Furies- Thus Spoke

by O'Brian Gunn

  Leo licks his lips. “You and me both.”

  Adam massages his throat and winces as he swallows around the pain still throbbing there. “So are you with us?”

  Leo considers the alternative, pores over the emotions gnawing at and plaguing his peace of mind and sending him to the roof of the Stratus Building. “When do we leave?”

  Detective West tosses the tracking device in the air and catches it. “As soon as we do a little recon. Friend of mine should be able to get us satellite coverage of wherever the hell it is we’re going. Let’s reconvene at my place.” He heads for the door.

  “You all go on ahead.” Adam polishes off his glass of water. “I’m going to see about getting us some more help.”

  Bisset’s palm leaves Adam’s cheek stinging.

  His head snaps to the side. He lifts fingers to his face and they come away with blood. He looks at her hand and sees/imagines her red-stained nails sliding back to normal length.

  “There’s my answer.” She takes a step back into her kitchen.

  “Bisset, I understand how you feel—”

  “THE HELL YOU DO, ADAM!”

  He steps inside and closes the door.

  “Have you not been listening to me for the past month? The Dragoness is not some resource you dig out of the box when you think it’s convenient. Do you honestly know what you’re asking of me?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, Adam.” Her eyes search his. “I came to you for help because I thought I was possessed by a demon. You could bathe this entire city with the tears I’ve cried.

  “I’ve told you what The Dragoness does, what she whispers in my head. I told you that she’s starting to take control of my body. And here you are asking me to let her loose for people who may or may not be alive.”

  “I’ll be there with you, Bisset.”

  “How about you be there for me, let The Dragoness take control of your body and do as she damn well pleases.” She spins around and walks stiffly to the counter, bracing herself up as best she can. “Be quiet.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  She shakes her head. “I was talking to Seraph.”

  Adam starts to take a step forward, but withdraws his foot at Bisset’s expression. “What does she say?”

  “She thinks I should go with you. She says this could be what The Dragoness needs to—to calm down.” Her chest heaves. “All three of us are supposed to be one and the same, but I still feel like I don’t know who I am.”

  “Maybe Seraph and The Dragoness don’t know who they are either.”

  She stops rocking and turns around.

  “Or what they can do. We need all the help we can get. We don’t know what we’re going up against and we—”

  She faces him. “She’s smitten with you.”

  Frown. “Who?”

  “The Dragoness. She tells me how much she admires your tenacity, your vim, as she put it.” She feels the heat from Adam’s body. She grabs his hand and places it on her breast.

  He jerks back.

  “What’s the matter, you don’t like black women? Don’t want a biracial child as the next savior of the world?”

  “Bisset, please, you’re speaking out of anger.”

  A scoff accompanied by faux confusion. “I wonder why. You don’t want to use my body, you just want to use. My. Body.” She shoves him back into the door. “I am sick to death of everyone trying to use me, of everyone wanting something from me.”

  “Please, listen to me, Bi—”

  “Get out.”

  “There’s a family that needs—”

  “I’m drowning in needs, Adam. Part of me needs to hurt, part of me needs to heal, there’s a part of me shoved in the back of my fractured mind that needs to schedule a damn tire rotation for my car. But right now, the only thing in the world I need most is peace.”

  Adam slides a look out of the window and back to Bisset. He eases back toward the door, reaches behind him, twists the knob, and leaves.

  Bisset watches his stretched shadow underneath the door. The shadow ripples and Adam slips something underneath. The shadow glides away.

  Bisset picks up the loose piece of paper.

  Perry West

  215 E. Washington Ave. Apt. 344

  “Okay.” West slides his finger across the laptop’s touchpad and clicks on the attachment. It begins to download. A few seconds later a detailed map fills the screen.

  “Yeah, I got it. Thanks, Beecher.” He stops tapping keys. “Uh, yeah, I don’t know, it’s kind of a bad time for me.” He listens. “Not exactly.” He looks at Walter’s jacket draped on the chair across from him. “It’s...convoluted. Sure, I’ll keep in touch. Thanks again.” He ends the call and turns back to the three men in the room.

  “Was he able to find the location on the tracking device?” Giorgio leans against the wall.

  “Yeah.” He scoots his chair back and adjusts the angle of the screen. “It looks like Libera Mentis Machina is holed up about five hours from the city.” He points. “In Thornebriar.” A detailed overhead view of a cluster of houses, streets, and dots fill the screen.

  Noir leans closer, holding a hand to his ribs. “Thornebriar, Thornebriar, Thornebriar, I think I’ve—” He squints. “Isn’t that like command central of suburbia purgatory?”

  West nods. “Exactly.” He taps the touchpad. “Everything checks out except—” He breaks off when he sees the screen has gone gray. “Slow piece of shit, com’on.” Gray. Gray. A closer image. It’s blurry at first, but resolves in a few seconds. “Finally. Now, everything looks okay except for this section here.” He taps a key and the image zooms in on the western section of the community. The houses in the area look strangely disjointed and somewhat smudged. “Normally, this part of the layout wouldn’t raise any eyebrows, but a recon satellite took a scan of the place.”

  “What did it find?” Leo studies the map.

  “That’s just it, it can’t find anything. The place is shielded up tight. No radio or cell phone transmissions, nothing on radar. It’s like the area was swallowed up whole and all that’s left is the image.”

  “Sounds like what we’re looking for.”

  Walter walks in with Adam behind him. “Found your friend here on the doorstep.”

  “’ey.” Perry throws Walter a smile.

  “I did all I could. I wasn’t able to convince my, uh, my friend to help us. I’m sorry.” Adam shoves his hands in his pockets.

  Walter looks from Perry to Adam, Adam to Perry. “I feel like we all mean different things when we say friend.” He dips his head at the man with the disgustingly perfect cleft in his chin. “He in your homo ho-tation?”

  Adam stops.

  Noir stops.

  Walter spots the man who killed his old boyfriend.

  And stops.

  “My God.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “Madre de Dios.”

  Adam looks at West, expression snarled into disgust. “You’re a homosexual?”

  Walter hurries down the hall. “Suddenly have to pee.” Noir limps after him.

  West’s eyes follow Walter before swiveling on Adam. “You have a problem with what I do in my own damn house?”

  “God sees and hears everything!” He points down the hall. “You are tainting that young man with your debauchery. Had I known you were a homosexual, I would have never approached you. Never!” He runs his fingers through his hair in agitation. “It is a vile, vile sin.”

  In the bathroom:

  Walter shuts the door behind Noir. “The fuck are you doing here?” The hissed words ring hoarse in the confines of the room.

  “Not killing your new boyfriend, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He leans against the door, running his tongue over his teeth. “So you’re exploring the daddy types now, eh?”

  “You have to leave. Now. Seriously.”

  “Take it down, dude. I’m not doing any favors today, at least not here.”

&nbs
p; “Do you know how many nights I couldn’t sleep after what you did to Matthew? I sat awake scared shitless that you were gonna come back and kill me.”

  “Do you know how long it took for me to heal after your crazy-ass abusive boyfriend carved me up?” He jabs a finger into the smaller man’s chest. “Still have a scar on my stomach.”

  In the living room:

  “—throw that Bible rhetoric at me, Adam. Get that crap outta my face.” Perry swats a hand through the air and goes back to the laptop.

  Giorgio and Leo watch.

  Adam advances on him and shoves the laptop onto the floor, shattering the screen. He stomps on it, crying out with each frenzied step. Loose keys fly like teeth, shards and fragments of plastic break off and skitter along the floor until the machine’s guts are exposed. “This!” He jabs a finger at the mess. “This is one of the problems that needs to be rectified. Technology. Humanity advancing down the wrong path.” He steps towards West. “This is not the way to God.” His furious blue eyes bore holes into West’s gaze. “The destruction of His great works by people like you is one of the reasons there’s so much evil in the world. You masquerade as a man of the law, but you—”

  B A M !

  The world tilts, whirls, and flashes as pain cracks through Adam’s jaw. He crumples to the floor along with a spatter of blood from his mouth.

  “Get the fuck outta here.” West stands over him, massaging his bruised fist and breathing heavily through his nose.

  Adam stands on feet that wish to sit. He wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand, swallowing a glob of blood. It’s the second time he’s bled today. He looks at West.

  “God bless you.”

  “GET. OUT!”

  He leaves.

  West looks at Leo and Giorgio.

  “Anyone else got anything to say to the faggot?”

  Giorgio goes to the window with lips sealed. Leo picks up a book on the coffee table.

  The heavy clomp of boots sounds from down the hall moments before Noir stops at the edge of the living room. Giorgio has opened the window and leans against the sill with his hand in the breeze. Leo’s eyes don’t move on the random page of the open book. Perry has a bottle of beer tilted up, glugging away.

  The wrecked laptop remains in a jumble of its own electronic intestines.

  “Can’t take you pendejos anywhere without you showin’ out.” A glance around the room. “Adam gone to pray or something’?”

  The beer bottle is slammed down on the counter. “Adam’s gone home to nourish his grievances along with his mouth.”

  Noir’s eyes land on the bit of blood on the floor. “You didn’t.”

  “I sure as hell did.”

  “You sure as hell did.” Leo turns the page.

  “We can’t do this without him, man.” He starts counting off fingers. “He’s got the strength, the speed. That glow thing could come in handy if we need light.” He stops, thinks. “But if I can get the hang of my new peepers I can—”

  “We can still do this.” West polishes off the bottle and pops open a new one. He takes a long pull before continuing. “I can bring in some of the guys on the force on this—”

  “And tell them there’s a very substantial chance that they could die on this little rescue? That they may be going up against Alpha-Omegas who mean to do them a great deal of harm? Explain to them that they’ll be fighting an organization we know next to nothing about?” Giorgio looks away from the window.

  Perry lowers the bottle. “You don’t know them like I do.”

  “I’m sure that if they wanted to lend you a hand, they would be here right now, detective. But they aren’t, are they? We’re all you’ve got, and Noir is right. We need Adam and anyone else he can convince to help us.” He steps away from the window. “Leo, how powerful are your force fields?”

  Leo looks over his shoulder. “I haven’t stopped anything larger than a van.”

  “Libera Mentis Machina has the capability to disguise their presence from a recon satellite, you can be sure they won’t skimp on the defenses for the base. Guns, missiles, assault vehicles.” He turns to Noir. “How fast can you move?”

  His mouth hangs, eyes blink. “Well...you saw how fast I took out Adam.” He slowly crosses his arms. “Haven’t really tested my top speed.”

  “And I’m still discovering the limits of my abilities. No one here is ready for this; none of us are prepared, and we don’t have time to train.”

  Perry sets the bottle aside. “Why didn’t you bring any of this up earlier?”

  The undead man cracks a smile. “I suppose I underestimated the fortitude of your convictions and sterling intentions.”

  “We just met, but I get the feelin’ you’re not used to fightin’ for what you want.” Perry walks from around the kitchen counter. “The chance that we survive is just as high as the chance that we could live.”

  Giorgio holds up a finger. “Actually, the chances of our...well, your deaths are—”

  “Let me finish.”

  “You should have let him finish, Bisset.”

  “Why?”

  “Adam has faith in us. He could have gone to someone else, but he didn’t.”

  “Because he wants to use us—you. Why are you taking his side on this anyway?”

  “We’ve never shown him what we can do, how strong we really are, and yet he’s somehow able to see a strength in you that you can’t even see yourself. Open your eyes.”

  “Why? I see the same thing whether they’re open or closed.”

  “I can show you.”

  The world seems to stop revolving.

  “Let me show you what I, The Dragoness, we, Bisset, can do.”

  “You’re trying to trick me.”

  “I swear by all the suffering and strife in this world and all others that I’m not. You take control of me this time.”

  Bisset opens her eyes and sees herself swathed in a sheer black dress trimmed in gold and emerald scales, feet bare, hair straight and sleek, eyes green-gold.

  “Be in me, Bisset, be in me.” The Dragoness opens her arms.

  Bisset faces her reflection. She takes a step forward and The Dragoness mirrors the movement.

  A second step.

  A third step.

  On the final step, Bisset collides into herself.

  Unchained strength soaks deep into her muscles, tightening underneath supple skin that shimmers. Her nose becomes unclogged as scents and smells spiral in like light into a black hole. She opens her eyes and ears for the first time and sees the world in details so sharp they almost slice, sounds so vivid they seem to slide and quiver around her.

  Her shoulder blades itch along with the tips of her fingers. Her mouth tastes of ashes and stale heat.

  Large leather wings suddenly burst from her shoulder blades as long hooked talons the color of emeralds rip through her fingernails.

  POWER she has never felt before, and yet she knows is rightfully hers to inherit, is a tsunami swelling from her core.

  Bisset/The Dragoness opens her mouth, tongue flicking over the sharp fangs, and loosens a blast of green-gold fire that roils up her throat, from her stomach and tickles the paint at the ceiling, making it bubble and burst.

  “Freedom!”

  The force of nature charges the window and shatters it in a baleful blast of glass and metal. She stretches open her wings and feels the air engulf her, embrace her. She slides her eyes shut and lifts her head back as her hair whips around her. She flings arms open, clutching her fingers into fists.

  “FREEDOM!”

  The Dragoness/Bisset flies upward into the clouds, blasting through the flimsy atmospheric constructions painted in hues of gray and night.

  “Feels natural does it not?” The Dragoness/Bisset opens her eyes wide to the air slamming into them.

  “I never thought that...Is this how you feel all the time?” Bisset/The Dragoness finds it hard to speak around the undiluted ecstasy and divine fire burning throug
h her being.

  “Until this moment, I could only feel a bare fraction of our true self, just as you could only touch a bare fraction of yourself.”

  “My God.” Bisset/The Dragoness runs her fingers through wind-whipped tresses.

  “No, you are the goddess.”

  Bisset/The Dragoness shoots back down to Dominion City in a rampant tailspin. She slowly closes her eyes, lets her body go limp and luxuriates in the peaceful feeling of madness.

  At the last moment, she flips her body and lands on the roof of the Stratus Building. She does not look down at the city below her, instead, she looks out at the stars, the sky, and the great lake of skyscrapers.

  The Dragoness/Bisset breathes deep. “The air is so sharp...so sweet.” A grin as the wind swirls around her wings. “Feels like taking my first breath.”

  A hush. A pause.

  “You really think we should help Adam?”

  “This isn’t about Adam, this is about us. Adam can barely govern his own life, how can he expect to help you with yours? We do this for ourselves, including Seraph.” Arms cross. “I’d like to show you what we’re capable of, and we can’t safely do that in the confines of the city; too many people, too much suffering concentrated in one area. If Unfettered Mind Machine is truly as disreputable as Adam says, then we can be sure no one will mind if we...cut loose.”

  “You don’t care about saving the Johnsons at all.”

  “No. That family has done more to harm than heal the people they come in contact with. Whatever happens to them will be well-deserved.”

  “Even if we save them?”

  “Even if we save them.”

  Bisset/The Dragoness walks slowly across the gravel slung across the rooftop. She crouches down and takes a large fistful in her hands. She squeezes gently. The rocks crumble to powder that whirls away in the wind.

  “When can I do this again?”

  “Whenever we’d like, as long as the sun is below the horizon.”

  She looks out.

  “Hope the Unfettered Mind Machine isn’t afraid of the dark.”