by Schow, Ryan
The thing about gossiping is it unifies everyone, friends and frenemies alike. Damien isn’t my friend anymore, or an enemy, he’s just someone I used to like but now tolerate (barely) because he had his chance at being with me and he chose to disappoint me instead.
“So do you really like me or not, Damien, which is it?” Apparently the enraged part of me, the vindictive, hurt part of me is taking a backseat to what’s left of my insecurities. I guess I need to have Damien like me just to know someone will.
“Switch subjects in the middle much?” he asks.
“Well?”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says.
Oh my effing God!
“Look, Damien, I have”—I start counting and come up with Brayden, Jacob and Jake as other possibilities for boyfriends—“three guys minimum who would eat a mile of their own shit to have me, so really I’m not hanging on your every word anymore. The truth is, if you want me as a girlfriend, then I’ll consider taking you as a boyfriend, but if not, stop toying with my emotions. And stop wasting my fucking time.”
Okay, that was too harsh and too rated R (have I completely stopped censoring myself???), but still, a lady has to know when to put her foot down, even if dropping an f-bomb to prove a point is so very, very unladylike.
“Good Christ, Abby, tell me how you really feel.”
“You think my world revolves around you? Not anymore. For your information, I have half a dozen crisis’s facing me and you’re not one of them. So right now, at this very moment, if you don’t say something nice, something endearing, or perhaps even something that might undo the damage you have done, I’m going to hang up on you because I have better things to do.”
“Well thanks for making this easy,” he says. His voice is all edge, and then it’s gone. He hangs up on me again.
My eyes and nostrils flare and I’m ready to breathe fire. That’s twice now. Twice! I growl and slam down my phone, then catch sight of myself in the mirror.
I don’t like the girl I see glaring back at me.
When did I become this person?
Am I going to shove all the boys in my life away and go back to being invisible? The truth is, I don’t want boy problems, but having hot guys chase you is better than being an island.
Part of me wants to call Damien back, really peel his face off, but I don’t. What good would that do? I’ve already shoved him away. Do I really want to put the last nail in that coffin, set it on fire and walk away from him forever?
No, I can’t.
I still like Damien, he’s just such a vagina sometimes.
5
At the kitchen table after another brutal class with Sensei Naygel is where I choose to announce my plan for the kidnapping and possible murder of Dr. Aribert Heim. Netty’s mother is already gone and it’s just the three of us: me, Netty and Georgia.
After a huge glass of water and a PB&J sandwich, I say, “We need to get Rebecca back, and it starts with getting rid of that freaking creep, Dr. Heim.”
“Who is Rebecca?” Georgia asks. “And who is Dr. Heim?”
I tell her everything, from my re-kidnapping Rebecca to the bitch in CPS who sold her, to her father trying to kill her, to her being experimented on like us—me and Georgia. Then, when I tell her how Dr. Heim tried to kill me, Georgia’s eyes become ginormous, disbelieving eyeballs. The holy cow eyeballs.
“So, I guess I’m pretty much immortal. Ish. Imortalish.”
“Ish?” Georgia echoes.
“Meaning I heal, but maybe I couldn’t grow a head back, or if my heart is cut out and thrown in a dumpster, I’m not sure my body will re-grow another. So, for now, I think of myself as imortalish.”
“So this Heim guy,” Netty says, “what’s his story?”
“He’s like me, a healer. Except older. Arabelle told me all about him. How he was some sort of Nazi doctor who became a war criminal who became a gynecologist until the public prosecutor’s office in Baden-Baden where he was practicing issued an arrest warrant for him. In 1980, he apparently converted to Islam and then assumed the name Tarek Hussein Farid. Supposedly he died in Cairo in the early nineties, but he didn’t. I think he hooked up with Gerhard about that time. Oh and this guy, he’s blonde and handsome, and one hundred percent Arian. He looks like he’s forty, even though he’s not. This guy was born in 1914. Do the math.”
Netty can’t believe her ears. Georgia, on the other hand, takes the news in stride. Like she has no doubt that these men who altered her DNA to give her an entirely new body—complete with the supernatural DNA necessary to make her a firestarter—could very well develop their own Fountain of Youth.
“Nurse Arabelle told you all this?” Georgia says.
“Not all of it. Most of it though. The rest I Googled. This guy,” I say, “he’s a real piece of work. A twisted motherf*cker if ever there was one.”
Nowadays, the f-bombs are just spewing from my face on their own. Sometimes I’m not really even that embarrassed anymore, even though I know I should be. Because I can’t stop cussing, I have decided to go back to at least censoring them. It’s all I’ve got right now. Sorry, not sorry.
“Do you think Dr. Gerhard is like him, too?” Georgia asks. “Immortal?”
“Yes.”
“Who is he really?” Netty asks.
“You don’t want to know,” I tell her. They’re both practically breathless at this point. I gather my dishes, and theirs, and walk them to the sink. “Basically Dr. Gerhard makes Heim look like a gosh damn saint.”
“I feel like he said something to me when I was in a dream, if it was a dream at all,” Georgia says. “Dr. Gerhard said he was impossible like me.”
“He’s a Nazi war criminal as well,” I tell them both. “The worst of the batch. Dr. Green is what the CIA called him when they smuggled him into the states after the fall of Germany in 1945. Before that he was nicknamed The Angel of Death because he sent more than four hundred thousand Jews and Jewish-sympathizers to their deaths in the gas chambers as the head doctor of Auschwitz prison camp.”
“The Auschwitz?” Netty says. “In Poland?”
“The same.”
“He was born Josef Mengele. Then, when he escaped, he went into hiding in South America and changed his name, among others, to Wolfgang Gerhard.”
“No way,” Netty says, breathless.
I nod, solemn.
“My great, great grandfather survived the Nazi’s,” Netty finally says. “He told us all about it when we were younger. For a short while, he was married to a Jewish woman and was considered a Jewish sympathizer.”
“Have you heard of Mengele before?” I ask.
She nods her head yes.
“The things my great, great grandfather told me about that man scared me so bad as a child,” Netty says. “He used to throw screaming infants into fire pits, and let attack dogs shred people to death and do experiments on people without drugs. When I was older, I made myself learn about him, hoping the monster in my mind was not as bad as the monster for real, but it was worse. He was worse.”
“In addition to being a monster, he’s also deemed the father of mind control,” I say. “All those conspiracy theories you hear about the government creating mind controlled slaves, well basically he’s at the root of it all, because it all came together in Auschwitz with the experiments in pain tolerance.”
Right now my arms are chilled with goose bumps. Right now my body is getting both hot and freezing cold at the same time. There’s something about speaking a nightmare’s name that makes him so much more disturbing.
“If Gerhard and Heim are fast healers like me,” I say, “or superhuman to some degree, then they won’t let Rebecca go. Not without waging a war. We can’t let her be their next failed experiment. We must get her back. And we have to make sure Heim never, ever comes after me, or any of us, again.”
“You’re talking about killing them?” Georgia asks.
“I’m thinking only of Heim right now,” I s
ay. “And for that bastard, I’ve got things far worse than death in mind.”
After I lay out my plan, the girls agree it’s solid. Crazy and downright criminal, but solid.
6
Jake calls later that afternoon as I’m napping in bed. The way I hit REM sleep in like fifteen minutes flat after my workouts at the dojo, it makes waking up the biggest bitch ever. Right now, my body feels lost in space.
“Hello,” I mumble.
“Abby?”
All I know is it’s some guy’s voice I kind of recognize.
“Who is this?” I ask. It comes out sounding like I said whosis?
“Jake Teller.”
“Oh, hi Jake,” I say, trying to sound pleasant, awake. It goes badly and I sound retarded.
“Did I wake you?”
“Of course, you did. That’s why I sound drunk.”
He laughs, then: “I’m going to be in town for a conference the next few days and I was wondering if I could take you to dinner tonight?”
No way.
Hell no!
“Sure,” I say. “What time and where?”
“I’ll make reservations for Laurel Court,” he says. “Around eight?”
“Fine,” I say, “Just text me the name and I’ll Google map it.”
“It’s easy to find. It’s right inside the Fairmont San Francisco.”
“What’s the dress code?”
“Formal. Don’t wear white, though. Everything in there is light colored, so you’ll blend into everything too much.”
“Just text me instructions, Jake. I have to go back to sleep. I’m so tired.”
“Long night?” he asks, with humor in his voice.
“Long everything.”
“Okay, I’ll see you ton—”
I’m already hanging up the phone, already trying to go back to sleep. It doesn’t take long. I don’t even hear my phone vibrate when Jake’s text comes through.
Gusher
1
Brayden hit the town determined to make it a night. He started with the city’s best night clubs. He chose the Haight District because, with everything said about the Haight, he thought it might fit his mood. Haight and Ashbury had some significance to Charles Manson, though he wasn’t exactly sure of the tie in, but in his mind he thought, tonight I’m going to kill it. That became the theme, and his own inside joke: kill it.
Brayden started out at Milk Bar which was right across from Amoeba Records and the entrance to Golden Gate Park. He went inside and it was hopping, but it was too loud to game. Besides, they were playing 80’s music. He never did well with 80’s music, ever.
He left Milk Bar and ventured down the block to Club Deluxe, a little retro number still in the Haight. Unfortunately the place was all done up in ’50’s and ’60’s décor. Um, no way anyway. In fact, he never even got a drink because he was in and out and not really vibing it.
Disappointed with the Haight so far, he wandered back out on the street where he was offered a plethora of drugs (coke, crystal meth, green bud) by mostly upstanding San Franciscan citizens. Politely, he declined. Down at Clayton and Haight was what the locals called a Victorian punch bar.
Hobson’s Choice.
He went inside and everything felt right. He ordered a Sex in the Snow, because he hadn’t heard of that one before, but he did overhear some sexy little dish talking about it being over-the-top orgasmic. And it was. Vodka, Peach Schnapps, Cranberry and Orange juices and a touch of crème de Cacao. Talk about perfect! While drinking it, he thought of Becky. He kind of missed her.
Within moments he met a two set, opened flawlessly, then found a thread he could take the distance. Before you do a number-close, and before (or after) a kiss-close, you’re supposed to change locations. At least, that’s what Romeo told him. You want to peel your target, or targets, off from the crowd, from distractions. Get them committed.
Pulling them from the club wasn’t all that hard. They grabbed a taxi, the three of them piling in the back, him riding bitch. One girl put her hand on Brayden’s knee. The other put one hand on him, but further up his thigh.
Most club girls with the look he prefers, in his experience, will leave a club pretty easily. And most are okay with physical escalation. Some girls, however, expect you to take them home and rail them, so when you don’t head to a quiet, private place and try to squeeze their tits or something, these dance floor hussies will sometimes get pissy.
Of the two girls, the Caucasian/Hispanic hybrid had the best body and the most beautiful face, but the blonde—who was damn near perfect herself—had the best energy. He considered taking them to his suite at the Fairmont, but suggested a late dinner instead after hearing the hybrid’s stomach make the loudest growl.
“What did you have in mind?” the hybrid asked when he suggested dinner.
“Something nice.” He looked over their dresses, both black cocktail dresses, and said, “I know this sexy little place that’s different and beautiful and totally upscale, as in not cheap. I think you’ll like it. I’m buying.”
They got all giggly and the energy in the cab shifted.
It was becoming clear they would be with him. Not only were they vibing him, but he had good taste and money, too. Earlier, he wondered if he could close a three-way, which was both exciting and scary, but that’s why he wanted dinner first. The truth was, he was mostly scared.
And he still liked Abby.
Back at the Fairmont where he was staying, there were basically two restaurants to dine in: the Tonga Room, which offered exotic Asian cuisine, along with the best Mai Tai ever (or so he was told), and Laurel Court which supposedly had some of the freshest seafood the city had to offer. The three of them were dressed more appropriately for the Tonga Room than Laurel Court, which was just fine. If these girls didn’t like Tonga, then they could just walk home.
You can’t be human and not like that place.
Jungle themed and specializing in Asian cuisine, the concierge told him the seventy year old restaurant underwent a million dollar restoration by Gensler San Francisco. Along with a gorgeous granite bar and bar stools wrapped with snow leopard accents, there were sexy red leather banquettes that wrapped around the outer corners of the lounge, and the best lighting: hanging globes in amber, blue, red and opal. There were tribal wall coverings in fuchsia and orange, authentic bamboo table tops, and the kind of chic chinaware that doesn’t remind you of your grandparents’ holiday best. The real surprise, however, was the big lagoon in the middle of the place. If ever there was a hot spot to ease a woman into the moment, it was the Tonga Room.
So picture Brayden with a gigantic smile on his face walking through the Fairmont with two sugar bombs, one on each arm, and then picture him walking by Laurel Court and seeing Abby and Professor Jake Teller taking a seat inside.
The look on Brayden’s face, it defied description.
He pulled to a stop, fast, one of the girls barking her objection. Just then, some skinny bald kid bumped past them and went inside.
Rude!
“Hold on,” Brayden told the girls sternly. “Stay right here.”
If Abby didn’t want to see him when he drove all the way here from Vegas, but she could make time to see Jake motherfreaking Teller, she was going to get the nastiest piece of his mind.
He stalked inside the restaurant, bumped the small bald kid who bumped him—he was talking to the host who was now making eyes at both him and Brayden—and made a b-line straight for Abby.
The thing about Laurel Court is you can’t describe it, it’s that beautiful. Just saying it has domed ceilings and gorgeous marble tables means nothing unless you’ve actually laid eyes on the restaurant. If you stand in the middle of it, then you’ll get it. Old money can barely afford this place is the first thing you think if you’re not from old money. I’m not good enough to even be seen outside the front doors is the second thing you think.
Doesn’t matter. Brayden was seeing red.
He sauntered ri
ght up to Professor Teller’s and Abby’s table and said, “Well isn’t this cozy, you and the pedophile.”
Jake’s eyes flashed wide and Abby’s mouth fell open.
Thinking back, after what was about to happen, Brayden would recall feeling something unusual, a disturbing presence or something. A darkness. But he wouldn’t know what that was until he saw the boy. The skinny, bald kid who bumped into him and the girls outside the restaurant. After confronting Abby, the kid moved past him almost in a blur, just enough for Brayden to see his narrow shoulders and the bald back of his head.
Then he saw the short, curved knife, the one shaped like a Raptor’s claw. Saw the kid slide up to the table and slice it across Abby’s carotid artery. Saw the gusher the followed.
Abby’s neck.
Flayed open…spurting a red geyser…
Her eyes shot wide open and her hand flew to her neck, staunching the flow for a minute, but it was really coming. Jake didn’t move. He just freaked out in a complete, paralyzed silence.
Brayden moved fast. He grabbed the nearest napkin, a white linen square, and pressed it over Abby’s wound.
“Put pressure on it,” he said.
She did.
Her hands were nearly red with her blood. Something like pain flooded her eyes. Perhaps it was fear. One look around, and Brayden knew the boy was gone. Done.
This is a fatal wound, he thought. No doubt about it.
Abby was now gasping for breath, a thick gurgling sound erupting from the back of her throat. That’s when the screaming started. Some old broad the next table over just let her B-movie scream queen voice go. It was deafening.
People were stirring, gasping, panicking. He ignored them all. His mind was filled with panic. He forced it to settle. Through his fog of fear, Santa Monica all came rushing back to him. If going to L.A. to kill Demetrius Giardino taught him anything, it was that he must stay calm in the midst of chaos.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” he said in her ear. She nodded, scared. Her face was turning a pale blue. She lost a lot of blood, which was easy to find when it’s sprayed everywhere in such a light colored environment. Right now a lot was soaking the linen cloth and draining down Abby’s arm.