Protecting Emma

by ML Michaels

  The rest of the scene was just as disturbing and confusing to Jimena as the floating body. On the outside of the tub, it’s limp limb, complete with a deep gash in her wrist, clasped in a handhold with the woman in the tub, was a corpse surrounded by candles. Jimena instantly recognized it from the crime scene pictures that had been passed around the motel—it was the girl that Agatha had found.

  A door closed behind her and Jimena whirled around, letting out a scream. The man who had come through the door seemed to pay no attention to her or her gruesome discovery, and instead turned the television on and upped the volume. Once that was done, he turned his gaze toward the maid, who by then had closed the bathroom door and was insisting vehemently that she hadn’t seen anything. As the man stepped closer to her, his beaten characteristics coming into view in the dull glow that the candle casted, he rifled through his jacket pockets.

  “I really wish that you hadn’t opened that door,” he said, producing a roll of duct tape and abruptly rushing towards her.

  ***

  “No, like seriously Chris, if you can’t start finding me better gigs, you’re going to be fired! I’m sick of these idiotic reality dancing shows and all these stupid children’s show cameos.”

  The agent on the other side of the phone answered, but Maritza Eon never heard it. Two quick knocks on her door took her attention. She checked her reflection, always mindful of how she looked now, and went to answer the door to her trailer door.

  “I’m gonna need 10 to myself today!” She barked out the door, barely even glancing at the person who’d knocked on her door. He was a tall, bald-headed tan man with dull black eyes and a vacant expression on his face. Maritza eyed him with an annoyed expression, waiting for the creepy looking man to explain why he was wasting her time. When it was obvious that he was another one of those star-crazed bumbling silent-stalker types, she tried to close the door, but he stuck his fingers between it with surprising speed. The crunch of his hand was sickeningly audible as Maritza slammed the door on it.

  “Oh my god!” Maritza exclaimed, seeing the man’s security shirt and already picturing how her publicist would react. “Please come in and let me ice that for you.”

  She let the man into her private trailer, hoping to fix the situation and avoid any liability. The lanky man muttered something vaguely affirmative as she walked, following her into the trailer, showing no sign that he even felt the injury to his hand.

  Maritza was on her knees, crouching and rummaging through the contents of her mini-fridge while she spouted apology after apology. She was looking for ice, frozen vegetables, a popsicle—anything that could be used to ice the injury—but she only seemed able to produce half-frozen miniature bottles of alcohol. “I’m sorry, I can’t seem to find anything,” she said, apologizing for the tenth time since she’d slammed his hand in the door only seconds ago.

  The security guard, who had grabbed her laptop from her desk while she was looking through the fridge, dropped his hands and the computer in a fierce arc, connecting painfully with Maritza’s skull.

  Not a second later, as if summoned by the bone-splitting sound, the door to her dressing room opened and a figure walked in. Its facial features were masked under a dark hoodie and the rest of its body under a long black trench coat. The security guard stood at attention, much like a soldier in the army.

  “You’ve done very well, Charon.” The security guard beamed with pride, not only at currying his master’s favor, but also because it was an honor to hear his name said in the master’s true voice. Perhaps, he was one step closer to being privileged enough to see the master’s true face. “Now, leave me be,” the figure continued, “Go find something we can use to get her out of here.”

  Once Charon left the trailer, the figure removed its hood, revealing its revolting visage. The reflection seemed to taunt and beckon from the mirror above the mini-fridge. On either side of the fridge were headshots of Maritza, beautiful and perfectly maintained, providing a stark contrast to the contorted face in the mirror.

  The figure turned towards Maritza and their two faces grew closer, in distance, as the figure crouched over her heaving body, their lips only inches from one another. She was still alive, but the figure could smell the life leaving her, see it evaporating like ephemeral wisps of steam from her pores. When their lips finally touched, Maritza’s fair skin and beautiful hair meeting the balding and dissolving skin under the hood, the figure took in her last breath, trapping her essence within.

  Less than 10 minutes later, just as the unlucky newest member of the makeup crew was going to let her know that they were waiting, Maritza Eon, the beautiful pop starlet sauntered out of her on-set trailer, her gaunt male bodyguard following behind her, a large suitcase in hand and his eyes downcast. The makeup team stood, waiting for the show’s co-star to take her seat and go through the hours of work that got her ready for the camera. Instead, much to their dismay, Maritza got into a waiting limo, and her assistant stuffed the luggage into the car before they pulled off.

  As they wondered just what the hell they were going to tell the director, they questioned what made stars act so selfish, as if their actions had no effect on anyone else. Maritza Eon couldn’t answer that question—though, to be fair, Maritza couldn’t answer any question. And would never be able to again; she was dead. Dead and stuffed in a suitcase in the trunk, to be exact.

  The Maritza Eon who sat in the backseat, speaking clear and concise orders to the limo driver through the telephone, wasn’t Maritza at all. It’s true identity had been lost or extinguished from the minds of most mortals and through the years it had come to be known by only a single letter. E.

  E was capable of shifting, changing its physical form to take on the attributes and characteristics of another. And when it chose to walk the earth, amongst the living and human, its ability to shift came in handy in situations like these. Of course, as the still body in the trunk could attest, the power did not come without a price.

  “Did you make sure to check her?”

  “Of course. She was dead. And I don’t think anyone suspected a thing.”

  Maritza’s mouth tightened. Her manicured blonde eyebrows furrowing as her sparkling green eyes peered at Charon, her assistant. “You don’t think?”

  “I mean—I know. I know that no one suspected a thing.”

  Her face relaxed, melting back into that of a 19-year-old, losing the demonic characteristics that had moments ago pooled so visibly under the surface. They stopped at a red light and E was thankful that their windows were tinted.

  This was the first time that E had taken on the form of someone so well known, and it had its advantages. The fully stocked and complimentary stretch limo for instance, had come in handy after they’d come out of Maritza’s dressing room. Also, her notoriety and fan base would serve as the perfect catalyst for their end goal—that was, if everything went according to plan.

  ***

  Ethan Jacobs stood up, tossing the empty roll of duct tape in the bedside trash bin and stepping back to inspect his work. The middle-aged Latina woman was petite, only 10 or so pounds either side of a hundred. She was feisty though, despite her size, and had got in two or three good shots at his face before he’d gotten her hands and feet tied to the chair.

  She’d calmed down after that, the only sounds that could be heard were her sobs and whimpers. Ethan had grown numb to the cries of mercy over the years, from humans and other forms alike. It was a side effect of a long time on the job.

  Sometimes, being an agent of The Order meant walking the line between good and evil, human and monster, so deftly that it was impossible to tell where one began and the other stopped.

  He walked past her, sure that the restraints were enough to keep her in place. He was careful not to step on any of the opal-bush candles or to extinguish any of the flickering flames. Ethan moved to the bathroom, pulling the lifeless body of his partner from the tub and wrapping her in a towel.

  She was ghastly
pale and thin, making it easy for him to carry her to the bed and lay her down. Jimena, from her duct-tape prison across the room noted the difference in him as he held her. His hands that had just been rough and controlling with her now cradled her body gently and securely. After setting her down and lightly stroking her cheek, he then began systematically blowing out the candles, following the intricate formation that she’d formed. Her body sprang to life, gasping for air, flailing and screaming the second that he blew out the last of the candles.

  In an instant, he was next to her, pulling her into an embrace and holding her still, whispering evenly to calm her down.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay, everything’s fine. You’re back. You’re you... Ella.”

  “Ella,” he repeated, making her say it back to him until he could feel the pounding of her heartbeat calming through the pulse in her thin arms. They sat there for a couple of minutes, neither of them saying anything, the room falling quiet, save for the intermittent chatter and sound from the maid.

  “Ethan,” Ella said, when she finally found her voice. “It was horrible.”

  “You saw her?”

  She shook her head in confirmation, bringing the distorted images of The After flooding back. The alienating silence of it all, Mary Ann’s terrified expression, and the tragic tale she’d told of her demise. If it had just been a nightmare, she’d be able to forget it, force it down and bury it away with the rest of the demons that seemed to take over her mind at night. But, this wasn’t just a dream. Everything had happened. “I was right, Ethan. He killed her.” She murmured into his chest, feeling the tears begin to fall as she thought of the corpse that was lying still in the bathroom. Mary Ann’s corpse.

  “It’s okay, Ella. Now you know, and we can bring him to justice.” He took her chin in his hands, tilting her gaze to face hers and wiped her tears. “I know you just got back, but we have a new case. It’s a big one.” Ella could hear the urgency in Ethan’s voice, and she felt it again—the sinking feeling that he cared more about catching whatever case they happened to be working on than her. She broke down, the torrent of tears she’d been fighting back flooding out of her.

  Ethan hugged her, his strong hands rubbing slow circles up and down her dainty, still damp back. With just a thin towel covering her, he felt every muscle and bone in her back. If he wanted, he could have trailed his finger along her backbone, fingering each bone as he inched down the length of the towel.

  Ella could smell the alcohol on him from this close and knew that he’d been in the bar while she was away. Sometimes, she found herself completely confused at how anyone could have so many problems that they constantly needed to be drunk. Then, there were other times, like now, where she found that she completely understood Ethan’s need for a bottle, and even worse, in these moments, she always felt that she was a kind of kindred spirit to his.

  He had his demons, transgressions from his pasts and fallen friends to stay up and haunt him when he managed to become too close to sobriety. She had the deaths and demons of everyone she’d seen in The After, all of their mistakes and unfulfilled desires weighed heavy on her each second, and sometimes Ella wished she could be a bit more like Ethan and just numb herself to it all.

  “It’s all going to be okay, ‘Rella. There’s nothing more we can do about it now except make sure that the world knows what he did, and he doesn’t get away with it. But, Ella, he’s dead. He took her life, and then like a coward, he took his own. We can’t bring her back, but there are still hundreds of people we can save from E. We have to get on the road now, though.”

  He let her go, standing up and taking a step back, as if he could walk away from the feelings he got when he held her. Ella stood, the towel cinched around her chest and walked to the bathroom to change. She stopped in front of the desk, where the maid was taped, gagged and crying. “What happened here?”

  Ethan stood up, standing between the maid and Ella, braced to stop her from doing anything stupid like freeing her, if he had to.

  “She saw you two in the bathroom. There was no way around it. Even if she hasn’t been listening to our conversation, she saw our faces. Now hurry up and get dressed. Her boss will be looking for her soon, so I’m going to have to call this in, and I’d like to be a town away before the cleaners get here.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Ella said as she passed the maid. She couldn’t pull her eyes away from the red-eyed stare. Even when she closed the bathroom door and began getting dressed, the tear-streaked expression haunted and reminded Ella of her own past.

  She’d spent the first decade of her life being ridiculed and abused because of her abilities until she got the courage to run away. On her own, she’d found herself in the company of those hoping to use her gifts, especially her penchant for knowing things that no living soul could know, for capital gain.

  That was how she’d first got on the government’s radar and what eventually landed her in a classified and covered-up special detention facility, where she was locked up, poked and prodded, and studied until finally trading her cooperation and loyalty for freedom.

  Now, she realized as she walked out of the bathroom, past the imprisoned maid, and out of the quaint little hotel, she was the one rounding people up and taking their freedom. She had become the monster, now.

  Ethan and Ella got in the car, a purple ‘94 Honda, and pulled out of the parking lot.

  “So, where are we headed?” She asked.

  “LA,” Ethan answered with a smile. “We’re off to the city of angels to find a half-demon. Isn’t life grand?”

  ***

  Danielle Emerson had been driving a limo with Lorenzo’s for 10 years. As a company driver, she’d experienced more than her fair share of passengers with eccentric tastes.

  She’d driven one famous rapper, whose identity her job’s confidentially agreement wouldn’t let her divulge, who insisted that the mini-fridge be removed out of the back to replace it with a stash-box for his weed and paraphernalia. Another starlet that she’d driven had requested that she keep her driving speed at an odd number at all times, and then the starlet actually had the audacity to yell at her as if she could feel when the car was going forty-four miles per hour.

  Still, with all of the weird requests that Maritza Eon had asked of her today, she may take the cake for biggest and weirdest diva. Maritza had her drive into Los Angeles, stopping at out-of-the way antique shops all over town. Each time, they’d roll down the window silently and pass her a note listing a different bizarre ingredient.

  So far, she’d had to purchase a certified-genuine piece of wood from Noah’s Ark, the eye of an owl, three different types of herbs that she’d never heard of, and a pint of O-negative blood from the local hospital—which wasn’t easy to come by. She was pulling up to the last spot on their list and already rolling down the partition for her next note.

  “Not this time,” Maritza said through the telephone that allowed them to talk to the driver. “My assistant is going to go in and purchase this himself.” Danielle rolled the partition back up and Maritza went to hang up the phone, but didn’t securely rest it on the receiver.

  As such, Danielle could still hear everything the two of them in the back were saying, and even though she knew that she shouldn’t listen in, she did anyway.

  “So, what do we need out of this modernized looking store for the spell?” Maritza’s voice came through the phone. It sounded strange though, like her, but different. “And what exactly is Victoria’s Secret anyway?”

  “It’s a clothing store that human woman frequent,” the assistant’s voice answered.

  Human women? Danielle thought to herself.

  “We don’t require anything from here for the ritual, but it will help us with the last ingredient for the spell.” Danielle could hear rustling, as if someone was hurriedly flipping through old pages of a book. “The essence of a virgin. I’ll be right back master.”

  Danielle hung the phone up quickly, her head reeling from everyt
hing she’d heard. Rich people were into some really peculiar, stuff she’d learned in her tenure, but Maritza definitely took the cake. She shook her head as she turned on the radio, Eon’s smash-hit “Love is Patient” blaring through the speakers. She’d always seemed so innocent, the limo driver shrugged.

  Minutes later, as Charon’s tall frame exited the store and maneuvered through the crowd of waiting press and pedestrians, a large smile spread across Maritza’s face. E never thought that there’d be a reason to be so happy to see the pitiful peon lumbering towards the car, but his emergence from the store meant that they could begin to put distance between themselves and these annoying humans.

  Charon entered the limo, his giant frame having to fold in on itself just to sit comfortably. He passed her a shopping bag and after peeking into it, Maritza folded her hands over her chest. “I’m not putting that on. It’s bad enough that I have to inhabit this flimsy, teenybopper. I’m not wearing that, too.”

  Charon chose his words carefully. “Master, I understand. You’ve been away from the world for a very long time. Our customs probably seem strange to you, but I can assure you, I’ve done my research on the target. With this outfit, he won’t be able to keep his hands off of you, and we’ll have everything we need.”

  Although E hated to admit it, Charon was right. There was very little in the world that Charon understood better than his master. The subject of humans, however, happened to be one of them. E hadn’t walked amongst the living in more than 30 years and even then humanity had never been a subject that kept his interest

  So, Maritza began to undress in the backseat of the limo, Charon closing his eyes in respect. She took the strange article of clothing from the bag and slipped its soft fabric on her smooth tan skin, inspecting her naked body. The limo slowed as the brake lights began to bleed through the tinted windows. Maritza pulled the trench coat on her body, tying the belt together around her waist, keeping the outfit that she had on beneath hidden from view.

  She lowered the partition and told the limo driver to go around the block, before stepping out of the limo and walking steady on six-inch heels. Maritza’s curls bounced and her hips swayed seductively as she climbed the ornate stairs leading to the spacious front door.