“Meh, does that count as matricide if they’re technically clones? Hiya, I’m Reilly. Say, boss. You shipping out of here? Want a few candy bars for the voyage?” Reilly pulled a package of candy out of the pocket of her sweatshirt and tossed it to Vincent.
“Dude, you’re like 12!” Ivy froze, staring at Reilly in disbelief. Reilly performed a gentleman’s bow. Another Medusa snuck up behind her. She reached a Colt out and burned through its last three rounds.
“You know how they say ‘only the good die young’? Ain’t gonna be me, doll-face. I’m practically Mrs. Satan’s daughter, and my illegal guardian uncle is a zombie. Do what you want to with that one. No worries, Jane. I’ll take the new recruits off your hands. Somebody’s got to bring them up right while you’re away.” Reilly winked at Jane, who waved at her, falling in behind her dad.
“Wait, Jane! Are you leaving us?” Lindsey and Ivy ran after her. They didn’t want to say goodbye. Certainly not after what they’d seen.
Jane paused, jogging backward for a while, not wanting to stop moving.
“Guys, come on! You know it has to be this way. It’s just easier if I don’t say goodbye.” A smoke bomb lit off near her feet, hiding her from their sight. She had vanished all over again. It was unbelievable.
“Learn them right, Reilly. Take care of yourself too, okay?” Dexter huffed as he jogged to keep up with the Lewises.
“They’ll be ready when you come back!” Reilly shot a thumb’s up Dexter’s way.
“I’m not coming back.” Dexter tried to laugh to take the edge off of it all. Everyone standing here knew that if their plan succeeded then they would surely never see him in the flesh again.
Reilly huffed and turned to look at Lindsey and Ivy who were standing with their jaws dropped wide open.
“So, you wanna be part of the resistance, huh? Make their sacrifices mean something?” Reilly folded her arms, looking them up and down.
“You’re…just a kid?” Lindsey was shaking her head in disbelief.
“Yup. Got a few years on you in street combat too, missy. So you’re answering to me first and foremost. I’ll train you up first and you’ll join me and Uncle Taylor’s campaign. We’ve got bigger fish to fry than this little Cuban humidor fiasco, ‘kay? It’s not a surprise. The government that these big business men corrupted. The hate-mongering President? We’re about to ratify all of that at the Capital. Call the Army back in and fight this war as one human group and not a bunch of clowns shooting blanks into the stratosphere.” Reilly smiled. She reached to a holster she’d belted around her thigh and produced a Taurus Raging Bull, checking to see if it was loaded.
“Ah, yes. We’ll start you on six-guns, Bad Company.” Reilly pressed the pistol’s handle into Ivy’s hand. Ivy stared at it and stared at the girl, totally dumbfounded.
“Take it easy! I think you’re gonna like it here.” Reilly smiled. Just then, a shriek echoed from out of the tree line. Medusas were fleeing the woods, pressed on by the firefight and the ballistic battle cries of Taylor and his guys.
*****
Chapter 8
He knew that this was always the end for him. Dr. Kingsley was fully reformed as a human ever since that day in Centralia when he’d sacrificed his humanity; still, these were the consequences of his sins. He had given the She-Hitler the final thrust she’d needed to take to the clouds. In the end, the blame would always weigh on him.
The moonlight peered through the slits in the fog. Life and light would prevail even in the face of alteration. Kingsley believed that. Even though his tormentor was marching toward him now, razor in hand, the ocean’s mist billowing her skirts to standing like a war goddess’ robes. For just a moment, Dr. Kingsley allowed his eyes to drift away from Leona Kelley’s horrific loveliness. His soul was enraptured by the crystalline beauty that was her sister.
Kiara stood, dressed in a SWAT officer’s body armor, and yet still more glamourous to Kingsley’s eyes than this Hell-Bride. He held his breath, watching as the wind lifted her dark hair and wreathed her in smoke. Her mouth formed a marble line, and she had the body of a Venus. She gripped a Japanese katana that she had recovered from the Centralia lab, holding it defensively out in front of her body.
For a moment, she took his breath. It was tragic, almost criminal and obviously insane how she, a brutal assassin with an Occult-mutilated mind, could have won his heart in a fraction of the time it normally took. He was a stubborn man. It had taken too long for him to realize that. Now it might even be too late.
Then came the most frightening question that had ever risen to the back of his mind. A doubt that shook his axis.
What was he supposed to do if he lost her?
“Caroline!” Kiara called out over the torrential winds and rains that hail-spread in the Medusa’s wake. The nuclear/chemically altered incarnation of Kiara’s sister twisted toward her, howling like a banshee. Kiara huffed a soft sigh.
“Caroline. Listen to me. That day at the Dark Altar. Kingsley could have done away with you. We seized that fight. He would have every reason too. I let you escape. I didn’t want to. I probably shouldn’t have. Something told me that you were still in there. That this poison would bring you back to light.” Kiara looked at her feet, apologetic and not wanting to meet Kingsley’s eyes.
Kingsley’s memory of the day he transformed wasn’t clear. He could see himself splitting into various shards of himself, tearing through stony hills, trees, and walls of the Centralia neighborhood to give chase to She-Hitler. Her doubles had scattered. Once the Altered kids had taken the town, they put the few remaining locals on a bus and shipped them to Lancaster.
If Kiara believed that she could save her sister now after everything, then Kingsley had already lost her. The thought of this stirred his terror to a white fury. Fury directed toward Leona and himself. They had sown this broken world in lust and greed and hatred. They would have to destroy each other. It was the only redeemable end for both of them.
“You…Foolish girl. Once my best, now the bane of my existence. Remember what I promised you, Kiara dear, on the day I sacrificed you to my gods? Your soul belongs to me. Never mind that by all rights you have already died. You are ageless. Deathless. Timeless. You will never die because you are bound to the world I made for you. There is no end to the horror I can bring upon you if you try to get in my way.” Leona’s altered form started to giggle psychotically and lifted off the ground. She levitated in semi-circles, limbs spinning in their joints against their natural pivots.
Kiara turned to look at Kingsley. Her jaw was set. He knew that she had made up her mind.
“Your supposed gods are really just well-studied people living in other dimensions, Caroline. They won’t be able to stand against all of us. We have a weapon you never did. It is our desperation that will win our fight. We will live because we can’t die. As Humankind, we can’t.” Kiara’s voice cracked. She assumed an aikido fighter’s stance, ready to face off with Leona to the death if need be.
Kingsley was transfixed by the power of her graceful pose and crushed by her internal struggle. This woman was power and yet she twisted in the wind at the thought of her evil sister and putting her down.
“Stand down! I haven’t come for you! She is here…the woman of my sorrow. Of my joy. My creation!” Leona’s head twisted almost in an 180-degree turn. Her eyes rolled frenetically in her face. An infrared glow spread around the waterline of her eyes and her mouth. She was seeking for the Andromeda by her thermonuclear impulses. Kingsley was floored by how he could know that. This serum had heightened his intellect and ability to read a situation by as much as 500 percent.
“You won’t take her!” Kiara took a step forward, slashing the sword in a frantic kamikaze, almost fearfully, not wanting to kill her sister but not able to let her come for Jane either. Only she wasn’t coming for Jane.
“Stand down, puppet!” Andromeda came sailing through the air. She swatted her hand like a lady’s fan. Magnetism overtook Kiara’s
body. Her sword was shattered into 12 pieces and she was flung through midair, crashing brutally and being suspended from a light-pole.
“You! I swear one day I will put you down!” Kingsley spun toward the Andromeda, opening fire on her with his SigSauerP226.
“Ah, but Doctor! You already did!” Andromeda giggled, flashing Jane’s face again.
Kingsley froze. They both knew what this meant. No matter how he championed the cause of these people, no matter how many lives Kingsley saved, he would always be guilty for the death of Jane Lewis.
“Oh, mother? Do you hear that sound? The resounding echo of silence.” Andromeda touched down in front of Leona, smiling darkly. All this time playing keep away with her and now she came to the She-Hitler willingly. Almost eagerly.
With a bewitched smile and a twinkle in her eyes that told Kingsley that something far worse was on her horizon. Leona’s mind was under a psychotic break. She honestly believed that she was the supremely powerful being here and that she had all of this under control. Andromeda had her wrapped around her little finger. She laughed darkly at Kingsley. They both knew this.
“My prodigal child returns. I suppose I should start believing in miracles.” Leona threw back her head, laughing as lighting coursed over the ground and rose to her palms. It shot down her throat and she gargled it with her blood, spitting sparks in a halo that Andromeda spun in her fingers.
“You should be careful the things you wish for and the one’s that you call miracles.” Andromeda’s lips started to spill over fountains of blood.
“Let me teach the way to Kingdom Come. The principalities of the air belong to us and we will reign in terror.” Leona rolled her fingers into fists, catching the strands of lightning like thin filaments of cotton in her shaking hands.
Andromeda hissed like a static radio. Thunder split the earth. The goddesses were gone.
Kingsley took off running. His heart kicked like a shotgun 100 times a minute. He watched in despair and helplessness as Kiara bore the brunt of the electrical storm.
“No! No, no, no, no, no…” Kingsley smote his hands together, propelling himself up a stairway of the static energy, drawing it into himself to take away her pain.
Her head rolled listlessly on her shoulders. Kingsley stood mid-air, waiting, hoping with everything.
Kiara nodded, clothes and hair catching fire.
“Hey!” Kingsley ran a hand over her head, smoothing her hair down. He was in denial that she was burning. That her eyes showed a pain that ran deeper than her injuries.
“Soon, Doctor. I feel it in my bones. Soon we will have to say goodbye.” Kiara smiled wearily.
“Don’t talk like that. You’re fine. You’re going to be just fine.” Kingsley lifted Kiara up, cradling her to his chest and descended to the ground at a blinking speed.
He looked around in amazement. The battle was over. The Medusa with her double armies was gone as abruptly as she’d come.
They were greeted by Taylor, whose eyes were wide and sad at the sight of his sister’s injuries.
“Hurry, bring her in! I know what the next play is in Caroline’s book. That’s one benefit of being half grave-dirt and other part swamp water. She’s set a trap for all of us. The dead are moving. We have to be ready to use the Andromeda against her. She’s the key to making or breaking all of this. She has always been the key.”
*****
Chapter 9
The Boss 429 Mustang growled as it tore over the broken paths leading up from the dense Cuban forest and out into the city.
Jane leaned against the dash. She was trying to ignore it but an intense pain was shooting through her side and her face. Something wasn’t right.
She clutched at her ears, trying to ignore the static ripping sound that was cutting through her thought patterns. Gasping, she felt it all come flooding back. These images were from the day that she died.
“Ay!” Jane beat her head against the dash.
“What’s wrong, baby? Hey, what’s wrong with her?!” Dexter shook himself, trying to react properly. He thrust his hand to the bag he’d clipped to his thigh where he kept the phlebotomy supplies. He ripped out needles and tubes, ready to give Jane a heavy dosage of his blood again. Anything to sustain whatever failing life remained in her.
“No! Stop! What’s the difference? I’m already dead!” Jane couldn’t contain the thrashing. She felt the whip strokes cracking across her back again, severing muscle from bone, disfiguring her and knocking her skeleton off its alignment.
“Jane, it might not matter to you, but it matters to me! You have to fight it!” Dexter was screaming over the car’s engine now. The ditches surrounding the path were coming up in wide strips of partially paved road and tree roots. Now the sins of the South American drug trade were laid bare. The dead were being moved up from the dust by the sick magnetism that had given life force back to Taylor and his gang.
“Kyrie Eleison.” Jane’s eyes rolled back in her head. She broke out in a ravaging seizure, hands flying out and slapping against all corners of the cab. Her hair caught fire and her body flashed ultra-bright charges like road flares. Dexter grabbed her by her jacket collar and stared, awestruck and clueless as to what to do about it.
“Dexter, listen to me. You have to guide her with your voice.” Vincent cut nervous looks over his shoulder. The car was rattling now like a dentist’s model teeth. A howl rose from the rocks as pieces of sunken trucks and buried suitcases burst free of the topsoil, shot back from the shallow graves of highway murderers on the mule road.
“How? I-I don’t know how?!” Dexter was panicking. His hands were trembling and clammy and his hair stood on end. Vincent tried to drive with one hand and chamber a Desert Eagle with the other.
“‘Kyrie Eleison’ it’s Greek for ‘Lord, show mercy’. I raised her in a Catholic home. It’s a Catholic hymn and has deep meaning to her. Her brain’s anomaly is trained to hone in on that phrase. Mine was too. It must be the subconscious reason why she called out those words the day she died.” Vincent ducked as shrapnel from massive log chain links cracked the windshield and ricocheted past his head.
“Okay, umm…. Jane? Umm, Kyrie Eleison.” Dexter seized Jane’s hands. The phrase had felt awkward at first but her eyes fluttered and her head trained toward the light.
It was a good thing too. No sooner had Dexter practically hypnotized Jane and had started grounding her back to the physical world than did a city bus burst free of the soil, chassis wailing Banshee style.
It was filled to the brim with at least 30 wailing people, these undead. The driver stood up, thrust her fist through the roof and tore out of it shrieking to the sky.
“We will be repaid! The Andromeda and Lucia have given us the strike order! Now is the time for death to have the precedence on the earth.” It was a Cuban woman, a Tommy gun in one hand. Her guts were still effervescent with all the drug bags Leona had stuffed her with when she’d been buried. It was impossible for them to tell for certain, but clearly, this was one of Leona’s former Fulton contact cartel bosses. Judging by what she was saying, the Andromeda was turning She-Hitler’s forces against her.
Vincent slammed the breaks. It was too late. The van was already pitching forward.
“No! Not like this! It doesn’t end like this!” Dexter scooped Jane up, pulling her close to himself. After all that they had been through, this ending was the last thing he would accept. It just wasn’t going to happen. They still had the world to save.
Jane’s eyes flashed, taking on an intense ice-blue light. She thrust out her arms, suspending the Mustang from the gaping pit’s mouth with all of her magnetic force. She gnashed her teeth. Her lips weren’t moving but they heard the Geryon speaking suddenly.
“You must hurry to the Capital, Agent Lewis. That is where they have taken my form. They will use me as the conduit to channel the conscious dead back to their vessels. It is the Andromeda’s doing for she has the most resistance through the part of her that is your
daughter and she’s the most militant. The will channel the spirits to one accord, raising some dead thoughts even into machines, breaking past the boundaries of time and space to have sunken empires march forward. For this is more than an end to time and space. The purpose is a virus in the Universe meant to unravel all that is and the laws of natural science. She-Hitler was merely the channel, the puppet with kingdom intentions that utterly evaded her.” The Geryon’s voice cut off.
Jane cried out, squeezing her eyes firmly shut. Blood dripped from her eyelids. They could feel the pressure of the magnetism holding them back from the Pit easing up.
It was a fraction of a frame. They were lost. Jane’s strength broke and the Mustang pitched forward. But then, the unbelievable happened. The earth quaked and its wound began to close. The dust pushed through. The mustang was spinning like a top, on top of a mound of dirt the size of a massive termite hill.
Dexter sat up and kicked one of the doors open. He turned around, panting. This could be good or this could mean a whole new evil was on the warpath now.
Derek Matheson stood there in the middle of the rippling ground. His eyes were blazing the color of an exploding sun. His hands were stretched out. The ground was rippling and crumbling in reverse under the power of his quakes. He was closing the earth’s wounds and drawing the dead out. They reeled and vomited up soil and worms, writhing underneath him.
“Go, Dexter! The Calvary’s behind you!” Derek gnashed his teeth, lightning shooting from his skin. The earth was scorched in the wake of him as buried drugs and contraband were unearthed and swallowed up in the wake of electric currents breaking free.
Leaf came running up behind him, jumping from field to field, drawing up the lighting into his fists. He was a meteor moving across the ground at a meteorite’s clip on his own legs. Fire shot out of his mouth in huge clouds of burning fields, like he was breathing stars. Smoke wreathed from his nostrils. His chestnut hair had been bleached a shade of white that made Dexter’s eyes water and squeeze shut.
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