“I would introduce myself once more, but we all know each other, don’t we?” By then her eyes had adjusted to the lighting. Through the blinding glare of the overhead light, Ithaca could make out the faces of some of the gang lords in the audience. Groups from all over the world had flown in to whiteness this one moment. As she gazed out through the crowd, she could see them scattered in clusters in the crowd. Nearly a five foot radius separated each of the gang leaders and their accomplices making it easy for Ithaca to see who was in attendance.
Hotaru sat near the front with Heather and Hamilton on either side of him. Of course they would be here. How else was she supposed to destroy the evidence of this event without them? To the right, the leader of the Italian mafia and his crew watched with cold eyes. A group of Russians sat in the back. As her eyes continued to skim through the crowd, they rested on a face she hadn’t expected.
“Donatello.” Ithaca almost sang when she recognized his pointed goatee. Unlike the rest of the members in the room, the leader of the Krome sat alone in the center of the audience. “I’m so pleased you came.”
Donatello said nothing. He hardly even flinched when Ithaca called him out.
“You don’t have to worry about Trench and the BOA.” Ithaca announced, “They have an excused absence. This brings me to my first point.” She called making sure her voice was heard over by everyone. “We have all been rivals for so long. Look around. Why are we so diverse? Why have we segregated ourselves from one another?”
A small utterance rolled through the audience as heads turned from side to side. Ithaca smirked. “I’ll tell you why.”
Just then a light from overhead shown down on a spot upstage. In the ring of light a beaten and bruised man was tied to a chair. Blood stained the front of his shirt and through the strips of chocolate colored hair, blood dribbled from his mouth and nose. The blue tint of his ice cold skin made it look as if he had been badly bruised. It was Michael Caster. He was already dead, but as he sat tied to the chair every eye in the room thought he was still alive. Why would anyone want to tie up a dead man?
“He calls himself the King.” Ithaca spat. “But what has he done for us? He has regulated our need for power. He has punished those of us who are more than capable of greatness. He has confined our influence and has kept our true potential hidden from the world!” As she spoke, Ithaca stepped closer and closer to his corpse. “The Era of the King ends today!”
By now Ithaca was less than a yard from his beaten body. She raised the hand with the pistol and pointed it at his chest. “How much more of a man is he than us?” She asked under her breath.
Three shots. One that punctured his lung. One that penetrated his stomach. And the last one went straight through his heart. Blood cascaded from his body and instantly the stench filled her nose. But it was the smell of victory. Everyone in the room had to see her kill him. News of that extremity couldn’t have been passed by ear as easily as it would now be passed by eye witnesses.
In that moment Ithaca felt it all. A wave of accomplishment and satisfaction rolled over her as she watched the blood pool beneath his seat. She hadn’t realized how hard she had worked, how many lies she had to keep up with, and how many promises she had to make in order to even get this far. But this was only the beginning and it was a beautiful beginning.
Now that the audience had seen what they had come here for, it was their turn to spread the news. Michael Caster was murdered by Ithaca Iglesias. The Legend had come to an end and this was the dawn of a new beginning. The beginning of an elite supremacy.
Slowly Ithaca turned around and eyed the witnesses in the crowd. “Tell everyone; supernatural and natural. Make it known to the universe that things are about to change. The underground has been conquered and with the help of every single one of you, the corporate elite will be the next thing we overthrow.”
She eyed the audience once more. Most of them looked satisfied, but some of them remained skeptical. Perhaps Michael’s death was too much. Perhaps it wasn’t enough. With the gloat of victory firm in her chest, Ithaca made the first mistake of this new beginning. She chose to ignore the unsatisfied members of the audience.
“This meeting is adjourned.” She announced. “You all have ten minutes to evacuate the premises before Pele burns this place to the ground.” With that she turned her back on the audience and hurried off the stage.
The rustling sound of members climbing up from their chairs vanished once Ithaca had rounded the corner of a hallway back stage. August stood there leaning against the wall with his arms folded over his chest. “Quite a moving performance.” He mentioned as Ithaca continued down the hall and he pursued after her.
“Has Mason stopped by?” She asked ignoring his remark.
August nodded and replied, “He took her before you even got on stage. I made sure that he knows when to meet us at the airport. How do you know he’s not just going to run away with her?”
Ithaca scoffed, and then the scoff turned into a giggle. “You will have plenty of time to get to know Mason in the next upcoming months. I suppose you could say he’s an honorable kid. Loyal. He always has been.” Ithaca stopped in her tracks and faced August when she spoke up again. “But I imagine deep down, taking the element and remembering whatever he forgot makes him want to know our side of the story. Do you see what I mean darling?”
August eyed her skeptically. With stilettos on her feet, she was nearly the same height as he was and he didn’t have to look down much to meet her eyes. “Yeah,” he muttered before Ithaca reached up to pat him on the cheek.
“Good,” she remarked keeping her hand against his firm jaw line. “Then I suggest you quit worrying about him and embrace this moment with me. We’re here! We made it this far! I’m so glad you chose to double cross Michael all those years ago. If you hadn’t…” Ithaca let her fingers slide from his face and glanced at the double doors at the end of the long hallway. “You might be dead beside Michael.”
Ithaca said nothing more but continued down the hall. August watched hesitantly as she strutted to the nearest dressing room. She wouldn’t really kill him would she? Was she implying that their trust was weak? He chose to ignore the moment and called to her before she could disappear inside the dressing room. “There’s one more thing.”
Her head snapped up so quickly her ponytail swung from one shoulder to the other. “And that is…?” She inquired cynically.
“Intruders.” He replied.
Ithaca withdrew her hand from the door and stood there with her arms folded as an impressed gleam lingered over her face. “Huh, the cops are on to us already? My oh my…”
“Not cops,” August corrected. “Tourists. I think. On my way back from giving Haileigh to Mason, I heard voices. Two boys and a girl. They were talking about how nice the Stelter Hailstorm parked up front was.”
Ithaca arched her eyebrow. “Lotus Stelter came after all? Too bad her baby sister has already been saved. She can burn in here. Those tourists can burn as well. Speaking of burning…” Ithaca dug into the jacket of her costume and pulled her cell phone. “This place should be nothing but ashes in less than five minutes.” She said not looking up but instead reading her one text message.
LARISSA: I’LL JUST MEET YOU ON THE PLANE.
Ithaca shrugged before tucking the phone away. Larissa had made it seem like such a big deal that they needed to meet up then suddenly waiting an extra hour wasn’t a big deal. It seemed strange, but Ithaca didn’t bother to text back. “Get out of here darling.” She called to August as she slid into the costume closet. “I don’t want you to burn.”
~The smell of rain overwhelmed Lotus the moment she threw her car door open. The grey clouds above the deep green mountains were just starting to morph into a dark purple. A winter shower was approaching the scene, and from her experience, the filming studios had a tendency to flood. She could only hope that Lee's kidnappers would let her go before the bridge became flooded over.
If it weren
't for her muscle memory, Lotus would have forgotten to put her Stelter into park and pull out the key. Even as she raced to the studio she couldn’t find herself thinking about anything but Lee and her safety. In no time at all, Lotus was throwing the door open to the warehouse sized studio and calling out her name franticly.
"Lee!" she hollered into the darkness of the small lobby, but no one was there to reply. Once the door slammed shut behind her, she was enveloped in an empty vacant darkness.
"Haileigh!!" She called even louder.
Once more, the only thing to answer her was emptiness and darkness.
Lotus's hand fumbled against the wall by the door as she tried to find a light switch but there was nothing. Of all the years she had spent at the studios, not once had she ever turned on a light switch. That had always been the job of the maintenance crew. Perhaps there was a power box that light up the entire studio somewhere hidden in the back. For the time being, Lotus's cellphone would have to do.
She ignored the numerous missed calls from Kasper only to activate her flashlight app before sprinting down the hallway she was most familiar with. Along the way, she threw every door open and screamed out her sister's name. Nothing. Just darkness and vacancy. By the time she reached the stairs, she had begun to question if this were all a joke. If her sister had really been taken, wouldn't the captors want nothing more than money from her? But of that were the case, then why was the studio utterly barren?
She rounded up the flight of stairs and burst through the door on the second floor. "Is anybody here?!" She finally called down the empty hall. The bright light emanating from her cell phone cast a ghostly glow all the way down the hall. This time, instead of assuming no one was here; Lotus shut the door quietly behind her and strained her ears for a response.
Something quiet and faint came from the end of the hallway. Something that almost sounded like a whistle. Lotus's heart fluttered as she raced toward the sound. "Haileigh!!" She screamed, "Haileigh, where are you?!"
Above the beating of her panicked heart and the pounding of her shoes as she sprinted down the hall, Lotus was able to pinpoint the sound coming from a door hanging ajar just before the hall turned left. Without worrying about the possible danger that could be behind the door, Lotus threw it open and shined her light into the another hallway. She had hoped to find her sister, or at least someone who could reassure her that she was safe. Instead she found nothing. It was just an empty hallway that appeared to have been under construction for quite some time now.
Clear plastic tarps hung over the walls as the pungent stench of drying paint and metal wafted into her nose. Exit signs cast their ominous red glow against the tarps almost making the hall look like a blood stained slaughter house. But Lotus didn’t care. She swallowed the lump in her throat, ignored the fear building in the pit of her stomach and proceeded down the hall.
Empty buckets and rusty tools scattered around the hallway like land mines. With the aid of her phone, Lotus was able to avoid stepping into them. With each step, the whistling grew louder until was sure it was an air conditioning vent or even an open window. There was no way her sister could be making that sound, but Lotus couldn't find it in herself to turn around until she knew for sure.
Her ragged breath seemed to be amplified in the silence even when she tried to force herself to breath from her nose. But as she continued down the hall, she realized that the source of the sound was coming from behind the tarp. She pulled it back.
The tarp had covered what appeared to be an unfinished room. Wood frames outlined the perimeter and against the back wall an open window revealed the beginning of a light rain shower. As the rainstorm picked up, the wind rushing through the open widow whistled ever more. Lotus would have felt like a fool for following the sound all this way, if it weren't for what sat in the middle of the floor.
It was a chair; a single desk chair that did not belong with all the mess of construction. When Lotus shined her phone on it, droplets of drying blood glistened back. But that wasn’t all. Someone had been tied to the chair. A thick band of duct tape had recently held thin wrists to the arms of the chair and another loop of tape had once pressed small shoulders into the back of the chair.
Lotus took a hesitant step forward and swiveled the chair around so that she could examine it more closely and found it peculiar that the duct tape wasn’t broken. It still looped around the arm rest as if the person being held captive had suddenly disappeared. With her pale and shaking hands, Lotus ran her finger over the loop of duct tape around the chair’s back. If Lee had once been tied to the chair then perhaps the tape had yanked out a few of her fair blonde hairs. Sure enough, when Lotus rotated the chair around, a single strand of silvery hair shined blue in the light of her phone.
Instantly, a hot rage built up inside her. Her sister was gone and Lotus had no idea where else to go. Franticly she shined her light on the unfinished walls hoping that some other address would lead her on a twisted wild goose chase to find her. But once more there was nothing but wood and fluffy pink insulation covering the walls.
“Haileigh!!” Lotus called once more. Her voice cracked from having screamed her name so many times. “Please, where are you?!”
Lotus turned her back on the open window and strained her ears for something else. Once more she used the glow of her cell phone to peer down the hall full of plastic tarps. She was listening so hard that she nearly leapt out of her skin when the phone in her hand began vibrating once more. The image of Kasper smiling awkwardly in his suit beamed up at Lotus just as she swiped her thumb across the screen.
“She’s not here Kasper.” she said solemnly into the phone. “I don’t know where else to go.”
“Lotus!” Kasper exclaimed franticly. From his end of the phone, Kasper sounded as if he were talking with his head outside the window of a speeding car. A rush of wind morphed his words making it hard for Lotus to hear. “You need to…. Now!!” He sounded frantic, but Lotus couldn’t understand why.
“I can’t hear you Kasper.” She admitted pressing the phone closer to her ear. “You sound like you’re-”
Just then the floor shifted beneath her feet so suddenly that she was thrown off balance. It was as if a stampede of elephants had just slammed into the studio. An earsplitting roar exploded from somewhere beneath her feet with such a thunderous detonation that the ground was shaking. Her footing gave out beneath her and as she toppled to the ground, the phone in her hand flew out. The room should have faded to darkness without it. And yet the room was glowing with a horribly familiar glow.
Lotus recognized the feel of heat before her eyes could adjust to the burning ember glow emanating from the end of the hall. Red and orange flames burst through the end of the hallway she had just come from. Lotus stared horrorstruck as they licked the walls, turning wood to charcoal in nearly a second. The transparent tarps lining the hall melted into a pool of plastic even before the flames could touch them. Black smoke billowed into the air, curling like snakes above Lotus.
This couldn’t be happening. She had escaped the wrath of fire once before, but as she tried comprehended the overwhelming heat and size of the flames, she knew that her chances of escape were next to none. Quickly she climbed to her feet and sprinted for the other end of the hall. The flame had already eaten her ideal form of escape, now she had to hope that there was something else for her at the end of the hall.
Even as she sprinted the flames seemed to chase after her like a bullet train. They had burned through the walls so tremendously that the weight of the roof caving in sent fireballs sailing for her head. By the time she had reached the end of the hallway, the black smoke had sunk deep into her lungs and the flames made her eyes feel as if they were melting. Quickly she wiped her eyes with the collar of her shirt before looking up.
Through the suffocating black smoke and the brightness of the flame’s light, Lotus saw what she had been most afraid to see. A blank empty wall signaled a dead end. There was nowhere else to go but
back into the flames. Lotus wasn’t about to give up that easily. There were still several unfinished windows lining the walls, and she knew that surviving a two story fall was much more possible than this fire.
She whirled around and gaped at the blazing flames. It was like looking down the throat of a fire breathing dragon. A flutter of hope rose in her chest when a door that hadn’t been touched by fire yet caught her sight. Quickly she burst into the room and peered out the window. What flicker of hope she had in her chest vanished when she glanced down at the fiery floor beneath her. The blaze burned so bright, it almost looked like a river of lava.
This couldn’t be happening to her. There had to be a way out! A pang of hopelessness rose within her chest when she felt the heat from the hallway start to eat at the wooden door behind her. The flames pulled like fingers at the wood, crawling to get inside the room and incinerate everything that had ever existed. The room was so small and the fire was so unavoidable that she felt it begin to singe away at her exposed skin. The fire was practically licking her back now. Lotus’s whirled around and backed up against the window as closely as she dared. Her heart leapt in her throat as she stared horrorstruck at the monstrous flames. If there wasn’t a way to escape, then maybe there was a way to put out the flame.
Just out the window, the light shower of rain had picked up to a steady downpour. Hopelessly, she closed her eyes and willed the water droplets to circle around her. Instantly she felt the refreshing sensation that only water could bring and the smell of Hawaiian rain mixed in with intoxicating odor of smoke. When she opened her eyes back up, a perfect bubble of water surrounded her leaving her with a thin shield protecting her from the scorching heat. But Lotus knew her victory wouldn’t last long. The heat was blistering. Even to the extent that it evaporated the rainfall the moment Lotus used it to protect her.
But the fact that Lotus’s protection was failing wasn’t even the worst part. The fire was so intense that it was burning the cement floor beneath her. She knew there would only be moments left before the ground gave out and she plummeted into her fiery death below. That was only if she was lucky enough to avoid the fire burning the ceiling above her. There was no way out, and Lotus knew this. As the thought filled her mind, the shelter of water around her began to weaken. Gaps in the bubble began to form and Lotus even wondered if she should even keep trying.
The Stelter City Saga: Ultranatural Page 40
