by Beverly Rae
Damn. He shortened my name only when he wanted to stick it to me big time and use the old “we’re buddies and we’re in this together so do it for the team” tactic. He knew I couldn’t refuse the assignment now. Not that I’d planned to turn it down. I mean, demon hunting and finding jewelry both in one assignment? Throw in a handsome hero and what more could a girl ask for? Since I already had the handsome hero at home, I was all set.
Still, I didn’t want to appear overly enthusiastic. “How am I supposed to know when and if I see it?”
“There’s an engraved inscription inside the Bracelet which reads, ‘Eternal Power’. Fortunately for your purposes, Satan wrote the inscription in English and not in German.”
“Why would he write the words in English if he made the Bracelet for Hitler?” Not being a history buff, I wasn’t sure if Hitler knew English or not. But he damn sure had to have known German.
“Most historians believe he wrote the inscription in English to piss off Hitler.”
Satan had a sense of humor? The image of Satan headlining at a comedy club with his long tail swishing back and forth and horns sprouting from his head zipped through my head. If an audience member didn’t laugh at his jokes, he could jab them with his pitchfork. I giggled, garnering yet another scowl from Mac. Did this man ever smile?
“Terrific. I’m supposed to find a piece of jewelry without knowing what it looks like, after it disappears from the one place on the planet with the highest level of security ever known to mankind. I’m supposed to do this before an unidentified high demon lord finds it. Do I understand the mission correctly, sir?” He knew he’d asked the impossible and knew I knew it, too.
“You’ve got it.” He faced the wall of windows again and his shoulders, always thrown back and kept rigid, sagged. With a voice heavy with the weight of responsibility, he nodded and added, “I’m counting on you, Jenn.”
Terrific. Simply terrific. I opened my mouth wanting to tell him not to count on me too much, then decided not to add to his burden. But how would I get this weight off my shoulders?
Never Judge a Book by Its Cover—Unless There’s a Naked Man on It
MacNamara worked in the building all Protectors called headquarters. Yet another building housed what we liked to call the main office, where those with even higher security clearances than MacNamara worked.
However, no Protector knew its location. In fact, none of us had ever seen the inside of the main office or met the few powerful beings who worked there. Before Mac handed me a post-it with the address scrawled on it, I hadn’t been totally positive the place even existed. Yet here I stood, biting my lip and trying to ignore the nervous tickle running down my spine. Stalling, I checked the address for the third time.
“This can’t be right.” It’s not like I’m plagued with obsessive-compulsive disorder or a diminished capacity for reading, but I had to check the yellow piece of paper a fourth time. I simply couldn’t grasp what was right in front of me.
If the address was correct—and I had to believe it was—then the main office, the agency where the brightest minds running the most secretive and powerful organization in the known universe was ensconced, was a cottage. The high-level super-secure office was a quaint, white-picket-fenced, flowers-in-the-window-box type of house sitting in the middle of a street lined with shade trees. Children played on the lawns of similar suburban homes a few yards away and a poodle barked incessantly from the front porch of the house across the road.
Another home boasted a stenciled placard declaring Children Are Always Welcome. I figured either the old lady in the shoe had upgraded to the burbs, or Hansel and Gretel’s witch was running a scam to lure unsuspecting twenty-first century children into her clutches. Based on my past experiences, my money was on the witch.
I pushed through the gate and walked up the old-world stone pathway to the front of the home. I studied the copper mailbox attached to the wall next to the door covered in painted flowers, unable to decide whether to barge right in or knock first. Luckily, someone made the decision for me.
The door flew open and a man reached out, grabbed me by the arms and yanked me toward him. I reacted, of course, in true Protector mode and used my body’s momentum to throw him off balance. We tumbled onto the hardwood floor, banging my head and making the world go fuzzy for a moment. However, I could see well enough to know the bear-size man was already on his feet while I still fought to catch my breath. But I wasn’t out of the skirmish yet.
Wrapping my legs around his, I rolled and brought Grizzly Adams’s big brother down—thankfully not on top of me. This time, I was the first one off the floor. Scrambling to my feet, I drew back my arm in preparation to knock Bear Man flat again should he ever get off the floor. I may not have much body weight, but I do pack one helluva wallop, if I do say so myself. In fact, I was a bit disappointed when I didn’t get to belt the lug.
An elderly lady, the epitome of a sweet grandmother, burst out of nowhere and held up her hand to ward off any blows I could land on my attacker. Her buxomly form stretched the seams of her workout outfit, and hot pink running shoes completed her look. She frowned and shook a finger at us. “Stop fighting this instant. I will not tolerate fighting in the foyer. If you two want to wrestle, take it downstairs to the gym.”
The gym? How can a little cottage have a gym?
She glared at me, her expectation of my obedience obvious, and I lowered my fists. Still, I kept at the ready just in case the big guy wasn’t listening to General Grandmother. “Fine by me. I didn’t come here to fight.” I tossed Grizzly Gus a fierce look. “But I won’t shy away from one, either.”
“Good. I abhor violence except as a last resort.”
With Grandma between me and my attacker, I took a second to survey the entry. Instead of a staircase leading up to another level, the foyer consisted of one white unadorned wall stretching in a nearly complete circle from the front door. Several doors, all exactly the same, with no names or numbers to identify them, were set into the wall. Whoever had decorated the place was into minimalism to a major degree.
She nodded her approval of my statement of non-aggression and offered her hand to my ex-opponent. For her to help this gigantic man to his feet would have proven a difficult task for an older woman had not one very strange thing happened. Once Grandma and Bear joined hands, he began to shrink. My eyes most assuredly popped out of my head, but still my brain refused to believe what I saw. The big guy transformed into a dwarf-sized man. Grandma made a few strange clicking sounds and the diminutive man nodded, glared at me once and exited through one of the doors.
“How the hell—”
“You’ll have to forgive him, Ms. Randall, but his people take the job of security for our building very seriously. After what happened, he feels he’s let the Society down. Although I don’t know why he blames himself. He wasn’t on duty during the time of the robbery. Now if you’ll follow me, I’ll take you where you need to go.”
“Wait a sec. How the fuck did he…” Wouldn’t you know my brain would freeze, leaving my mouth forsaken of the question I wanted to ask?
She paused and waited for me to get the super glue out of my mouth. She apparently decided, however, that I wasn’t going to get mentally unstuck and decided to move on. “Really, Ms. Randall, I don’t like to criticize, but foul language does not become you. You’re such a pretty young woman, why make yourself ugly by using profanity?”
I ignored the recrimination about my language, intent on a more important topic of discussion. “His people? There are more of these incredible shrinking giants around?” Without saying a word, she unlocked and passed through the middle door in the wall, then started down a long narrow hallway. I hustled to fall into step beside her. “But how did he shrink?”
She paused to face me, folding her hands in front of her as if getting ready to teach an academically challenged child. “Oh, I forgot. You don’t know, do you? You’re a Protector Level Ten, right?”
At my nod, she pivoted and continued down the hall. “Harry—we call him Harry because earthlings can’t pronounce his real name—is from the planet we call XP234-2935.”
I stopped, unsure I’d heard her correctly. “He’s from another planet?”
Again she halted, turned to me and clasped her hands. “Yes, dear. Harry is from another planet.” She smiled at me in a patronizing way and I struggled to keep from telling her my IQ. “Don’t they teach Protectors about the other races in the universe?”
Uh, no. “If they did, I must’ve missed the class.” I started to laugh, but cut it short when I saw she was serious. “You’re not kidding, are you? He really is from another planet? He’s a real alien from outer space?”
She shushed me and put a manicured fingernail to her lips. “Please don’t call him an alien. He’s adopted earth as his second home and you’ll insult him if you call him an alien. In fact, he considers himself as much of an American as you or I.”
“Wow. Talk about the great melting pot.”
“Exactly.” She motioned for me to follow again. I obeyed, trying not to trip over my jaw hanging to my feet.
We must have walked for more than five minutes but the hallway kept on going and going and going. I wondered how the length of a hallway inside the small building I’d entered could extend more than ten times the length of the entire house. Or at least, the length of the entire house as it had appeared on the outside. The whole place was fast leaving the boundaries of space and dimension behind.
I’ve hunted supernatural creatures for years and I’d thought I’d seen everything imaginable as well as some things I’d considered quite unimaginable. Man, was I ever wrong! I’d met my first alien from space and walked down a hallway defying the laws of physics. What would I encounter next?
At last, we reached the end of the corridor where the hallway split into a T-formation and came to yet another white door. Grandma winked at me, knocked and called to whoever was behind the door, “Reslind, she’s here.” After giving me a pat on the shoulder, she turned and continued down the hallway to the right.
“Hey! Where’re you going?” All at once, I felt like a child on her first day of school and Mom was abandoning me to fend for myself. “I didn’t catch your name.”
Grandma pivoted again and assumed her regular pose. “No, you didn’t because I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry. I don’t know where my manners are.” She giggled and suddenly looked decades younger. “Jack always said I was an impertinent gal. I’m Marilyn, Ms. Randall, and it was very nice to meet you.” With another wink, she resumed her pace away from me.
“Good to meet you, too, Marilyn.” I glanced at the door and when I turned back to her, she was gone. “Wow. For an old chick, she sure can move fast.”
“She’s pretty quick on her feet.”
I wheeled toward the door and took a ninja stance, ready for anything. An overweight, balding man held up his palms in defense. “Whoa, young lady. I’m sorry I startled you, but I don’t believe my action deserves an attack.” His face took on an odd expression. Was he trying to smile? From the pitiful attempt, I could tell the guy didn’t practice the gesture often. “I see you met Marilyn. I’m Reslind.”
“I did. Well, sort of. I didn’t get all of her name.”
“Oh, well, Marilyn’s rather secretive. But who can blame her? After all the fuss about her relationship with John Kennedy, you can understand why she’d like to keep a low profile. Please, come inside.”
“John Kennedy?” I took him by the arm, keeping him with me. “Marilyn has a thing with a guy named John Kennedy?”
“Had. She had a relationship with him. John is dead.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Still, they must’ve gotten tired of the comparison.”
“Comparison? What do you mean?” Reslind pried my fingers off his arm. “Who would they be compared to?”
“You know. The Marilyn and the John Kennedy, the former President of the United States. Granted, she doesn’t look much like the movie star bombshell, but I assume people would’ve made the jokes anyway. You know, because of their famous names.”
Reslind scrutinized me and lifted his eyebrows. Why did everyone in this place make me feel as though I’d skipped school the day the brains were handed out?
“Ms. Randall, I fear you don’t understand. Marilyn—our Marilyn—is that Marilyn Monroe.”
Okay, so either I was going crazy or the people who ran the office were certifiable. Frankly, at this point, I wasn’t sure which option to choose. “But Marilyn Monroe died a long time ago.”
“Ah, I see. The Protector classes aren’t covering much history, are they?” He tipped his head to stare at me over his horn-rimmed glasses. “My dear, at the request of President Kennedy, Marilyn’s death was manufactured. Staged, as Marilyn liked to say. The real Marilyn came to work for us the day the news media reported her death to the nation. She’s been an invaluable asset to the Society for over forty years. Now perhaps we can get on with the reason you’re here?”
I just met the real Marilyn Monroe. Oh. My. God. “But what about the woman they buried?”
“Mary was an android.” He pivoted, once more closing the discussion on Marilyn. “Ms. Randall, are you coming?”
An android? Holy shit.
I followed my new escort through the door and into a room much like any other living room in America. A television served as the focal point with a conventional couch, loveseat and ottoman facing the screen. Pictures of landscapes dotted the walls, while knickknacks sat on the two end tables and coffee table. This was the type of room I’d have expected to find in a cottage. Nonetheless, I frowned, unable to stop the disillusionment flowing through me. After meeting Harry the Alien and Marilyn Monroe, I guess I’d expected something more than a typical living room.
“I can see you’d hoped for something, shall we say, less ordinary.”
“Oh, well, maybe…” I didn’t want to appear rude, but knew I couldn’t hide the truth. “Yeah, I guess.”
Reslind surveyed the room as though trying to see it through my eyes. “I can understand your disappointment. But we wanted you to see where the Bracelet of Invincibility was kept. Er, at least until it was taken.”
Had I missed something? I took another look around the room and tried to picture a rare and powerful weapon safely hidden away. But where? In between the couch cushions? Behind the painting on the wall? “No way. You guys kept a valuable piece of weaponry in here?”
Reslind studied me, making me feel like a bug under a microscope. “Ms. Randall, don’t you see how one should never take anything or anyone at face value?” Accepting my silence as his answer, he crossed over to the lamp beside the couch and flipped the switch, filling the room with light. He dropped his hands to his side and waited for my reaction as if he’d revealed the Hope diamond and I’d called it a chunk of gravel.
“Am I missing something?” I tried to keep my tone level, without my usual sarcasm, and failed.
Within seconds, the furniture started dissolving through the floor. The walls to the room fell away, melting before my eyes, to reveal a room rivaling NASA’s Mission Control. I glanced around, once again having to force myself to close my mouth. One large monitor after another lined the upper portion of the new walls, and machines of various descriptions and sizes blinked lights and fed information into the screens. The scenes on the monitors caught my attention. Row after row, the picture was the same. Exact duplicates of the living room we’d been standing in seconds before flickered on the monitors.
“Each of those rooms contains various articles of importance, power or wealth. Can you see where the objects are?”
I stepped up to the closest one and squinted. “Nope. Looks like the room we’re in—or were in.”
“Exactly. Yet each of those rooms contains many objects of value. For instance, watch the sofa on Monitor Seven.” Reslind pressed a button on a machine below the monitor.
I followed his direction. To my amazement
, the sofa flipped over, exposing a long cylindrical tube covered with red spots. “What is that thing?”
“‘That thing’ as you put it is a weapon from the planet SC29711-103. To activate it, the operator touches those red spots in a specific order. Then a laser beam of immeasurable power travels in a path of destruction for a distance of not less than one hundred light years, cutting a hole through anything and anyone in its way.”
“And you’re hiding this weapon under a couch?” I stepped away from the monitor in an instinctual reflex of alarm. I didn’t want to accidentally push any button—especially the wrong button. “What did the people of planet SC-whatever do with a such a powerful weapon and how did the Society take possession?”
Reslind’s stern composure crumpled in what I surmised was a show of emotion. “The people of SC29711-103 used it to annihilate their enemies on the planet SC29711-104. We received this one from a weapons dealer who took it off their decimated planet after an equally horrific weapon, launched moments after their attack, impacted their world and wiped out their civilization. Many millennia’s worth of progress and culture of two thriving civilizations were gone within seconds.”
“Both worlds are gone?” Sometimes I wondered if any intelligent life existed in the universe—including on earth. “And no one survived?”
“Both planets were obliterated, and no, no one on either planet escaped extermination.”
I looked at the weapon with new eyes and the realization of the office’s purpose struck me with a thud in my gut. “These are everyday living rooms in an everyday cottage in an everyday neighborhood. And this building holds all these rooms? In other words, you’re telling me the main office is a holding house for intergalactic weapons of mass destruction?”
“Yes. Providing secure housing for unusual weaponry is one of many functions we perform.”
“But why here? Why not in a place with more security, like cement walls, super-powered guards, or a frickin’ army to keep them out of the hands of the bad guys? How about on an uninhabited planet? Why risk our world by keeping all this possible destruction here?”