by Angel Payne
Have we?
If that’s the case, why did they deliberately haul Lux down their goddamned rabbit hole? What’s the wonder twins’ game here?
Which, goddamnit, leads to my most eerie question of all.
Why the hell am I so sure there’s a “game” here?
Christ. What kind of a cynic have I turned into? Have I gotten so used to Faline’s hijinks that I’m instantly mounting the worst-case scenario here? About a pair of nervous little girls who clearly worship my son already?
Oh, fuck that mush.
I’m close to a mile beneath Los Angeles, standing in some pseudo-psych ward with no physical backup or method of contacting help—because I’m damn sure AT&T hasn’t thought of reaching out and touching someone down here—meaning we’re on our own in this stark white weirdo-land. Facing off, once again, with a pair of creatures that share too many traits with my son for any kind of decent comfort level. So yeah, as far as I’m concerned, this is all on the shiny-shiny girls. They’ve got to prove why my guard shouldn’t be hiked higher than a Starfleet force field and why my suspicions don’t have to stay pegged at a glaring level ten.
But I’m willing to take the first step—at least for Lux’s sake. “We need to help who, buddy?” I prompt him.
He steps back but doesn’t look away from me. At the same time, the girls shift forward, flanking him. It’s a chore not to let my jaw plummet at the ethereal beauty of the sight. The two dark princesses are like heaven’s perfect completion for Lux’s gold gorgeousness. I have to fight all the instincts that keep telling me this is right, instincts that keep prodding me to be as protective of the girls as my boy. But for all we know, maybe they’re a couple of fabricated automatons in Faline’s fucked-up forces. It’s disgustingly possible that they’re not real. Has the witch perfected holograms along with every other sick trick up her demented sleeve? We don’t even know their names!
“They are called Ira and Miseria.”
And I had to go there.
But Lux’s disclosure is like a thousand new nicks in my intuitions. I’m consoled but concerned to see the concurring glints in Emma’s gaze—especially as I state the frightening obviousness here. “Those are Spanish words, aren’t they?” I funnel the force of the question, and the electric accusation of my stare, at both the girls. “They mean…”
“Anger.” The answer is supplied by a new arrival in the hallway: a woman as striking as the twins but with distinct differences. The girls are so beautiful, I keep wondering if they’re computer generated, but this woman is definitely flesh and blood. She could nearly be a Kardashian, though her features bear the wideset eyes, classic nose, and lush lips of someone directly from Eastern Europe. “And misery.” The four syllables bear out my hunch. She’s definitely from someplace between Russia and Italy. “And I am Aliz.”
A discomfiting pause drags by. What the hell now? I’ve only been uncomfortable about meeting a pretty girl one other time in my life, and I wound up marrying that one. But what the hell am I supposed to say at this point? Great to meet you, Aliz. How’s it hangin’? And while you’re at it, care to enlighten me about what the hell you’re doing down here, keeping a couple of little girls hostage in your bizarro bunker?
Thank fuck Emma’s got her act together more than me. “Hi, Aliz.” She steps forward, right hand extended. “I’m Emmalina. And this is Lux. And this is—”
“I know who you are.” Aliz’s statement is like her focus on me. Direct, determined, undaunted. But beneath the steel of her voice, there’s a softer cushion. Something shielding the armor around her exterior from permeating the flesh of her heart. “Reece Richards. Oh, yes. I know exactly who you are.”
I shift my weight and avert my gaze. Meeting hers has become a trip to what-the-hell central. It’s not the fact that the woman recognizes me. That’s happened to me everywhere from airports and traffic lights to beaches and bathrooms since I was sixteen. It’s how she phrases the salutation. As if the lining I just imagined across her heart is frayed and thin and getting worse by the day.
A feeling I understand in abundance.
A comprehension that threatens to burst my own heart from the inside out. Yes, even now. Yes, especially now.
“Okay.” I draw out the syllables, hoping the woman will pick up on my valiant try for levity. She doesn’t. “A lot of people know who I am.” I nod toward Emma. “And her too, actually.”
Am I fond of the blatant confrontation to which I’ve switched? Of course not, but Princess Mysterious here isn’t offering much of a choice. If humor won’t loosen her up, maybe a direct throwdown will.
“I imagine they do.” The queenly demeanor isn’t fast enough to hide how she twists her fingers in front of her stomach and purses her lips as if she’s being presented at court. I mean a real court, with judgmental rules and strict rituals. Lots and lots of those. “At least she says they do.”
And just like that, I toss aside the need to compare her with all of Henry the Eighth’s wives plus their handmaids. I throw out every assumption and impression I’ve gathered about the woman, with the exception of one thing. The one word she’s uttered that gives away all the information I need to know about her.
And damn it, everything I don’t want to know, as well.
She.
The she who’s being invoked like a demon that won’t go away. The she who’s likely banished this woman to this cage as much as the twins. The monstress who’s been invoked by a person regal and graceful enough to be her fucking queen. Who might have been just that to Faline, in another world. A reality far different from this.
Whatever the hell this is.
But don’t I already know that answer?
No. No.
I turn away. Slam my eyes shut against the ensuing images in my mind. Bright-red blood. Searing, burning pain. The hopeless acceptance of captivity.
The same sad futility I recognize in Aliz’s gaze.
Fuck. Fuck.
I force my eyes back open. Work my hands against themselves, furling and then unfurling my sparking fists. I force moisture down my throat, despite how the damn thing has closed to the width of a pinprick. Fitting comparison, since my senses have turned the same texture.
Still, I order myself to peer around again.
To really look this time…
But instantly damning myself for it. In at least a thousand different ways.
Stark walls. Antiseptic smells. Emotionless light. Empty echoes.
Nuclear blasts of memory.
Assaulting. Incinerating. Frying me. Trapping me.
Alpha Two. Alpha Two. Alpha Two…
No.
No.
I’m not him anymore.
I’m not there anymore.
Not him. Not there. Not him. Not there.
Easier said than done.
I force my mind back to this moment. Again, easier said than done, but I finally dive headfirst into the box in my brain labeled Detached Analysis. Four years of university-level business management didn’t pound it into me, but after a few months of facing off with felons, it stuck. Right now, it’s my salvation.
“How can we be of service to you, Aliz?” It’s the safest alternative of all the demands hammering at my brain and the one that matters the most right now. “Your children were clearly rattled when we found them upstairs”—feels like the easiest descriptor, so I’m going with it—“and we assumed maybe—”
“They are not my children.”
And there’s my lesson for the day about assumptions. “All right. Do they have parents, then? Where are they? Were they hurt during the quake?” Or whatever the fuck it was. I scowl for a second, not certain how I feel about the alternative theories getting easier to accept by the second, before swinging my focus from Aliz to the twins. “Is that why they sent you to us?” I question, pointing a finger upward. “Are your parents lost? ¿Necesitas ayuda con tu familia?” When they keep staring as if I’ve asked them how to get to the fuckin
g moon, I mentally dig in my heels. I’ve been a man-slut, a party god, an extreme-sports junkie, and an insane big spender, but I’ve never been a quitter. “¿Padre?” I prompt. “¿Madre?”
Zap.
I’ve sure as hell hit the button this time.
I’m just damn sure it’s not the right one.
The girls detonate into shrieks that are worse than their fits in the elevator. They grip each other as if they intend to fuse permanently. Even Lux’s attempt at comfort, struggling to encompass them both with his outstretched arms, doesn’t ding their grief. If anything, as our son tries to console them with the basic Spanish Emma and I have taught him, their laments grow louder—all triggered by one definite word.
“Madre!”
“Madre!”
“Madre!”
Every time one of them enunciates between their sobs, my gut twists tighter. When the torque is bad enough to match the torment of gazing at Aliz, I suck it up and fix my sights back on her again. “Holy shit,” I rumble. “Their mother…did they lose her in the quake?”
The woman’s bite of a laugh is nowhere near my top ten—twenty—anticipated reactions. “No. Though I am certain that is what they wish.”
And that one? Don’t look for it in the top fifty.
“Excuse the crap out of me?” Sometimes, Emma has the perfect words and matching inflection for a moment. But before Aliz can give her a reply, the girls cry out twice as loud. Their pleas are worse to endure, carrying the scratchy pain of pure desperation.
“Madre no! Madre no!” They keep up the synched screams, each spinning around—until I’m wearing one of them around a leg and Emma’s draped by the other. “Por favor, madre no more!”
That one word of an extension, provided by the little girl who turns her terrorized, tearstained face up at me, helps to clarify a shit ton. While the surge of their raw emotion in the air has made it impossible to stay totally inside the detachment box, I’m able to register that part loud and clear.
Madre no more.
And then to let in some of my ensuing fury because of it.
Just some.
If I crank back the hatch, I’ll let the entire storm fill up the cabin of the ship of my composure. The ship that has to stay afloat right now. The ship that’s already pitching hard on the waves of my comprehension.
“No more what?” I spit at Aliz. “Of their own mother?” Guided by raw impulse, I shield the back of Ira’s head with the wide spread of my hand. “Where the hell is this woman?”
“Not here,” Aliz answers. “At least not now. Thank God.”
“Then who the hell is she?” And does the heartless hag know that her own children are screaming and shivering and cowering at the simple mention of her?
Aliz jerks up one side of her mouth, channeling her mirthless chuckle into new form. “Reece Richards, savior of Los Angeles, leader of Team Bolt, the walking lightning strike…you know that you possess that answer already, yes?”
Her words are like defibrillator paddles to my chest—only not in the life-giving way. They’re on reverse, punching the power out of me, forcing my mind and soul to grasp what she’s said but hasn’t said—because she doesn’t have to.
Because she’s right.
I already know the answer.
The same answer that resounds in Emma’s stunned choke and carries through into her sandpaper utterance. “Oh, holy shit.”
Aliz rolls back her shoulders with the grace of a queen, despite the anguish still glittering in her large dark eyes. “I would not classify anything about this situation, or the woman who created these children, as holy.”
Another shock of the paddles. Twice as hard. Five times as torturous. Unbelievably, I still grit out one word.
“Faline.”
But as soon as I do, the twins shriek louder. “Noooo!” Ira bawls against my thigh, making my leathers glow green with the intensity of her dread. She clutches both my quads, her fingertips searing ten holes through my leathers before doing the same to my skin. I lock my teeth, enduring the pain in hopes it’ll ease her desolation. But deep inside, I already know the answer to that quandary too.
Hope gives a creature strength. Maybe even the kind that Faline Garand can’t control.
And there’s nothing the bitch loves more than control.
“No more Madre Faline.” Miseria sobs into Emma’s knee. “No more, no more, no mas!”
My wife gulps hard. Rubs her lips together, clearly battling against sobs of her own. Lux has already lost that clash. With a trembling chin and big blue eyes turned into oceans of sorrow, he openly begs me with every inch of his sweet, expressive face.
But begs me for what?
As I stare back at him with seared quads and burning eyes, I wait for the answer to manifest for that one too. Surely, like all the others, it must be ready to blast in at me any second.
My senses give me nothing but bewilderment, agitation, and confusion. They tangle tighter together as I attempt to wrap my mind around every astounding event of the last hour—despite how I know, I know, we’re nowhere near to being done with every jolt yet. I knew it as soon as I spoke Faline’s name. As soon as my invocation turned the twins back into hysterical wraiths. As soon as it made Aliz look just as morbid but in ways that terrify me in equally visceral ways. Clearly the woman’s hung out a bit with royalty. There’s a good chance she carries such a rank. Queens don’t show their weaknesses unless they’ve been soundly beaten. Aliz looks like she’s three steps from being ordered to the guillotine.
Is that because she defied Faline?
Or was she brought down here to be specifically utilized as a pseudo-nanny for Miseria and Ira?
Or was she here already and simply drafted into this strange role?
I yearn to cut to the chase and restart the conversation with that part of the investigation, but there’s too much to figure out first. All the parts that already make my gut feel like a brick of solid bile.
“All right, let’s take this back to the starting blocks.” I take a pull of as much air as my lungs will allow. “You’re telling me…Faline Garand is the mother of these two girls?”
Aliz levels her gaze. “If that is what you choose to call it.”
My nerves stand on edge. On a basic level, I understand the woman’s elusiveness. If she was the girls’ steward but has absconded with the twins while leaving Faline in the dark about it, she needs to extricate herself from any further liability at this point. I understand that. Sure as fuck doesn’t mean I have to like it.
“So her DNA is dancing in their genetic code.” I hold up a hand, indicating I’m not making this one a question. Emma’s guttural gasp backs me up.
“Dear God,” she rasps and flows a hand over Miseria’s thick black curls. “I— I didn’t notice. Not like this. Their skin’s darker, but the set of their eyes…and if their hair were cut differently…” She interjects on herself with a tangible shudder. Her features crunch into a taut wince. “Oh, dear God,” she echoes.
I nod again, though the motion isn’t so steady. Carefully, I pick apart Aliz’s communication. “The woman who created these children,” I reiterate, half my mind breaking off for some careful timeline math. “But…why?” The blurt is my immediate, and best, reaction to that ten-ton brick of shock. “What the hell kind of prize was she after?” I take it down to the growl I’m already feeling. “The woman didn’t suddenly jones after the Gerber baby photo trophy. Not even in another dimension is that shit show possible.”
“She’s sold her soul to the dark side six times over,” Emma injects. “And only craves one return on that investment.”
“Oh, I am well aware of what she wants.” Aliz rejoins her hands at the front of her waist. Her pause creeps to the edge of ominous, unfurling a foreboding chill through my system. “All of us.”
They’re the words I’m fully expecting, only without her unnerving emphasis. But before I can fully dissect my disconcertment, Emma ignites with a fresh flare of
fury. “And after the witch is done with everyone on earth, she’ll start on the rest of the solar system.”
For a split second—yeah, even now—I’m derailed. Can I fucking help it that my wife is a bonfire of pure hotness when she’s incensed? But the second after that, I’m pounding my hands together, stomping down my libido and refocusing the investigation in the same whomp of action. “So that lands us back at the starting blocks. Trying to figure out how two children got mixed up in that bitch’s grand plan for world domination.”
“But how?” Emma demands. “In what way?” She turns as green as the girls’ bloodstreams while framing Miseria’s tiny shoulders with her hands. “They’re children. If they’re equally as enhanced as Lux, they can’t mentally be older than five or six. What possible use could that witch…”
She stops herself short again, her imagination clearly taking over from there—and rendering shitty results. With a soft sob, she drops to her knees in order to now embrace the girl. But she doesn’t surrender the stare she’s locked with mine. Heartache etches little waves into her forehead. Fuck. More than ever before, I yearn to scoop her up, along with the twins and Lux, and cast a spell to banish every shred of their collective despair.
Since I can’t do that, I spear Aliz with a pleading stare. “What do you know, damn it?” And let my shoulders fall, gracing her with visible respect. “Please. If you do know anything…”
I trail off as Aliz adjusts her shoulders, hitching them back as if she’s just issued an inner decree to do so. “The girls’ names,” she suggests with steady calm. “They are unique, yes?”
“One way of putting it,” I reply.
“And most people call children names that they would have the child inspire in the world…”
“Unless that person is a bitch who’s wired opposite from the rest of us,” Emma spits.
Aliz dips her head at a practiced angle. “And she has created two life forms for the purpose of attracting those energies instead.”
“Attracting them?” I counter. I unfurl my fist to issue the contest with an upturned palm. “What the hell are you saying? That Ira and Miseria were conceived to be magnets for negative energies?”
