by Dave Ferraro
***
“Shanna, you lead the way,” Natalia ordered. “You’ve been here before, so this is familiar terrain for you. But we should rush in and surprise anyone who’s still here. We may not get a second shot at this. It needs to count.”
Shanna stared at the empty windows of the lifeless buildings, remembering the last time she’d been here with a sour taste in her mouth. She’d been unwittingly infected and had infected her comrades, she had fought Lupe and Rocquelle alongside Jade, and Cameron had been replaced by a shape shifter. Not the fun times she liked to recall.
The alley they would need to take was just ahead of them when a crash of glass and concrete suddenly met their ears and they all paused to watch a bright light shoot up through the sky from the roof of the paper mill, like a firework, gold and dazzling. It continued into the dark sky until it grew small, like a blazing comet fading into the distance.
“What…was that a flare?” Cameron wondered. “A signal to warn someone that we’re here?”
“No,” Natalia told him, taking off at a run. “Loup-garous can fly. That was a loup-garous fleeing the scene.”
“Lupe…” Shanna’s eyes widened as she caught a whiff of sulfur on the way down the alley to the secret door. “So she was still here. But now she’s gone.”
“But Rocquele may still be here,” Quinn said, racing ahead of her with Natalia.
Cameron and Shanna followed the other pair as quickly as possible, but arrived at the scene where Shanna and Jade had fought the villains well behind the other two.
As they stepped into the room lit by torches, the smell of sulfur much more potent here, Shanna carefully looked back into the loft, where she saw a gaping hole in the ceiling, splinters of wood still showering down through four floors of destruction and dissipating yellow smoke that marked Lupe’s exit.
“She’s…” Quinn looked back at Shanna, his voice trailing off.
Shanna hurried to his side and stared down at Rocquele’s bald head, her mouth slack, a look of terror on her face. A blade was buried deep into her tattooed chest, blood soaking her robes and beginning to creep over the floor. She was still warm as Shanna took one of the witch’s hands in hers, but she was already dead. She would be giving no information to them, save for the note left hastily at her side, in which Lupe had scrawled a taunting “Too late.”
Natalia watched Quinn for a moment, before standing up with a sigh and beginning to search the loft.
“I’m sorry,” Quinn said quietly to Shanna, staring down at the note.
“Damn it,” Cameron cursed. He kicked at a random box before running a frustrated hand back through his hair and turning to aide Natalia in her search.
Shanna looked down at Rocquele’s body sadly, suddenly feeling very sorry for the witch. She looked so pathetic. And what a pathetic way to die, stabbed by a comrade she’d dared to trust in her scheme for revenge.
“This is pointless,” Natalia said a few minutes later, jarring Shanna from her reverie. “Lupe was methodic in erasing any evidence or clues.” She indicated Rocquele. “We have to assume that she will not be found easily. Probably not before the bounty is collected.”
Quinn looked away, at the note, and shook his head sadly.
Cameron stared at Natalia. “We can’t just…give up.”
“We won’t. We will help the others research.”
Cameron watched her leave the room silently, Quinn just behind her. He waited for Shanna to join him. “I can’t believe her. She’s so…cold about it. Doesn’t she realize that more of us could die if we don’t come up with something?”
“Not ‘us,’” Shanna reminded him. “You’re not infected with this. You’ll be alright.”
Cameron looked at her pointedly. “I will not be alright.”
Shanna walked out of the building with him, somehow comforted by his insistence that he needed her. She clung to his hand as they walked, and didn’t let it go until they returned to Marvel Hill.
