Thud! Thud! Thud! The sound of monstrous footsteps flood the hallway to the room. “Castille!” Hell Hound’s distorted, demonic voice rages. A fireball spirals down the corridor past the open door just before he makes his grand entrance. At first scent, Lon’s expression turns from commanding and competent to ominous.
“What? What is it!” Gina demands reading him.
“That’s right, Pretty Boy,” Manny Briggs taunts, the moniker he gave to Lon the night he and Angelo Tulane invaded their home, brutally raping Gina while making him watch. “Now who’s untouchable?” Manny seethes, his Hell Hound voice at full throttle. “I got lawyer lady’s blood running through my veins.” His violent red eyes flicker with hints of emerald green. “All I had to do was bide my time. With her around, I knew you’d get distracted. Bitches have a way of doing that to a man.” His raunchy laughter fills the room.
He lunges at Lon, striking and kicking at him. Lon deflects what he can, but is physically unable to strike back due to his psychological attachment to the scent of Gina’s blood. Even as the divine Vigilare—the omnipotent beast—his heart does not lie. He cannot harm the one he loves.
Gina wields a tall, steel candelabra across Manny’s back pulling his attention from Lon. Hell Hound spins around, his body seething and domineering. Gina meets him, the same way she practiced on Robo-Spartacus, planting an effective series of strikes and kicks to his frame knocking him back. Her hands and feet warm at each contact with his smoldering frame.
Lon lunges at him with full intent to take him down but his body is unwilling to commit, Gina’s scent shielding the slimy serpent. Lon growls in frustration releasing a fireball overhead. Gina watches triumphantly as it ricochets off the steel ceiling crashing down in direct line of Manny. Willing himself stoic, Lon’s urge to protect anything Gina kicks in. He dives on Hell Hound, shoving him out of the way, taking the fiery ball for himself. His body absorbs the flame unwounded. Manny stumbles in Gina’s direction. She meets him with another round of martial arts strikes, knocking him to his knees. He laughs standing upright, his eyes blazing in her direction, releasing the fire from within. Gina ducks, the ball splatting into the corner behind her.
“Pussy,” she accuses, her voice calm. “I wouldn’t expect you to fight me mano-a-mano.”
“I don’t fight fair, lawyer lady. I fight to win,” his distortion resurfacing as he turns on Lon. Grabbing him up, he wings him against the wall. As Lon’s body slides down the metal surface, he bolts upright landing on his feet untouched, his body uber-resilient. Hell Hound lets loose a frustrated yell at his inability to harm his master. Pelting Lon with a series of fireballs, each and every one is swallowed up by his body. Accepting the warmth, Lon smirks at Manny, his soft distorted laughter surfacing. Manny smirks back, his hard, blazing hand making contact with the side of Gina’s face. The brunt sends her sliding across the floor on her back. Lon puffs air through his flaring nostrils, pacing the floor around Gina. He cannot pick her up, not in his smoldering transformation, his heat too much for her mortal skin. “You wanna play with me!” Manny shouts at Lon. “Let’s play, Pretty Boy.”
The scent of Hell Hound’s blood, Gina’s blood accentuated by the searing of the serpent’s skin, causes Lon to drop his offensive stance in front of Gina’s body, allowing Manny to crawl atop her. His forked tongue wagging in her direction, sniffing her from her toes to her nose. Gina lambastes him across his reddened, raw face, darting her fingers into his flaming, violent eyes. Quickly retreating upon contact with his heat, she scurries backward along the floor, reaching for something, anything, to ward him off.
Blinking his eyes in pain, Manny grabs her around the ankle forcefully pulling her underneath him yet again, securing her with his thighs. “I don’t think your little slut learned her lesson,” the hound’s hellish voice warns, fumbling with the zipper on his jeans. “I say we have a do-over. What do you say, Pretty Boy?” He clamps down on her neck, preparing to force himself on her again. Gina yells painfully with the searing grip, branding her flesh. Lon growls, stomping around them, tortured by his body’s refusal to obey his mind in tearing Hell Hound limb from limb.
“Go ahead,” Gina chokes out, remembering Tony’s transformation after their consummation, wishing for any Vigilare pedigree at this point, even that of the hound from hell.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! The swift sound echoes down the corridor outside the room.
“Maxim,” Lon says, his defeated, distorted voice turning hopeful.
“No!” Gina laments, heaving for air, her neck now free from Hell Hound’s grip. He pushes off her and leaps to greet the young successor.
Manny emits a demonic laugh. “You’re gonna fry like your coon-ass grandfather,” he threatens, winging a series of fireballs in Max’s direction. The steel blue glare catching each one midair. Maxim thrusts the iced-over spheres back at Manny, pelting them against his chest, propelling him backward with each solid onslaught. Max leaps at Manny, their bodies taut and tangled with each execution.
“Ahhh!” Manny roars, enraged, as his fiery touch fails to breach Max’s icy skin, the sensation akin to that of a wet tongue on a freezing flag pole. With every contact and retreat of Max’s frosty palms and fists, Manny’s flesh tears from his body. As they grapple, Max’s body temperature begins to increase, heating at a consuming rate. His steel blue ray flickering now with streams of crimson red.
“That’s it, Maxim!” Lon cheers, on his hands and knees, agilely shifting back and forth with their wrestling frames. “Take his heat. Consume it,” Lon directs, seeing his divine pedigree in his son. Gina watches, helplessly fearful yet awestruck. “Get up, son. Now’s the time. Get up!” Lon’s yell excitedly distorted.
Max frees himself of Hell Hound, standing tall and domineering over the serpent. Manny laughs, prepping himself to release a hailstorm of fireballs on the young Maxim Kiesel.
Lon grins, the hound playing right into his hand. “Swallow them,” Lon directs. Max looks to his father, his eyes questioning. “Trust me, son. Swallow them all,” Lon coaches. As expected, Manny pummels fireball after fireball at Maxim, slithering away with each missile. Trusting his father, Max swallows each and every one, the orbs surely burning him from the inside out. He winces excruciatingly. Hell Hound tiring himself out, the barrage finally comes to a halt. “Exhale, Maxim. Now!” Lon shouts.
Max’s back arched, he exhales vehemently. The swallowed fireballs line up one by one, forming a ring of fire around Manny Briggs. The round-faced hematologist was right—the back burn from the fireballs deprive Hell Hound of his tinder, consuming his fuel. Manny looks around at the ring of fire, helplessly standing in its center. His body draining of its energy, he stumbles, falling to his knees. The red hue zapping from Hell Hound’s eyes, his skin returns to its ghastly complexion.
“Max!” Gina yells. “Stop!” Her eyes set on Lon, his body reacting, losing its fuel the same as Hell Hound’s.
“No,” Lon’s gentle voice rebukes waning from its distorted tone. He drops to his knees behind Maxim. Max turns in his father’s direction, the ring of fire dying down, allowing Manny Briggs to rebound to his feet. “Maintain, my son!” Lon orders, his distortion returning. Max whips his head back in Manny’s direction regaining control of the fiery ring, blazing once again forcing Manny to his knees.
“Lon,” Gina cries, joining him on the floor, attempting to hold his debilitated frame upright.
He smiles, weakly stroking his hand down her face. “It’s the only way.”
Gina looks up at the door hearing another set of footsteps, purposeful and light. With Emily’s presence, Maxim’s internal thermostat blazes causing the subtle ring of fire to engulf, wilting Hell Hound’s body to ash inside the smoldering circle.
“Dad!” he yells. “I can’t stop it.” Maxim’s body seemingly ready to burst into flames itself.
“Emi
ly,” Lon whispers, his eyes flutter open, then close again, nearly gone from them. Gina picks up on his cue, looking to the dark-haired siren in the doorway.
“You have to stop him. Now!” Gina barks.
Emily bares down calling on her Vigilare pedigree, her body meditative and calm. She channels Max, her violet eyes now exuding a gentle emerald green cast with hints of confident steel blue. She controls the ray, willing the glow over and around Maxim rather than darting through him. Max’s body cools with her soft, controlled action, his skin morphing from violent red to porcelain. His heart and respiratory rate drop, registering calm within. The crimson red of his eyes return to steel blue, causing the flames of the fire to crystallize. As his eyelashes meet, the ice shatters into tiny shards. Tink. Tink. Tink. They fall about the floor. Max’s body exhausted, he turns to Lon and Gina, falling to his knees beside them. Emily joins, resting on her haunches across from Maxim.
“What do we do?” Max asks, his solemn eyes scanning his father’s lifeless form.
“You did good, son.” Lon weakly pats the side of his face, his lungs wheezing. He takes Emily’s hand joining it in Maxim’s over his chest. “You carry on, that’s what you do. The divine bloodline.” He smiles at them tenderly.
“Lon,” Gina cries. His head resting in her lap, her tears trickle down her face and onto his.
“My sweet Brianna. Now, you are free,” he whispers. “And so am I.” Releasing his last breath, he is gone. Gina covers his open eyes, her body collapsing over his, grieving his loss once again.
CHAPTER 25
In his laboratory stationed in a dilapidated section of New Orleans, the round-faced, spectacle-clad hematologist works diligently. After sedating the former members of ETNA, he siphons their Vigilare blood, ridding them of the pedigree. IVs, blood tubing and monitors abound as Dr. Godfrey shuffles from one station to the next, busily trying to right his and Dr. Ryan’s wrong from years past. The lock on his lab door clicks open. He looks up over his bifocals. Speak of the devil, he thinks to himself as Dr. Ryan and William Truly enter.
“What can we do?” William Truly offers up his service, a true soldier, a former Navy Seal.
“Yes. Yes,” Dr. Godfrey exclaims fully intent on using his help. “These five need to be transported to the police station.” He points to five members, whom he has returned to mortals. “They’re going to detain them until the feds can take over. Apparently the dookey is about to hit the fan on the whole ETNA sector,” he refrains from using a curse word in the presence of a lady. “A federal investigation, they tell me.”
“Affirmative,” William Truly says, grabbing up the first of the sedated, shackled ETNA members. A large and in-charge presence, he throws the flimsy-framed white coat over his shoulders carting him to his vehicle.
“With the exclusion of those five, I count only ten remaining. Where are the others?” Dr. Ryan inquires. Her eyes scanning the laboratory, settling curiously on the vials of crimson red blood with whirling hints of emerald green.
“The great detective is still rounding them up.” Dr. Godfrey shakes his head in admiration, a chuckle forming. “He is steadfast, that one.”
“What do you plan...” Dr. Ryan begins, interrupted by her husband, William Truly coming back for another white coat. As he swiftly gathers up two sedated bodies, traipsing out the door, Dr. Ryan continues, “To do with their blood?”
Dr. Godfrey eyes her, his brows pressed firmly. “Don’t get any bright ideas Patricia,” he warns. “That blood is to be destroyed. Incinerated.”
She grabs the door, hearing William Truly coming back for two more. Hoisting the scientists, one over each shoulder as if they are feedbags, he pecks Dr. Ryan on the cheek in passing, indicating he is headed to the police department with the detainees. She closes the door behind him. “Wouldn’t it be best to hold onto it? For safekeeping?” she pries.
“I would think you have learned by now that when it comes to that blood...Vigilare blood,” Dr. Godfrey enunciates, “there is no safekeeping.” He busily inserts IVs into the arms of five more ETNA members, wheeling their stretchers to the siphoning station.
Dr. Ryan helps him, pulling stretchers into position. “I just think it would be best to keep it. At least some of it. You never know when it may be needed.”
Dr. Godfrey spins in her direction, his round face uncharacteristically angry. He points his finger only centimeters from her chest. “I went against my better judgment once for you. I will not do it again.” He returns his hand to his side, pulling on the edges of his lab coat, briskly adjusting it. “You can either make yourself useful, or leave.” He begins attaching blood tubing to the IVs secured on the interior forearms of the white coats.
Dr. Ryan looks at him surprised by the rise in his voice. “You’re not quite the pushover I took you for,” she comments.
He scrunches up his nose hoisting his bifocals to the appropriate eye level. “You surround yourself with courageous people, you become courageous,” he answers, speaking of his association with Tony, Gina, Max, Emily, Marks and Aubrey.
“I see. They’ve won not only your respect but your heart.” She paces in front of the siphoning station unable to keep herself from eyeing the blood in the tubing as it leaves their systems, quickly replaced with mortal donor blood. “Business and friendship do not mix, kind Doctor. You know I am right in suggesting we store simply a minute amount of this blood. Why am I arguing with you?” she questions herself, throwing her hands up in the air. “You work for me. I make the decisions,” she clarifies.
The laboratory door flings open. Detective Tony Gronkowski drags the remaining members of the white coats’ debilitated bodies inside. His breathing ragged, his clothing and his skin torn in multiple places, his fatigued eyes spark and sputter emerald green as if he has a short in his breaker box. Leaning up against the wall, he catches a bottle of water thrown to him by the round-faced hematologist who remains steadily at work. “Thank you,” Tony expels, having to force his legs upright beneath him.
“Detective,” Dr. Ryan acknowledges him.
“I suggest you leave,” he pants between breaths, guzzling his water.
“Oh, you do?” she chirps sharply.
He nods his head. “Before you create another mess someone else has to clean up.” He crushes the empty water bottle, lobbing it into the trash. “The man said no. N-O means no, lady. Open your damned ears, and get the hell out.” Tony flings the laboratory door back against its hinges, giving her a perfectly clear message.
“So, you think you run the show now?” She steps up to him, her eyes investigating.
“The show?” He chuckles. “More like the freaking circus. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” He stares her down, his hazel eyes disgusted with her image. His face and body marred from fighting white coats into sedated submission. “Hell Hound. Gina’s husband. The whole damn lot. You ever read Frankenstein? You can’t keep playing with people’s lives. Gina knows. Hell, your own daughter even knows all the dastardly little deeds you’ve done. Do you have no shame?”
“Sometimes the best decisions are not always the most popular, Detective,” she reprimands.
Tony huffs, looking to Dr. Godfrey, unable to fathom her gall. “You ever wanted to hit a woman, Dr. Godfrey?”
He smiles at Tony. “No, Detective. I don’t believe I ever have.”
“In all my years with the police department. All the crazy, disrespectful, name-calling, fist-flinging folks I’ve come in contact with, I’ve never wanted to hit a woman.” He looks directly at Dr. Ryan. “Until now. Sure the best decisions aren’t always the most popular, especially when it doesn’t affect you directly, huh?” He jolts toward her refraining from laying his hands on her. His teeth gritting, he seethes, “You let a woman believe her husband and her six-year-old child were dead while you knew they were alive all along. You
kept them that way. Bartered them off to ETNA to keep her for yourself. To serve your purpose. That same woman would’ve risked her life for you...for your Emily...for any of us!” His escalating voice causing Dr. Godfrey to jump. “What the hell are you? Surely you can’t be human.”
“I’ll be back...later,” she calls to Dr. Godfrey, maintaining strict eye contact with Tony as she walks out the door.
“Freaking unbelievable,” Tony huffs, shaking his head. “You’re not going to let her back in here, are ya?”
“Not if I can help it.” Dr. Godfrey continues his diligent work, scurrying from white coat to white coat.
Tony’s legs give out underneath him as he slides down the wall until his backside rests on the floor. His head tilted back, his eyelids heavily closing, he apologizes to Dr. Godfrey, “I’m sorry I doubted you. You’re a good man, Charlie Brown.” And he’s off to sleep.
Dr. Godfrey shuffles to him resting there, draping a blanket over the brave detective’s frame. “You’re a good man, too. A valiant inspiration.” A smile gracing his happy face, he affectionately pats Tony on top of his head before returning to his task.
CHAPTER 26
A few nights later at New Orleans General Hospital, Aubrey lies in her medical bed, her leg elevated and in a cast from her toes to her thigh. Her arm is in a sling and the side of her head is wrapped in gauze from her injuries at the burning Blues Bar. Officer Sam Marks, still at her side, greets their visitors, Max, Emily and Tony, embracing each one. Emily sets a bouquet of flowers in the window. Taking the seat closest to Aubrey, she pulls a stack of Phase 10 cards from her black leather jacket pocket, dealing them out on the tray between her and Aubrey.
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