Gemini breathes in deeply. Slowly and audibly he exhales and brushes aside his brother’s condemnation. “Such strong and harsh language is neither going to ply nor cajole me to give you your Paige.” He knew what to say and how to say it, in order to draw a reaction from his brother. “In fact, as I told you, I was willing to bargain, but now, my brother, not so much…” Dismissive, he begins to turn and walk away.
It works.
Gemini’s attitude irritates L’girra. L’girra has been willing to bear through with what he sees as Gemini’s prattling. But now his brother has seemingly closed the door on his face, in a manner in which he perceives as acting like a spoiled child. Losing patience and losing his temper, L’girra growls and catapults himself through the damp air, bridging the gap between him and his brother within a split-second. He pounds his shoulder into Gemini’s chest.
As the two brothers collide, a bright, golden, translucent sphere immediately appears, with crackling blazing electricity. It starts as a slight spark at their first point of contact, and then, within an instant, it expands to completely envelop them.
The enclosing sphere is the result of their direct contact. As Nephilim twins, the essence of their equal-yet-opposite bodies burn in turmoil against each other, causing the projection of the enchanting aura. It is a telltale sign that the particles of force that give them their angelic abilities are being nullified, and the brothers are made mortal.
The impact sends Gemini far across the floor, crashing his back into a wall, with L’girra firmly imbedded into his chest.
Dust and pieces of rotted wood shower over them.
As the brothers grapple, the light from the fiery golden sphere reflects Gemini’s surprised bright blue eyes. But soon, his eyes transform and regain their steely gaze.
Gemini begins to strike his fist against his brother’s gut and ribs, in order to set himself free.
Pulling away from Gemini’s chest, L’girra seizes Gemini’s upper arm with one hand, and then, with the other hand, repeatedly strikes Gemini’s jaw.
Gemini pulls his brother in by the back of the neck, tying him up and preventing his swings from having an effect.
With an angry growl, L’girra wraps his arms around Gemini’s trunk, lifts Gemini into the air, and swings Gemini completely around, slamming him once again into the wall.
The sphere encompassing them is ablaze with excitement.
Retaliating, Gemini pulls in L’girra’s head with both hands and slams it into the damaged wall, setting himself free from his brother’s grasp.
The golden, electric sphere fades away like an evaporating sparkling mist.
L’girra turns from the wall to face Gemini. His lungs breathe hard with fury. Wasting no time, he propels himself once again into Gemini’s body. This time, the collision is with such force that the two fly across the room, and through a window.
The glass pane shatters into irregular pieces that slice open the skin of their faces and hands.
The falling, driving rain immediately begins to strike and soak their bodies.
Their powers nullify, and the fiery sphere once again encloses them.
They fall quickly through the air, incapable of counteracting the inevitable.
Down to the black street they plunge.
* * * * * * *
Unable to track down Sik, Special Agent Katrina Etelson is back at the San Diego FBI Field Office, as she picks up her ringing mobile phone.
“Special Agent Etelson,” she greets.
“Hey, yeah, is this the FBI lady?” a man’s voice asks.
“Yes, sir, this is Agent Etelson. May I help you?”
The man replies, “Yeah, I’m a bartender here in Mission Beach. I got your number from my friend who also tends bar in Cass Street. I’m calling about this guy named Samuel Kessian you’re looking for.”
Etelson sits up in her chair. She turns her gaze to Stevens who is at the other side of the desk, working on his laptop. “Ok…” she says, waiting for his next words.
“The guy came in late this afternoon.”
Etelson waves at Stevens. He looks up. She then whispers to him, “Someone saw Kessian.”
Stevens stops and listens.
Speaking to the bartender, Etelson asks, “Can I have your name, sir?” She writes it down as he spells it out for her. Then, she says, “Ok, please continue.”
The bartender recounts, “Well, he sat up at the bar and just kept ordering one shot after another. Then, he played some pool by himself for a while. Then, he comes back and sits at the bar, and ends up just talkin’. Real friendly, ya know?”
“Alright, go on.”
“After gettin’ a few more shots in him, he starts getting serious. Says he’s got a date tonight, and he’s gonna take her up to Mount Soledad.”
“Mount Soledad?” asks Etelson. She has heard of the name in passing conversations.
“Yeah, that’s the mountain in La Jolla, with the big cross at the very top. I’m not sure why he’s getting plastered just before a date…but whatever.”
“Did he say when he had to get there?”
“When he took off, he said he was goin’ right over there. And he just left five minutes ago.”
“Can you describe what he was wearing?”
“Yeah, Jeans, black baseball cap. Black leather jacket.”
“Great. Thank you very much, sir.” Etelson hangs up. As she stands, she speaks hurriedly to Stevens, “Hey, we gotta go. Bartender says Kessian just left his bar, after pounding down a few shots. He left a few minutes ago, on his way to that place with a cross on top, called Mount Soledad.”
“Yeah, that war memorial,” Stevens says, as he closes his laptop and stands. “We’re outta here.”
Quickly, they make their way across the floor and to the elevator.
Etelson puts her phone back to her ear, saying, “I’m notifying SDPD to have them meet us there.”
She turns to Stevens again and asks smiling, “What’s the over-under on Kessian giving us a disappearing act? I’ve got some quarters to put on the line.”
* * * * * * *
“And I’m Aaron,” the salt-and-pepper haired Hawaiian man replies pleasantly, “It’s nice to meet you, Miss Crystal. Now get there safely, alright?” He lets Crystal’s hand go.
As Crystal turns to depart, she smiles, gives a petite wave, and says, “Thanks again!”
Aaron walks back up his driveway, with his body casually rocking left and right with each step. Before reaching his garage, he slips his hand into his pocket and retrieves his phone. He adjusts the distance between his eyes and the phone in order for his eyes to focus on the displayed time. Walking through the garage, he stops at the door leading into the house. Still gazing at the time, he mumbles, “Well, I guess I read the time wrong. Momma won’t be coming home yet.” He slides the phone back into his pocket and adds, “I better close the garage door then.”
Just before he turns, he hears the creaking wood of the old garage door. An instant later, the hollow pinging sound of its aged, metal springs begin to reach his ears, as they stretch with the lowering garage door. On the wall in front of him, he can see the descending shadow of the slowly dropping heavy garage door.
In the backyard, his German shepherd dog starts to warn him with urgency, yelping and barking as loud as possible. It jumps against the large, glass pane of the sliding door that leads from the backyard into the kitchen. Unable to move the door, the dog darts to the side and leaps up to bark into the screened window in front of the kitchen sink.
Aaron hears the impassioned warning of his faithful dog. With concern in his furrowed brows and fear in his eyes, he cautiously turns around.
Crystal stands at the opposite corner of the garage. Her hand is raised up to the garage door, and from its palm, its trio of slender tentacles extend, grasping the edge of the door and slowly pulling it down.
Warmly smiling, Crystal says, in almost a whisper, “I just want some privacy, Aaron.” She adds eeri
ly with her sweet well-mannered southern accent, “You’ve been so gracious, I didn’t want your death to be a public affair.”
Aaron is the man whom Gemini offered Crystal, as the one in lieu of Tamara Mitsuko Kaneko.
Aaron’s eyes scream in both terror and disbelief at what he sees. Rearing back, he loses his balance. His arms reach behind him against the wall, to catch his fall. As they do, one arm strikes the crisscrossing machetes; and their sharpened metals clang and ring in the enclosed air.
The garage door completely closes. Releasing the door, the tentacles wriggle, whip, and snap in the dark.
The only light is from the long sliver of space between the old, heavy, wooden garage door and the concrete floor.
Crystal takes a step closer. She raises her other hand. Immediately, the skin at the center of the palm tears open, and from it, spring the other three tentacles. They leap in unison at their mark, closing the distance between Crystal and Aaron within the mocking and fluttering blink of Crystal’s eye. Their sharp siphoning tips open agape, ready to engorge in thick red nourishment. Upon reaching their prey, they wrap tightly around Aaron’s neck.
Instantly, Aaron feels the pressure in his head, from the constricted blood flow. Instinctively, he grabs at the tentacles with his hand, pulling them and attempting to prevent them from making a stronger chokehold.
The tentacles tug and yank Aaron toward Crystal.
Aaron pulls back his neck and tries to stand his ground.
Still smiling, Crystal patiently walks her way to Aaron. Simultaneously, her powerful tentacles begin to raise Aaron into the air.
Aaron feels the heels of his feet rise. His free hand flails in the air, and then bangs again into the two machetes. Finally, in the darkness, his hand fervently feels for the handle of one of the long blades.
His hand touches it, and then firmly clenches it.
Immediately, Aaron swings the machete into the terrifying darkness in front of him.
The rusted, yet cleanly sharpened, metal blade sings the promise of delivering a severed limb. Effortlessly, it slices emphatically through the dense tissue of the first tentacle, then the second, and then finally, the third.
Crystal feels her grasp immediately loosen. Her arm snaps back, free of the tension it once struggled against.
Aaron’s feet drop back down onto the cool, concrete garage floor. Hurriedly, his hand tries to unwrap the three severed appendages from his neck. But the tentacles instantly transform into tiny glistening, glass-like crystals that fall, like sand through his fingers, down on the floor. They strike the concrete with gentle pinging sounds, as they bounce and ricochet to a stop.
Crystal eyes her three severed limbs that whip uncontrollably in the space in front of her. Her smile quickly vanishes, and her eyes pronounce her fury.
Wasting no time, Aaron turns and opens the door leading into the house. The big man dashes through the threshold. As he hears his barking dog, he calls out, “Uku, help!”
At that moment, the German shepherd leaps and tears through the screen window. It lands on the kitchen counter and jumps down onto the floor on its race to his master’s voice.
Crystal walks a slow, deliberate pace toward the threshold of the opened door.
Aaron sees his dog, in full stride, running into the hallway leading to the garage. The dog passes him. Its protective instincts are fixed upon the danger in the darkness ahead.
Into the master bedroom, of the small one-story house, Aaron rushes. His lungs breathe deep and hard. His eyes dart across the room. Making his way to the bedroom closet, his hands reach up to one end of the shelf inside and retrieve a shoebox. Tossing away the lid, his eyes find a gun’s magazine within it, already loaded with flesh-ripping, hollow-tipped rounds.
He grabs it.
The box drops.
Again, his hands reach up. They sweep across to the other side of the shelf, letting other old boxes and folded clothes drop down to the closet floor. Finally, he grasps another shoebox, and from it, he pulls out a cleaned, semi-automatic, forty-caliber pistol.
With a solid click, the magazine slides into the pistol’s handle.
Crystal’s calculating eyes watch the courageous strides of the dog, as it closes in. With the dog just steps away, she cocks back her uninjured arm.
Growling, the dog leaps at Crystal, brandishing the teeth of its worthy jaws.
Crystal snaps forward her arm, and from it, the three tentacles whip. They dive into the dog’s mouth. Like steely surgical blades, they cut through the dog’s throat, drill into its heart and lungs, pierce cleanly through its stomach and intestines, and exit through the wretched animal’s black and gray fur.
The dog lets out a gurgling yelp. Caught in midair, it tries to wriggle and tussle itself free.
Crystal merely waits. She glares at the dog in anger, mingled with satisfaction, as she watches it kick and twitch.
The dog’s movement slows. Finally, its life escapes, in a last gasp of breath.
Aaron hears his dog’s woeful cry. Fearful, he turns his head and peers over his shoulder, and out to the hallway.
With a wrathful snarl, Crystal forces the three appendages within the animal to rip apart in opposite directions. They tear through the beast’s flesh, splitting the poor animal into pieces.
Its blood and flesh are strewn throughout the hallway.
With her lips curled in anger, Crystal turns her attention back into the garage. She sees the precious crystalline pieces of her body. Lowering her three severed appendages, she sweeps them over the scattered glass-like objects. As her tentacles touch each one, they instantly melt with a red-hot glow and attach themselves back onto the slender limbs.
Moments later, Crystal is made whole once again.
Slowly, she turns around.
Stepping through the threshold, she lets her appendages lead. In front of her, they reach. They touch, crawl, and feel the walls and ceiling of the hallway, as if trying to listen for any sound or sense any vibration.
Crystal takes a cautious step, and then another.
At the end of the hallway, Aaron appears. With extended arms, both of his hands fiercely clutch the forty-caliber pistol. Fearfully but confidently, he aims his weapon and readies his stance.
He fires a shot.
The gun enthusiastically recoils in his grip.
The bullet enters Crystal’s chest. Instantly, it exits, tearing away her flesh and spewing out her blood.
Crystal’s step falters, and she shudders backward.
As her blood and flesh spew behind her, they morph into tiny crystalline particles and drop like scattered little stones.
Aaron fires another round.
Again, Crystal is struck in the chest. Another hole perforates through. She drops back again. The tips of the tentacles dig into the hallway walls, like fingernails scratching and grasping for a stable hold.
Crystal looks down at her chest. The sight of the wounds sends her into fury. Her tentacles dig further into the walls. Her mouth snaps wide-open, releasing a long and protracted hiss. As the air sifts through her throat, the more slender, shorter tentacles of her mouth rip through her tongue. The multitude of pale, almost translucent appendages whip and wriggle out wide, in the air, in a fearless posture.
The hiss is like the terrifying sound of a hundred striking snakes.
Suddenly, Crystal lunges forward.
Aaron doesn’t falter. Another shot pops and echoes throughout the small house.
Crystal is driven back. She falls to her knees, and the tentacles of her mouth retreat.
Aaron lowers his aim to follow her sinking body. This time, his target changes.
Another shot fires.
The bullet travels swiftly across the distance, spinning and tunneling. It finds its mark at the cheek, just under Crystal’s eye. It shatters the bones in her face. As it exits her head, it dislodges pieces of the back of her skull and flings them across the threshold of the opened door.
Crystallin
e particles scatter behind her head, striking the walls of the hallway and ricocheting away over the floor of the garage.
Slowly, Crystal falls completely backward, on the floor, with her legs folded underneath her. Her extended tentacles lifelessly drop down along the length of the edges of the hallway walls.
Her body lies motionless.
Aaron doesn’t move. He watches closely for any sign of life from the unnatural beast.
Seconds pass.
He can hear his heaving lungs and thumping heart inside his chest. But he hears nothing else; he sees no movement from Crystal.
Cautiously, he walks forward, keeping his gun extended, and aiming in front of him.
Aaron walks step by step in between Crystal’s lifeless appendages that lie on either side of the hallway.
Keeping his distance from her body, he stops three steps away.
He eyes her once again, searching for any movement, any twitch.
The breath he takes sounds almost like a short sigh of relief.
Cautiously, he begins to lower his weapon.
A moment later, he takes a step back.
But then behind him, from one of Crystal’s palms, the tips of the seemingly lifeless tentacles start to twitch. Without wasting an instant, they suddenly whip in the direction of Aaron’s feet. The trio of appendages wraps tightly around one ankle.
In a split-second, Aaron is lifted upside-down, into the air, by one of his legs. The other leg dangles freely and collides into the wall.
With his back facing Crystal’s rigid body, he is unable to witness what is happening behind him. Aaron quickly shifts the gun to one hand. Turning his head around, he points the gun backward, trying to aim at the direction of the garage.
A shot fires, but misses.
Crystal moves. Her body eerily rises, bending at the hips. With her back and neck stiff and rigid, she slowly inches upward like a rising corpse.
RB 01 Through Flesh & Bone Page 65