Furies- Thus Spoke

by O'Brian Gunn

  “What made you change your mind, detective?” Adam is behind West as they walk down the hushed hallway.

  “Honestly, Mr. Kensie, I haven’t changed my mind about you at all. Still think you’re an Alpha-Omega with a savior complex lying to yourself and to everyone else you meet.” Scoff. “Sovereign of God.”

  “I’m not the only one here with a savior complex.”

  “Not gonna argue with you on that.”

  Adam stops. “I could leave. Walk away right now instead of helping you with this case. You called me because you need me.”

  West pauses and turns. “You’re right, I do need you, but you’re not gonna leave. You can’t.” He scratches at his nose with a thumbnail. “If there’s a chance you can save the Johnsons, then you’ll take it.” He spreads his hands. “That’s who we are.”

  Adam stares at him. “So you’re just tolerating me?”

  Shrug. “People tolerate me and my crap all the time. Respect isn’t always tantamount to like.”

  “You respect me?”

  “I respect what you’re doin’, but not how you’re doin it.” He heads toward the elevator. “Comin’ or not?”

  Adam sighs. “God give me strength.”

  He follows.

  Leo is now stretched out on his stomach with his chin resting on top of his hands looking over the edge of the force field down at the miniscule cars and the tops of people’s heads fifty stories below. His tongue dabs at the corner of his mouth.

  He thinks about dissolving the force field and plummeting fifty feet. He wonders if he would pass out before he hit Platt Street.

  Noir is reminded of the first time he tousled with an A-O. Matthew Maddrox McCain. The night ended then the same as it did today: in bandages, pain, and a great deal of cursing.

  “You got any mota around here, niño bonito?”

  Giorgio swipes at the nearly invisible gnat biting at his neck. “What?”

  “I called you pretty boy.”

  “I’m aware of that. What is mota?”

  The Puerto Rican man rolls his good eye up. “You know the Spanish equivalent for ‘pretty boy’ but not the word for weed?”

  The undead man goes back to his ministrations. “I spent a wondrous season with the most beautiful Latina my eyes have ever had the pleasure of drinking in.” He dabs alcohol in a cut. “Beautiful hair spun from velvet, long legs the color of shimmering cinnamon.” He sighs. “Enough to make me feel alive again.”

  “Do you?”

  “No, I said it was only enough to ma—”

  “Tipo, do you have any weed around here!? I know you said you used to smoke ‘n’ snort it up back in your glory days.”

  “No, I don’t.” He smoothes a large Band-Aid over the cut.

  “Can you even get high anymore?”

  He pauses. Considers. “I’m not sure.” He resumes his work. “I haven’t tried.”

  “Can you still get drunk?”

  “Have yet to make an attempt.” His hand bats at the gnat.

  “All o’ your plumbin’ workin’ down there?”

  His brow furrows. “What are you—” Eyebrows lift. “Yes, of course my...plumbing is working.”

  “How? I mean, you don’t have any blood, so how do you get har—”

  “If you don’t stop talking, I’m going to add a fresh bruise on your head.”

  Silence.

  “Why did you attack that woman at the clothing store?”

  “Crazy chick was plannin’ a killin’ spree during a shoppin’ spree next week.”

  “You’ve been watching her?” He wipes at the slash of blood on Noir’s arm.

  “For a few days now. Had a dangerous need to drop a deuce and I stopped in the store to use the can. Overheard her in the ladies room next to me talkin’ to someone on the phone about takin’ out everyone in the store.” He shakes his head. “Thin-ass walls.”

  “She could have been venting her frustration. A threat isn’t always an imminent one.”

  “Waited for her until she came out, saw the look in her eyes.”

  “And what look would that be, pray tell?”

  “The look that says I’m about to seriously fuck some shit up. You see it once and you never forget it, looks the same on everyone. May not know what it is when you notice it, but you know it ain’t good. That, and I followed her to a gun shop. People that vent usually don’t ask to test out a shotgun.”

  Giorgio leans back. “All done.” He hands him two aspirin. “Take these.”

  “Thanks, doc.” He gently eases himself up. “Why were you there?”

  “Feeding.” Giorgio leans back against the couch. “There’s a small graveyard not far from the store. I heard your little skirmish just as I was about to replenish.”

  Noir stands up and starts walking around the spacious townhouse. “So death is what keeps ya goin’?”

  Nod.

  “How does it feel to...eat death?”

  He rubs tenderly at his mouth. “My skin freezes before it’s set aflame for one glorious second. It’s like being submerged into a tub full of ice and gasoline and lighting a match.” His hand swats. “Damned bugs.”

  “Hmm.” Noir juts his bottom lip out. “Sounds really relaxin’.” Fingertips rub over the black walnut desk. “Mind if I ask why you live in the same buildin’ as your moms? Not like this neighborhood is lackin’ in high-end real estate.”

  The other man gathers used cotton balls and bandage wrappings. “She wanted to keep me close, within her reach, always has. She made her offer practically diabetic by taking care of my rent and throwing in new furniture.”

  “Think my moms would be fine with me livin’ off planet. Not that she wants to get rid o’ me or anythin’, just that she knows how much there is to see and experience in the world. Don’t want her baby missin’ out.” Noir peers out the peephole at the door, starts to pull his head away and looks back. “Gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just saw an old friend and that white guy that’s been on TV tellin’ everyone he’s God or some shit like that.”

  “Adam Kensie?”

  He tears his eye away from the door. “Yeah.”

  “What are they doing?”

  Eye back to the peephole. “Gettin’ on the elevator. My guess is they’re goin’ back to the scene of the crime.”

  “The Johnsons’ apartment?”

  “Unless there’s another murder conspiracy goin’ on in this buildin’ I don’t know about.”

  “I’m curious as to what it is they’re looking for.”

  Noir looks at him with a smirk growing beneath the cuts and bruises. “Let’s find out.”

  Leo’s eyes flutter and he re-solidifies the platform below him that he has been slowly and unconsciously weakening, softening, and dissolving along with his will.

  He swallows the lump in his throat, wipes the tears from his eyes, and takes a deep breath of oxygen, focusing on the way it makes his lungs expand and the way his blood pumps through arteries and veins to keep him alive. Keep him alive. Keep. Him. Alive.

  Desperation soaks his mind, seeping into his thoughts like drops of oil in water. Maybe the Johnsons left something in their condo that can do what they no longer can.

  He takes a few minutes to mentally gather himself before heading downstairs.

  Cade District isn’t too far away.

  Detective West shuts the door behind them, flicks the overhead lights on.

  Adam looks around the apartment. “Except for the police tape on the door and the tape outlines on the floor, it almost looks like they just stepped out.” He picks up a family portrait. “What exactly are we looking for?”

  West walks down the arched hallway. “I got Caulley to talk, told me that he found a tracking device here.” He raises his voice from a room in the back. “Figure maybe it can lead us to Mentis Machina.” Scrape of porcelain. “Jackpot.”

  Adam follows his path down the hall. In the bathro
om, West has removed the lid from the toilet tank and waggles a small handheld device between two fingers.

  The sound of the front door being kicked open ripples down the hall.

  Adam races back to the living room, door vibrating in its hinges as it swings back, rusted and tarnished knob clattering and rolling on the floor.

  In the doorway. Two men. One with curly brown hair and the other with a shaved head wrapped in bandages.

  Adam opens his mouth to say the word. The bandaged man blurs and is suddenly behind Adam with a bandaged hand around his mouth. “Next time, don’t advertise the secret power word on TV.”

  The brown-haired man calmly closes the door behind him as best he can.

  Adam brings his elbow back hard. The bandaged man shoves a curse out between hard-packed teeth as he backpedals and holds a hand to his ribs, sinking to the floor. He braces himself on a knee and relearns how to breathe around the shafts of agony.

  Adam opens his mouth and inhales—

  —and chokes when he’s punched in the larynx. He sees a wavering Detective West in his vision raise his gun and fire at the brown-haired man.

  The apartment’s acoustics capture the reverberating gunshot and resonate them throughout the living room.

  The bullet catches the man in the shoulder. He winces more in agitation than in pain. Another bullet to the stomach. Chest.

  “Will you please stop doing that? This shirt is Delgadar and you’re riddling it with holes.”

  _____ diverts a sliver of attention away from the fray and spreads it to the minds of the other residents in the building. _____ calms their mounting hysteria at the sounds of the gunshots, shuffles their thoughts and massages their tension into something more docile. _____ implants the suggestion that they all heard fireworks in the park next door. Damn hoodrats. _____ goes back to the regularly scheduled telepathic programming.

  Detective West slides his aim to the wounded man. “Don’t think your injured buddy here is as resilient as you.”

  “Better make that first shot a killin’ one.” Claws sprout from the ends of bandaged fingers.

  “Am I the only person in this room without an active A-O gene?” The detective eyes the sharp talons, the warped bullets being ejected from swiftly healing flesh, at Adam holding a hand to his throat.

  The bandaged man flicks his fingers, making his claws click. “You don’t know, detective, could wake up tomorrow a new man...or woman...or child. Never know what wacky power you could get.”

  Perry’s grip tightens on the firearm. “How’d you know who I am?”

  “You could say we’ve met.”

  “Pretty mug like yours is hard to forget.”

  “He knows.”

  Three heads swivel to the handsome man.

  “He knows the Johnsons are still alive. Don’t you, detective?”

  Perry shuffles his feet, gun wavering uselessly. “How do you know that?”

  “The dead tell no lies, but in this instance, they do.” He glances around the room. “They’re both quite faint, but the essence of death and the essence of life clinging to this residence don’t match. The people who lived here and the people who died here aren’t the same.”

  Perry finally lowers his gun, looking at it as if it’s a plastic toy. “He’s right.” Eyes cut from bandaged man to bullet-ridden man. Jaw muscles flex. “The Johnsons were taken by a highly-protected secret organization called Libera Mentis Machina, Unfettered Mind Machine. As far as we can tell, they’re a group of scientists or something that performed an experiment, wanted to see how the world would react to the life and death of America’s first prominent A-O family.” He taps at the side of his thigh with his useless firearm. “We recently had one of their agents in custody, told us about this tracking device the family had stashed here.”

  Noir limps carefully over to the couch and leans against it. “Why give up the goods so easily? At least let me buy you dinner before you spread your legs.”

  Perry does his best to hide his annoyed grimace. “All four of us obviously want to figure out what really happened to this family.” He holsters his weapon. “Got our own personal stakes, but...” Shrug. “No reason we can’t all eat at the same table.”

  “Fair enough.” The handsome man gestures at the device. “But what do you plan on doing after you’ve tracked them down? If this...clandestine organization is as powerful as you seem to think, then I doubt that even a person with your resources could disassemble them if they’re experimenting with A-Os and elaborately staging murders.”

  “I might not be able to shrug off gunshot wounds, but I am super-stubborn. Gonna gnaw at me for the rest of my life if I don’t even try to save these people...assuming they’re still alive.” He looks over Giorgio’s shoulder at the family portrait of the Johnsons.

  “And you’re so choked by ambition that you would foolishly risk not only your life, but the lives of the Johnsons to please your lofty aspirations?”

  “I’ll help him.” Adam clears his throat a few times. He swallows and speaks. “These people are interfering with God’s plan, penning in and separating his holy flock. It’s time we visit the lion’s den.”

  “This lion probably has a lot more to fight with than fangs, claws, and a ferocious roar.”

  Noir braces himself up on his elbow. “So we just—

  Giorgio swivels his head over his shoulder, curls catching the gleam of the lights beautifully. “There’s someone in the hall.”

  Noir’s image smears as he streaks out of the living room and into the hall. The sound of struggling. The sound of rubber slamming into a body accompanied by a glare of blue-white light. Noir staggers back into view in the doorframe. He starts to blur forward, is suddenly fetched up and bound tight in a thick coating of blue-white jelly. He hovers back into the condo, followed by Leo, who’s thrown up a protective force field in front of him.

  Perry snaps his gun up out of reflex, lowers it when he notices the half-sphere shielding their new arrival. Shoulders slump. “There a gahdamn A-O flash mob scheduled here tonight?”

  “Guess I’m not the only one out searching for bliss tonight.” Leo slides his eyes across the remaining three men in the living room.

  “You here to sign up for the Johnson rescue mission, too?” Noir gives another fit of struggling in his bonds.

  Leo’s conjured manifestations flicker and fade as his concentration takes a direct hit. They stabilize a second later as he resets his stance. “The Jo—” He swallows the rising lump in his gullet, tries to clear it from his throat. “The Johnsons are alive?” He’s a parched man who’s heard the whispered and everlasting promise of water and salvation.

  Adam flicks a glance at the others before quenching Leo’s thirst with a single word. “Yes.”

  Leo’s eyes flutter, throat works, pulse throbs, mouth dries. “How sure are you?” He releases Noir from his bonds, dissolves the force field in front of him.

  Perry finally holsters his firearm. “You mind telling us who you are and what you’re doing here before we share any more information with you?” He slides his way past Leo, giving him plenty of space, steps to ease the door closed again after poking his head out and looking in either direction down the hall.

  “I’m Leo.” He looks from over his shoulder at the detective to the other men in the room. “I was thinking about undergoing treatment from the Johnsons.”

  Noir fold his arms over his chest. “You have heard that people go batshit happy from their joyful noise, right?”

  Leo looks down, pitches his words low and packs them to the brim with conviction. “It’s worth the risk.”

  Adam cradles his throat as he speaks.“Is your life truly so unful—”

  “Adam.” Perry cuts him off. The two make eye contact and Perry gives a small shake of his head. He continues when Adam gets the not-so-subtle hint, striding over to the kitchen for a glass of water instead of finishing his sentence. “If you were under the impression that they were dead, what are yo
u doing here?”

  Leo raises his eyes and looks around the condo. “I thought maybe they left something behind that might help me.”

  “A final grasp for a final straw.” Four head swivel to Giorgio as he speaks. He glides backward and eases himself down on the fine grain white leather couch, folds one leg over a knee with a motion that’s all easy grace and breezy elegance.

  “Something like that.”

  “We don’t really have time to sit here and discuss this over tea, gents.” Perry pulls the tracking device from his pocket and bounces it in his palm. “Gotta get moving if we’re gonna do this.”

  Noir shakes his head and allows a huge grin to split his face. “You locos ain’t serious, are you? Ain’t no way of knowin’ what you’re walkin’ into. Could be a damn fortified military base or some shit like that.” He knuckles his eyes.

  “Among other such perilous horrors.” Giorgio tucks a stray strand of hair behind his ear.

  “We’ve got someone with super-speed and claws. Adam can protect us from anything Libera Mentis Machina throws at us. I might not have superpowers, but I can shoot the shit outta something. This well-coiffed man-twink here’s got his—” Perry’s fingers flutter at the undead man. “—devastating GQ cover boy looks and bulletproof thing goin’ on.” He turns to Leo. “And I know we just met, but I’ve got a feeling we could damn sure use whatever it is you can do.”

  Leo narrows his eyes. “You’re pretty quick to trust for a police officer.”

  Head nod. “Right now, yeah. Truth is that I need people with abilities like yours to see this thing through. But if you help us, you might be able to get that Johnson special you seem so hard up for.” He dips his head to the side and twists his mouth along with it. “Would be a textbook-perfect irresponsible bastard if I intentionally put civilian lives in danger, but…I feel like it’s you all who’s gonna be protectin’ me on this one. I just hope it’s worth it.”