American Quest

by Sienna Skyy

  Enervata’s voice again: “All I ask is for a simple explanation.”

  A cry of agony.

  “You can put an end to this, my friend. Tell us how Kolt plans to turn Jonathon Raster. Tell us and we’ll let you fly away home.”

  Another cry, this time shriller, followed by a convulsive groan.

  Isolde could see that, once again, Enervata stood in his natural form, mopped in sweat and blood. She stepped inside.

  All eyes turned toward her. Enervata and Hedon regarded her openly. Surreptitiously came the gaze of Jachai, one of Kolt’s Pravus lieutenants, who lay prone on the floor, bound in chains.

  But also watching her were the eyes of the imprisoned: those in cells, those on chains, and those in boxes or jars. Those who had, at some point, infuriated Enervata beyond the mercy of murder. Those who should be dead, but who Enervata maintained through a spell of immortality. They lived on, most of them silent, in those cells or boxes or jars. Forever suffering. And they thrived on moments such as this when the torture of another soul meant another joined them in their misery.

  Glueg had been lucky. Even Rafe, though first subjected to torture, had been lucky. Should Isolde openly defy Enervata she would not be so lucky.

  “Look what the canteshrikes dragged in,” Enervata said, casting aside the tool he’d been using.

  He lifted a brow at her. “Had a little sport, did you?”

  Isolde lowered her eyes and examined her body, slashed from head to talon with yawning wounds and the odd broken bone. She had bathed in the pool along with the other silly, vain creatures before returning here, but the gashes still wept.

  “Good sport refreshes my body and mind. The same way you, master, choose to unwind.”

  Enervata’s black liquid eyes had been searching her face, watching for her hatred or fear or nonchalance. She’d give him the latter only. Let him guess at what burned within her heart. She even affected a smile.

  He seemed satisfied and even impressed by her demeanor.

  “Walk with me, Isolde. Hedon, please continue.”

  The wretch on the floor whimpered. He was crouching naked, hands bound, the chain encircling his neck at a length of no more than twelve inches from the floor. Isolde wondered whether Enervata had begun torturing this servant of Kolt after Rafe, or alongside him.

  Isolde and Enervata left the hall and entered the living area where Sileny stood dusting an Erté figure.

  “Some Courvoisier please, Sileny.”

  He turned to Isolde. “I must admit, I wondered over your reaction to Rafe’s departure. Your hatred of each other was obvious, but . . .”

  He wagged a finger at her. “One never knows.”

  Isolde inclined her head but said nothing.

  The sound of Jachai’s screams filtered through the corridor.

  Enervata’s eyes drifted back toward the Hall of Amusements. “Strange. I have been to see this philanthropist Jonathon Raster and found no vulnerability in his character. Kolt has virtually no chance of corrupting him.”

  “With Kolt, one never knows his plan. He corrupts e’en the most virtuous man.”

  Sileny appeared, filling tulip glasses with Courvoisier and presenting one each to Isolde and Enervata.

  The malice fractured around Enervata’s eyes. Beneath that lay a strange sort of frustration.

  “She drinks only wine, you know. I can’t seem to persuade her to try a little cognac.”

  Isolde tilted her head. “She?”

  Enervata waved a hand at the north wall, beyond which he kept the young dark-haired woman, Gloria.

  “She’s a woman of discriminating taste. Quite remarkable, really. Her palate. If she would only open herself up to try the cognac, I believe she would be able to divine the nuances from one region to the next.”

  Isolde regarded him quizzically. His concern over this woman’s palate transcended the strategic maneuvers of his mission.

  Enervata’s expression shifted. “Now let us return to the Hall of Amusements. Care to join in the fun?”

  “My sporting need not have an end. I may learn something from our friend.”

  “You may indeed, though I think I’ll leave it to Hedon after all. He has a rare talent in matters of torture. Pity it does not make up for his failings.”

  Isolde caught the darkness of Enervata’s expression. This pretense at equanimity—casually chatting over a glass of cognac—did not fool her. Had he not slain Glueg and Rafe already, both Hedon and Isolde would likely be dead or displayed on some pedestal. But his resources were now dwindled and he lacked time to recruit replacements at their level.

  Isolde knew that she and Hedon would both be dead at Enervata’s first opportunity. What she didn’t know was whether she would die quickly, slowly as Rafe had, or worse.

  The sound of Jachai’s whimpering rang in her ears as she reentered the Hall of Amusements.

  “Made a bit o’ progress, haven’t we, master?” Hedon nudged Jachai with his foot. “Tell the master what you just told me, lad.”

  Jachai garbled in reply.

  Enervata frowned. “What’s he saying? I can’t even understand him.”

  “Och, that’ll be because most of his teeth are laying around ’ere somewhere. Mouth full o’ blood and spit. But I can make out what he’s saying all right. The way a mum knows the words of’r own babe.”

  Hedon laughed with delight at his own joke, the period of grieving for his brother seeming to have passed.

  “Says our good philanthropist Jonathon Raster has an auntie, he does. Poor dearie’s in sad health and our Raster’s just beside himself over it.”

  Enervata’s eyes narrowed. “And Kolt is promising her return to health in exchange for his corruption?”

  “Would appear that way. This auntie’s like a mother to’m, it seems.”

  Enervata frowned, considering this. “That is a problem for us. Do you think Jachai’s hiding anything more?”

  Hedon shook his head. “My experience, we’ve got all there is from him.”

  Enervata nodded. “I agree.”

  He turned to Isolde and grabbed her wrist.

  For a moment, she thought he meant to drag her to the center of the room and chain her down alongside the now-toothless Jachai. But instead, Enervata lifted her arm and grabbed the hilt of the dagger that hung from the strap across her chest.

  He withdrew it and approached the quivering, prone wretch on the floor.

  Jachai’s eyes flew wide. He babbled an indecipherable plea.

  Isolde shook her head. Did he really believe Enervata would let him escape? Didn’t he even realize his good fortune?

  Another might have passed the dagger to Hedon, but Enervata preferred to carry out the final stroke himself. He grabbed Jachai by the hair and yanked backward, exposing the white arc of the Pravus’s throat. The blade flashed.

  Isolde averted her gaze.

  She looked down instead at the glass in her hand, the amber liquid the dark-haired one had refused to taste. Isolde smiled. Odd, despite the bleakest environs, how one might find ways in which to entertain oneself.

  She sipped her cognac, letting the golden heat turn her lips and tongue to silk.

  OHIO

  Bedelia listened carefully to Jamie as she explained the events of the last several days. The woman laughed softly. “And I thought all of the adventures in my life were over.”

  “Maybe your adventures are just beginning, Betty Lou,” Forte said.

  Bedelia tilted her head. “Betty Lou?”

  Forte went into one of his wild air guitar contortions and sang, “Betty Lou. Betty Lou. Betty Lou got a new pair of shoes.” He stopped “playing” and shrugged. “Sorry, I don’t know any songs about women named Bedelia.”

  Bedelia patted him on the arm. “That’s okay. You sing very well, you know.”

  “Well I guess you’re who we were supposed to meet in Dayton,” Shannon said.

  Jamie shook her head. “And we have no indication of where to
go next. Something tells me we should head south.”

  Bang!

  The van lurched and Bruce cursed under his breath, trying to maintain control as he pulled over to the shoulder. He and Jamie hopped out and circled the van to discover a flat tire on the right rear passenger’s side.

  “Charlie and I are experts at this!” Shannon said as she climbed out of the van. “We can slap a tire on faster’n a doughnut to a cop’s belly.”

  Jamie grinned. “You won’t hear me complain’.”

  She rummaged through the back of the van for the jack and the spare and Bruce dragged them out.

  “My dad was a cop. Knows the best doughnut places in Brooklyn. Bagels, too.”

  Bruce put the spare down and turned to Jamie. “What did you say just before the tire blew?”

  She blinked. “Just that we should continue moving south. Oh.”

  Bruce panned the fields that spread out beyond the road. Jamie followed him. There was no sign of civilization for miles.

  “I guess either the good guys are giving us a thumbs-down or the bad guys are,” he said.

  Jamie frowned. “Seems to me the ‘good guys’ have been leading us little by little, not blocking us.”

  They turned toward the road, where a green Cadillac approached. It slowed and pulled over.

  “Maybe these are the good guys coming to bail us out.”

  The woman who stepped out of the Caddy wore a green suit and a green wide-brimmed hat. Her face stretched longer than most and ended in a riot of red lipstick.

  “Ooh, had a squeaky blowout, did you, pumpkins?”

  She stepped in her high-heeled shoes with exaggerated care across the gravel to where Forte and Shannon bent over the jack.

  “Can I call you a tow truck, mm?” She blinked at them with enormous eyes lined black at the inner lid. When she smiled, her lower lip leaped high over stained teeth to join the upper.

  Forte smiled at her over his shoulder with hesitation, and then narrowed his eyes toward Bruce and Jamie. He cranked the lug nut wrench.

  “Looks like we’re managing, but thanks,” Bruce said.

  “Oh, this is your problem!”

  She picked up the lug nuts and held them in her palm.

  “What’s wrong with them?” Bruce said.

  “Why, they’re all wrong. Here, pumpkins, let me fix them for you.”

  As she spoke, Jamie’s attention veered to the green woman’s stained teeth. She thought she saw a flutter within them.

  Bruce grabbed the woman’s wrist. “Put those down!”

  Her hand closed over the lug nuts. “Why, I’m only trying to help!” This time Jamie was certain of the movement at the woman’s stained teeth. It was a black-winged insect crawling along her incisors. The woman opened her hand again and the lug nuts had somehow transformed—into roaches.

  She blew on the roaches, and as she did, hornets poured from her mouth.

  Bruce jerked backward. “Everyone get in the van!”

  Blister beetles poured from the woman’s jacket sleeve. She dropped her long jaw and laughed, coughing out clouds of mosquitoes.

  The insects swarmed them; seemed to be coming from everywhere. Their wings crackled and hissed. Within seconds, they each expanded so that the mosquitoes grew to the size of hummingbirds and the hornets swelled to ratlike dimensions. Forte swiped at them with the tire iron.

  Jamie shrieked as one of the mosquitoes descended upon her and sank its beak into her neck and then another found her thigh. Bruce clapped first one and then the other, feeling the crack of exoskeletons. Human-looking blood smeared his palms.

  “Come on, kids, get inside!” Bedelia, the only one left in the van, had opened the door. She shrieked as the insects dove for her. Bruce, Jamie, Forte, and Shannon rushed to the van and stuffed themselves inside, snagging a hornet and a blister beetle in the door as they slammed it behind them. But by then a horde of sizzling beasts had already slipped inside.

  Forte went ballistic with his tire iron and Bruce grabbed a thermos and used it like a hammer. Shannon used her nail file like a bayonet. Bedelia shrieked, yanking at a blister beetle that clung to her leg. Bruce tried to get to her but she managed to pull it off on her own and smashed it against the window until it cracked into pieces.

  A popping sound came from the roof and then another at the windshield. A hornet loomed outside and it slammed into the van. Then several more repeated the action until the front passenger window cracked near Shannon’s head and she screamed. The glass held.

  The giant cockroaches and blister bugs began to swarm the exterior. Soon they covered every inch of glass. The interior of the van grew black. The effect was unsettling, but at least it prevented the hornets from slamming into them.

  They fought the scuttling, crackling, and sawing in blind darkness. Jamie heard the whip of Forte’s tire iron followed by a yelp from Shannon.

  “Sorry, babe!”

  Bruce fumbled at the driver’s seat and the interior lights came on.

  Jamie cried out again. The mosquitoes wouldn’t leave her alone. She tugged at one that had latched to the inside of her arm but she could not dislodge it. Bruce threw his arms around her and squeezed hard, crushing the nasty thing between her elbow and rib cage. He shucked it and threw her onto the seat, covering her with his own body so that he faced outward, swinging his thermos like a baseball bat one moment and a battering ram the next.

  Slowly, the paroxysm inside the van dwindled, and the only nonhuman left wiggling was the blister beetle that they’d caught in the van door. Bruce rose from Jamie and eyed the horrible creature as it skittered and scrabbled at the metal jamb. One red-and-black striped wing flapped and its long antennae lashed wildly above the black egg-yolk eyes that sat on either side of its head. Bruce lifted his thermos and squashed it.

  The underbellies of supersized insects squirmed along the glass. Were it not for the dome light, they’d still be sitting in pitch black.

  Bruce looked down at Jamie, who lay pale and damp-faced. “Jamie, you all right?”

  She nodded, but did not reply.

  “She’s lost a bit of blood,” Bedelia gasped, leaning over the seat and clamping a hand down on the wound on Jamie’s thigh. As she did so, Jamie saw pustules forming on Bedelia’s arms where the bugs had attacked her.

  “You saved us all, Bedelia,” Bruce said. “They swarmed us before we even knew what was happening. If you hadn’t called out to us, I don’t want to think what might have happened.”

  Bedelia looked at him with a quivering lip. “Thank you, son, but I don’t think it’s over yet.”

  “Look!” Shannon cried.

  She shrieked and parried the vent with her nail file. The feelers and pinchers of a blister beetle slithered from the other side of the grate. Jamie watched this distantly, as though it were happening in a movie. She felt faint.

  A cracking sound came from the windshield where a rat-sized cockroach had dislodged a wiper blade and was carrying it off.

  Forte put a hand to Shannon’s wrist and then swatted the vent with his tire iron. “God, they’re taking this van apart. We gotta do something, man!”

  Shannon turned to Bruce. “Jamie’s appeal! The malevolent lip . . . ?”

  Bedelia shook her head. “She needs to stay quiet! I’m worried about how much blood she’s lost. I think she might be in shock.”

  Jamie opened her mouth as if to speak but said nothing, her forehead glistening.

  “Oh my God! Charlie, watch the vents!” Shannon sprang to the backseat and took off her hooded jacket, rolling it into a ball and putting it under Jamie’s feet. Bruce draped his own jacket over Jamie.

  “I’m all right,” she whispered.

  Forte swung at another vent. “More incoming!”

  “His, um, his loyalty shifts,” Bruce said unsteadily. “The malevolent lip. The malevolent eye. Or, he who is spry . . . ?”

  Shannon shook her head. “That’s not it.”

  Jamie wanted to help the
m, but found that she couldn’t.

  “Hang on! Maybe she wrote’m down.” Bruce released Jamie’s hand and dug into her little velvet bag. No such luck.

  He did, however, find her depiction of the symbols from the stump and the sapling, replicated in berry juice on the back of the map printout.

  “Maybe this’ll work.”

  Hands still smeared with the blood of the mosquito, Bruce used his finger to draw the symbols on the window above Jamie’s head.

  Insects began to fall away from the glass.

  “It’s working!”

  Forte swung the tire iron. “Get the front!”

  Bruce repeated the motions, but the blood on his hands had dried.

  “Bruce,” Jamie whispered and raised her arm. A bright red stain bloomed at the underside of her bicep.

  Bruce winced. “Jesus, Jamie.”

  He touched his finger to the blood and drew the patterns on the front of the windshield. The insects fell away and retreated from the vents. Bruce repeated the steps on the other two sides.

  Shannon pointed at the field beyond. “Look!”

  The insects retreated in hordes, flying, scurrying. One by one, they burst into clouds of ash.

  The five travelers remained inside the van, silent and watchful, for several minutes beyond when the last insect disappeared. Finally, Bruce opened the door and took a cautious step outside.

  The van looked like it had just gone through a jungle safari. A snaking crack slashed the front passenger window, almost as if in continuation of the one in the windshield that had appeared compliments of the hailstorm.

  There was no woman in green.

  Forte appeared at Bruce’s elbow. “You in one piece?”

  Bruce looked down at his body. Slashes, cuts, torn jeans.

  He shrugged. “Basically I’m fine. But the spare has a hole in it almost as big as the one in the tire that blew and we’re still missing four lug nuts that sprouted wings and flew away. How’s everyone in the van?”

  “Jamie’s pretty weak, but she’s okay. Bedelia’s all blistered up. Shannon’s fine except for where I accidentally hit her little finger with the tire iron. God I feel bad about that.”