by Monica Rossi
And she was lying about not knowing, she’d just lied right to his face, there was no way she hadn’t known what she was doing. Making him think he’d found someone he could make a home with. He’d let her close to Morgan for God’s sake, there’s no telling what she’d done to her when he hadn’t been around.
He threw a leg over the seat of his motorcycle, prepared to ride until he couldn’t think anymore, but then he looked up and saw the last person he needed to see standing across the street.
Demon.
He got back off his bike and strode across the street until he was less than a foot away. He considered that smug face for a moment and then he punched him in the jaw with all the strength he could muster, which was considerable.
Demon staggered to the side, unprepared for the blow, and came up holding his jaw. A jaw that would be shattered if he were a human, “I’ll give you that one, brother, for old times sake. But that’s the only one.”
“You heard what just happened in there,” Red’s voice almost shook with rage. Here was the one person who could twist the knife deeper and he just happened to be standing outside Sidney’s door.
Demon shrugged in response, “I could not give a shit less what you and Sidney do or don’t do. I came here to talk about what happened in Asheville.”
“Yes Demon, tell me what exactly did happen in Asheville, because unless you’ve got him stashed in your back pocket, I don’t see Big Dog or the other two with you.”
“I told you on the phone Red this shit is bigger than Big Dog, we need to think about it, talk about it with the guys, make plans before we run in half cocked and fuck things up.”
“What does any of that shit have to do with Big Dog, Trainz, and BillCo? That guy you were talking about, he’s got nothing to do with us. Nothing to do with Three Rivers.”
Demon’s eyes hardened, “You’re angry right now, you’re not looking at the bigger picture. You need to calm down and think things through.”
“Oh I’ve thought about it,” Red’s voice trembled with rage, “I’ve thought about it every goddamn day since he helped someone take my daughter and lock her in a fucking metal storage unit. I’ve thought about it Demon, about ripping him limb from limb and letting him bleed out slowly. I’ve thought about all the different ways that man could die and all of them at my hand. So don’t hand me any crap about thinking things through because that’s all I’ve thought about.”
“And I’m telling you that we may need Big Dog in the future, we don’t know anything about this guy or whether or not he does have plans for Three Rivers. And until we know, we shouldn’t do anything that would jeopardize a tool we could use against him.”
“The only thing I need for Big Dog to do is die, and if you won’t bring him to me then I’ll go get him myself.” Red turned on his heel, leaving Demon with his jaw clenched. He didn’t care. Fuck him, fuck Sidney and fuck anyone else who wanted to get in his way.
“Yes, sir. Every single test subject except one is dead,” the small bespectacled man’s voice carried a tremor, a tell that he was scared of Fredrick’s response.
“And how exactly did they die?” Frederick kept his calm, this small man had obviously had nothing to do with the break in at the lab. He was about to piss in his pants at having to report about it as it was, there was no way he’d have the balls to actually cause the destruction that had been left in the wake of the break in.
“Sir, they were all stabbed, directly through the heart.”
“I see, and why was that one left alive,” he pointed towards the door with his one remaining test subject.
“We don’t know. It’s possible the people who did this thought they’d already killed everyone and just missed him, or either it’s some kind of message, though I don’t know what it could be. We took the feeding tube out so that we could ask him some questions, if he’d heard anything or if he had seen anyone, but he just kept screaming and begging to be killed. He probably heard the intruder as he killed the rest of them, you know those kinds have exceptional hearing. ”
“Hmm, yes. Well, unlock the door and let me see him, maybe he’ll answer a few questions for me.”
“Sir, I’m sorry, we had to sedate him. He tried to swallow his own tongue, we didn’t want to lose the only subject we have left,” the lab technician looked at the floor. Frederick didn’t know why these people were so scared of him. He’d always treated them fairly and only a few had been terminated due to incompetence. He always tried to keep his people happy. Happy people produced the best results.
“That’s fine,” he looked at the man’s name tag, “John, I’ll question him later. So tell me about Carol. Any idea how she came to be here, and dead?”
“The security team thinks she let in whoever did this. We did an internal autopsy and found that she’d had consensual sex prior to her death. The general theory among security is that she’d found someone to bring in and instead of waiting until the staff was here to admit him, she lured him here thinking she’d admit him herself, and he overpowered her.”
“Hmm, well that explains why she’s dead, but why would somebody then try to sabotage the lab? Killing the subjects and destroying all of the powder? What about the security cameras, do we have any footage from the events of last night?”
“No, sir. All of the cameras flashed white and stopped recording at around one AM.”
“And the security on duty?”
“All dead, sir, knife wounds to the heart.”
“I see, well what is your theory, John. Security isn’t paid to think, but you are.”
“Sir, I can’t give you conclusive data because there are too many unknowns,” the poor man was beginning to shake.
“I didn’t ask for conclusive data John, I asked for your thoughts.”
“I.. um… Sir, if I had to guess then I’d say someone found out who Carol really was, seduced her, and used her to let a team in here to destroy the lab.”
Frederick nodded, that was more plausible than a single captured test subject taking down all the security, disabling the surveillance, killing all the subjects, stealing the powder, and getting out without anyone being the wiser.
“Good work John, lead the team in cleaning up and then start manufacturing more samples to test. No permanent damage has been done, we’ll just be delayed for a bit. I’ll have the field team work on getting you some more test subjects.”
“Yes, sir,” John gave an odd little bow and turned to walk away, his white lab coat swishing as he went.
Frederick was annoyed, but no more than that. He was playing a long game, and this was just a bump in the road to a much bigger destination.
He walked to the door where his one remaining test subject was housed and looked through the window. The meat that lay on the table was only just recognizable as human, the flesh of his legs and arms seemed to be disintegrating, making his limbs into four red lumpy masses that stuck off his torso. They’d had to remove the straps that secured them down because there wasn’t enough muscle there to hold them up, the straps just cut right through, like a spoon through gelatin.
Frederick was not satisfied with the result. The powder was performing, but not the way he wanted it to. He didn’t need something that would torture a patient while it demuscled him over days. He needed something that would kill on contact. He needed something that looked and smelled innocuous enough that he could mass produce it and distribute it amongst the general population. He needed something that would kill anything that had the tiniest drop of supernatural blood in its body, while leaving humans unharmed.
It was going to be tricky, and it might take years to come up with the correct formula, but he had no doubt he would be successful.
In the meantime, he had other plans to work on.
Sidney tried to concentrate. She tried to see the apple in her mind, the red and green dappled skin, the yellowish flesh it contained, the core with its dark seeds, the delicious juice that should be causing the apple to explode
at any moment… at any moment now the apple was going to explode. Any moment now that delicious juicy apple is just going to burst.
She let out her breath and slumped, “It’s no use,” her stomach rumbled. “See, I don’t want the apple to explode, I want to eat the stupid thing.”
They sunny orchard was serene, the big leaves creating a melody as she and Cord sat, knees touching, on the ground between two heavily burdened apple trees.
“You’re not concentrating. You forget that I can see what you’re thinking.”
How could she be expected to concentrate when she felt like lying down, closing her eyes and not talking to a single person until her soul felt whole again, instead of like it had been broken into a thousand little pieces. Her insides felt hollow and empty and she just wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else other than in this cheerful clearing with this gorgeous man. Sidney fingered the grass beside her and wished for the thousandth time that she were at home in bed wallowing in self pity instead of sitting here trying to learn how to explode apples with Cord.
“And what good would that do you?” Cord cocked an eyebrow at her, his beautiful eyes sympathetic, but he still wasn’t giving her any slack.
“I don’t feel like doing this, wouldn’t it be better if I tried this stuff when I didn’t feel like drinking a bottle of wine and watching something depressing enough to make me feel better about my life? Maybe I could read Ethan Frome and thank God I’m not at staged sledding accident levels of hopelessness yet.”
“Do you only treat sick gerbils when you feel like it?”
“No, but that’s work.”
He nodded, “And so is this. Look, nothing is ever easy. You don’t wake up one day and suddenly you’re the best painter in the world, you have to work at it.”
“Yeah, but some people have talent, which I clearly do not have at apple explosions.”
Cord made a pshawing sound, “If talent was all you needed there wouldn’t be a single witch alive, or artist for that matter, who ever amounted to anything. You can have a talent for something and if you don’t practice it, the best you’ll ever be is mediocre. But on the other hand, you can find something really hard to learn, and work on it day and night and still be better than anyone else. That’s how hard work, practice, and learning works.”
Sidney nodded, she agreed, in theory. But today she just needed a little space. She needed to breathe and see how it felt. She needed to accept that Red had left her because of his own issues and it had nothing to do with her.
She knew it, mentally, but she needed to really accept it and try to move on. And that process included wine, tears, and sappy made for TV movies. Not sitting in a field with ants crawling on her while she tried, unsuccessfully, to do some hocus pocus on an apple.
“Here, we’re going to try something else. Fuck this apple,” Cord picked up the apple and threw it hard, making it fly far out of sight.
“You should have played baseball,” she said, looking the direction the apple had traveled.
“I did, but that was before I learned how to do that and I sucked, I got to pick daisies out in left field every game,” he grinned at her.
“I thought I had to go in order.” She’d began working with water because that was what she’d been told to do, and after reading multiple books, taking copious notes, and listening to Fran go on and on and on about water ad nauseam, she was finally getting to try her hand at it. She should really be more excited but all she felt was a deep numbness. And she really should be working with Fran, who it seemed, was exceptional at water magic, but she’d had something else to do that morning so Cord had been assigned to help Sidney. Not that she was complaining. Even with the mind reading, she’d take Cord over Fran any day of the week. It was amazing what a little personality could do for a person. Not that she could fully appreciate it in the mood she was in. Maybe Fran would have been a better match for her mood, come to think of it.
They’d started with water droplets on a plastic cutting mat. Cord had sprinkled the droplets and then instructed Sidney to move them to the edge of the mat one at a time. Sidney had tried so hard her brain felt sore and finally a few of the droplets had moved, but she wasn’t entirely sure that wasn’t because of gravity or some other completely explainable event. Such as Cord tipping the board to make her feel better.
Then they’d moved on to trying to make a glass of milk tip itself over. Sidney had completely failed at that. All she’d gotten the milk to do is ripple a bit as it sat in the glass. Then they’d gone to the orchard to play with apples. So far all she’d made the apple do was sweat, a little of the juice leaking out through the skin.
“Oh we’ll still be working with water, we’re just going to try a different approach,” he jumped up, wiping the grass of his pants, the kind Sidney was now mentally referring to as Zen pants, before he held a hand out to help Sidney up. “Come with me,” he said, walking back toward the path they’d come on.
She watched the sun play across the muscles in his back as he walked. It really was a shame he was gay. Such a beautiful man.
“My boyfriend doesn’t think it’s a shame,” he turned back and grinned at her, his bright white smile slashing against the dusky olive of his skin. It was a shame, no matter what his boyfriend thought.
“Do you own shirts? I have yet to see you wear one. I may not be rich but if you need a couple of teeshirts I’m sure I could grab you a few from Wal-Mart.”
“I just like feeling closer to nature, I wouldn’t wear pants if I could get away with it.”
“Those things you call pants are almost skirts, except with a giant slit up each side,” she actually thought they were really cute and considered asking him where he got them. They’d be wonderful on yoga day.
“I’ll have you know that I make these pants myself, and they are all the rage in Mysteria,” he made a sharp turn, taking them off the path that would lead back to Bree’s house.
She followed, the trail getting narrower with tree branches beginning to inhibit their progress, “Mysteria?”
“Yeah, it’s a temporary town that pops up at Transformus every year.”
“Transformus, of course, how silly of me.”
“Oh my God Sidney, do you live under a rock? It’s a free expression art festival slash burn that happens every year.”
Whatever that was, “Ok,” she’d just take his word for it. “So where are we going?”
“You’ll see, it’s not much further.”
They walked in silence, Sidney trying to turn her mind away each time it landed on Red. But it wasn’t much use, all she could think about was how cold he’d looked when she’d told him what she was. Cold and unfeeling. It was hard to believe the man who had been so caring with his daughter, with her, could turn into stone at the mention of a single word. Witch.
“You really shouldn’t have told him, but I understand why you did.”
Sidney blew a piece of hair out of her face, “How does your boyfriend deal with you reading his mind all the time.”
“He doesn’t because I don’t. That’s no way to have a relationship.”
“Well can you do me the same courtesy?”
“Nope,” he said quickly and unapologetically. “I have to keep myself open to you to help you learn how to think while you’re practicing.”
“Well can’t you just turn it off while we’re not practicing?”
He sighed, “It’s obvious you don’t know how hard it is to turn this off and on so I’m going to go with the short answer. No.”
“Whatever,” she said, annoyed that he had the ability to give her privacy but refused to do so.
“But you really can’t blame him for his reaction,” Cord steered them back to the subject.
“I sure can, I can’t help that I’m a witch, any more than he can help that he’s a shifter. It’s not like I asked for this.”
“That’s true, but his kind has a taboo against even dealing with witches at all. They have like this big
book that dictates how shifters should behave. It’s like a religion, with no God.”
“And his book says he can’t be with a witch.”
“His book says he can’t even associate with certain kinds of creatures. I mean we aren’t supposed to have children with them, for obvious reasons, but we can associate with whoever we want. All living beings are part of a whole? Why would we be prejudiced against one group?”
Sidney didn’t know what those obvious reasons were, but she had other questions. “Bree called them ‘nasty shifters’ when I first met her. That seems a little prejudiced to me.”
“Bree has had some bad blood with shifters in the past, mostly because they were so intent on hating us. Sometimes that rubs off on others. Fran, for example, doesn’t care much for shifters either. But don’t worry, it’s not like a rule that you can only live with, date, or even marry other witches or humans. We’re an open welcoming bunch. Hell my boyfriend is a Faery.”
Sidney stopped in her tracks, “You’re dating a Tinkerbell?”
Cord rolled his eyes, “Your parents really suck. Someone should have told you at least a little bit about how the world works.”
She agreed that her parents sucked, however that didn’t get him out of answering the millions of questions that were flying through her head.
“But really, a fairy? Like with fairy dust and everything?” Sidney was going to have to get someone to sit down and tell her exactly which mythical creatures were real and which one weren’t, so that if she came face to face with a centaur in the forest she wouldn’t shame them all by passing out or accidentally looking at his junk.