listen that the paranormal world is just our world colliding with alternate dimensions. That alternate dimensions do exist for a definite fact. That in these alternate dimensions there are people, older and wiser, that could lend us their god-like knowledge for our own scientific advancement.” Jessop looked back to the fire, coal black eyes smoldering in its light.
“People with more subjective minds have assumed that these alternate dimensions would be abstract. Full of spacemen, vampires, aliens, all kinds of crazy. There were some with bleeding hearts that assumed they would be populated by benevolent citizens from some utopian world. That anywhere but here is a better world than our own with less rigid physical laws and brighter tomorrows.” He paused and let a shaky breath.
“That would have made them gods indeed. It’s my belief that there is only one God, Dr. Kingsley. A God who is somehow the minister of all existence, and yet works to save us from worse alternatives to our darkest nightmares and deepest suffering. The thought of one God gives me a small shred of personal hope, Doctor. Yet it still won’t keep powerful forces from supposing to share ‘godhood’ over everything I held dear.” He took a step closer, running his hand against the carved walls of the once-mineshaft cave.
“Just because there is evil doesn’t mean there is no good or that there won’t be one final good outcome. On the flip side, just because there is benevolence doesn’t mean that it’s predominate or to be presumed from anyone. That was Caroline’s grave mistake. Here, in the midst of her pagan altar and radical scientific theory, she and her ladies tested the theory that our ancestors were communicating with alternate dimensions beyond their scientific understanding. She gave higher powers, darker forces of elsewhere a ring. Solicited their savvy and input.” Jessop leaned his face against the wall and sighed.
“She called for them and they came. Legions of them tuning in from God knows where. God help foolish Caroline when it happened. She went from free nihilistic horseplay to commitments of organized crime. I can’t say it isn’t what she wanted, but it may have otherwise come from a more human offshoot of cruelty. It isn’t human nature to devour one’s own children in the presence of her supervisors, is it?” He turned on his heel. Kingsley gawked.
“For all the ages, demons and angels and any race other than humankind have been legends of sentimental minds. Scientists and academics scoff at the notion of them. If they were wise, they would explore their possibility beyond the ignorance of historical humans. It might have spared us this atrocity now. We may have known how to combat the hostiles and solicit the friendliness of the non-combatants.” Jessop nodded and pointed a finger at Kingsley.
“Leona murdered us on these altars, Doctor. To the last of us standing here, even your girlfriend, at different points in her research journey, whether personally or by ordering another to do it for her. She did necromantic tests on our decomposing corpses, with chemicals, with animal genome. As instructed, she played god with the lot of us.
Then, when her pen pals said it was the right time, she brought us again to this altar. They did something to us. Something with magnetism. With optogenetics, lights coming from untold places. Apparently, being on the other side of the universe’s seesaw mathematics, they were able to retrieve us from forgotten dimensions we dispersed to when we passed on. We revived, twisted, deformed as we are now.” He hissed, gnashing his painful teeth and glaring at Kingsley.
“With the last of us before Harrison Kelley broke the mold, she slaughtered us and brought us here to be “judged” by her pen pals. By unknown means they reanimated us only enough so that we could function and speak, but like Harrison Kelley or our Uncle Taylor, our vitality was suspended. She banished us to different holdings. To tombs, to hospitals, to wherever she could. Some us she converted as “go-betweens” for her and her pen pals. Auntie Kiara got dubbed as a witch for these forced ritual practices.” Jessop watched Kiara as she turned away to fight tears. Kingsley looked to her stunned, and reached a hand to push her sweat-soaked hair from her face.
“So that means?” Kingsley held his breath, understanding at last.
“Place your hand on my throat, Lucien.” Kiara swallowed, trying to smile.
Kingsley took Kiara’s pulse. Or lack thereof. If there was one, it might be one beat for every five minutes.
“Kiara is the only one of us whose revival resulted in one vital function. That of breath. Even then, it never worked properly. She never worked properly again. So, Leona used chemicals to alter her behavior and render her the stoic assassin you know her as today. Chemicals coupled with an electric surging dental apparatus was the general prosthetic that gave birth to ‘Bleach’.” Jessop shrugged. Kingsley stared at her, awestruck. Jessop spread his hands toward the skies.
“Leona called on faceless teachers. Masters of Science and technology. For someone so brilliant, she was insanely ignorant, too. Once she’d figured out that there were trace chemical substances left over in our bloodstreams after the masters got done with us, she hooked up with Harrison to begin her pharmaceutical pursuit of perfection. She is terrified to come back here. Horrified by the idea that there could be a higher authority she’d have to answer to. That there is someone she might have to pay for the privileges of being a goddess for a while.” Jessop looked back toward the cave as it gurgled and belched up yet another bout of stinging ash slag. Kingsley pulled Kiara to his chest to shield her from the spray.
“Ah, so you want me to turn her over to her higher authorities, is that it?” Kingsley stood up straighter. Kiara was shaking her head. Now that it came to this moment, she didn’t want to let him do it.
“You-you shouldn’t have to be the one! God! What was I thinking…You shouldn’t have to be the one.” She turned to face the slag-shooting pit that seemed to scream with the voices of a thousand keening women, mourning their unholy dead.
“Kiara, listen to me. You’ve done your time in Hell. Now it’s my turn.” Kingsley bent over her and kissed her before he realized what he was doing. Her eyes went wide. He swallowed. The faint taste of human blood remained on her haunted lips. Yet her soul was mixed up in her living breath. He knew in the core of himself that, for all the darkness and lows she’d slipped down into, she was not the evil witch minion of Leona Kelley that so many people believed her to be. If anybody was worth surviving this, if anyone was worth saving and making whole, it would be Kiara Rievaulx.
“Here I go.” Kingsley drew a deep breath of the blazing cedar pungent air. They watched with bated breath as he shielded his face with his arms, and strode into the jaws of the underworld.
*****
Chapter 26
She felt like a chainsaw was tearing her apart, but she was free. If every step from here on out was pain, Jane Lewis could deal with that. The pain meant that in some small way she was still alive. That she had won her struggle with that thing.
It wasn’t her. Yet it was. It wasn’t Leona and yet it was. It was alive by all the various different consciousness drawn to the power of the Andromeda’s electron recall.
Jane was s
tanding in the street’s center now. Taylor and Leona’s biker gangs were circling each other like flocks of crows, exchanging fire like a Western pony show. Taylor and Joseph had managed to fight the boys down from the New Yorker’s hood. Leaf’s seizure thrashing caused the New Yorker to catch into raving flames. They’d all bailed, rolled for the street. Made a protective barrier around the President as the car exploded, sending a geyser of fire into the skyline, roasting the power lines, burning them like candle wicks and catching the telephone poles on fire.
“Ease these kiddies to the sidewalk, Doc. Let me give you the walk through.” Taylor motioned with forefingers as he and Joseph swung the soldiers to the ground. Leaf’s hands thrashed out and he hissed.
“Want me to spill some brass on this one, Reeves?” Croc circled the Andromeda as she hissed in the net.
“Nah. I’m thinking we could use a tiger for our future traps, yeah?” Taylor rubbed his chin. Joseph looked up at him with wide-eyes.
“Oh God…This is all happening for real.” Matthews stood teetering on the street. Dexter caught him by the arm.
“Sir, perhaps you need medical attention?” Dexter gave Jane that wondering look he always had back in their Caddo Vitality Clinic days. Jane smiled. He still trusted her. They were still a team.
“He’s probably gonna need a lot more than that before we’re through. I think it’d be best if we all helped the Doctor and that guy with the boys, don’t you?” Jane nodded to where the soldiers’ lay thrashing on the ground.
“Right, because that ten-year-old girl can handle herself!” Matthews stomped his heels.
“Don’t underestimate Reilly.” Dexter pointed his thumb as the girl shot the heads clean-off six Doppelgangers, one after the other. The President stared, stunned. The child was drenched in ultra-violet blood yet seemed to be totally calm.
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