by Unknown
“I know she can,” Rhys said. He was beaming as he said it. He was proud of me.
We went over facts and laid out tentative plans for the next hour or two. After three arguments and a standoff of wills, we had come up with something that actually would work. The sun was setting by then, and we would be going into the warehouse Angie was being kept at eleven o’clock. Three and a half hours I would have to wait, riddled with nerves and anxiety. Rhys and I had parted ways with Arlen temporarily, and headed back to his house to prepare and gather supplies. I would need to find where Moonbeam had holed herself up. She could have had valuable information I needed.
Rhys had been close to me ever since we left the Old Absinthe House, never straying more than a foot or two away from me. Brief touches turned into lingering ones and quick glances were turning into heated stares. I knew that Rhys had a very particular idea about how to utilize our extra time before our rendezvous with Arlen. By the time we had actually made it the four blocks back to his house, he had me pressed snugly against him while my back was pushed up against his front door. He kissed me long and deeply, while nimbly retrieving his keys and unlocking the door. The evidence of his arousal was straining against his jeans while the rough material rubbed against my belly.
He was practically mounting me in the streets and if he didn’t get the door unlocked very quickly, I feared he actually would right there on his front steps in plain view of all. I didn’t think that I had it in my heart to deny him either. I squeezed my thighs tightly together to relieve some of the need I felt there. I was already slick with wanting. The door behind me swung in. Rhys picked me up with my legs wrapped securely around his hips and walked us through the house towards the bedroom. He made me feel so light and delicate, something I had never felt before. Clothes were flying in every direction as we made our progress. By the time we reached our destination, pants were all that remained. It wasn’t careful nor was it soft. We each knew that time was running out and we may never get the opportunity again, so our desperation ruled us. Our animalistic tendencies ran free as he roughly and passionately rutted inside me until we both collapsed in a pile of sweat and satisfaction. I hoped with everything that I had in me that it wasn’t the last time we would have together.
Rhys pressed a gentle kiss to my temple, before rolling to the side of the bed and pulling his briefs back on.
“We need to get our stuff together. We have to be at the spot in two hours.”
I nodded. I was feeling too much to say anything. I had to keep up my hopes of being able to tell him everything I felt when all of it was over and behind us.
I knew it wouldn’t be possible. There was too much happening and too many shifting pieces of the puzzle. I’d make it up to him one day, maybe by giving him the chance to be free and happy even if I wasn’t a part of that picture for him.
I climbed out of the bed behind him and got dressed quickly. I had to find Moonbeam, and I had a feeling I knew where I might find her. There was a window seat in the kitchen facing the street, she’d be there lazing away for hours or sleeping like any normal cat would, deceptive little beastie.
Making myself numb to everything as best as I could, I made my way back down the stairs. Moonbeam was right where I thought she would be, but she wasn’t sleeping. She was waiting for me.
“Hey pretty girl. We’ve got some real trouble ahead of us, don’t we?”
She didn’t purr. I knew her thoughts were close to mine when even the physical comforts no longer helped.
With enough practice, I had been able to carefully cleanse my mind and open myself up rather quickly. After almost twenty minutes, I was finally ready, sending my awareness out to meet hers. She knew the danger laying ahead of me and she knew that we needed something big to pull it off. I softly pushed what I knew to her, hoping her infinite spiritual wisdom could come up with something. I’m not entirely sure who thought of it, but I could create a bubble, one that was pushed outwards to engulf the three of us who would be putting it all on the line that night. We would be able to see each other, yet we wouldn’t be able to be seen by anyone outside of it. A mixture of several of the items I had gathered from Mama’s collection should’ve been able to help make us spiritually invisible. One such tincture had made it possible for Marie Laveau to hide the child that would eventually become my great- great grandmother and if she could do it then so could I. We ironed out the details. Then, I just had to prepare it all and that would be the tricky part. I knew the one would have to sit for an hour and it would take almost that long for it to kick in. It was going to be a near thing.
Racing through the house, I found my overstuffed duffle bag and began pouring all of its contents onto the bed. I rummaged through them all to find that one specific ingredient that would make it all come together. There was the tiny vile I’d saved of chicken’s blood. Back in the kitchen I found a porcelain bowl that I promptly poured everything into and ground into a thick paste. It had the consistency of mud and smelled like rotting earth. I knew there wasn’t anything that would make it pleasant, but, like good little soldiers, we would push on. I thinned it out a bit with water. We would end up having to consume it like a shot of strong whiskey.
As the time dragged on, I gathered a small bag full of things we would likely need, like healing herbs and bandages, gris gris necklace pouches full of plants that would ward off the dark energies that would be surrounding us. By the time, I had everything together and still had a half an hour until we had to leave, I decided to seek out Rhys. As it turned out, he was making preparations of his own. I walked into a spare bedroom to find what looked like a small army’s arsenal. Guns were laid out across the bed with boxes of ammo piled here and there. He even had a few grenades sitting around. Wide eyed, I knocked on the door to make sure he knew I was there.
“Hey,” he said with a smile. “Is all of your stuff ready to go?”
He just barely turned his head to see that I was walking in before turning back to the task he was so deeply focused on- loading magazines of bullets. I didn’t say anything. I was too shocked to even make a sound. Where had all of it come from? Did he just keep explosives laying about the house? What kind of work did he do on the side? He finally took that moment to examine me more closely after the prolonged silence, and saw the disbelief written all over my face.
“What?”
Innocence dripped from the single uttered word. Inside me something just broke, a string of chuckles and really girly giggles escaped. I wasn’t even sure that all of it was funny, although I couldn’t find it in myself to stop laughing. I laughed with increasing intensity until it was hard to breathe and my face and sides began to ache. My eyes were even watering. It was reaching the point where I began to fear that I was really deranged when Rhys’s confused expression took on a different meaning. I think he viewed the room with renewed freshness and understood why I was giggling hysterically. It was ridiculous, like something straight out of a movie where the main man is a big time assassin and getting ready to take on an entire drug cartel or something. He looked around the room and joined me in a good laugh. He sat down on the edge of the bed, hard. I sat next to him, calmed enough to speak finally.
“So what’s your plan with all of this, Rambo? You planning on taking out a third world country or is this just your, for special occasions collection?”
“Ha-ha. Very funny. I’ll have you know that, just because we’re dealing with zombies, it doesn’t mean that they can’t die just like everybody else.”
Well, shit just got real. It sobered me right up. I hoped I wouldn’t choke, I wasn’t sure if I had it in me to kill a man, not in cold blood. My blood was very warm. I could say that it was hot even.
I stayed quiet for the most part until we left fifteen minutes later. Moonbeam was staying behind where she would be safe. Saying goodbye to her was rough, to say the least. It felt like it was goodbye, the forever kind of goodbye and I just wasn’t prepared for that. My mind was frayed, scrambling t
o find a perch on something stable, something to look forward to even though my outlook was bleak. I thought back to my contract with the Baron Samedi. No matter how much I tried to not think about it, it kept coming back. Would I be able to tell Rhys that I was doomed no matter what? No, I couldn’t. I couldn’t burden him with that, especially when his focus so desperately needed to be elsewhere. He needed to come through it all right. I wouldn’t do that. I would, however, plaster on a nice smile and pretend like, aside from this whole Drake situation, everything was fine. It’s what I did best.
When we arrived at the designated location, a small intercity park approximately three blocks from the warehouse that Angie was supposedly being kept at, we were the first ones there. Arlen was nowhere in sight and it worried me. Would he set us up? Would he be a no-show and leave us to fend for ourselves being already woefully outnumbered?
We were joining the shadows tonight, avoiding the sporadic street lights in an attempt to remain mostly concealed. We didn’t want to attract any unwanted attention, Rhys had enough fire power that he would set off serious alarms should anyone question us. It wasn’t long before the barest of movements could be seen in the shadows on the other side of the park. Arlen had arrived. I watched his progress towards us. He was as graceful as a lion sneaking up on a gazelle and just as lethal.
“So glad you could join us,” I jibed. He was barely five minutes later than the agreed upon time. I wasn’t even upset, but I had to give him a hard time. Arlen didn’t reply, not to me anyways. We started walking in the direction Arlen had said the building was, ducking through the rest of the park and taking alleys when we could to try to stay off of the streets. It was very cliché, but what can you do? It was effective.
“We will have to split up,” Rhys said to him, to which Arlen promptly agreed.
“Maya will go with you to the north side and I’ll enter from the south. If we get them sandwiched in between us, I think they stand less of a chance. It’s harder to fight an attack from two different directions.”
“What?” Arlen’s protest collided with my own outrage and contestations.
“No, I’m going with you.” I was adamant. I didn’t think that Arlen cared much to risk his neck in order to save me. Not that I needed protecting.
“I said I would help you, I never said that I would work babysitter duty.” A muscle near Arlen’s jaw twitched. He was not a happy camper.
“Please? I’m going to attract more attention with all of this than you will. You two just need to get Angie and get out as fast as you can, don’t look back,” Rhys said to Arlen while gesturing to the large duffle bag he carried that was filled with the tools of his trade. He gave no further explanation as to his decision. He just made sure that we knew that his mind was made up and no further discussion would be had on the matter. So that was it. He shoved me off onto Arlen like it was nothing. It stung my slowly recovering ego. Arlen seemed to be annoyed, too. I imagine it attributed to no one speaking during the rest of the short walk to the building.
It appeared like any normal warehouse that you would find in the city. It was a large, brick building, maybe three stories tall. Gang graffiti and artistic murals were splashed across the coarse blocks. Some windows were still intact, though they were few and far between. Most windows were long since shattered either falling victim to bored adolescents or Hurricane Katrina. This area wasn’t hit as hard as some of the other neighborhoods but nowhere had escaped the coming of hell unscathed. Some of the windows had been boarded up in an attempt to make it, if only slightly, more presentable and less run down looking. My nerves ratcheted up a few dozen levels at the thought of what might be waiting for us within its walls. It didn’t appear to be sinister but I knew better, looks could be very deceiving.
There were no sounds coming from the building or the surrounding areas. I didn’t see any movement as I slipped under the few windows that were low enough to see through. The logical part of my brain was screaming that going in the warehouse was a bad idea. Something just wasn’t right with it.
“Rhys? Something feels off. Wrong. Do you feel it?”
Rhys paused, focusing. He looked like he was examining a single brick in the wall a little closely, but I knew exactly what he was doing. He was sending out his awareness to get a feel for the building. He flashed a glance to Arlen abruptly.
“I’ve got nothing. I don’t feel anything in there, at least nothing alive.” His brow furrowed and he spared me a quick glance.
Those butterflies that I’d been feeling in my belly turned into condors threatening to tear out of me. If there weren’t any signs of life coming from the inside of the building, then what did that mean for Angie? I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. I was going to have to see her firsthand before I would give up on her. Panic started to well up and I was about to bolt towards the corner of the building, searching for any way in, but was abruptly stopped by a strong, firm hand holding on to my upper arm and a stern glance from Arlen.
“Where do you think you’re going? Are you trying to get yourself killed? If you are, then fine, but don’t expect us to put our necks on the line if you’re going to act reckless and disregard our safety.”
His harsh reprimand was like a slap to the face, but in my panicked state, I needed it. He was right. If I went in there solo, in a hurry I would get myself into trouble that I wouldn’t be able to get out of and these two would come after me, maybe even get killed themselves. It was reckless and couldn’t be afforded. Chamomile would help, but I didn’t have time for such things right then. I hung on to the back of Rhys’s shirt with Arlen following close behind me.
We stopped by the door that we had originally planned on entering through. It was a rusty steel door that was just marginally open, yet when I attempted to press it open more, it gave a sturdy resistance. There was no way that we would be able to get the door open without the hinges, that looked like they needed a good oiling, creaking and echoing through the empty building. Too risky. We would need another way in. I remembered passing by a window that held considerable promise, even more so that it had a ladder traversing the side of the building leading to the roof.
“This isn’t going to work.” I gestured towards the door.
Arlen stayed vigilant, constantly scanning for anything that could be perceived as a threat.
“There was another way in,” Arlen said, not looking at either of us and starting back in the direction we had come from. Rhys stayed silent. He pulled me along in his wake as we crept back around the corner to the ladder.
Rhys caressed my cheek and checked me over from head to toe, memorizing everything about me. I know because I was doing the same thing to him. He pulled me flush against him and his lips came crashing down onto mine. It only lasted a second and I wished it could have gone on forever, but he tore himself away and began to climb the shabby ladder that lead to the roof. Arlen began pulling me towards one of the main level windows that had been broken out. This one lacked the wooden boards that would keep unwanted guests out. Arlen stood beside the window. He kept me next to him and pushed up against the wall just in case there was someone inside. He checked to make sure we wouldn’t be seen entering through the window.
With a nod, I knew it was clear and Arlen slipped nimbly through the window without making a single sound. I followed, much less gracefully with a grunt and landed on the hard cement floor. Arlen plead with his eyes for my silence.
We crept through the building, it was empty for the most part. Any remnants of whatever that place used to produce long since gone. Bums and junkies appeared to have made some of it their home. Corners were filled with littered blankets, trash, and any number of drug paraphernalia that I didn’t want to venture closer to inspect. Through the open door ahead, I could see a much larger room than the one we were making our way through. It was about as tall as the entire building and near on three times the size of the room I was creeping through.
I paused near the doorway, waiting for Arlen
’s all clear signal when I peered back from where we had come. Nothing, at least not when I first looked. As I was turning my head away, I could have sworn that I saw something rush from one side of the room to the other near the far entrance. Swinging my head back towards the far end of the room however, I saw nothing out of place or suspecting. I felt the beginnings of a cold sweat working its way over my skin. Tiny hairs rose on the back of my neck. Something was watching us, leaving us at a sincere disadvantage.
“Arlen? We aren’t alone anymore,” I whispered as I touched his arm to get his attention.
His head barely moved in acknowledgment, although he still pulled me into the larger room. We glanced around, empty shackles lay against the side wall near the far corner. It was exactly like the place Angie had been kept in those photographs tacked up in Rhys’s hidden room.
“She was here yesterday,” Arlen said grimly.
My eyes flicked around the room, scanning for any threat. Not seeing anything, I sprinted to the chains and shackles that lay slack on the floor. Dark, reddish brown, almost black spots were scattered over the floor. Blood. Ice ran through my veins at the realization. The street lights streaming through the windows, left abruptly. Did we have a storm moving in?
“Maya! Get up slowly and get back here. Don’t make any sudden movements,” Arlen loudly whispered.
He hadn’t moved from his spot. His tone scared me. This indifferent, aloof man of few words was worried and that fact alone scared the ever loving shit out of me. I slowly rose, stiff and straight backed and turned back towards him. I was met with two pairs of eerily familiar, iridescent violet eyes, no more than a foot away from me. Bacalou, two of them, peered back at me with their intent written all over their near feature-less faces. They plainly intended to kill me.
I felt the prickle and pull as my magic began to bubble to the surface in preparation of battle. My adrenaline was beginning to kick in and my heart raced. The left-most creature began to inch forward. I raised a hand to ward him off and a bright light zapped out of my hand and hit the shadow square in its center. Before it had a chance to react, it was crumbling into a pile of ashes. The other sprang, but soon suffered a similar fate without much effort being used. I breathed a deep sigh of relief. I breathed that sigh too soon. When I glimpsed Arlen, he was locked in a battle all his own. Three Bacalou had him surrounded. Whirling about, he wielded some sort of stick with a glowing blue-green tip. He slashed through them and tore pieces of them away, from where he produced such a weapon I hadn’t a clue. It was certainly efficient. Must have been a Fae creation.