A man dressed all in black, including a cape, holds a red rose, his face hidden by an exquisite Phantom of the Opera mask adorned with one solitary diamond teardrop. He extends his hand palm-side up to Gina.
“This ought to be good,” Aubrey jokes under her breath, waiting for Gina to reprimand and refuse him.
Gina’s glare intuitively morphs into a warm gaze with the familiarity of the man’s presence. As if ruled by some intangible chemical pull, she places her hand in his. He hands the rose off to Aubrey with a molten smile, who grins back, completely charmed. Gina accompanies him to the dance floor. She gasps as he pulls her tightly to his frame, a frame with which she most definitely has a previous intimate acquaintance.
He loosens his grip. “Did I hurt you?”
“No,” the breathless word escapes as she shakes her head.
He pulls her to him once more, his right hand secure in the small of her back. With his left, he coaxes her hand from its formal position, coming to rest over his heart. She takes a deep breath, closing her eyes for clarity, only to find none. His scent intrusive, primal, revives a once dormant feeling inside her. The sensation returns her memory to a specific moment in time: her first dance with Lon.
She opens her eyes slowly, coming to rest in line with his neck. She fights the urge to nuzzle her cheek there, attempting to talk herself back to reality. The rapid cadence of her heartbeat brings her attention to his. Her hand resting against it, the pace keeping time with her own. She scans his neck, the large vein visibly and ferociously pulsating. Tuning in with her ears now, aware of the rapid, forced movement of his breathing as it passes the side of her face. She pulls away from him, her eyes darting back at his from behind her mask.
“Were you at the café on the corner this morning? In the window?” she pleads.
“Yes,” he whispers.
Tears form in her eyes, an irrepressible ache bubbling internally. “So, I’m not seeing things? I’m not crazy? Lon? How can this be?” Her chest heaves. The room spins, ambient sounds growing distant as she stumbles, losing her footing.
“Gotcha,” he assures holding her upright.
She reaches for his mask, an attempt to validate her suspicion.
He deflects her hand. “Not here.” His eyes search the room, settling on the stairway leading to the floors above. “You okay?”
She nods her head returning to full consciousness, her muscles reacting, holding her frame taught and erect. He maintains her hand in his, leading her quickly to the stairway.
“Gina,” Aubrey calls, peering over the tops of heads and around bodies, attempting to follow her with her eyes. She starts after her and the phantom, only to be intercepted by Sir Lancelot in full medieval costume of interwoven metal links and an iron breastplate bearing a coat-of-arms crest.
“My lady?” he beckons in his best French-American accent, his hand extended palm-side up.
Aubrey takes him in with all her senses, a soft giggle escaping her. “I hardly consider a knight one who beds his king’s wife,” she dismisses, a well-versed fan of medieval literature. She sidesteps him in pursuit of Gina.
“‘Do you believe in Heaven, my lady?’” he calls after her.
She stops, interested. Turning to face him she follows suit, repeating lines from the movie, King Arthur. “‘This is Heaven for me,’” she plays along with her best Guinevere impersonation.
He parades around her, full of machismo, quoting Lancelot’s reply, “‘I don’t believe in Heaven. I’ve been living in this Hell. But if you represent what Heaven is, then take me there.’”
She throws one more glance in Gina’s direction watching her disappear up the stairway willingly, following the phantom. She’s a big girl, Aubrey thinks to herself, quite smitten with her current companion. She performs a half-curtsey before placing her hand in her suitor’s, accompanying him to the dance floor.
Gina grips the front of her billowing ankle-length black and crimson dress between her fist, holding the material at waist level to aid in swiftly clearing the stairs, as the phantom leads her expeditiously to a large, empty state room on the third floor, far from the sights and sounds of the ballroom below. The orchestra, once perfectly audible, now is only a faint rumble, clouded by muffled voices and laughter from below. Clink! She hears the door come to a close behind her. The room is dim. Soft candles flicker. Shear, white panels of silk hang from the rafters, ebbing and flowing, a seductive dance, a gentle breeze from an open window its choreographer. She pauses momentarily, her instincts alarmed. The whole thing seems like a dream, a fairytale. ‘If something seems too good to be true, it probably is, DeLuca,’ the words of an old friend, a partner, Detective Tony Gronkowski flood her mind.
“I see you still wear your crucifix,” the phantom says, stroking her neckline, calming her apprehension. The crucifix was a gift from Lon. Who else would identify its importance? His touch, warm and seductive, sends shivers up her body. He grabs the shear, white veil of silk, cocooning it around them coyly, causing her frame to meld into his. He leans his head down until his forehead rests against hers. “You’re still not convinced,” he infers, the questions burning in her eyes.
“How am I to believe you stand here in front of me…alive,” she says, the word causing her to catch her breath as it runs away to the bottom of her abdomen. “When I saw you, lying on the floor of our bedroom…lifeless,” she finishes, tears falling from the corners of her dark green eyes.
“My sweet Brianna…”
A muffled cry escapes her lungs upon hearing her given name for the first time in what seems like forever laced in his rich, familiar tone.
He nestles his hands into the back of her hair, his thumbs caressing the dampness of her tears, wiping them away. She watches him still half-disbelieving, her gaze a mixture of confusion and desire. With only one way to answer her inquisition, she pushes up to her tiptoes her mouth now in line with his, his breath as ragged as her own. His desperate eyes say he yearns for her to kiss him. She wets her bottom lip with the tip of her tongue before meeting his mouth, tenderly, cautiously attempting to maneuver around the silly clip-on fangs. The phantom groans deep in his throat, allowing her to lead momentarily, acclimating herself to him. His embrace grows firmer, more ardent as he takes the liberty of fully tasting her, intensely, passionately, the connection and confirmation now made. This man—he most definitely was once hers, as she was his. Physically shaken, he pulls away. He stares at her, his chest heaving up and down, his eyes now mirroring hers, carnal and bemused. Backing up, he disappears into the shadows of nearby shear, white, dancing drapes.
“Brianna, anna, anna…” her name echoes through the room laced in his distant whispered tone.
She spins circles searching for him, the candlelight and flowing drapes clouding her sight as the entire scenario up-ends her mind. That wary internal instinct kicking up again, she feels the urge to run. She turns toward the door, startled by his presence. She wonders if he truly is a phantom, a figment of her imagination. How else could he back away from her only to mysteriously appear behind her? “This isn’t real. This isn’t real. This isn’t real,” she rehearses to herself, intending to walk past him, through him, to the door.
“Don’t fight it, Brianna,” he coaches, his arms encircling her waist, his lips crushing down on hers.
She bats him away, his touch, his kiss different now from only moments ago, completely foreign.
The man steps forward, the dim light casting dire clarity on Gina’s subject. This man appears to partner the phantom, with one exception, a bold spider web tattoo proudly displayed on his neck. Her eyes focused and startled, he takes keen advantage, capitalizing on the element of surprise. He grabs hold of her mercilessly, wringing her wrists together behind her back while bearing down on her mouth with his own.
She does what comes naturally, clamping her
teeth together, the silly clip-on vampire fangs finally coming in handy.
He growls, jerking his head away from her, loosening his grip on her wrists as his hand automatically tends to his bleeding mouth. Looking to his palm where a scant red, viscous substance lies, he smirks, running his tongue the length of his bottom lip, perfectly content with the bitter metallic taste. Tut tut tut goes the sound of his tongue clicking off the roof of his mouth. “You shouldn’t have done that, lawyer lady.” He is still momentarily, the look in his eyes all too familiar.
“No. It can’t be,” she whispers, completely frozen witnessing the transformation.
His respiration exaggerated, vehemently pushing air in and out, necessary for the physiological changes overtaking his body. He shivers, his arms presenting out from his sides, the oxygen exchange fully electrifying his musculature. She eyes his temples, the ravenous bloodflow fully visible, pulsating, surging. He closes his eyes behind the pale mask, attempting to embrace the full effect of his heart beating loud, ferocious and rhythmic like a drum.
Gina backs up, shredding the constricting, billowing layers of material from her body, thankful she hadn’t let Aubrey talk her out of wearing her black fatigues underneath. Her dress now lies in a heap on the floor as she readies herself, crouched in a defensive stance, for what, against what, she is uncertain.
The man grins menacingly, his metamorphosis complete. He flips his eyes open, a glaring red hue bores into the room. Gina continues backing away toward the door, maintaining her crouch. He lunges at her, the radiance of his red stare instantly flushing her body with the heat it exudes. She counters with a block, followed by a jab to his trachea, intending to knock the wind from him. Unfazed and unmatched, his hands clamp around both of her arms crushingly. With one absolute move he whirls her body airborne. Pain shoots up her spine as her back slams against the unforgiving mortar wall some twenty feet from where she had stood. Falling into a defenseless heap onto the floor, she writhes, a guttural wail released as her body fails to accommodate the demands of her mind, Get up!
Paralyzed on her side, her form contracts into a fetal position. The swelter of the man’s presence returns, her body breaking out into an instant sweat. His laugh torments, piercing as he joins her on the floor. He lies flat out on his belly like a snake, his hands propped beneath his shoulders, his sparkling red eyes corrupt, scanning her crudely up and down. The crucifix hanging from her neck reflects the red glare as his eyes are drawn to it. He reaches for the pendant, roughly stroking her flesh where it hangs. She locks her hand around his wrist, weakly attempting to deflect his grasp. Sensing the crucifix’s importance to her, he jerks it, releasing the chain from her neck. Her lungs failing to cooperate, her reprimand is mute.
“Cat got your tongue?” he taunts, slithering his body closer to her, his ear turned towards her mouth. His sinister laugh surfacing.
Her hand falls limp from his wrist, coming to rest in the strands of her hair cascading about on the floor. She wiggles her fingers at their contact with a sticky moistness, causing a faint smile to form on her lips. Alarmed with her satisfaction, the man pushes away, grabbing her hand from her tresses. Her fingers exhibit traces of crimson red, strangely matching her mask.
He too smiles, snapping to his feet in one fluid movement. “See you around, lawyer lady.” He pockets the crucifix, swiftly disappearing through the open window.
Gina lies there, her body beginning to adjust to meet the demand of her blood’s exposure to external oxygen. She closes her eyes. “No. No. No,” she chants aloud, attempting to curb the conversion. One of her tasks over the past year working with Dr. Godfrey was gaining control of her transformation from Gina DeLuca to Vigilare, her goal to call upon it, morphing in and out of the roles at will. She breathes deeply, wincing with the affliction it causes to her aching back, understanding the basis of control resides in her air exchange. ‘Master your breathing and you master your chi…the divine essence of one’s existence,’ she hears Dr. Godfrey’s words replay in her mind. Clenching her jaw, she expels an agonized moan squeezing her eyes further shut, hoarding every ounce of energy.
“We were in the main ballroom. She was dancing with a man. He had on a Phantom of the Opera mask,” Aubrey’s frazzled voice comes from the hallway. “Don’t I know you?” she questions the police officer who accompanies her and Sir Lancelot.
“How long has she been missing?” he asks.
“I don’t know that she’s missing, exactly. She was following the man willingly,” Aubrey defends.
“All right, how long has it been since you last saw her?” he rephrases frustrated, pulling on the door to the room. It will not give. “Marks, find me something to break this lock,” he orders Lancelot.
“You got it, Sarge.”
“You’re a police officer, too?” Aubrey questions Lancelot, returning her attention to the man inspecting the door. “I don’t know. It’s probably been about thirty minutes. I swear I know you. Where do I know you from?” she continues sifting through her memory bank.
“In my line of work, it’s best that you don’t know me,” the officer jokes, wielding his flashlight about the perimeter. “Marks,” he calls impatiently.
“Got it!” Marks frees the fire extinguisher from its glass encasement, heaving it in his partner’s direction. Catching the red cylinder, the officer promptly clanks it off the door handle and lock, causing it to weaken.
“Ooh!” Aubrey exclaims at the sound. She scans Lancelot, her tone sharp, “Why didn’t you tell me you’re a cop?” He raises his eyebrows, shrugging.
Through all the clatter, Gina’s focus prevails, her body relaxing, her mind winning out. She maintains closed eyes, awaiting full return to herself as she attempts to gather her arms and legs beneath her.
“Should you really be doing that, Officer?” Aubrey continues to meddle.
“Look lady, you wanna find your friend or not?” he grunts with one last wallop of the extinguisher, breaking the lock free. “And…it’s Detective,” he says, slinging the door open.
Gina cries out with the thunderous jolt to her system, losing all mental control. Her body reacts with each step the man takes, as if his presence is engaging and reviving the effect. “Stop,” she laments, momentarily debilitated by the adrenaline pumping through her system at the ferocity of her heartbeat. The man continues toward her, the glow of his flashlight leading the way. Her back arches involuntarily with the expansion of her ribcage ravenous for air. Her ears ring with the roaring boom of her pulse.
Aubrey follows behind, alarmed with the posturing of Gina’s body, knowing what’s to come. “Um…I don’t think this is a good idea. Maybe you should leave,” she informs the officer. Gina’s air exchange growing deep and perfectly audible, informs Aubrey her transformation is complete. “I forgot to tell you, my friend has this condition…”
“She looks epileptic,” Lancelot chimes.
“If only that were the case.” Aubrey winces, her mind frantically searching for a way to coax the cops from the room.
The lead officer wrangles with the shear, white drapery, pushing and hoisting it aside, clearing his direct path to Gina. With each approaching footstep, her body reacts to him, his energy intensifying her own. Ascending from the floor in supine position, her body is haunting in its presentation, causing the officer to stop dead in his tracks.
“Gina,” Aubrey calls nervously.
“DeLuca?” the cop questions, hearing the familiar name.
“Detective?” Aubrey pieces things together. “Gronkowski!” she exclaims.
The room floods with a sparkling emerald green glow as Gina’s eyes thrust open, her body whipping into an upright, fully commanding position. Her crimson mask disintegrates from its close proximity to the luminescent gleam.
“Holy shit!” Lancelot stammers. Aubrey grabs him, spinning them both acro
ss the floor to an adjacent wall, safely removing him from the glare.
Detective Tony Gronkowski stands face to face with Gina…Vigilare. His heartbeat hastens, pummeling his blood through his veins. His breathing mirrors hers, fierce and consumptive. “Awe, hell. Not this again,” he mutters at his physiological reaction. Vigilare’s gaze commands his. He growls with the affliction, his eyes responding, discharging the same emerald green hue. Their prismatic glares zap and twist one against the other, replicating bolts of lightening. The enzymatic force causes every window in the room to pop, the glass crystallizing to its most basic form. On guard, their eyes dart simultaneously to the sound of the windows, bypassing a large mortar pillar in the center of the room. The concrete explodes, projecting outward before collapsing into splintered fragments on the floor. Detective Gronkowski lunges, swaddling himself around Vigilare, shielding her from the shrapnel.
Aubrey and Lancelot take in the sights from a safe distance, mouths gaping, still huddled on the floor. Vigilare attempts to combat Gronkowski’s hold on her, but her body has seemingly been rendered tame. Lancelot clamors to his feet, the interwoven metal links of his medieval costume causing a racket.
“No!” Aubrey shouts. Her instinct kicking in, she sweeps his leg just in time as the wall behind him shatters from the looks innocently directed upon it by Gronkowski and Vigilare. Lancelot falls to the floor, safe beside Aubrey as she readies herself, sitting up in front of him.
“Get down,” he whispers, tugging on her shoulders.
She bats him away, channeling her own inner Vigilare. “Here goes nothing,” she sighs. Prepped and ready, she calls to Detective Gronkowski and Vigilare, “Woo-hoo.” At first register of her voice, their eyes dart in her direction, casting a double-powered emerald glow.
2 Brooklyn James Page 4
