Maybe I was doing something right after all? Then again, how hard could it be to impress a virgin demon? The thought made me a little sad though I don’t know why. I unzipped the jumpsuit, pulling it down. As it slipped off his shoulders, he sat up so he could pull his arms out of the sleeves.
What I could see of his chest told me Troy worked out, but didn’t diet well enough to form muscle. There was a lot of definition but not enough bulk on his chest so it just made him look sort of odd.
Either way, as his hands were caught in the sleeves, I bucked my body while swinging my arms against the side of his head with all my might. We toppled off the couch, and he landed on his back, arms popping from his shoulders at obscene angles under the force of his own bodyweight.
I landed hard on top of him, but not hard enough for me to actually get hurt, though that was mostly because I’d known what was going to happen. And, well, his body cushioned most of the blow.
Troy reached for me, but between the entangling clothing and his dislocated shoulders, he couldn’t do anything to stop me from getting to my feet and backing away from him. The look that filled his face as he watched made left me feeling cold and scared. It wasn’t just hate there, that I could have understood, but something darker and more… depraved, I guess? It was a look that told me this wasn’t over, and in the end, he would have me, even if he had to beat me over the head and take my comatose body into his lair.
I spun, trying to suppress the dread swelling in my stomach and grabbed Roberto by the shoulder and shook him. He was staring off into space, eyes gazing at some distant point far beyond the walls of the room.
“Roberto!” I screamed, but he didn’t even blink at me. God what the hell was wrong with him? I looked around and grabbed Troy’s coke. It was still half full. Good. I threw it in Roberto’s face. He turned his head toward me, but his eyes remained unfocused.
“Uh…” he mumbled, lips moving languidly as he formed the word.
“Roberto! Wake up!” I pointed at Troy, who was already getting to his feet despite not being able to use his arms. I spun back to Roberto and slapped him as hard as I could. His head jerked back.
“Dad!” I screamed, barely resisting the urge to shake him as tears welled in my eyes.
If I waited any longer, Troy would be on me again, and now he was some sort of psycho rapist in addition to being a soulless demon. It was like the worst of two possible worlds.
When Roberto didn’t respond, I reached out and grabbed his steak knife. Just holding it in my hands made me feel a lot better.
Troy lunged for me, his shoulder catching me in the knees and sweeping them out from under me. I tumbled forward, smacking my jaw hard on the couch as we collapsed into a heap. As stars flashed across my vision, Troy wormed his way on top of me, disjointed fingers clutching at my shirt and pulling me down toward him.
“Abby,” his words sprayed across my throat as he spoke. “It doesn’t have to be this way.” I drove the knife into the side of his neck, spilling his hot, sticky blood over my face and chest. He didn’t react, just blinked at me for a moment.
Troy collapsed on top of me, a gurgle of surprise rippling from his ruined throat as his eyes went as wide as dinner plates. He tried to move, to grasp his throat, but he couldn’t due to his dislocated shoulders. His eyes met mine, and I knew one thing. The flit was gone. This last torturous moment would be experienced by Troy… alone.
I reached out, stroking his face with my fingers as blood pooled on me, seeping through my clothing and making my stomach turn. I didn’t look away as the light faded from his eyes. I wanted to, I really did, but somehow, that didn’t seem fair, didn’t seem right.
Troy had died by my hand, and he was innocent. I deserved to watch him die, to share this moment with him so he wouldn’t die alone.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered as the door behind us burst open. I craned my head, looking away for a split second to see Tom rushing into the room. He pulled Troy away from me and cradled him against his chest. Crimson stained Tom’s white t-shirt as he mewled softly to Troy.
Troy spasmed, the last breath of life fleeing from him, and as it did so, Tom fixed me with a hard glare.
“Why?” he asked.
I stared at him, unable to respond as his eyes shifted from me to the doorway behind me. I turned my head slowly, already knowing who was standing there. Lisa stared at me, her lips slightly parted as she took a single step into the room. Her face was blank and unreadable, but there was something strange in her eyes. It wasn’t anger or grief per se. It was something more, something excited.
“Because he was taken by the flit,” Lisa said, crossing the room and taking one of my bloody hands in hers. “Isn’t that true, Abby?”
I nodded dumbly as Lisa pulled me to my feet, ignoring the blood, and her father, as he held the lifeless body of Troy.
“The only way to stop the flit is death. That’s what I was trying to tell you, Dad!” Lisa spat the last word at him, and he flinched. “The Agency doesn’t understand anything but power.” Lisa waved her hand at Troy. “They don’t care how many pieces they break because they are convinced they are right, that they can do no wrong. They don’t realize they are the wrong.”
“There could have been another way,” Tom said as Lisa led me from the room. “Troy didn’t need to die. Electrical impulse will disrupt the flit’s presence and drive the demon from the mind of the captive.”
Lisa glanced back over her shoulder and shook her head, lips compressed into a hard line. “I’ve been controlled by the flit before. There’s no way to really describe it. Let’s just say that while it’s in the driver’s seat, not only can it do whatever it wants, but you want it to do whatever it wants. Everything in you screams that the flit is doing what should be done. It’s like a drug.” She paused and squeezed my bloodstained hands. “And when it’s gone, you feel the residue of it in your mind, feel it like slime on your skin. Only instead of wanting to wash it off, you wish there was more. You wish it would pull you down into the murk along with it.”
She smiled, and it was creepy enough to make a chill run down the back of my spine. “The flit is the darkness that beckons you in with candy, sex, and drugs. The sad thing is, when it leaves, you think to yourself, how can I get more?” She shook her head. “Come on, Abby. We came to tell you we’ve arrived at your mother’s base.” She pulled me from the room. “Let’s find a way off of this bus.”
14
“I think Lisa has gone dark side,” Donovan said as he walked backward in front of us. He wasn’t looking where he was going, but he was A GHOST, so I wasn’t quite sure why I kept expecting him to act like a corporeal person. “Look inside you and know it to be true,” he added, raising one hand in the air and clenching his fingers into a fist.
“Quiet,” I said even though part of me was worried he might be right. Lisa had been acting a little off ever since the flit had taken her over, and okay, I’d trusted her because she had been my friend forever, but what if something inside her had changed? For all I knew, maybe the flit was still controlling her… That thought made my blood run cold.
Lisa shot me a look. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Huh?” I looked at her innocently as heat spread across my cheeks. “What are you talking about?”
Lisa stared at me, a thought knitting across her brow as she pursed her lips.
“Nothing,” she said, turning back toward the large empty room. Well, that wasn’t true exactly. The room was filled with wooden crates and a bunch of other junk, but it was so large it seemed empty. Hell, even the ginormous semi-truck seemed tiny and insignificant in the cavernous space.
I tossed one last glance at the weird tanker truck that had brought us here, somewhat hoping Roberto would come running out after us. Honestly, I wasn’t quite sure why I wanted him to come help me so much. Okay yeah, he was my father technically, but it wasn’t like he’d taken me to the park or propped me on his knee while reading me bedtime stories.
So why was I so worried about him?
When he didn’t come running from the truck, I turned back to the huge room and glanced around one last time. It resembled a cave more than anything else, but that might have been because it appeared to have been hewn from one singular chunk of rock. Only that was impossible because it was the size of a couple football stadiums.
“I think that’s where we need to go,” I said, pointing at a tube that reminded me of an elevator I’d taken with my foster mom, Esmeralda, when we’d been on the run from my biological mother, Gabriella. “It looks familiar, at least.”
“What is it?” Lisa asked, pulling me forward by the hand toward the jutting tube of plastic and mesh metal. “And I’m glad you stopped whining about all the blood.” She cocked an eyebrow at me. “You look tough. Maybe the next guy who shows up trying to kill you will think twice.”
“Next, you’ll be suggesting I mount the heads of my enemies on pikes outside,” I replied as I wondered once again if Donovan might be right about Lisa. Then again, Donovan was like nine-tenths jerk at any given time. No, Lisa was fine, and I was just jumpy.
I glanced down at my blood-stained fatigues and sighed. Being covered in sticky, cold blood was gross. I was taking a shower the first chance I got. I didn’t even care if it was warm. See, I was adaptable. On my own terms.
“I wouldn’t mount any heads anywhere. It would imply your enemies know where you are, and well, we don’t want that.” Lisa smiled at me as we approached the elevator. “But something has been bugging me. How come the flit didn’t take over me again or Roberto for that matter? I mean it probably goes without saying, but Roberto is way more physically impressive than Troy. If I was going to try to kill you, I’d take him over in a heartbeat.”
“Roberto has magic so it can’t take him over.” I shrugged, mostly because I had been wondering the same thing about Lisa. The flit should have taken over Lisa and crushed me to death by now. Hell, even Tom would have been a better choice than Troy. He could have pressed a button in his secret lab and had me shot full of holes or gassed or something. Either of them were far better choices than Troy. Then again, the flit hadn’t seemed super concerned with actually abducting me. Besides, what the hell had happened to Roberto, anyway? What turned him into a zombie? Was that the flit? Had it incapacitated him somehow?
“Well, you better figure it out because if the flit comes back inside me or Tom, you’ll want to be ready for it.” Lisa pressed the button next to the elevator without even checking to make sure it was safe. Thankfully, instead of blasting her to ash, it began to glow. A big wheel lit up overhead and started spinning.
“I’d be more curious to know why it left instead of taking one of you over when I killed Troy,” I said as the doors slid open with a hiss to reveal a black metal grate. I shot her a look that I hoped meant, “be careful,” and stepped inside.
“Well, nothing blasted you. That’s good right?” Lisa said, joining me on the platform a minute later. The doors shut with a whoosh. Green light burst from the floor, filling the tiny space for a split second and making multi-colored spots dance across my vision.
“Where would you like to go, Abigail?” said a voice from a speaker above my head. It sounded like a higher-pitched version of Gabriela’s, and just hearing it made a chill slide across my skin. I craned my head up toward its source to see the holographic image of her face staring down at me with an overly cheery smile.
“That’s creepy,” Lisa said as she glanced from the face to me and back again. “Though I can see the resemblance.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, shrugging my shoulders and doing my best to avoid my holographic biological mother’s intimidating gaze. “So, uh, where do you want to go?”
“To wherever all her tech is, or at least somewhere where we can figure out how to neutralize the flit before it decides to take one of us over again.” She gave me a smile that made me think she was hiding something from me. It was the same one she’d used when she replaced her dead goldfish without telling me. I’d wound up thinking the damn fish had lived for almost a whole month, and when I wanted to throw it a ‘thanks for living’ party, she’d broke down and told me the truth. Mister Fishy was apparently Mister Fishy the twelfth…
“You heard her, holo-mom,” I told the hologram, ignoring the bad feeling crawling over the back of my neck. This was Lisa, my best friend. If I couldn’t trust her, who could I trust? “Take us to the tech.”
“There are forty-seven rooms associated with ‘tech.’ Please be more specific,” the voice intoned, facial expression still too cheery to actually be pleasant.
“Is there a directory or a central hub?” Lisa asked, but the hologram didn’t respond. Lisa sighed. “I think you need to ask her.”
“Can you take us to the central hub?” I asked, feeling a little silly. “Or wherever it is that can tell us what gadgets are in this place?”
“Very well.” The elevator shook before falling down through the ground. I barely had time to gather my wits when we came to a stop in front of a pair of royal blue doors.
“Central repository and directory,” the voice intoned as the doors swirled outward, disappearing like we were in one of those science fiction movies.
“Sweet,” Lisa said, releasing my hand and scampering into the room like a kid in the candy store. I sighed. I really needed to teach her caution before she was blasted into road kill. Speaking of which, why had nothing accosted us? I was pretty sure this place had to have some automated defenses. Was it because of me? Was the only reason we hadn’t been blown to smithereens because I was here?
I took a step into the small, metallic space and stared at my hand. Why had Lisa been holding it all this time? I’d like to say that we were that close, but really, I don’t think she’d ever so much as given me an awkward hug. So her holding my hand for what must have been several minutes was odd, to say the least. Then again, I hadn’t exactly stopped her, either.
I knew why I hadn’t. It was because I’d wanted the comfort. I’d liked the idea of someone who wasn’t blaming me for everything, and if anything, Lisa wasn’t blaming me. She had fixed her sights on destroying the flit, despite the fact that it apparently was like being filled with concentrated rock ‘n’ roll. It was a little weird. If it was really like she said it was, most people would be trying to get more, right? Not try to smash it into atoms…
“Abby, I think you need to log in for it to let me access anything,” Lisa called from her perch in an overly large leather chair. It sort of seemed out of place in the otherwise Spartan room because it wasn’t even a computer chair. At least it didn’t look like one. It resembled one of those plush La-Z-Boy recliners. Besides, what kind of computer chair didn’t have wheels?
“Why do you think that?” I asked, my footsteps echoing on the metallic floor as I crossed the space between us.
“Um… because it’s asking for you to verify your biometrics?” Lisa pointed at a blue screen with a glowing handprint in the center. “I don’t think the system thinks I’m supposed to be here. If you want me to figure this out, you’re going to have to log in and give me access.”
“How do I do that?” I asked, placing my hand against the screen. It warbled, emitting a high-pitched shriek before cascading into a shroud of colors every color of the rainbow.
“How can I help you, Abigail?” the voice of my mother spoke behind me. I spun, my heart racing, to see a hologram of her standing there with her arms crossed over her chest. Her expression made me think of a Valkyrie the moment before it plucked you from the battlefield and carried you off to Valhalla.
“I need you to… um… give my friend Lisa access to the system,” I told it because I wasn’t sure what else to do.
“Are you sure?” Gabriella asked, quirking an eyebrow at me in a decidedly human gesture.
“Um… yeah, give her access to anything she wants,” I replied, and beside me, Lisa smiled. The smile sort of freaked me out a little. Maybe giving her full access
to my mother’s tech wasn’t such a good idea. What if she did something with it I didn’t agree with? I shook away the thought. This was Lisa. The girl I knew bottle-fed stray kittens when we were growing up. She wouldn’t hurt anyone. I swallowed… well except for when she blew away Stephen in cold blood… but that didn’t count, right?
“How long would you like the access to last?” the hologram asked, and for some reason, it seemed like it had picked up on my sudden discomfort and given me an out. I was pretty sure that hadn’t actually happened, but it sure seemed convenient. Then again, for all I knew, it had done precisely that.
“Um… how about for the day,” I replied with a shrug. Lisa glanced at me with barely concealed annoyance, but I shrugged again. “Unless she gets taken over by the flit, then strip away her access.”
“Very well,” the hologram said, turning toward Lisa. “Please place your hand on the scanner to be granted access to the system.”
Lisa nodded once, a strange frown plastered on her lips. With an exaggerated effort, she placed her hand on the scanner. Colors cascaded out of it before fading away completely.
“Computer, display the parameters of the flit on the main screen,” Lisa said, and even before she finished speaking, the wall above us turned black. Data began to scroll across it in bright green letters that hurt my eyes and made me look away.
“Do you have any idea what that means?” I asked with a sigh. “Because it just looks like gibberish to me.”
“Not yet,” Lisa replied, cracking her knuckles as she slid into the chair. “But I will.”
She glanced at me. “Um… why don’t you go see what’s up with Tom and Roberto. I’ll probably be here a while.” She stopped speaking, biting her lip in the way she did when she was trying to decide whether or not she wanted to keep talking. Evidently, she didn’t because she turned back toward the screen and ignored me. Nice.
The Magic Within: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Found Magic Book 2) Page 11