by Mark Tufo
“He cannot talk to you like this!” Charity chided.
“Ah, perhaps you do know us better than I had given you credit for. I sometimes forget that those who share the blood can see down the line of past events.”
“Sophia for Gary, then you three get back on your little boat to China, or however the fuck you got here, and leave. You are no longer welcome on this continent.”
“He has no right!”
“No right? You have my brother, bitch. I have every fucking right. You so much as break his Walkman, and I’ll parade Sophia’s head around on a fucking stick so that the crows can feast on her God forsaken eyes!”
Charity moved past Payne almost quicker than I could track. She was not used to a lowly half-breed squaring off against her, and she certainly wasn’t used to Payne telling her what she could and could not do. She had her own agenda, and she was going to play it out. That was, at least, until Tommy sprang into action. She’d been so focused on me she barely took note of the downtrodden boy. His punch started somewhere in downtown Seattle before it connected with the side of her head—the temple, to be specific. Her legs were buckling even as she slid sideways in between me and Payne. She fell to her knees a good five feet to the side, her head lolling about like a bobble-head mounted on a Jeep dashboard on a particularly rocky trail.
Inside, I was jumping around like a little kid. This was almost as good as watching the Red Sox beat the Yankees in the playoffs. I tried to stay as calm as I could on the outside.
“You still feeling pretty confident about your odds of taking us down, Payne?”
She said nothing.
“I think, if we put our minds to it, Tommy and I could kill you, and then, when we were done, we’d take care of Concussive Cathy over there before my buddy finishes off Sophia. By tomorrow morning, you three and all your illusions of grandeur are but fucking dust.”
She still said nothing, weighing her options, I guess.
“Makes no difference to me if you spend all of eternity wandering the vast wastelands of purgatory.”
She looked at me with surprise.
“Oh yeah, I know all about that place, too. You have to wonder what’s worse, being forever alone in that gray world or having to pay for all your transgressions with the source spring of evil. I suppose Eliza knows. I sense confusion on your part. Did you not know that we reunited her with her soul before we killed her?”
“You lie; that is not possible.”
She said the words, but she didn’t seem overly confident about them.
“It’s the truth.” Tommy told her. He was looking at his knuckles that had swelled from the hit.
I wasn’t going to tell her that we’d had the help of a burgeoning witch and a spell-trapped Shaman. It was better if she somehow thought we could do it again.
I felt bad for Tommy, and I’d smooth things over later. Right now, I needed to do all I could to convince Payne we were not adversaries she wanted to have.
“She screamed for mercy at the end. Begged me not to do it. What came for her was unimaginable. Can you imagine being tortured in a place where every second can be dragged out into a lifetime?”
Charity wobbled her way to a standing position. She had to reach out to a small tree to steady herself.
“Please, Payne, give us Gary, take Sophia, and go home,” Tommy pleaded. “Make something good come out of my sister’s suffering.”
“Your traitorous ways to our kind disappoint me, Tomas. Although a lot of that fault lies at your sister’s feet for letting you stay half turned for so long, you belonged neither to us nor to them. You were forced to find your way as best you could. You had the chance to be a great ally to us, yet you align yourself with the lowly humans.”
“You were human once,” he said to her.
“For merely a speck of my existence was I saddled with that burden. Does a butterfly feel for the caterpillar when it sprouts its wings?”
“Fuck the metaphors, Payne. I want my brother. Your lives depend on your answer, right here, right now. We either leave with him or you die. It’s as simple as that.”
“And what of Sophia?”
“We get home with no further problems, and I release her.”
“That is your word?”
“Scout’s honor.” I told her flashing a “v” sign.
Payne thought on it for a moment. “Very well.”
That seemed to snap Charity out of whatever stupor she was in. “You cannot!”
“Oh, I can and I have. We have found out what we came to find out. To do more is to risk too much.”
“You are worried about a broken vampire, a halfling, and some human food? Perhaps you are not the illustrious vampire we all thought you to be.”
Payne hit her with a backhand that dropped her once again to the ground. Charity moaned in pain.
“Do not doubt my resolve, Charity. We did not come to seek retribution for Eliza, we came to see the force that had her removed from this world. We have accomplished that. I did not like Eliza. I respected her, though, and I have done what I have set out to do. I have no desire to join her as a plaything for the Dark One. Release the human.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don’t trust this one. I think maybe you should do it.”
“Perhaps you’re right.”
“Oh, I know I’m right. She’d cut his fucking throat and say oops. Vampire or not, she’s still female and I’ve seen that look before.”
Charity looked like she was going to explode. Tommy stood over her, making sure she did not attempt to stand again. It was a couple of minutes later when I finally heard them coming back through the woods.
“Where are you taking me?” Gary asked, the fear evident in his voice.
“I am releasing you.”
“Releasing me how? Like letting me go, releasing? Or releasing me from my earthly tethers, kind of releasing?”
Well that was definitely a Talbot-esque type of response. If I wasn’t so fucking nervous, I would have smiled at it.
Gary looked about as pale as the mist that surrounded him. He seemed to have a difficult time reconciling that Tommy and I were ahead of them.
“Are you real?” he asked.
“Pretty much,” I told him, stepping forward. I gave him a quick embrace. “Are you all right?”
“Mostly. They can get in your head.”
“Yeah, I know. Get behind me. We’re going to leave now.”
Payne nodded. “It was a pleasure meeting you.”
“Yeah, not so much on this end.”
“You will do as you promised and release Sophia?”
“I swore to the scouts. They take their oaths seriously.” And with that, we turned and left. We’d not gone more than a couple of miles when Gary asked to stop and rest. He was drained, Payne had pushed him hard to get away.
“You weren’t in the scouts,” he said, sitting on a downed tree.
“Yeah, I know.”
Tommy looked over to me.
“Relax.”
By the time we got back, the morning sun was beginning to spill over the horizon. I thought I was done with the weird sights for the immediate future, but in fact, I was kind of just getting started. Sophia and BT were still together, although he looked like shit, and MJ and Trip were with him. So far not too strange, but Sophia had on a patented tin foil hat as did Trip, although hers had electrical wires running from it, leading to some sort of box that MJ was fiddling with. Trip was doing various yoga poses. I knew what they were, but in the off chance that I can keep my man-card intact, I’m not going to name them.
“Oh, thank God.” Tracy had come out. “Oh, you poor thing.” She grabbed Gary and ushered him inside. “Where’s Dizz?” she asked before she followed my brother in.
I pursed my lips and gave a small, terse shake of my head.
“I’ll talk to the kids,” she said.
“Thank you.” I leaned in and kissed her quickly. “What the fuck is going on here?” I asked, looking aroun
d. “Are you all right?” I focused on BT. He was sitting in the corner with an ashen look to him.
“Gary? Dizz?” he asked, looking up for the first time.
“Gary’s fine. Dizz didn’t make it. What’s going on, man? You look terrible.”
“She … she got in my head, Mike. She made me believe she was my fiancée. I had started to cut through the restraints.”
I think I may have gasped. Does that sound too much like a nineteenth-century female? I thought I saw my man-card floating off on a small breeze. If she had gotten loose and BT was under her control, she could have sliced through the rest of the household in no time. We could have come home to a much different, ghastly, and gruesome scene.
“It was Trip, fucking crazy-ass, stoned Trip, saved my life.”
“He saved more than just you, man.” I pulled up a chair to sit down next to him. Now that I’d stopped moving, I found just how tired I was. It was part that, and it was part the stress of realizing just how close to disaster we’d all come.
“I guess you’re right. She was so far down inside of me I probably would have helped her.”
“It’s okay, man. It’s not your fault.”
“Mike, I almost let her go, and on top of that, I have to reconcile that it was Trip that prevented that.”
“You feel like talking about it?”
“No.”
I sat back. It took about five minutes less for him to start speaking than I thought it would.
“I’d swear, even now, Mike, that it was my Linda sitting in that chair. Down to the smallest detail, she looked like her. I don’t know why Trip came here.”
“Was looking for leprechauns!” he shouted out in a horrible Irish accent as he moved into the child’s pose. You should just pretend that you have no idea how I knew that.
“He came in, Mike, with his stupid little tin foil hat, and then he stuck it over her head. Things started to get fuzzy, you know, like shitty television reception back in the antennae days. Linda’s face was blurring with Sophia’s back and forth until finally it was just that bitch’s. I almost stuck my knife through the side of her skull.”
“Kind of wish you had.” Sophia glared at me. At some point, someone had been wise enough to place duct tape over her mouth. “What the hell is Mad Jack doing? Was he looking for leprechauns too?”
“Pshhh, as if he could see them.” Trip moved into downward dog.
“Trip said I should go get him, so I did. He grabbed some of his equipment and came down here after I told him what happened. He’s been working ever since. Keeps saying things like ‘fascinating’ or ‘incredible,’ though he never explains further than that.”
“You bother to ask? Guy likes to talk about his experiments.”
“Never thought to; been a little preoccupied after having a conversation with my dead fiancée.”
“Understood. I’m sorry, man.” I brought a fist down on his thigh and tapped him gently. As I stood, he looked at me gratefully. “Whacha got going on?” I asked MJ. It looked like he was getting ready to fry her brain like an egg and then maybe decorate it for Easter.
“She’s incredible!” Mad Jack said before dashing off to look at another piece of gear.
“She in your head too?” I kept a close eye on him.
“My head? No, no. I have signals interfering with her broadcasts.”
“Broadcasts? Like television signals?”
“Sort of. Let me see if I can dumb this down.”
“Oh, thank you for that. If you could use words with no more than two syllables, that would be fantastic as well.”
MJ looked at me funny. “I’ll try, but that’s a tall order.”
“Just tell me what the hell is going on. If I don’t understand it, I’ll just nod and say uh-huh at the appropriate time.”
“Okay, the human body has low levels of electrical current that run through it at all times. It controls nearly everything we do, perception of pain, muscle contraction and movement, nerve function, healing, and definitely brain activity.”
“Okay, so far, so good on my side.”
“Well, the brain is the super highway for these signals, and measurements have been done that show the typical human can power a 15 to 20 watt bulb. Some people more, some less.” He made sure to look at me directly when he said “less.”
“You’re not even trying to be funny right now, are you?”
“Huh?” He looked puzzled. “Can I continue?”
“Go for it.”
“There have been medical studies where sent small currents that were sent into a person helped correct all manner of brain disorders, including Tourettes. There have even been studies that show people can and do emit these signals.”
I saw where he was going with this. “So our friend over there, she can do this?”
“She’s not my friend,” he said, as if it needed to be clarified.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Figure of speech, MJ. Just keep going.”
“Well, you know how I said people can power a small bulb?”
“Yup.” I was trying my best not to show him how much he was beginning to aggravate me.
“Mike, she could run a toaster … on the other side of the room.”
“That a lot?”
“About a thousand watts. She could completely fry the circuitry in someone’s head if she had a mind to.”
“She can reach out with her mind and just kill people?”
“Yes.”
“How far?”
“I can’t really pull off Trip’s impromptu shield to test, but I don’t think a hundred feet is out of the question, maybe as much as three hundred.”
“Are you shitting me? She can kill someone from a football field away?”
“I am most certainly not ‘shitting’ you.”
“Can you scramble her up a bit with this gizmo?” I swirled my finger around his electronic wizardry.
“This is test equipment. It’s for measurement purposes.”
“I get what test equipment is for.”
“Then why are you asking if I can zap her?”
“She can’t leave here.” I looked over to Sophia. She could hide in the woods and silently destroy everyone.
“Gary’s asleep. He should be fine, Mr. T.” Tommy had joined us.
“You know about her?” I asked almost in an accusatory tone.
“I knew of her. I’m not sure what you’re asking. What’s all this?”
“Apparently, Sophia here is like a mini Tesla, only she’s deadly.”
“What?”
“MJ over there seems to believe she has the ability to send electrical currents out that can either control or kill a person.”
“And you believe him?”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Mad Jack is pretty two-faced and deceitful. I haven’t trusted him since we found his van filled with Pabst Blue Ribbon. I mean, who drinks that shit when just about any beer you want is available?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I know. I might be more suspect if our big sad friend over there hadn’t spent the night with his fiancée.”
“She’s dead.”
“You catching on yet?”
“What? Oh. Holy crap.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much what I said. Is this something all vamps can do?”
“To a degree, we all have the ability for mind manipulation. In varying degrees, some are better at it than others. I’m better at it than my sister was, but I’d never be able to convince a person that I was someone else.”
“Well, it seems Sophia is training for the Olympics with her skills. I know what I promised Payne, but we can’t let her go.”
Tommy frowned. “I wondered why she even agreed to do it. That’s not really her style. You want to keep her captive.”
I said nothing.
“You want to kill her?” he asked, astonished.
“What other choice do we have?”
“In cold blood?
”
“Her blood is already cold, and it’s not like she’s an innocent. How many deaths can be attributed to her over the centuries? Five hundred? Five thousand?”
“Still, Mr. T.”
“Tommy, do you really believe Payne is just going to walk away? In your heart, is that what you believe?”
He said nothing for a good long while. “No, I don’t. She’ll kill us all just to do it.”
“MJ, you’re a hundred percent sure on what she can do?” I asked.
“I’m as sure as I can be given the data I have. The only way I could be more certain is if she killed something. But I wouldn’t recommend that type of real-world test.”
“Thanks, I needed that warning, kind of like someone telling me that the contents of a cup of coffee are hot, or possibly, not to hold lit fireworks in my hand.”
“Yes, like that.”
“I’m going to lie down.” BT stood.
“You cool?”
“As cool as I can be. Stop looking at me like that, Mike.”
“Like what?”
“Like the way everyone is usually looking at you. I’ll be fine. I know what she did, but I have to admit it was still nice seeing Linda, and I’d like to hold on to that for a little while longer.”
“Enjoy your rest,” I told him.
He turned before he walked out of the room. “Don’t let her go.” Then he left.
“Anything else you can learn from her?” I asked MJ.
“Encyclopedias could be written about her.”
“What are you going to do?” Tommy asked when I reached for the knife sheath attached to my calf. “You can’t just kill her like this!” He blocked my way.
“Are you kidding me? Did you see what they did to Dizz? What they would have done to Gary? What they would have done to us all? What they will do to us all.”
“This is different.”
“No, it’s not. This is a war. Our side prevails or theirs does. She’s not a bystander or a casualty of war. She’s an active participant.”
“She’s a prisoner.”
“Get out of my way, Tommy.”
He stood his ground.
“Mike?” Tracy had come in. “Is there a problem?”
“Mind-melting Maggie over there is a danger to us all, and Tommy is of the ilk that we should let her go and deal with her at a later time. That about an accurate portrayal?” I asked him.
