Ransom shakes thoughts of Institute Founders from his head and instead plans to light a fire under the asses of the engineers and contractors developing The Institute’s tunnel system under Los Angeles. It’s taking them too fucking long. Wouldn’t have even had to send the team out in the craft if that shit was done already. Incompetents. Surrounded by incompetents.
Back in Ransom’s lair the video feeds from the extraction team splash across the dozen screens. So far so good.
The phone rings, busting up Ripper Ransom’s reverie. Purple light flashing. Oh fuckstick. Spoke too soon. It’s them. Dread fills every cell in Ripper Ransom’s body. These are the only times this ever happens. He takes a deep breath and pushes the button, muting the extraction team screens.
“Things are not going very well, we hear, Ripper.” The voice is made of glass and cruelty. The Founders can get away with calling Colonel Ransom his nickname to his face without getting a bullet as thanks.
“All under control now, Sirs.” Cold and sudden sweat drips from under Ransom’s arms, trickling down his sides and into his trousers.
“You know that’s not good enough,” the voice tuts, a banal sound made horrifying by the entities bearing it.
Ransom winces, the emanations worse than nails on a chalkboard. He pulls it together. “Sirs, those escapees will get a punishment they’ll never forget once they’re back. I can promise you that.”
“And what about you?” The threat is implicit.
Ransom’s fillings rattle, his mouth fills with blood. “Sir?”
“You let them escape. What should your punishment be?” The voice takes on an edge that causes Ransom’s nose to bleed.
“No matter,” the voice continues. “We’ll talk again. Soon.” The connection breaks. The purple light flashes off.
Colonel Ransom leans back and holds a towel to his now-gushing nose. Today might, in fact, be a good day to die. Again.
6:15 PM Spruce-Musa Hospital
“You will release her to me this instant!” The Countess Barona screams in Nurse Jonelle’s face, waving the court order around in her hand.
“What the fuck is this?” Günn shoves the video camera into Red Feather’s hands and storms over to the nurse’s station. “What in the hell is going on here?”
Barona turns, a vile expression on her pinched face. “Don’t you dare swear at me, Detective. I’ll have you court martialled!”
“Good luck with that, lady, seeing as I’m not a member of the United States military. I repeat, what the FUCK is going on here?” All the frustration building up in Günn breaks through the surface. Not to mention, she smells the rotting meat of some major lies.
Barona blusters, “I have a court order issued by Judge Aldridge that remands my grand-niece into my custody! You’ll hand her over this instant!”
“Give me that.” Günn snatches the paper from Barona, who is so startled she stumbles. Her eyes form slits anew.
Günn reads it and her heart sinks. Motherfucker. Handing over a child to this woman. Of all people.
Barona watches Günn’s face fall and smiles. Every drink of pain tastes just as sweet.
“Any time you’re ready, Detectives.” Barona smirks as Günn hands the court order to Red Feather who reads it, his face expressionless. Ain’t no way I’m gonna give that bitch the satisfaction of a response.
“Please wait here,” Red Feather says, handing the court order back to the police officer. “We’ll be right out with your niece.” He starts walking toward Lily the cyclops’s room. Günn catches up with him and grabs his arm.
“You can’t possibly even consider giving Lily to that old bag!”
“Günn,” he studies her face, “are you okay? Seriously. You can tell me.”
“I’m fine.” His gaze makes her uncomfortable. “I just fucking hate that bitch. And something stinks to high heaven about this whole thing. I mean how can she just—”
Red Feather puts up his hand, “You and me both. I’m sure the kid will hate her, too. But we’ve no choice right now.”
Günn deflates. “God. Dammit! You fucking do it. If I get near that woman right now I swear to Christ I’m gonna knock her out on her Prada-wearing ass. Wait for you in front of the last survivor’s room.” There are too many emotions coursing through Günn to understand. She fights the urge to spit on the Countess as she passes. Barona’s pale face breaks into a wide smile, her capped teeth glowing under the harsh hospital fluorescents. Red Feather emerges, the gargantuan fifteen-year-old one-eyed Lily in tow, looking confused at this newest strange turn of events.
“Lily, this is your great-aunt, the Countess Barona. She’ll be your guardian from now on.”
“But I don’t understand. Why now? Why didn’t you ever take me from that horrible orphanage?” Lily’s one eye blinks back tears.
“Well dear, I only just found out about you. Otherwise, of course I would have,” Barona simpers, her voice as if talking to a toddler.
“But—” Lily senses something is off. None of this makes any sense. The Countess interrupts her.
“Come, dear, we have plenty of time to catch up. What say we get out of here and go shopping? I’m sure you’d love to get out of that dreadful hospital gown.”
Lily shrugs, looking at Detective Red Feather with her one sad eye. He smiles an apology. She nods.
“Pleasure seeing you again, Detective. Though one I hope to not experience again any time soon.” Barona sniffs.
“Likewise, I’m sure,” Red Feather says, discreetly handing Lily his card again just in case she left the old one in her hospital room. The Countess is halfway to the elevator.
“Come on, then, Lily.”
Lily turns to the detective. “Thanks for everything.”
“You call me. Any time. Got it?” Red Feather feels a powerlessness reserved for dreams about his dead father.
“Got it,” Lily promises and hugs Red Feather. He watches the elevator close on Barona’s gleeful face and Lily’s heartbreaking farewell wave.
The Countess Barona wasted no time in making arrangements for her newest theater of cruelty. She phoned her usual contact who, in turn, initiated a chain of phone calls, each adding a new actor into play. Barona’s domestic staff is busy setting up her basement into a makeshift film set. Bit players are lining up at the servant’s entrance, six-foot three-inches and taller as requested, waiting for their close ups.
Lily has never been in a limousine before, and though her terrible feeling about the woman who calls herself countess persists, she marvels at the plush interior.
Not for long.
Just moments after getting seated the Countess begins to explain the rules and expectations of being a part of her illustrious foster family. Lily’s eye widens. She tries to open the door to jump out, preferring death by oncoming traffic rather than going down this madwoman’s road. The doors are well locked. Lily trapped. A familiar feeling.
“You can make this easy on yourself or you can make me angry,” the Countess says, snarling. “If you choose the latter, you can’t imagine how much worse I will make this for you. I know we’ve only just met, but you had better trust me on this.” Barona bares her teeth and laughs. “Or go ahead. I dare you. Make me angry. More fun for me.”
Lily’s insides turn to mush. “Why are you doing this to me?” Tears stream down her face.
The Countess wipes the tears away and grabs Lily’s chin, forcing her forward in her seat. “Because, my little freak, I can.” The Countess flings Lily’s face away and smiles. Lily curls her huge frame into the corner, wondering what she’d done in previous lives to merit such consistent bad luck.
Connie Jones, aka Console
Fitful sleep means wicked visions, the ones for which you’ve become known since your eye surgery.
This time yo
u’re dreaming of a young woman, dark skin, long dark hair. She has a handful of books. She’s speaking a language you don’t understand, you can’t even recognize the script, but somehow you know it’s Czech and she’s in Prague. She’s on the tram, on her way home. A group of shaved-head neo-Nazis board the tram and start calling her names. Telling her to go back to India. They surround her, a pack of hyenas. She keeps her head down. This isn’t the first time. She doesn’t expect help from any of the whites on the tram. Romany are the most hated of the hated in Eastern Europe.
Her tram stop. They part for her. Follow her out the door. Now she’s getting scared. This is going too far, and she still has a ten-minute walk before arriving home. She walks faster. They keep up, Doc Martens thudding on the ground behind her. Still calling her names. A rock hits her square in the back and she falls to the ground, skinning her hands and face, books flying. She screams for help but finds none. Another brick hits her forehead, splitting it open.
The neo-Nazis drag her to a nearby park. They take turns beating her. Savage kicks and punches from brass knuckles and steel-toed shoes. She’s spared further violation. It’s dirty enough to them to touch her gypsy skin at all. They cut off her hair. While she’s unconscious they dig a hole. They dump her in it. Rocks on top so they remember the spot and they can come back to urinate on her grave.
She’s still alive.
You wake up with the taste of dirt in your mouth and an aching in your ribs. This just happened! There is time to save her! Get her help! You push the call button. Over and over, praying that it’s not too late.
Please don’t let it be too late.
6:30 PM Spruce-Musa Hospital
Connie Jones, the silver-eyed final survivor, pushes the call button over and over again, knowing that once was plenty but help isn’t coming fast enough. Nurse Jonelle saunters in.
“Hold your horses, honey! You ain’t the only patient we got here today.” Jonelle’s patience is worn thin by the wretched encounter with Countess Barona.
“I’m sorry but you have to help me. There’s a girl buried alive and I need to talk to the police!” Connie’s breath goes in and out ragged. “Plus, that guy in the corner is really freaking me out and he won’t leave no matter how many times I ask him!” She glares at the trenchcoated figure standing in the corner, arms crossed, a shape around him like stencil wings on the white walls.
Nurse Jonelle turns and looks, seeing nothing. Oh Lord. Not another one, remembering the ruckus when they arrested the DJ earlier. “You get out of here!” She says anyway, humoring the girl, making shoo gestures into the corner with her hands.
“And don’t come back!” Connie says as the man shimmers and disappears. “Oh, thank you, Nurse. He was creeping me out, just staring at me. Who was that?”
Nurse Jonelle is not even going where invisible men live. She clears her throat, avoiding the question altogether. “So, what was this about someone buried alive?”
“A girl was walking home, through a wooded area, and these Nazi dudes attacked her and buried her alive. Someone needs to go help her!” Connie’s eyes plead Believe me!
“Honey, you do know that they dug you up out of that rubble right? I think you were just having a bad dream. Maybe even a memory.” Nurse Jonelle fiddles with the IV drip Connie has dislodged with her violent dreaming.
“Yes, they told me,” Connie says, “but I swear it wasn’t me in the dream. It was in Prague, that’s especially how I know.”
“Prague, Nebraska?” Nurse Jonelle has a cowboy cousin there.
“No. The Czech Republic!” Connie wrings her hands, using the sheet as a buffer.
Nurse Jonelle looks confused. “I think we’re gonna need to schedule an MRI for you, hon. I’ll just go and page the doctor.”
“Nurse!” Connie is frantic. “Please, no, I need the police!”
Nurse Jonelle humors her again and leaves the room. Connie goes over what she saw in her vision: the girl, long dark hair, dark skin, olive eyes, a gypsy. The men, five of them, neo-Nazis. Burying her, loading her grave down with stones. Horrifying. Dammit, where’s my laptop, I could find that girl and help her myself! Though she knows she really couldn’t. Even her hacking skills are insufficient to stop a murder or dig a woman halfway across the world out of a shallow grave.
Connie stews in her bed, plotting an escape, when Detectives Red Feather and Günn knock on her door.
“Detectives, thank God! I need to report a crime. A girl was beaten and buried alive by some skinheads in Prague! I dreamed it, and she’s dying!” Please, someone, believe me! her eyes scream.
Red Feather feels goosebumps break out over every inch of his body. “Do you often have dreams that come true?”
“All the time! Please, help.” Connie reaches out to the detective, who sits on the edge of her bed and takes her hand.
Red Feather smiles. “Me too. Tell me what you know.”
Connie begins relaying the dream from the beginning. Red Feather takes notes in his pad even though there’s nothing the LAPD can do about a possible vic in Prague. Still, he knows well enough to honor someone else’s visions.
The winged trenchcoat figure, earlier banished by Nurse Jonelle, returns to the room, lurking in a corner hidden from Connie’s view, now focused on the female detective.
The Angel Curiel
You’re unsettled. There’s no reason for this girl to be dreaming about Prague. You know her visions are prescient, linked to her future and the future of people she loves.
Something is not right. Not right at all.
Kaleanathi and her minions are up to evil, you can feel it to the tips of your wings.
The Ethereals are still recovering from their morning’s exertions bringing what survivors they could back to life. Not to mention, they have Mother, The Ancient One to contend with. They’re no match for The Elementals right now.
If only you could find a way to harness the power of these extraordinary humans and channel it toward Ethereal protection, but every time you try you hit a wall. Kaleanathi. She’s machinating.
Nothing is going as planned. A thread in the grand tapestry has been pulled and can’t be woven back. You’ve all meddled too much.
You turn your attention back to the matters in your employ, right at your hands. The female detective is not going to make it unless she accepts all of what she sees, has seen today. Her brain already shows signs of spiritual bleeding from all she’s repressing. You try to help her, too, but her defenses are almost as impenetrable as Kaleanathi and crew. You haven’t the time or the energy to break through.
But you can still help with one survivor: The regressed girl, Una O’Doole, whose most recent memory is that of being molested by her priest. While Una sleeps, you right the crossed wires. When she awakes, she’ll be her twenty-two-year old self again. She will not remember the abuse she’d repressed so well before her resurrection. You rebuild that wall yourself. Let her have some peace. She and the others still have many battles ahead.
You check in on the other survivors.
The alien girls pace their rooms, they know what’s coming for them.
The vampire drinks his ninth blood bag, feverish with addiction. This wasn’t supposed to happen! He was the prophet, that’s why you brought him back. But now he’s again broken. With every blood bag he’s further removed from his true self. You put him to sleep and try filter out the poisons in his system. It doesn’t work.
You watch—again helpless—as an evil woman removes the cyclops from the protective sphere. There’s nothing you can do to stop it. Why isn’t there anything you can do to stop it?
The circle is crumbling. The darker future you’ve seen in your nightmares has already begun unfolding and you are, for the first time in your angelic existence, completely and utterly powerless.
6:40 PM The Barona Estat
e
Lily and the Countess Barona arrive at Tartarus—the Countess’s vast and well-fortified property—automatic locks clicking as Barona’s chauffer releases Lily’s door. Lily looks around, praying for an escape, but the estate is impenetrable, from inside or out. Lily isn’t the first to want to make a dash for it upon hearing what was in store.
The mansion itself is enormous, eerie, like it’s been set on fire and never repainted. All sooty granite and shadowy turrets. The front door is a toothed mouth, hungry. Janosh emerges wearing the black and white suit of the help, takes hold of Lily’s arm. Lily moves to struggle, but one threatening look from the Countess takes the wind from her sails.
How could I have survived for this? Lily wails inside, once again wishing she were dead.
Entering the grand foyer, the sensation heightens that the house is eating her, drawing her energy, making her weak. The Countess Barona, on the other hand, looks in her element and rejuvenated by entering her far-from-humble abode.
She’s a goddamn vampire, Lily thinks.
Yanosh brings Lily to the basement where workers have arranged a film set replicating a young girl’s bedroom, hardly makeshift. Professional lighting, a catering table, and even dressing rooms for the actors.
“Countess!” Johnny Teeze, the director, is a squirrel-faced little man with a strip of fuzz on his upper lip and greaseball hair. “How delightful to see you again!” He moves to kiss her on the cheeks, she puts one finger up to stop him.
“Do not touch me. Ever.” Barona sniffs. Johnny Teeze’s mouth curls in a sneer as he draws back. Stuck-up bitch.
Crime Rave Page 27
