Chimera (The Weaver Series Book 1)

by Vaun Murphrey

Without any warning, Maggie grabbed the neckline and ripped it down the front with an economy of motion that suggested it wasn’t her first time.

  I narrowed one eye at her.

  Maggie’s smile was grim as she countered, “It was ruined anyhow.”

  My undershirt was a bloody mess as well. The neckline was low enough for Maggie to pull it down to expose my healed wound. Just on the lower inside curve of my left breast, a bright pink puckered spot looked tender. Maggie ran a finger over the area, so lightly I almost couldn’t feel the pressure of the caress. I got a chill and a shiver all of a sudden.

  Silver popped back into my head suddenly, and I wondered at myself since I hadn’t even noticed her absence. Maybe I was in shock.

  “I do good work, don’t I, Sister?”

  Maggie released my undershirt and patted the neckline back into place. “You and Silver are amazing. I don’t know how you do what you do, but it’s a miracle.” She glanced into the living room at the splayed legs of the corpse on the floor then at us with an earnest cast to her features. Brows bunched and top lip covered by the bottom one before she said, “You aren’t a monster, whatever you might think right now. We’ll figure it out together, okay?”

  Silver said, “She’s right, you know. I don’t think we’re a monster. Sometimes the heroine in the tale has to be a little bit scarier than the villain to win in the end. Maybe this is how we can beat the Soul Eater?”

  Tears welled in our eyes, and I felt them roll softly down our cheeks to drip down the column of our neck. I spoke out loud answering Silver and Maggie both. “I don’t want to do it again, even against the Soul Eater…even if it means we die.” I reached up a hand to wipe the wet away from our throat and stared at our hands as they lay in our lap.

  Maggie smoothed our hair from our face then tilted our head up. I refused to meet her eyes. “Honey, I would be really worried about you if you didn’t show remorse for killing someone. You should be sad. It’s no little thing that happened today, but you should also be glad you’re alive.”

  I jerked from Maggie’s touch. “You don’t understand, Maggie…I enjoyed it…it felt good, just for a split second…I wanted to revel in his death. Normal people don’t do that.”

  Silver laughed darkly in my head. “Oh yes, they do! Quit trying to destroy this moment! You told me to stop having a pity party when I thought we were going to die, so you better quit this whining around now that we’re going to live!

  “We’re all animals deep inside with the most basic of survival instincts, and what wild animal doesn’t crow at a victory over death? Get over yourself and quit letting the way James and Kara looked at you make you all angsty.”

  Maggie rested her palms on her knees. “I can’t say anything to make you feel better right now. I can tell you that I would have felt pretty damn satisfied if I killed a man before he could kill me. I might feel bad about it later because taking a life is no small thing but, in the moment, it would feel righteous. Enough of this talk. Drink your juice and hold still while I take your pulse.”

  “Amen. You could ruin a wet dream. By the way, I love you, and I’m genuinely glad we aren’t dead. Has Maggie shared her and Gerome’s master plan to get us out of this? The police and the FBI are probably still nearby, we’ve got a dead body with no outward signs of foul play, not to mention the dead body is the son of one of Gerome’s Council enemies. What’s the strategy here?”

  After I let Maggie take my pulse and she seemed satisfied, I asked, “What are we going to do about Calvin? Does Gerome have a plan? How can I even prove he stabbed me, and it was self- defense if I’ve already healed the wound?”

  As if my questions had prompted events to move forward, my aunt’s phone began to ring in her coat pocket, and she pulled it out to answer.

  “I said no phones.” She stilled at the words from the other end. “Got it. Be there in a second.”

  When the call ended Maggie slammed the phone down on the table and closed her eyes without any explanation to me, but I assumed she was entering the Web to speak with Gerome. After what seemed forever and a day but was probably closer to five minutes, Maggie opened her eyes and immediately her skin began to pale.

  I hunched forward in the hardwood chair to ask, “What?”

  She blinked then shook herself as if trying to escape a bad feeling. Maggie rose to wiggle her shoulders free of her jacket and hang it on the chair back. “Gerome is bringing his ‘friend’ with him. They’ll be here in just a minute.”

  Silver blurted, “Say what? He can do that?”

  At first, I thought I might have heard her wrong, so I clarified, “Gerome switched minds with his ‘friend’ and he’s coming to the house or this ‘friend’ is here in the flesh from a whole different galaxy?”

  Maggie took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “In the flesh.”

  “Interesting…”

  “You guys never mentioned he could do that…” I was perplexed, but Silver was just as abundantly curious, like an overenthusiastic puppy.

  My aunt’s red hair was frizzed out all over her head. It created a magical halo effect about her features. She sighed and put both hands to her face as if she wanted to wipe all of our problems away then raised her head from her hands to say with heat, “Apparently your uncle, my husband, has been keeping his counsel about said ‘friend’ and he’s going to hear about it…later. Right now I’d welcome Santa Claus in here if it would fix our situation. We can yell at Gerome after all of this is over.”

  Silver laughed like tinkling bells in my mind then said in a sing-song voice, “Some-bod-y is in trou-ble! I wonder what he’ll look like. Do you think he’s a little green man? Ooh, ooh…what if he’s Vulcan or Klingon? That would be so cool!”

  I gave a sigh of my own and Maggie eyed me curiously so I spoke for Silver. “My dear twin is making guesses as to the physiology of this ‘friend’…and it’s mostly suggestions that reflect a serious geek status.”

  “Hey! It takes one to know one! I’m not the only one who thought Patrick Stewart was cute!”

  I replied out loud for Maggie’s benefit in an acid tone, “We were four, Silver, and the captain from Star Trek The Next Generation is not sexy…he’s old enough to be our grandfather.”

  Silver replied prissily, “You have your opinion, and I have mine.”

  I almost made my aunt laugh, but her face got serious and then extremely thoughtful as she pondered her theories about what this person from another galaxy would look like.

  When we heard the front door open, both of our minds snapped back into the here and now. I stayed seated because I didn’t know how fast I could get up with how weak our body still felt. Maggie shot out of her chair like a rocket to stand at the entrance to the kitchen, completely blocking our view.

  I heard Gerome’s voice murmur softly. He came around the half wall for the entryway looking haggard and weather-beaten. Gerome hugged my aunt briefly before he walked over to squat, balancing on the balls of his feet in front of my chair. I had never seen him look so tired; his face reflected many more years of age this afternoon than it had when he had given us money this morning.

  I remembered we were supposed to be mad at him for not telling us about our father’s Warp past. I couldn’t bring myself to be annoyed anymore. Gerome’s eyes stayed on my ruined shirt hanging ripped open and the bloody undershirt with the tiny split from the screwdriver’s entry into our body. I touched our chest where it was healed. “We’re fine now.”

  A man came into my field of vision. He stood with his back to Maggie as he looked down at Calvin’s dead body. It was disappointing just how commonplace he appeared. No pointed ears or ridges sprouted from his forehead. He was extremely tall; I would guess roughly seven feet or more, with dark skin and a shaved head. He wore a calf-length trench coat, beat up denim jeans, and muddy cowboy boots.

  We were going to have to mop the floors all over again after all of this was over.

  “That is seriously underwhelming.
So, what, all sentient life looks the same?”

  Gerome turned. When he noticed the direction of my gaze, he stood to say in a profoundly tired voice, “Ladies, meet Kal.”

  At his name the tall, dark man glanced up briefly from his examination of the corpse and gave a nod, first to Maggie, and then a long studied look ending in a bow to me. His gruff voice when it issued forth sounded like any other persons I had heard, completely ordinary.

  “We need to get started, Gerome.”

  One of his hands went to his belt to withdraw a round, glowing disk which he set in the center of Calvin’s chest. He straightened, expectant.

  Gerome sighed. “We’ll be right back.”

  Kal did something else to his belt, put a hand on Gerome’s shoulder, and then they vanished, along with our inconvenient dead body.

  Maggie turned to me, appearing shell-shocked, and stumbled around in the area they had just occupied waving her hands in the air.

  Silver crowed, “Now THAT was extraterrestrial!”

  Chapter Sixteen: Serial Killer Exchange Program

  The silence of the house was a presence of its own before a gust of wind made the roof beams creak. Maggie’s arms fell to her sides as her eyes focused on the blood-smeared floor and the abandoned screwdriver.

  She turned to me and pushed her wild red hair off her forehead. “Okay…we have some things that need doing ourselves. I need to call about the broken window, clean all of your blood up from the floor,” she stopped to look at all of the muddy footprints with a sigh, then continued, “mop and get you some IV fluids. Can you wait for me to clean up before I call David or Nicky to bring over what I need for you?”

  “We should be good as long as you keep us still, Sister. All of our vitals are holding steady, and I don’t think we’re really in shock, although we should be.”

  I said, “Silver says we should be good as long as we stay still and rest.”

  Maggie nodded absently to indicate she heard, but she didn’t move for a minute, just stood staring off into space. Right when I was going to ask her if she was okay, her eyes and body jolted back into motion in the direction of the laundry room. Maggie returned to the kitchen armed with a yellow sponge mop and purple liquid cleaner advertising a lavender scent. Her demeanor was all business. She set down the cleaning solution with a solid thump. A brisk walk over to the forgotten screwdriver allowed her to retrieve it from the floor. She tossed it into the sink with a loud clatter.

  Maggie rested both hands on the edge of the metal sink, head bowed. I heard a quiet hitch, and her shoulders began to shake. Maggie crying was terrible. She barely made a sound at all, as if it were shameful.

  I rose to shuffle over and rest a hand on the trembling shoulder closest to me, saying nothing. I would guess Gerome alone ever got to see her weaker side. Maggie had to exude confidence as a doctor, or her patients wouldn’t trust her judgment. My aunt folded me roughly against her, hiding her tears against my hair.

  We stood like that in front of the sink as the house communicated its battle against the elements to us in creaks and groans. Maggie abruptly turned away, rubbed at her cheeks and mumbled, “Sit down, I’m fine, and you shouldn’t be up.”

  “Thank you for sharing your ‘human’ moment with me. I promise not to tell.”

  Maggie laughed as she looked down, presumably at the bloody screwdriver, then raised her head to look back at me, still resting her palms on the edge of the sink.

  “We don’t have time for me to be ‘human,' dear. I need to put on my big girl panties and jump on the ‘woman up’ train. I’ll grab some hand towels and soak up the excess blood before I mop. Otherwise, it’s going to smear everywhere.”

  She walked away to pull open a kitchen drawer by the refrigerator and grabbed a couple of hand towels to make her way over to the entryway.

  Silver asked snippily, “What’s her major malfunction? She’s not the one who got stabbed.”

  I thought back severely, “Are you that dense? She doesn’t handle surprises well, and she’s had a whole truckload of them today. Not to mention we got hurt while she was with us and there was nothing she could do about it. Maggie broke a window and climbed in her house trying to save us.”

  “All right I get it…I wasn’t attempting to be mean.”

  “Sometimes you don’t have to try.”

  “Who’s being mean now?”

  I settled into the chair and wished I could be of more help. When Maggie had absorbed as much blood as the hand towels would hold, she set them at the bottom of the sink with a splat. The tap got cranked all the way open on the hot side, and steam clouded the air around her head.

  Maggie continued to clean, and I continued to watch until Silver, who was suspiciously quiet and absent popped back into my mind.

  “Kal, the asshole alien knows how to cover his tracks in the Web. I just wanted a peek to see if his essence was that much different from ours so that I could get a feel for what we were up against. I can’t find the rat bastard anywhere! Gerome shows up just fine. This makes two people now I can’t find in the Web; first the Soul Eater and now Kal…and that’s never happened before…ever!”

  My gut instinct was kicking in again, and I got the feeling there was a connection we were missing but rather than share with Silver, I placated then scolded her instead. “It’ll be okay, Silver. We’ll figure it out. You shouldn’t be spying on them while they help dispose of our dead body. It’s a little ungrateful.”

  “It isn’t okay, Cassandra. What if I don’t see them coming? I’m already responsible for what happened with Calvin because I was in the driver’s seat…what if I don’t see an attack coming in the Web? If we have the ability to burn a Weaver’s presence out of the Web, someone else could, too…I did it on instinct, and I don’t even know if we can do it again.”

  I sympathized with her fears, but I also didn’t want her paranoid twenty-four hours out of the day and afraid to ever let her guard down. “How long have we been alive?”

  “That’s an idiotic question, but I’ll answer it, thirteen years or so…why?”

  “In that time, how long have you been in the Web?”

  “I don’t know…since I can remember.”

  “So, in all that time, don’t you think if someone wanted to do something to us they would have? Most especially when you were wet behind the ears and vulnerable? I say if we want information we should ask Kal…and yes I know you don’t trust him, but it’s better than nothing. We’ll have to bring it up to Gerome and see what he says.”

  Silver got silent, but I could sense edginess there, so I suspected a verbal onslaught was imminent. I contented myself to watch as Maggie finished wiping away any trace of my blood. Tilting my head I looked at my ruined shirt and inquired out loud, “Maggie, what should I do about my clothes? Don’t I need to change?”

  My aunt gave a final swipe with the mop and leaned on the end of the handle. “Probably, but I guess we’ll just wash everything with way too much bleach and then smuggle it all out of the compound to dispose of it. Or burn it. The blood is gone, so I’m going to call about the window and get David to head this way with what we need. We probably both warrant a change, and I’m going to have to buy us both new coats.

  “I don’t know how people get away with murder. It’s freaking complicated trying to cover our tracks. A forensic team would find evidence of your blood without breaking a sweat, but they’d be at a loss to explain the fact that you don’t have a severe enough injury to justify that level of blood loss once they matched the DNA.”

  I gave an indifferent lift of my shoulders. “It’s my blood, and obviously, I’m not dead, so I don’t see a crime here. We’d only be in trouble if they can connect his death to us and this location. Even if they proved he was here, that doesn’t incriminate us because he was here with Malcolm the other day.”

  I stood slowly to remove my coat and set it on the table top, but as I did, there was a metallic clatter as our house key escaped out of a
pocket. All of this mess just because of a simple key…if Silver hadn’t been trying to extract it, Calvin wouldn’t have been able to pull us off balance and trap our hands so easily. The world was such a strange place to spin off in one direction over such a tiny detail.

  “I’ll agree to ask Kal about hiding in the Web if Gerome thinks it’s safe. I still don’t trust him.”

  Her agreement came grudgingly, but I would take it all the same. “Noted.”

  Maggie came into the kitchen, mop in hand. “Strip down to your panties and then hotfoot it to the bathroom in case Gerome and…Kal pop back in. I’ll take care of the laundry and bring some new clothes while you shower. Our damn bedroom is getting soaked from the rain blowing inside. Your uncle and I may end up sleeping in the living room, which is a little bit creepy.”

  A shiver visibly went through Maggie’s whole body.

  I pulled the shirt she had torn down the middle off of our shoulders and piled it on top of the coat then grabbed the bottom of my tank top and pulled it over our head. Some of the blood had gotten stiff. The tank tried to stick to our skin in the spots where our escaped body fluids were still moist. I paused to look down at our bare chest. I could see the rust colored evidence of the injury smudged on our skin. I needed a shower. When I was down to my undies, I began to make my way to the bathroom as instructed. Maggie gave me a wink as I passed while she held the phone to her ear.

  I felt her fingers brush the back of our shoulder so I turned around and she put her hand over the phone.

  “Are you feeling strong enough to take a shower by yourself? I don’t want you to fall.”

  “We’ll be okay, I think. Slow and steady wins the race,” Silver assured me.

  I echoed Silver’s comment out loud for my aunt’s benefit, and then someone answered on the other end of the line pulling her attention back to the business at hand. The bathroom had a cold and haunted feel to it. I snatched aside the shower curtain to prove nothing was there.

  “Geeze mineeze, what are you…three? There is no boogeyman in the shower. We’re the scary thing remember?”