Twins of Prey II: Homecoming

by W. C. Hoffman

  16 Well

  Dropping to the ground to take cover, each of the remaining angels stationed themselves behind some form of furniture. The couch, love seat, and piano had become their bunkers.

  “What in the hell was that?” DC asked.

  “A fucking arrow came in from through that back screened porch area,” Michael replied still in place ducking behind the piano.

  “This is bullshit, who uses a bow and arrow and who has the guts to shoot at us?” Gabriel said in an angry manor of disbelief.

  “I don’t, know but we sure as hell are going to find out,” said Michael.

  “I’ll go check it out, I’m gonna straight up kill this mutha, ” DC said.

  Michael was surprised by this valiant show of courage and was not sure if DC was being a hero or was just dumb. Either way he was okay with the idea.

  “You do that I’ll head up stairs and watch from the window as your lookout,” Michael replied.

  “No, that’s a bad idea, we all need to stay together,” Gabriel pleaded not wanting to be left alone and showing a chink in his tough guy armored bravado.

  All three of them, now on their knees aimed their guns at the back porch not focusing on what was behind them. The quickness and silence of Tomek’s approach was all but equal to the stalking of a mountain lion upon an unsuspecting whitetail fawn. The main difference being that the fawn would have a chance to run.

  With three bounds from his position around the corner, he now stood directly behind Michael. Being that close to his prey and not striking, he heard Uncle’s voice,

  Kill when you strike, do not hesitate. The serpent can still bite after you remove his head.

  Uncle’s lesson was in reference to a time that the boys had a raccoon in a trap and had spent the majority of an afternoon rattling the cage and poking at it with various objects while laughing at the reactions they got from the furiously freighted animal. It was a time when they were still young and although they had been talked to about killing and the importance of taking the life from a living creature, it was not something they had yet to accomplish on their own. This lesson was Uncle’s way of teaching them to kill quick and clean. Drake learned this lesson and followed it with pride, Tomek who was much like his brother in some ways, differed in this approach.

  Tomek reached down grabbing the hair of Michael and using a flint-napped stone knife and sliced upward from the bottom of the angel’s jaw line towards the sky with his other hand. The vicious cut removed the soft cartridge part of the earlobe sending it flinging into the air where Tomek snagged it for a trophy as he ran forward towards the other two leaving Michael screaming in pain, but very much alive. Michael screeched as he fired his rifle into the side wall multiple times causing his partnering angels to duck back into their respective hiding spots.

  Henderson still below in the pit quickly extinguished the flame from the lighter upon hearing the commotion and shots being fired. At that moment she had no clue as to what was going on above her but did not want to become a target. Staying alive in the dark was better than being dead in the light.

  Before Gabriel and DC could turn to see what had happened behind them, Tomek had run between the two throwing down a homemade grenade-like ball which consisted of a fine ground powder of fermented nutmeg mixed with the dried and crushed up body of a bhut jolokia pepper from their garden. The peppers were known to the boys as scorpion breath peppers and while they were not natural to Michigan they were grown every year in their gardens. Often they would open them up and rub them on branches and rocks in areas that they did not want deer to enter. The high level of capsaicin present in the peppers would drive away anything that came near it. It was the perfect all natural garden protector.

  The ingredients of this attack grenade were then wrapped in a wet cheese cloth, dipped in wet riverbank clay which dried into a shell like casing. This allowed them to store the weapon as well as throw it a great distance if need be. Another specialty of Uncle’s training, the grenades were usually the twins’ best form of bear repellant, but it also worked just the same on unsuspecting humans.

  The mystified powder latched onto every bit of moisture in their eyes, mouth, and throat. All three angels grabbed at their throats and eyes as they withered in pain yelling obscenities and waving their guns about the room only to see the shadowy figure of Tomek exit and run through the kitchen escaping out the back door. Gabriel remained on the ground as he had caught the largest amount of the debilitating mixture while DC got to his feet and rushed into the kitchen reaching for the sink to turn on the water.

  DC struggled once at the sink to breath and found no relief from the water that would of normally come from the faucet. Only this particular sink was not in operation at the moment as Henderson had yet to fix the plumbing in this side of the house. Turning to the back door he remembered the old well was just outside in a little courtyard near the parking lot. The fieldstone lined well resembled a theme park wishing well meant to collect the quarters of wishers more so than it did a water source but with the burning of every mucus membrane in his head he did not care, DC just wanted water.

  Stumbling out the back door, the angel headed straight for the well and once reaching the side wall he dropped to his knees. With his head over the ledge he spit a large amount of saliva and snot that the powder was causing his olfactory senses to create into the darkness of the hole. Hearing the sound of his phlegm splash onto the water below DC grabbed the rope tied bucket next to him and tossed it down.

  Only he never heard the bucket make contact with the water as he expected. Turning around to check the rope he wiped his eyes and saw both Tomek and Drake standing there. One of the boys was holding the end of the thin rope just short of where it was tied to the cinder block that acted as the buckets anchor. Unable to see exactly who they were he shook his head again as if he was seeing double.

  The shake did little to clear his blurred vision as he reached for the pistol tucked loosely in his waistband. Pulling the small handgun up and pointing it back down towards the house where the twins stood he blinked again and they were gone. Turning back on his hands and knees he looked down into the well and while he could not see the bucket the moon’s full reflection gleamed on the water’s surface below which motivated him all the more to lift it up. Turning back around to grab the cinder block and pull it closer to the well he figured that would give him the slack needed for the bucket to reach the water.

  Again, just as the twins had vanished before him so had the cement block. Looking around, spinning wildly in a circle DC could not tell if he was indeed going crazy or if it was perhaps the Devil himself playing these tricks on him as a test of his faith.

  “Jesus Christ be with me, be with me in this momenmmm...” DC said asking for help from the Son of Christ but was unable to finish his reverent plea due to the block’s rope now wrapped around his neck. He sprung up to his feet grabbing at his neck and running towards the house only to be yanked off the ground and into the air by Tomek’s pulling of the rope backwards. Seeing his feet airborne above his head as his back slammed against the ground DC again began clawing at the rope which was double wrapped around his neck at this point cutting off his air supply.

  With his fingernails digging at the rope and penetrating his own skin the neck began to bleed from the multiple puncture wounds he was creating in a failed attempt and catching even the slightest bit of air. Getting back up to his knees he looked up and saw Drake standing there with the cinder block on the edge of the well’s rock ledge. DC began running at him but again was yanked to the ground as Drake nudged the heavy chunk of cement down into the well.

  The falling weight tightened the rope robbing DC of the slack he needed to escape the trap. He slammed onto the brick pavers that were so intricately placed years ago and slid on his stomach towards the well’s side as the block made contact with the water below. The sinking weight pulled tighter and tighter as DC took his panicked last look around through his eyes which were
failing due to every blood vessel in them exploding as he choked to death as the dark night faded away. Faded away into nothing. DC’s body went limp and again, all was silent. On the outside of the house anyway.

  17 Falling

  Knowing they still had two more angels in the house to deal with both Tomek and Drake stepped into the kitchen through the back door the same way DC had run out. They knew their foes had guns but the twins held them in very little regard. From what they had seen they were now hunting boys, not men and certainly not deputies. Drake with his knives in grip stood next to Tomek who had his new bow in hand. He had grown fond of the new Predator three-piece takedown recurve bow Hawkins had given him. The Michigan made bow was much prettier than his self-made bows of days gone by and was deadly accurate.

  Entering the door and seeing the body lying in the kitchen floor, split in half from the window slamming down upon his stomach, they grew more curious as to what had happened. Drake reached over to the wall and flicked a switch turning on the kitchen and dining room lights.

  “Who the hell do you think did that?” Tomek asked.

  “These guys are nothing short of animals, pure ghetto bred heathens. They probably did it to each other. They disgust me. Truthfully, we are doing the world a favor, let’s kill them all just so we don’t have to deal with them later,” Drake said showing his brother he clearly viewed the angels as less than human.

  “What about her?” Tomek asked.

  “You know why we are here, when we find her we will deal with it our way,” Drake answered.

  Tomek then reminded his brother “Yea, but Hawkins said,”

  “Hawkins said protect her from the angels, we are doing that,” Drake then continued “But he sure as shit didn’t say what to do with her after that,” Drake replied.

  “So what is the plan?” Tomek asked.

  Drake took a longer pause than before to answer, “I don’t know, I just don’t okay.”

  “Yea,” Tomek said.

  “We tried to kill her, then she tried to kill us. Fair is fair right? Or no, I wish I knew what Uncle would do,” Tomek pondered aloud but his thoughts quickly turned back to their current task at hand as they heard the floor boards in the living room area creak warning them that someone was approaching.

  Drake slinked into the corner with his back flat against the wall panty’s cupboard doors waiting for the unknowing victim to step into the dining room while Tomek covered his back entering the kitchen with an arrow nocked. They waited and waited but heard and saw nothing for almost twenty minutes. Tomek grew restless and entered the dining room signaling to Drake that he was going to head back outside and around the front of the building where he would then enter through the front door. This way they thought whoever was hiding in the living room area trying to wait them out would think they had left while truly being flanked and surrounded.

  Exiting out the back door, Tomek let it slam shut to build the illusion that they had left. He then circled the wooded and ivy-covered side of the brick house passing over a small garden area and metal bike racks finding his way to the front porch. Slowly entering the front door, all stealth was now lost as it creaked open as if they were watching one of the campy old scary movies that Hawkins was fond of on late night television.

  With the creaking of the door, Gabriel sprang up to his feet and began running full speed from the living room towards the back door of the dining room trap that Drake had set perfectly for him.

  “Coming your way!” Tomek yelled letting his brother know to get ready. Tomek drew his bow back but the combination of dark and a running target did not give him the clearance he needed for a shot. Letting the arrow down he chased after Gabriel.

  As Gabriel jumped over the hole in the floor his landing area was directly in front of Drake. Drake saw the flash of his body as it entered the doorway and he swung at Gabriel with his knife in a backhand motion fully expecting to make contact with the angel’s chest and drive the blade deep into the heart. Only there was no Gabriel there, no chest, and no heart. Drake had missed completely and the off-balance clumsiness of not making contact spun him around the door’s edge causing his momentum to fling him down to the ground on his side.

  Rolling over, he looked up to see what had happened just as he saw Gabriel blast through the screen door. Getting back up to his feet, he took two bounds and knew exactly why his previous strike had landed nothing but air. Looking down it was clear to see on the smeared linoleum floor that after he jumped the hole, Gabriel had landed in the blood of the dead window boy, started slipping and fell backward avoiding the swinging knife as if he was doing a life and death version of the limbo game.

  Drake got up, slipped on the blood himself, and regained his balance before hitting the ground and followed the bloody footsteps of Gabriel out the door and into the wood line. Tomek moving through the living room, watched as his brother was leaving the house. In an effort to join his twin, Tomek took a running start and leaped in the air to bound over the hole that unbeknownst to him, held his sister at the bottom who had stayed silent this entire time just observing what she could of the action happening above her.

  Upon reaching the opposite end of the hole, Tomek’s foot broke through the weak and dry-rotted historic wooden flooring. The area cut by the angels had deteriorated the entire section of flooring and as he dropped through it, his bow and the nocked arrow were ripped from his grip and tumbled downward into the cellar landing at Henderson’s feet. If not for Tomek’s outreached grip on one of the floor joists, he would have the same fate as his bow, and his sister.

  Tomek hung there, from one arm strung out dangling above Henderson and yet at this point she was unaware of exactly who was above her. Henderson picked up the bow and felt around for the arrow. In a short matter of seconds, she had found the arrow and had it nocked onto the string. Feeling the smoothness of the bow’s wood and the manufactured quality of it made her think there was no way it was a weapon that her brothers could have made by hand. Therefore the thought of it being Tomek dangling above her had yet to cross her mind. Until she heard his voice and not only was it his voice, it was what he yelled.

  “Drake, help!” Tomek screamed his brother’s name in a desperate attempt of his voice reaching his twin’s ears outside of the house. “Drake, Cemel Dosce!” Tomek yelled again.

  Having reached the wood line following Gabriel’s tracks, Drake heard his brother yell for help but ignored it knowing that whatever Tomek was dealing with Drake knew he was capable of handling it on his own. Drake had taken two more steps into the wood line’s thicket when he heard the Latin.

  “Cemel Dosce,” Tomek yelled again. This time Drake stopped in his tracks turned and began sprinting back to the house. Tomek continued to yell, but it was no longer Tomek’s voice Drake was hearing, it was Uncle’s.

  When you boys are in trouble, I mean dead-like trouble you must ask for help from each other but also from yourself. Your inner beast must fight for you as hard as your fellow twin beast does. Call out your beast with Cemel Dosce which in Latin means know thyself. With this call you will summon yourself and your brother to your aide. Use it sparingly and always remember to know thyself.

  Drake had never heard Tomek use the call, not when dealing with a bear, not when fighting a deputy, and not even when drowning inside the flooded cabin. But hanging there, ready to fall into the unknown darkness Tomek yelled it again, with all his might.

  Henderson’s shoulder and arm still injured from her fall throbbed with pain, but she fought through it in pulling the nocked arrow back. Unable to hold it for more than a mere second or two she let it down again in order to get a better shot up through the broken floorboards at her hanging little brother that was like a giant piñata full of hate. She knew from their unexpected showing at the funeral that they had survived, but until this moment she was not totally sure if it was them on that roof top or not. Now there was no doubt. Still as she pulled back and tried to aim at Tomek her mind raced on, wonde
ring, asking if she could actually kill her own blood again for a second time.

  “Cemel Dosce!” Tomek yelled as he attempted to swing his free arm up to grab onto the joist. His attempt failed and he remained there waiting to be saved or to fall, whichever came first. The blood inside his veins drained from his grip causing his hand to begin losing both strength and its color. Tomek looked down into the dark and saw nothing. The thought of nothing below him scared him more than if was able to see what he would land on. Be it spikes or water he certainly didn’t think that it would be his sister there in the hole.

  With the bow pulled back again Henderson looked down the arrow shaft trying to line up the center mass of Tomek’s body. With only one arrow this was her only chance. She knew if he fell and landed without being injured she would not be able to take him on in a fight being that her current condition barely let her draw back the bow. Aiming, looking at her brother the string touched her check and found its anchor. She was not an archer by any means, but she remembered the basics from her weekends spent at Camp Linden. The Girl Scouts camp where her original love for the outdoors had bloomed. At this point she convinced herself that shooting Tomek was no different than a Camp Linden hay bale.

  Henderson pictured the bull’s eye target on her brother’s back just as Drake entered the kitchen door two floors above her. Peering through the dimly lit kitchen, all he could see was the black hand of his brother, protruding up from the hole where it held on for life white knuckled. Sprinting towards the hole, Drake’s stomach sank as he saw his brother lose what little grip he had left. Diving to his stomach sliding through the blood, Drake reached down finding the strap to Tomek’s back quiver.

  Grabbing the strap and pulling up instantly stopped Tomek’s descent and almost yanked Drake into the hole himself in return. Yet there they stayed, Drake at the top of the hole laying prone out on his chest in the pool of blood holding his swinging brother. Tomek reached up, grabbing Drake’s free hand and they held tight to each other as if it was some type of a Russian trapeze act they had performed under a circus tent a thousand times.