by Gary Jonas
The chain wrapped around my neck several times before a couple of the ball’s spikes embedded themselves in the back of my head. And I felt them, dammit. The pain radiated to my eyes like the worst tension headache ever.
My trachea felt crushed. I only had a few minutes of oxygen left before I blacked out. Conn pulled me forward and I lost my balance. Brand stuck out his sword and I plunged right into it until the blade protruded from my back. I didn’t feel any pain from the sword like I did the morning star. Interesting. Ajax lifted his axe like an executioner to take off my head.
Well, I couldn’t let a fight go down so quickly like that, could I?
I swung my sword and cut Conn in half, perfectly bisecting her belly button. My sword kept going, but Brand saw it coming and pulled back so I only grazed his abs, but at least I was free of his sword. With Conn’s top half still attached to me by the morning star chain, I twisted at the waist and swung her into Ajax. As they went down, the look of surprise on both their faces was priceless. Conn let go of the handle before I fell. I danced backwards out of the mess, stepping over Conn’s spilled entrails.
Black spots bloomed and spread across my vision. Before the big black could claim me, I dug my fingers under the chain circling my throat and snapped the links. My trachea opened again and I took a breath while I pulled the spiked ball from the back of my head. Immediate relief. The wound Brand dealt me healed up, as did the extra holes in my head.
“Baby!” Ajax lined up Conn’s top with her bottom and her intestines pulled the two halves together. Her skin knitted itself back together, too, but her belly button looked a little crooked.
“All better?” Ajax asked his girl.
Conn nodded. “I will be.” She stroked his face. They both looked at me with unadulterated hatred.
Brand stood behind them and laughed. “That was awesome!”
Ajax and Conn whipped their heads back to look at him. “Shut up, Brand!”
Conn tried to get to her feet but her legs gave out. Ajax caught and lifted her as he stood. The look on Conn’s face said that maybe more than just her belly button had healed crooked. As I watched, her belly turned purple and distended like a nightmare pregnancy. Conn’s eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped into Ajax’s arms.
“Oops,” I said. “Looks like I put Baby in a corner.”
Ajax laid Conn on the floor, his eyes never leaving mine except to kiss her forehead. He growled, “This one’s all mine.”
“Be my guest.” Brand leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. “But I get the last dance.” He winked at me.
Damned if I didn’t feel like killing him as much.
Ajax bellowed and rushed me like a mad bull. He lifted his axe and I blocked his swing with my katana, which bowed but did not break. I lunged under him but he got me with a solid kick to the solar plexus. I flew back and hit something soft on the floor. It was Turner, who grabbed me from behind in a bear hug. I guessed her nap was over. Ajax came bearing down on both of us, axe held high.
I rolled forward until I was a turtle with a ghoul for a shell. When that axe came down, it sliced through Turner first, whose body kindly absorbed the momentum. I still got cut, but I stayed in one piece. No instant karma for me.
“Bonnie … will devour … you … for this.” Turner’s voice bubbled out through a mouthful of blood.
“I’ll tell her you said hi when she tries it, and then you can tell her hi yourself when you see her in hell.”
The light went out of Turner’s eyes.
Ajax pulled on his axe to free it, but ghouls must be made of tougher stuff than your average monster because the axe wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t break free of Turner’s death grip, either. Ajax gave up and kicked me in the ribs. I rolled over onto the axe and felt the blade push in deeper. No pain, just an awareness of its presence, same as any other working day. Except for the lethargy that crept steadily into my body.
Ajax grinned down at me, seeing my predicament. He lifted his foot over my chest and slowly pressed down like he was squashing a bug. The axe blade kept cutting. Karma wasn’t instant, but it sure was catching up to me.
I took a deep breath, and with the last of my strength I pressed my feet and forearms to the floor and pushed up as hard and fast as I could. I broke Turner’s grip and at the same time sent Ajax sprawling. Katana in hand, I practiced my batter’s swing and Ajax’s head went flying.
“She swings, she scores. Home run.” Brand clapped slowly and deliberately. “Sekutar 2.0, zero, the great Kelly Chan, two points.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I stared at Brand. “You know who I am?”
“Shit, yeah, sister. You busting out of here is the stuff of legends. We don’t eat all our vegetables, you know what they do? They tell us the Boogiewoman Kelly Chan is hiding under our beds waiting to gobble us up.” He raised his eyebrows and grinned. “Is that true? You want to gobble me up now, Boogiewoman?”
Not. Touching. That.
I became keenly aware that while the slices in my body had healed up, the ones in my clothes had not.
“Sorry about your buddies.” I picked up my ruined coat from the floor and cleaned the gore off my katana, which was slightly bent from the axe. I wiped traces of blood out of the letters on the handle.
Brand shrugged. “They were assholes. Besides, I’d had about enough of gagging on their doomed romance for the last two weeks.”
“So I see you’re the romantic type.”
“Don’t know, never tried it.” He tilted his head and pursed his lips. “Maybe under the right circumstances.”
I really wanted to touch that one, but didn’t. He’d be dead in a matter of minutes anyway.
“Your katana sucks now. Try this blade.” Brand tossed me his own katana which I caught in my left hand.
“Don’t go dissing my sword.” Though I had to admit, his katana had great balance, and felt lighter than my own.
Brand pulled two more katanas off the wall and casually strolled toward me. “Why? Is yours made out of a meteorite or something?”
I damn near dropped both blades. “I can’t believe you saw that show, too.”
“Anthony Bourdain? I love that guy. He’s cool for a geezer.” Brand swung in close but I was faster. I stopped him from shredding my middle with a solid block.
“He is not a geezer. Next you’ll be calling me grandma.” I pushed back and nearly knocked Brand off-balance, which I thought was way too easy and so avoided the trap he’d set by pulling up before I risked overbalancing myself.
“Just because you’re a Sekutar generation ahead of me? That’s stupid because we’re about the same age. Besides, you’re way too hot to be called grandma, even in that goofy get-up.” He anticipated my move and lunged in order to send me off-balance in the opposite direction. “But how about that knife, huh? After I kill you, I think I’ll spoil myself a little and have one custom-made.”
I went with his move, flipped back and landed a kick squarely under that adorable chin of his. Brand’s head snapped back and I heard a couple cervical vertebrae go pop.
“I can’t imagine how much a knife like that costs. What are they paying you guys these days?”
“A lot more than what you’re making from your dojo. Maybe you should get them to rehire you. I’d give you a good reference.”
“Yeah you would. My reference from you would be your severed head on their desk. But I’m done with the corporate world, so don’t you worry your—”
“My—”
“—pretty little head off,” we both finished the sentence together. I spun, lunged and caught the corner of his mouth with the tip of my blade, lengthening his smile by a good three inches.
“Damn!” I said. “We just met, I haven’t quite killed you yet, and I already miss you.”
Brand grinned as his cheek knitted back together. We locked eyes, and there it was again, that bittersweet déjà vu flutter.
Brand’s expression grew serious and he shook
his head. “There’s this song Frank Sinatra used to sing. Bryan Ferry redid it on a retro album. You probably don’t know it.”
“An old friend of mine loved Roxy Music, so yeah, I know the song you’re thinking of. ‘Where or When,’ am I right?”
“Yeah!” Brand stabbed at me and I locked his arm at the elbow. I swung his arm to the side, moved in toward his torso and struck. My katana sank in deep and I should have disemboweled him – but I wanted to know what he had to say about a song where two people meet for the first time and yet feel as if their meeting has happened before.
I guess I was getting sentimental in my old age.
I leaped back as Brand’s other arm swung a katana at my shoulder – not at my head, I noticed. Maybe he was feeling a little sentimental, too.
I decided to go for it. “It’s called layered time.”
“No, I think the album’s called, ‘As Time Goes By.’”
I laughed. “No, I mean the thing that’s happening to us. You feel it too, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I feel it.” Brand patted his closing gut wound.
“Be serious. You’re feeling déjà vu, or you wouldn’t have mentioned the song.”
Brand pulled back from taking another swing. “I might be. So what’s layered time?”
“It’s when a time event changes. Look, there’s only one timeline, but sometimes someone goes back and changes things so that when a second, slightly different event happens, it gets layered over the first one. Both events are real, they actually took place, but they are layered over each other and time continues on. Sometimes, people remember the original event vaguely. At least that’s how it was explained to me.”
Brand’s eyes widened and a look of comprehension crossed his face. Then he rolled his eyes and laughed. “Wow, that’s batshit crazy. Why would you believe somebody who told you that?”
“Because it was my dead best friend and my time twin.”
Brand started to laugh again, then stopped. “You really believe that, don’t you?”
“I saw it with my own eyes, Brand. I don’t expect you to believe me, but I think we could have known each other in a different layer of time.”
“Oh, maybe we were lovers.” He gave the last word a French accent.
“Would that have been so bad?” I smiled.
Swing “Not!” Swing “At!” Swing “All!” He wasn’t really trying. I easily blocked each attack. On the last swing, I knocked the sword from his right hand. He looked at the one in his left, shrugged and tossed it away. He raised his eyebrows and his grin reappeared. His eyes said, Come on. I dare you.
So I laid my swords down. I could kill him just as easily with my bare hands. The uncomfortable question arose in my mind: But do I still want to?
The answer was, Of course. I have to save Jessica.
I flew at him, kicking and punching, flipping and leaping. And yes, completely showing off.
He in turn kicked, punched, countered and showed off just as hard. We were evenly matched. Every time we made contact, I felt more alive, as if a circuit completed itself with each touch. If only every fight could feel that good.
Brand got me into a lock from behind. His breath tickled my ear. “You are so tiny. How can you be so strong and so tiny?”
“I’m only tiny compared to you.” I stomped on his instep, momentarily forgetting that he was like me, a Sekutar who felt no pain. One of my kind.
Brand laughed at the attempt and gripped me tighter. “So what were we like, in this other time layer?”
“I don’t know. There were things they wouldn’t tell me.” I turned my head enough to see his eyes. From that angle, they were a fascinating shade of greenish-brown. “But I think I can guess.” I changed my center of gravity, hooked my leg around his and took him down. I twisted and landed on top, where I pinned him.
“Oh, baby.” I felt Brand’s body go limp under mine but I wasn’t about to trust him. At the same time, I decided that before I ended his life, I would definitely kiss him.
Did I really have to kill him? Maybe there was another way.
“I think… no, I know we were on the same side. Help me free my friend Jessica and let’s go from there. What do you say? We’re so alike, you and me.”
What was I doing? Brand was a complete asshole, but that’s generally what I thought about anyone who tried to kill me, so I couldn’t hold that against him specifically.
“Alike? Because we’re Sekutar?” Brand slipped his arm out from under mine and ran his finger down my cheek, making it tingle. “Kel,” he whispered.
Brand looked so good, I couldn’t help but return the touch. His cheek was deliciously rough with stubble. For a minute, we were two other people who had nothing to do with DGI or ghouls or anything else happening around us.
I came back to myself. “You can be free of this place, too. Throw off the wizards who bind you, like I did. There’s a better way. It was shown to me, and I could show it to you.”
“Like a mentor, huh?”
His words touched me deeper than his fingers. “Yes.” I bent to kiss him.
The vibration of running feet made us both look up. Brand sighed. “Shit.”
“More Sekutar 2.0? I can take them.”
“Not these.”
I hadn’t realized the extent I’d allowed my body to relax in reaction to Brand’s until he grabbed my wrists and turned our positions around. Now he had me at his mercy. The footsteps grew closer. Whoever was coming was moving fast, and there were many of them, more than Sekutar 2.0 D through P.
“What are you doing, Brand?” I struggled against him, but he had me good and tight.
“You don’t get it, Kelly. You were sold into this life as a kid, but me? I chose it for myself, as an adult. That’s the difference. We aren’t alike. Not at all.”
The first person through the door looked a lot grayer than the last time I’d seen him, but it was definitely Floor Licker. His bright blue contacts were gone and his grey eyes gleamed with an orange light. There was something else that had changed about him, something that made my heart sink. I pushed that aside so it wouldn’t distract me.
A girl his age rushed past him into the room. Her skin was gray, her eyes tinged orange and she was bald – no make-up or wig. She looked around the room at the bodies until her eyes settled on what was left of Turner. Her hand flew to cover her mouth and her eyes widened, then narrowed to hateful slits as she looked at me. Other young ghouls crowded in, five, then ten, then twenty. More filled the hall behind them. They looked taller and more muscle-bound than any ghouls I’d ever seen. Even Floor Licker looked beefier than he’d been a week ago.
“No,” I whispered as I saw what DGI had done.
Brand lifted me off the floor. “Guess I don’t get to kill you after all. But I’m still buying one of those knives.”
He raised me higher. “Dinner’s ready, kids!” he shouted. “Come and get her.” Then quietly in my ear, he whispered, “I have to go. Trust me, you’ve got this.”
He tossed me at the crowd of young ghouls. Or more specifically, Sekutar warrior generation 3.0.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I twisted in the air, and shot Floor Licker a face full of boot as I came down. I punched two more Sekutar ghouls, including the girl who was so upset over Turner. I had a hunch she was the notorious Bonnie. I picked up Floor Licker and swung him into the crowd. Others pulled weapons from the walls. Brand grabbed my katanas. Instead of attacking, he tossed them to me. What was his motive? It was as if he wore two expressions – one that said he wanted to help, and the other that just wanted to see the most entertaining fight possible.
I twirled the swords in front of me in a complex pattern that not only created a shield of blades, but looked pretty damned cool. The front Sekutar ghoul took a step back, and a murmur went through the group.
“Is that?”
“Yes, it’s her.”
“It is her!”
“Kelly Chan!”
; I kept my swords moving. “I’m happy to sign autographs, using your blood.”
More murmurs, words of encouragement that passed from one to the next, like a buzzing bee swarm. They worked themselves up, coordinating their attack. Given time and more training, I could see them becoming an almost unstoppable fighting force.
Good thing I was there to shut them down. And after this minor distraction, I had a thing or two to settle with Brand.
Another buzz went through the Sekutar ghouls. A few at the back turned to watch someone approach. Surprised gasps passed through the group.
But none of the Sekutar ghouls could match my surprise at who came through the door. Amanda’s supervisor.
“Liz!” I calculated how quickly I could slice through the Sekutar ghouls and get her to safety. But then Liz was joined by a handsome, well-dressed man who looked like he gave her the worship she probably deserved. A bodyguard? Had she heard I was here? Had she come to call off the Sekutar ghouls? They seemed to respond to her.
And no wonder. Liz was just as beautiful as the first time I’d seen her at that boutique in Southglenn. But this time when she smiled at me, her full ruby lips were interrupted by gleaming white fangs.
What? Had DGI turned her into a vampire?
“I came to see you make me proud,” she said to the Sekutar ghouls.
“Anything for you, New Mother,” one of them said.
They practically purred, then their concentration snapped back to slaughtering me. I didn’t have time to figure out what was going on.
And Brand was long gone.
“The bitch is mine!” screamed the girl I guessed to be Bonnie. She started for me and the rest followed like the train of a dress, spreading out to surround me. I flipped backwards to the door – if I could make it to the hall I’d be able to fight them one by one. I wanted to see how many I could take down before the rest lost heart. My Sekutar brothers and sisters and I had been taught to fight in teams, but we lacked the single-mindedness this generation displayed.
