Family tgitb-4

by Robert J. Crane

  I stared up at the ceiling, still holding my midsection, trying to regain my breath but failing, wheezing. I knew cerebrally that I wasn’t dying of asphyxiation, but it felt like I was, like I couldn’t get enough air to my brain or my body, that I was going to die gasping right there on the mat.

  Mother stood above me, arms crossed, calm and collected, unmoving. “You’ve got spirit,” she said, looking at the black gloves she wore, the same kind she always forced me to wear, “but spirit won’t get you anything save for a nasty death.” She squatted next to me, and I felt her glove on my arm. “Discipline. Control.” I looked into her eyes as she stripped my glove off, baring my bandaged palm. “Obedience.” She shifted position and gripped me under the armpits, lifting me up. I saw the box in the corner, she faced me toward it, its wide maw open as if ready to swallow me up, and I tensed in her arms.

  She gripped my wrists, lifted my hands above my head and I felt the pain begin to subside, deep breaths flooding into my lungs. It still hurt, I still had trouble breathing, but it got better. “Breathe,” she said, as I stared at the box, taking deep breaths, all through my mouth, every one of them. “Get your breathing under control. You don’t want to hyperventilate.”

  Her grip on my wrists faded and my legs took up their own weight again. I stared into the box, into the shadows and darkness inside, and realized I couldn’t see the back of it, not even with the lights on. It waited for me, a silent mouth ready to devour me whole. I turned my head, slow, fearful. Mother was still standing directly behind me, close enough that I could smell her sour breath, like rancid milk.

  “Spirit won’t get you anything but killed,” she said to me again, and her face was blank, an empty reservoir of no emotion. “You use your strength by putting your emotions on a leash.” She looked down, then back up at me again, and I could have sworn she shifted her feet, as though from nervousness. “You will obey. You will listen. There are rules for a reason.”

  “I just…” I choked out. “I just…I needed to…I felt…”

  “I don’t care,” she said with a slight shake of her head, and by the total neutrality of her voice I could tell she meant it. “Feelings are irrelevant. Feelings won’t change anything; action will.” She took a step back from me, and turned toward the stairs. “Follow the rules, not your feelings.” She cast a look back as she reached the bottom of the stairs. “Your feelings will lead you to make stupid decisions – like they just did. Listen. To me, to the rules. Ignore your instincts; they’ll get you killed.” She cocked her head at me. “Like they almost just did.”

  I watched her head bob back, as though she were looking down her nose at me, surveying me coldly, and then she disappeared up the stairs, head first, then torso, until her feet receded from view and I was left by myself in the basement.

  Chapter 23

  Now

  “You jackass,” I said, and Mormont raised his other hand to reveal a gun. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I think I did,” he said, and I watched Mom writhe again as he pushed a button on the grip of the taser. “This is a taser built specifically for metas, so it holds a lot higher charge than the civilian models sold for use on humans.” He seemed to be talking to my mom. “It has a over a dozen charges, so I can keep you writhing in pain until you pass out, or you can just accept that I can drop an elephant with it and we can go on about our business without me having to push the button again.”

  “Oh…okay,” my mother said, from her hands and knees. “But gosh…I sure was enjoying…those lovely…zaps of electricity.”

  “And she wonders why I smart off at her?” I asked.

  Mormont’s grin faded and I saw him thumb the trigger again as my mother jolted and fell to her face. “No one likes a smartass,” he said when she finished writhing. “You done?”

  “I’m ready to start if she’s finished,” I said.

  He waved the gun at me. “I hear so much as a word out of your mouth, I’m just going to fill you full of bullets and drag you to the car. I’ll let them sort you out later.”

  I stiffened at his words. “Your car? You’re not planning on taking us to the confinement cells?” I watched him, and something connected before he even reacted. “You’re the spy! Oh, you bastard!” His eyes narrowed and his gun stopped waving at my insult, pointed instead at my heart. “Did I say bastard?” I felt the heat of emotion run through my veins. “Yeah, well, I meant it. You ran that interrogation on me and messed with my head when all along it was you?”

  He rolled his eyes. “You sound surprised.”

  I opened my mouth to answer, then after a moment’s thought: “I probably shouldn’t be. So, you work for Omega?” I felt my nostrils flare in irritation. “You turned the vamps loose too, then?”

  “Yes,” he said with a narrow smile. “My boss won’t be too happy that they died before I could stop you, but I’ll smooth that out a little by delivering a second succubus.” He stroked the trigger again and Mom rolled in another jolt of electricity. I started to make a move toward him and he cocked the hammer of his pistol. “Watch it. You can take a lot of bullets before you die, and every one of them will hurt, I promise.” He gestured with the gun. “Drop the sword.”

  I felt my fingers clench on it, not wanting to surrender my only weapon. “Why? You afraid you can’t shoot it out of my hands before I jump at you and slice your face off?”

  “Don’t insult us both by patronizing me,” he said, and I heard the threat in his words. “Drop it now, or I’ll put you on the ground and drag you out of here in a bloody heap.”

  I smiled thinly as I held out the sword and dropped it to the mat. “But you’d rather do things the easy way.”

  “Always,” Mormont said, and reached down with the hand that held the taser to fetch something off his belt: heavy duty handcuffs I recognized from when he had placed them on me came up in his hand, two pairs, and he tossed them at me. I caught them easily and held them up. “Put them on your mother, then put the other pair on yourself. Slowly. Any sudden moves and you’ll be picking lead out of holes in your body for the next two weeks.”

  I sauntered forward, trying to convey defiance with my posture as I came up to my mom but kept my glare firmly rooted on Mormont. “I hope you’re at least getting a big fat cash bonus for this.”

  Mormont smiled tightly. “You have no idea.”

  “Oh?” I leaned down to where my mother lay, her face pressed against the mat. “I’m worth a lot to Omega?”

  “An inconceivable amount,” he replied. “About ten million.”

  I paused and looked up at him, letting out a low whistle. “Dollars?” When he nodded, I arched my eyebrows in surprise. “Wow. Wonder how much they’ll pay you for two succubi?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “This one has some miles on her.”

  “And yet still,” my mother said from all fours, “I’ll find it in me to run you over, you pr—” There was a hissing noise as Mormont pulled the taser’s trigger again and Mom collapsed onto her face, writhing.

  “Even if it’s not double,” Mormont said, as casual as if he hadn’t just run voltage through a living, breathing human being, “it’ll be enough to live comfortably for a nice long time, far from whatever petty disputes you’ve got going on here.”

  “You can’t run far enough or fast enough to get away from this,” came a voice from the broken door. I saw a hand reach in as a figure followed. I tried to breathe a sigh of relief but I caught myself. Dr. Quinton Zollers stepped onto the broken glass, feet crunching with every step, a pistol aimed at Michael Mormont. “Unless you think you can outrun a bullet?”

  “Doc,” Mormont said with a grim look that never left him, even as the gun still pointed at me, “don’t make me kill this girl. If she comes with me, she’ll at least be alive – that’s how Omega wants her.” He thumbed the hammer again, for emphasis, and I heard it click as he decocked and recocked it. “But if you push me, I’ll put her brains all over that wall before y
ou can—”

  “Then you’ll have Omega after you and pissed off as well as the Directorate.” Zollers didn’t flinch. “I’m a counselor, and as such I’d advise you not to get yourself killed here, because if you harm that girl, you’re a dead man, even if I don’t kill you, and you know it.” Zollers raised his pistol, looking down the sights at Mormont. “So…do you want to die today? Because if you shoot her, you’re signing your own death warrant. Put the gun down.”

  Mormont pursed his lips. “I’m not gonna just disappear into the Arizona desert.”

  Zollers didn’t blink. “You’re either going to the prison under the ground or you’re going under the ground. Your choice. Make it quick. My finger is starting to itch.”

  Mormont was still, for just a moment. “In that case—”

  I didn’t hear his last words, blotted out as they were by gunshots, as Zollers emptied his gun into Mormont, every shot echoing through the room as loudly as if it were fired with the barrel right by my ear. I dodged out of the way, pulling my mother back to the ground with me. Mormont’s gun fired twice as his muscles contracted one last time.

  There was a heavy smell of gunpowder in the air as the smoke began to swirl. I lay on the ground next to Mother, and I watched Mormont collapse onto his back, unmoving. I rolled to him and yanked the gun and taser out of his grasp. There was no sign of movement on his face and he had already stopped breathing. There were a series of red circles spreading out of holes in his torso. I was reminded of Andromeda again as I watched one of the wounds bleed, blinking as his white shirt turned red beneath his suit coat.

  I looked up at Zollers, his calm eyes looking at the dead man next to me, his pistol still pointed at Mormont, and by extension of my proximity to the body, me. “Doc?” I asked, jarring him back to himself. He stared down the sights at me, and I caught a flicker of something in his eyes that scared me. “Doc? You can put the gun down now.”

  He stared hard down the sights at me for another long few seconds before his arm started working again and the pistol ratcheted down, slowly, a little at a time until it was by his side. He then seemed to take a breath, finally. “Never did trust that son of a bitch,” he said with a nod at Mormont.

  “Have you ever killed anyone before?” I asked, getting to my feet.

  “No,” he said, staring at the body. “No, I haven’t. Counseled a lot of people about it, though.” He laughed, a little rueful. “You’d think that would have prepared me for how it’d feel, hearing them talk about it, but…” He wore a smile that wavered, then disappeared. “…it really doesn’t.”

  I felt a little pity for him, though I didn’t know where from. I had killed before, and I hated it. I cast a look at the two dead vampires on the mats, and realized I didn’t really feel that bad for them because they were beyond subhuman, but I had regretted it when I had to kill Gavrikov. I even felt bad about killing Wolfe, though I could barely admit it to myself, let alone fathom where the hell that infinitesimally small remorse came from. “It’s okay,” I said to him for the first time, and meant it, almost as repayment for all the times he’d told me the same. “You might want to put the gun down,” I told him as I watched his hand shake. He looked down at it and his fingers unclenched. The pistol fell from his grasp and to the mat as he stared at it. I watched him, saw his eyes widen and his head jerk up a moment before a taser swung around and hit him in the side of the head as he tried to dodge.

  I whirled and saw Mother holding the taser by the prongs that had been lodged in her skin. She dropped it to the ground. “I didn’t really want to knock him out like that,” she said, and I looked – Zollers was facedown on the mat, eyes closed – “but I need Directorate complications right now like I need another hundred thousand volts.” She centered her gaze on me. “Let’s go.”

  “I’m not going with you,” I said, already down and checking on Dr. Zollers. I touched him briefly with my ungloved hands, long enough to establish he had a strong pulse and was still breathing, but no more than a couple seconds. “Are you insane? He just saved us from being kidnapped by Omega.”

  “And that’s all well and good,” she said, and I felt her come up to my shoulder, “except that the next logical step would be for us to be confined in our own private cells by the Directorate instead.” I looked up and saw her blue eyes flash cold. “And I personally am not looking to be a prisoner of Erich Winter. Not now, not ever.” She reached down and I felt the pressure of her hand on me, on the shoulder, squeezing my arm, tugging me to my feet. I came up and threw it off.

  I watched her eyes blaze in reaction when I did it, and I planted my feet as she stared at me. “I’m not going with you.”

  “I guess you’ve forgotten what happens—”

  “When I break the rules?” I asked. “When I don’t follow your commands?” I circled her and she circled me, keeping our distance in a staredown unlike anything I’d done with her before.

  “Everything I do, I do for your own good,” she said, and it poured a little more gasoline on the fire inside me. “The things I do for you, even now, with Andromeda, are for your future—”

  “You still treat me like a child,” I said and stopped circling, causing her to do the same. “Feed me a line about rules, or how it’s all for my own good, and stop short of trusting me with the truth.” I smiled, and tried to make it devastating. “All these years and you’re still trying to keep me in a little box in the dark.”

  She took a step forward and caught me flatfooted. It was stupid for me to be so smug that I didn’t expect her to come at me, but I didn’t, and she landed a slap on my cheek that sent me into a turn and a fall that I rolled out of when I hit the mat. I came to one knee near the wall and looked down at something next to me, and realized it was the katana. I looked at her, then at the sword, and picked it up and pointed the blade toward her, staring down the sleek metal surface, at my reflection in it, distorted and rounded. Then I looked up at her, at the shock on her face.

  “So that’s how it is?” She stared at me in disbelief, then I watched the emotion dissolve into a cold fury. “All right.” She looked around and found the broadsword a few feet to her left and stooped down to pick it up, pointing the blade at me. “You know what this means, right?”

  “You don’t point a blade at anything you don’t mean to have dead,” I said grimly.

  She stared at me and I could feel the electricity between us as though the taser were firing from her eyes to mine. “So you haven’t forgotten.”

  I stared down the blade at her. “I haven’t forgotten.”

  She watched me as I rose to my feet, the sword never wavering. “Then it’s on you, what happens now,” she said. Before I could respond, she was in motion, her blade leaping at me. I parried, spinning to the side, surprising her and batting her weapon away. She came at me again and I dodged, riposting from the side and catching her with a glancing blow that elicited a grunt of surprise and pain. I took a step back, my blade still aimed at her, and I let a smile cross my lips. “Been practicing?” she asked.

  “You don’t think I’ve just been sitting around watching TV and dating boys the last six months, do you?” I asked. I whipped the sword around to a defensive posture above my head in a flashy move that was crisp and beautiful and could have been pulled out of the katas she used to teach me.

  A smile crossed her lips. “I suppose I sort of did.”

  I darted forward with the sword, clashing with hers as she retreated from my onslaught. I hit my blade against hers, chipping metal from both, and hammered it again, causing her to flinch from the strength of my attack. “Then I guess that makes you kind of an idiot, doesn’t it?” I plunged the sword for the third attack, this time connecting hard with her hand, and she let out a cry of pain as her weapon flew out of reach and she bent at the waist, holding her injured hand.

  I was prepared to halt my attack when she sprang at me over the distance of two feet, all that remained between us, and batted my sword aside, putting
her hands against my face, pressing her bloody hands onto my cheeks as we both toppled over. I hit the mats and bounced, throwing my hands up in defense and against her face as I braced for it; the pain that I had inflicted upon others, the pain of the stronger succubus, my mother, beginning to take my soul. I fought against her, pushed at her, but she doggedly clung on and I moaned and squealed as I fought to get free.

  I felt the press of her flesh on mine, of her touch against my cheek as she straddled me and pushed down. I reached up and wrapped my hands around hers, tugging on her wrists, trying to pull them free, but they didn’t budge. I waited for the pain to swarm me, overwhelm me the way I’d seen it take Wolfe, the way it had pulled at Gavrikov, ripping their souls free of their bodies, starting with a little jolt and building to a crescendo of agony that tore their very essence from their bodies and lodged it in my brain. I felt a slight stir in my skin as she clung tight, and I waited, still fighting, an agony building in my lungs more from the anticipation in my mind than the real pain in my body.

  I watched her face, like it was a snapshot being shown to me, a moment frozen in time, and the cold fury broke over it as she grimaced, at first, then cried out in pain and tried to jerk her hands away. Mine were on hers, though, and I gripped her tight, felt the swirl begin in my mind as I overpowered her. I rose almost without realizing it as she fell back, trying to pull her hands away from mine. I held on, even as she started to scream, until finally she jerked once more and tugged free, staggering back onto the mats and landing on her backside as I stared down at her and she looked up at me. Her face was haggard, blue eyes fearful for the first time since I’d known her.