The Naughty Nine: Where Danger and Passion Collide

by Nina Bruhns

  There crowd gave a soft “Oooh.”

  “We at VICTIM are committed to civil disobedience of all kinds. Our protests will carry the logo of VICTIM. It is a mark that all will come to know, so that they may realize who suffers to reveal the injustice around them. Behold our mark. See it, and know what it signifies.”

  Lester pointed upward. Then a floodlight switched on with a click at the edge of the courtyard. Giselle could see Marissa behind a large movie-premier-style fixture. The beam of light first brightly illuminated Lester’s feet then panned up his body, his arm and into the sky. It shone into the sky in the shape of—a bat.

  Oh, yeah. All would know what that logo signified. Giselle couldn’t help herself. She started giggling. She heard someone else begin tittering behind her. Then murmurs of Batman could be heard. Then snickers turned to guffaws from the crowd. Someone started humming the television show theme. More laughter ensued.

  “Who’s laughing?” The Vampire Lester roared. His voice deeper and stronger than one could imagine came from his frail frame.

  The laughter cut off. There was complete silence. Even the night insects had stopped their chirping.

  “Who dares to mock the plight of the vampires,” Lester roared.

  “I think it was that Anne Rice woman who started it,” Mr. Eye Patch offered from the back door opening.

  Oh, how helpful of him.

  “What? Who?” Lester cried. “She is here?” Lester went rigid. His eyes rolled back until just the whites were visible. He began to shake. Lester seemed to be caught in the throes of some kind of conniption fit as tremors passed up and down his body. Finally, he collapsed in a heap on the platform.

  Marissa screamed. Mr. Eye Patch and the partygoer throng rushed forward, almost as one, to Lester’s aid.

  Giselle attempted to surreptitiously inch backward against the flow. Then she broke into a run toward the house.

  Great. She didn’t have a ghost, so she would soon be out of a job. And now, she had probably killed Lester. But then she thought of the upside. He was already dead. The undead couldn’t really be killed, right?

  A Girl, a Guy and a Ghost: Chapter Eighteen

  Giselle ducked into the castle and tried to close the screen door behind her without making a sound. If she could avoid attracting any attention, she could get away clean without being seen by anyone dangerous.

  Through the mesh of the screen, Giselle saw Lester cradled in Marissa’s arms. Partygoers surrounded them. Someone Giselle didn’t recognize held something under the vampire’s nose. He moaned and twitched, starting to awaken from his stupor.

  “Mon amour,” Vector shouted from mid-courtyard.

  The partygoers turned, almost as if choreographed, from Lester to stare first at Vector and then at the object of his shout.

  “Giselle, wait for Vector. We have the sex now.”

  Marissa’s head jerked up and her eyes met Giselle’s.

  “It’s Anne Rice.” The ever-helpful Mr. Eye Patch called, and pointed toward her.

  Marissa drew to attention with a start. Giselle saw the emotion boiling up inside the other woman. Such rage and hatred twisted Marissa’s expression that it made Giselle gasp.

  Giselle pivoted and prepared to sprint down the hall to the front door. Just a few hundred feet stood between her and freedom. Before she could move, however, the front door opened. Ren, or maybe it was Field, came barreling through.

  Uh-oh. Exit blocked. There would be only a split second before they spotted her there.

  Giselle tried the handle of a closed door on her right. The knob turned but stuck. She gave it a firm push and heard the crack of the wood in the frame giving way as the door opened. Slipping inside, Giselle quickly closed it so that there was only a small gap while she huddled there, listening.

  No sound. No stomping feet. No yelling. Her fingers ran along the splintered wood around the lock. Oh, well. Breaking the door would be the least of her crimes.

  Giselle noticed that the room behind her was a library. Books lined three walls on built-in shelves. A rectangular, mahogany table with leather top had been placed at the center of the room. The green-domed lamp on the table cast a low glow of light in the room.

  Giselle pushed the door completely shut and moved closer to the light. She could see architectural plans rolled up in a large bundle on the right side of the library table. Papers and files had been scattered about. A book lay open on the left edge, precariously close to falling to the floor.

  Glancing behind her toward the closed door, she heard no sound from outside. She couldn’t resist investigating, so she rummaged through the papers and files. VICTIM pamphlets, manifesto and bumper stickers. She’d seen all of those before. She looked at the book. Someone had left it open to page three hundred. Giselle leaned forward and saw an unintelligible diagram of a cylinder with a cutaway of its interior. Giselle flipped the book closed, keeping her finger in place. She read the cover, The Anarchist’s Guide to Bombs and Other Nuisance-making Activities.

  Omigod. Was Lester planning to bomb something? Her attention flew to the plans. Her hands shook as she unrolled the bundle on the table. They were architectural plans all right. The Federal Courthouse on Wright Square. Omigod, to the second power. She flipped in a few pages to the drawing of what looked to be mechanical ductwork. A large red ink mark, on one area of the margin, said Set up here. Omigod, Omigod, Omigod. She had to find Ry. Then they had to do something.

  Before the thought could be completed or acted on, Giselle felt a hand clamp over her mouth and an iron arm locked tight over her left arm and around her waist. She felt herself pulled back, hard, against a large, beefy body. Struggling against her captor, she twisted and squirmed.

  “Pick her up, you dolt, or she’ll get away,” Marissa said from behind her.

  The iron arm lifted her off her feet.

  Giselle tried not to panic. Panicking would do no good. She kicked backward with her now-dangling feet. Useless.

  How could she have come in here without a weapon? Oooh, weapon. Giselle thrust her hand inside her pocket and pulled out the lighter. The beefy one behind her knocked it away easily and it clattered to the floor. Ridiculous.

  Giselle reached over her shoulder with her right hand and clawed at the face of the beefy one. She opened her mouth and the fingers that had been clamped over her lips slipped inside. She chomped down, hard.

  “Aaarrgh!”

  She bit down again.

  “Fu— Hurry up. She’s eating my fingers.”

  “Just hold on. I can’t find the stuff.” Giselle heard another beefy voice say across the room.

  She clawed again and felt her nails breaking.

  “Dammit. She’s going to scratch my eyes out. What’s taking you so long?”

  “I’ve got it now. Just hold her.”

  Still twisting, Giselle felt her feet hit the library table. She drew her legs up and braced them on the edge. She pushed out, straightening her bent knees and tore at the beefy face simultaneously.

  “Aaarrhhh!”

  She fell, free at last, as the beefy arm dropped away. Giselle rounded on the beefy one and struck with a kick counteroffensive that could be described as the ball-breaker. Field, or maybe it was Ren, cried like a girl, but Giselle didn’t have time to enjoy the sound.

  “Grab her,” Marissa shouted.

  The other beefy one grabbed at Giselle from behind and she felt a cloth go over her lips. The cloth had a sickly sweet smell. She tried not to inhale as she thrashed. But Giselle could feel herself going limp. Her muscles didn’t respond to her brain’s commands. But then, her brain wasn’t exactly clear.

  She felt a darkness starting to invade her mind and steal over her eyes, like a cloud over the sun. Giselle struggled to stay alert but consciousness slipped away, away, away. Her last thought was of the ghost. She hoped she wasn’t going to give it up.

  * * *

  A dark, weighted cloud lifted slowly from Giselle’s brain. At her first aw
areness, Giselle could hear voices around her, but couldn’t seem to understand their words. Gradually some of the words began to make sense.

  “Blah, blah, blah, she, blah, blah, blah, blah, found, blah, blah. Blah, knows―” Mumbling. “Blah, blah, has to die.”

  She understood that last bit, and unfortunately, she had some idea who the voice was talking about—her.

  Giselle tried to open her eyes but her lids seemed to be made of lead and glued shut. Concentrating hard, the glue loosened and she forced her lids to lift upward. Blurry vision ebbed away and the image in front of her cleared a bit. Marissa and Lester stood toe-to-toe a few feet away.

  The voices speaking unintelligible words came from them. Were they arguing? The vampire couple looked odd. They stood sideways, seemingly perpendicular to the ground, as if defying the laws of gravity. But as her vision and thinking continued to improve, Giselle saw that it wasn’t the couple who were positioned sideways in the air. They were located on the ground. It was Giselle who lay horizontally on something elevated.

  Giselle tried to move her arms and legs. They wouldn’t budge. For a moment she thought she was paralyzed. Then she felt the ropes that bound her legs together at the ankles. Her wrists had been similarly bound over her head and anchored to something.

  Starting to feel again wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Already, a tingling of pain had begun in her shoulders and arms because of the unnatural position.

  She turned her head and looked forward, which meant up, and saw a huge, luminously, full moon overhead surrounded by an array of stars. The sky. She was outside. Duh. What a revelation. She was outside, where?

  Giselle tried to take in other elements of her environment. What did she feel underneath her? It felt like stone or brick. A hard and cold surface was pressing against her back and hurt her skull.

  Moving her neck to the side made her a bit dizzy and nauseous. But the movement brought the vampire couple back into view. Lester and Marissa, toe-to-toe, continued to argue. Beyond them, stood Ren and Field. Neither one of them looked too bright. Just big. And beyond them, crumbling brick walls of some kind of ruin.

  Giselle swiveled her head away from the vampires. Ugh. More nausea came with the movement. Must be the drug they’d used to knock her out that was making her want to ralph. She closed her eyes and it helped to quell the feeling.

  She didn’t want to move but she had to find out what was on her other side. She completed the turn of her head and opened her eyes again. Nothing helpful on the other side. Just headstones and raised tombs. Headstones and tombs? She was in a cemetery. That meant she’d been laid out on—eeeek—one of those raised tombstone-covered graves. Yuck. Eeek. But mainly yuck.

  Her mouth felt full of some cotton-like fabric but she managed to open her lips. At least she wasn’t really gagged. She just felt like gagging. She cleared her throat.

  “Uhmmm.” Hearing her own voice brought relief that she could make a genuine sound. Neither of the vampires took any notice of her.

  She cleared her throat again. “Hey.”

  Still nothing. No reaction at all. The vampires continued to squawk at one another.

  “Hey, Lester. Marissa.”

  Nothing.

  “Hello there, not so dynamic duo?”

  Giselle could hear her own voice. Surely they could hear her. Yes. Finally, the two stopped bickering and Lester floated toward her. When he reached her side, Lester looked down at her with a calm, almost-gentle expression.

  He’s going to cut me loose. She felt herself asking him.

  He placed a hand gently on her forehead and pushed at the hair that was plastered to her forehead by sweat. “I’m so sorry, my dear. I can’t let you go.”

  Dammit.

  “Why not?” Giselle cringed at the whiny sound of her own voice. But a girl had a right to whine when tied to a tomb.

  “You know too much as they say.”

  “No. I don’t know too much. I don’t know anything. Ask anyone. They’ll tell you, I don’t know anything.” She tried to shake her head but the rough stone scraped at her scalp.

  “Just kill her and get it over with.” Marissa smiled in snide satisfaction. “You have to do it.”

  “No, you don’t, Lester,” Giselle said. “You don’t have to do any such thing.”

  “I don’t like it any more than you do, but I do have to kill you.”

  “I really think you probably do like it a little more than I do, since I’m the one dying here.”

  He looked abashed. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. But I am sorry. You see, I know that you know about my plans for the courthouse.”

  Giselle shook her head.

  “Do not bother to deny it,” he said. “It’s unfortunate, but it must be done.”

  “Marissa has made it impossible for me to do anything but kill you.” Lester walked back to Marissa’s side. “You will naturally not be able to write the article about VICTIM for your magazine. I am very displeased. It is most inconvenient.” He glared at his consort.

  “Yeah, inconvenient,” Giselle muttered. “But I don’t understand. What does Marissa have to do with it?” If she could keep him talking maybe she would be saved by some miracle. Plus, she wanted to know.

  “It was Marissa who originally tried to kill you, of course,” Lester said as Marissa nodded smugly. “She did not have my permission to do so, but nevertheless she did. In fact, she tried several times. But do not worry. I have chastised her severely about her behavior.”

  Great. That would be a lot of comfort to Giselle when she was dead.

  “Marissa suffers from an extremely jealous nature. She did not want me to romance you.” He caressed Marissa’s cheek. “I told her that I love only her and that my attentions to you were all a sham, but she could not accept that I would have sex with you. I told her that it had to be done. It was like a job, part of my duty, as the president of VICTIM.”

  Double great. More comfort for Giselle.

  “But it was her attempts on your life that caused you to snoop around and stumble onto our plans.”

  “What plans?” Giselle attempted to fake it. At Lester’s skeptical expression, Giselle said, “Oh, all right. I know. But I promise not to tell anyone. I am very good at keeping secrets. Like take my best friend, Mary Ellen. She used to be a man, but I haven’t told anyone, have I?”

  He didn’t look convinced so she continued. “And there’s my boss, Willie. He has a whopper of a foot fetish. I don’t need to tell you how I stumbled on that secret. Let’s just say, I don’t wear sandals in the office anymore. But no matter how tempting it was, I didn’t tell anybody about Willie’s love of toes. Well, I have told you now, but that doesn’t really count. Does it? I can keep my mouth shut. See I’m shutting it right now. I’m not going to say another word.”

  Lester shook his head.

  Oh, crap. Then a thought occurred. “If you kill me, people will know. You’ll be the first one they suspect,” she said.

  Lester shook his head again.

  “What’s wrong with that logic?”

  “This cemetery is the site of a burned-out church. It’s at least forty miles from Savannah. There have been some unsavory activities in the cemetery here lately. The authorities will assume that you were sacrificed by some satanic cult.”

  “Lester is right. There will be nothing to connect your death with VICTIM, or with what is going to happen at the courthouse,” Marissa finished with a self-satisfied smirk and a proud jut to her chin.

  “But Ry will know,” Giselle said desperately.

  “We will take care of Mr. Leland, later,” Ren or Field said.

  “Yes. I’m a bit surprised that Mr. Leland hasn’t made an appearance here. His much talked about, 'psychic talents,' must be failing him,” Lester observed.

  Psychic talent? “What?” Giselle asked.

  Just then a car engine could be heard. Gravel crunched under the tires as it approached. Everyone seemed to freeze in place as the car headlight
s came into view. The car’s engine turned off. A metal door swung open and slammed shut. Footsteps swished through the vegetation of the cemetery as an unseen figure treaded toward them.

  It was Ry, Ry, Ry, Ry. Crap. It was Vector.

  “Giselle, ma cherie. I see them carry you from the vampire house. But you do not get away from Vector.”

  “Who the hell is this?” Lester demanded of his henchmen.

  Ren and Field each shrugged.

  But Marissa knew. “It’s that French artist. You know the one who donated the horrible portrait of himself with fangs?”

  “Oh, yes.” Lester nodded.

  This incensed Vector. “Eh! I am great artiste. I create the art, which is unique in all the world.”

  “Never mind that,” Giselle shouted.

  He didn’t have Ry’s heroics, but surely she was saved now that Vector was here.

  “You should let me go now, Lester. I’m sure that since Vector saw your goons kidnapping me, he called the police and they’ll be here any second now.”

  Lester’s brow furrowed with uncertainty. He looked to Marissa.

  “It will go easier for you, with the authorities, if you let me go now,” Giselle pressed as he seemed to consider.

  “You may be right.” Lester moved to the tomb and began to loosen the ropes. He worked for a moment on the knot at her wrists.

  “No!” Marissa shouted.

  Lester stopped, and Marissa continued. “I don’t think this imbecile called the police.”

  “Oh, yes, Vector definitely called the police, didn’t you?” Giselle asked. Her eyes pleaded with the French skunk in the bright light of the moon.

  “Oh, no, no police,” Vector said happily oblivious. He hadn’t caught her hint. “We play the sex games. No police will interrupt.” Vector almost hopped up and down with eagerness. His eyes ran over Giselle tied to the tomb. “I like the M&Ms. I would like to be tied up too.”

  “That can be arranged,” Marissa said, snapping her fingers at Ren and Field. “Tie him up.”