When he got outside, she was in the middle of smacking two rocks together. Then she let them both drop into the sand. She said hello and didn’t get up. Dade walked over and sat beside her.
“I’m sorry I tried to hurt you,” she said in the tone of a toddler. “It’s making me do it. It’s turning me into something.”
“I know,” he told her, sounding almost tender. “I’m sorry Bernard did this to you.”
“I feel fine now,” said Ivy. “Sometimes it hurts so bad on the inside though.”
“I know.”
“Why did he do this to me?”
Dade searched himself for some kind of answer. “I’m sorry, Ivy,” he said. “I don’t really know. I suppose it’s just his nature.”
“Bernard said there’s no way to stop what’s happening to me. He says he’s already won.”
“Don’t believe a word of what that thing tells you.”
“That awful MoneySexPower monster,” Ivy said, “Bernard brought it back. Only worse.”
“Whatever he’s done, there’s a way to undo it.”
“He says you’re powerful but also very weak.”
“Maybe he’s right about that.” Then Dade’s expression became more severe. “But I’m still going to kill him.”
“Why is it that I wake up from the nightmare when I fall asleep?” She asked him. “Why do I keep falling asleep and coming here?”
“Because you’re strong.”
“It hurts so much,” she said as her face turned blank. “I’m starting to wake up. I can’t wake up. I don’t want to wake up.”
“It’s Bernard’s chemical spell. You’re fighting it in your sleep.”
“You can help me. I don’t know how I know but I know you can. There is something about you. Even though Bernard told me you couldn’t stop what’s happening, he still worries. That’s how I know you can help. I can see inside him sometimes. I think he’s afraid you can fix me.”
“I just decided that I’m going to.”
In a sudden motion, Ivy tilted her head straight up to the stars. It seemed as though she could see something over their heads. When Dade looked, the sky was empty as usual.
“The red storm,” she said. “I’m seeing it more and more.”
“I don’t see anything, Ivy.”
“You will,” she whispered. She floated up to her feet in what looked like a supernatural display of acrobatics. “I’m waking up” she said. “I don’t have much time. If I stay around much longer, I’m going to try to kill you.”
“Probably a good idea to call it a night then. One more thing,” Dade started to ask, “Would you like to go on a date with me?”
She looked confused, saying, “I don’t understand.”
“There’s this fancy restaurant nearby with a nice view of the water. The Alchemist and Barrister, they call it. I’ve always thought the place looked nice. Since I don’t eat regular food or go on dates, I’v never been there. I’d like to make an exception and take you there on Saturday night. That is, if you’d like.”
“Eight O’Clock,” Ivy said in a breathy near growl. “I’ll take a sleeping pill and meet you there.”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
Ivy started to leave, telling him, “Bernard wants to marry me.” Then she disappeared barefoot into the trees.
...
The next morning, the moment Ann Marie woke up, she felt an unexplained and nagging desire to talk to Dade. It was like he was somehow beckoning her. When she arrived to his lab, he seemed to be expecting her. It looked like he had been working on some experiment under the chemical hood all night.
“We’ve got a mission,” he told her. “Tomorrow night.”
“It was weird,” she said. “Before I came up here, it was like you were calling to me. I felt it.”
“I was calling to you,” he said, without explaining the phenomena further. “Ivy wandered over here last night. She’s trying to free herself from whatever Bernard is doing to her.”
“And you’re just going to help her after everything she’s done?”
“Of course.”
“That’s crazy!” she argued with a strange and mounting anger at the idea. “The whole thing is just a trap! You’re stupid to believe her!” Ann Marie realized how she sounded and immediately felt like apologizing.
“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not. All I know is Bernard loves that girl. He loves her in a way only Bernard could. He’s even planning on marrying her.”
“That’s sick.”
“I can’t accomplish my plan without you,” he said. “There’s no way I can do this on my own. I need a superior chemist, someone who can do what I can’t.”
“That isn’t me, Dade. I don’t know why you think I’m so great. You keep telling me that I’m so brilliant. Everyone tells me how brilliant I am. It’s just something that people say. It doesn’t make it true.”
Dade opened up his hand to reveal an old, folded-up piece of ivory paper. “I need this,” he said.
On the paper, there was a ball-and-stick sketch of a strange looking molecule. Ann Marie didn’t recognize the chemical structure at all. The diagram looked like a child or rather child chemist had drawn it twenty years before.
“What the hell is this?” She asked him. “Where did it come from?”
“That isn’t important. The important thing is whether you can synthesize it.”
“Hmm,” she said, studying the paper carefully. “I suppose I could modify the genes of one of my streptococcus colonies. The bacteria should be able to produce the most difficult precursor. I could get you within two steps of the reaction. It should be easy after that.”
“Perfect,” Dade said. “All we need is around fifty kilos by tomorrow night.”
“You’re crazy!” remarked Ann Marie. “There is no way I can scale it up like that.”
“I have faith in you.”
At that moment, the Sheriff walked into the lab. “I was able to round up those guys you were asking for,” he told Dade. “Wasn’t easy with the pretty new CEO watching us. We’re shut down on DeathStalkers though. She’s got most of them on lock. We just have your lab prototypes.”
“These guys you found,” Dade started to ask, “do they understand what’s expected? Do they understand what they need to wear?”
“What are you talking about?” Ann Marie interrupted. “Someone better explain this plan to me.”
Chapter 19
The Red Storm
Dade Harkenrider arrived at The Alchemist & Barrister Restaurant on Saturday evening a few minutes early for his date with Ivy. Asylum One dropped him off in front, where valets were working eagerly to get through a long line of fancy cars. He was dressed in a tailored black suit that had been prepared that day just for the occasion. When he stepped through the brass doors, he looked like a Hollywood leading man.
“Has my guest arrived yet?” He asked the tuxedoed host.
“Not yet, sir,” the man told him. “Would you like me to sit you while you wait?”
“Yes, thank you,” said Dade. He followed the host to a rather intimate table for two in the corner. It was right next to the largest window looking out over the surf.
His phone rang in his pocket. When he picked up, he asked Ann Marie, “Can you see me?”
“I have you on five different cameras,” she said from her seat in the Asylum. She was surrounded by flat screen monitors and corporate security people. The Sheriff stood close behind her. He was taking command of the operation. “We have Ivy under surveillance. She’s walking toward the restaurant now. We better say goodbye and get everything in position. Good luck on your first date.”
“It’s not a date,” Dade argued before hanging up.
When Ivy walked in, she was barefoot and wearing a long, worn out white teeshirt as a nightgown. When the host saw her, he seemed to go out of his way to ignore her odd attire and somewhat threatening manner.
He smiled wide and offered her a blue blazer embroidered with the restaurant name and logo.
He said, “If you are cold, madam, please feel free...”
Ivy just sauntered past him on her way to the table. When she got there, Dade was reading a scientific journal on human parasitology. He lifted his head to greet her. “It’s good to see you,” he said, standing up. He helped her into her chair like a gentleman.
“I’m not sure if I’m awake or asleep anymore,” she told him. Ivy looked around the restaurant, at the clanging plates, the busy waiters and busboys. She found all the activity strange and alarming. Her pupils were dilated black and her skin was as pale dead fish washed up on the beach. As strange as the two of them must have looked in the restaurant, no one was paying any attention to them. “I know I went to bed early,” she said. “Then I just wandered in here.”
The waiter brought over a basket of warm bread and dipping oil. Dade examined the basket for a moment. He looked at the appetizer like he was trying to identify an unknown species of insect. He reluctantly picked up one of the miniature loaves and began to spread butter over the surface. There was an awkwardness to the action. It was like he had never held a butter knife before. He took a bite and immediately winced at the taste. Then he let the food spill out of his mouth onto his plate.
“Sorry,” he told her. “It was much worse than I thought it was going to be.”
Ivy grabbed two chunks of bread, one in each hand, and started to scarf them down like someone drunk and starving.
“The food is pretty good here I’ve been told,” Dade mentioned. “I’m more of an algae man myself but I’ve heard good things. I really hope you like the rest of what’s coming.”
“What are we doing here?” She asked with a cheek full of bread. “How come you don’t seem to understand that Bernard has already won?”
“I’m a slow learner.”
“It’s too late for me,” Ivy told him. “There is nothing you can do to stop the transformation now. I barely have anything left to fight the spell. It’s getting harder and harder to stay asleep.”
“Bernard’s plan has failed,” Dade told her. “He just doesn’t know it yet.”
“I’m starting to wake up,” she said, looking afraid. “I can feel it. It’s coming.”
“Let it come.”
Then Ivy’s expression became blank and lifeless. She was beginning to wake up from her sleep and could become violent at any moment. She said, “Bernard told me that I will be his Queen soon. Don’t worry though. There will be a place for you at our throne.”
“It’s awfully nice of you two to include me.”
“We can be a family,” Ivy told him. “I know you’ve never had a real family. When I melted with Bernard, I found out everything about you.”
“Not everything.”
“I saw what happened to you, the little boy, Dade,” Ivy said. She lowered her brow and her eyes twinkled. “I saw what she did to you.”
“I saw what happened to you too,” Dade told her. “And I’m sorry.”
It wasn’t the response Ivy was expecting and she looked outraged. “You don’t know anything about what happened to me.”
Dade nodded, saying, “Yes. I do. I saw what Bernard did to you.”
“He made me perfect.”
“No,” Dade said, shaking his head in disagreement. “He stole something from you.”
“No. He’s given me everything.”
“Then I’m also sorry for what’s about to happen.”
“What do you mean?” Ivy growled through her teeth.
“I guess you’re about to lose everything,” said Dade. He stood up from the table and dropped his fancy cloth napkin on his plate. He raised the edge of a spoon and clanged it against his glass to get the attention of everyone in the restaurant. It looked as though he was about to propose marriage. “Now!” he shouted.
The first thing Ivy noticed was the near perfect synchrony in which the patrons and staff in the dining room went to action. Each of the well-dressed guests pulled out a gas mask from under their tables and secured it to their face. Ivy got up to flee for the door but Harkenrider stopped her. Steel gates, hidden behind the curtains, started to unroll to cover the restaurant’s windows and doors. The moment she realized that she was locked in, Ivy lunged for Harkenrider.
A dense, purplish gas started to hiss its way into the dining room through vents in the floor. The strange colored haze took over the room until it seemed as though Dade and Ivy were ripping through a cloud at thirty-thousand feet.
“What are you doing to me?” She started to cough on the purple gas. “It feels really strange,” she said with her voice trailing off into an echo. It sounded like they had both been transported to a massive cathedral and her voice was scattering off the ceiling.
“I’m going to help,” said Dade, trying to secure her. She was exceedingly strong. He flipped her over, got on top of her, and held her hands down.
“I’m gonna rip you apart, Harkrenrider! I’m gonna finish what your mom started!”
“Just keep breathing,” Dade told her. “The more you yell, the more you fight me, the better this will work.”
Ivy began to cough harder and fight more gently as the gas drifted into her lungs. Dade told her, “I’m gonna stop this. I’m gonna fix you.”
Ivy had one more burst of brutal energy left before the gas completely took over. She reached for the salad fork on the table. She quickly sunk the prongs into Dade’s stomach before her body went limp. Just before Ivy saw the room fade to black, she heard him cry out in pain.
...
Ivy saw the blackness recede to a warm sunlight. It felt like waking up after a nap on the beach. She was no longer in The Alchemist and Barrister. Now she was standing in the front yard of her childhood home, the place where Bernard had first come to her. The place felt hollow and unreal, like a high resolution reconstruction of her memory. She saw herself as a young girl playing in the front yard in her sandbox. She remembered that horrible day too well.
Standing there, she saw Bernard Mengel’s black limousine pull up to the front of her house. Then the sounds and sights of her old home became distorted. The entire scene took on a buzzing that made her dizzy. The picture of her old home and street now looked like it had been formed by a broken film projector.
Suddenly, everything was black and perfectly still. Ivy seemed to be in a room so large that there was no discernible boundary. It was like an endless black fog. Someone took her by the right hand and she immediately sensed comfort and home. When she turned and looked, she saw Dade Harkenrider.
Any hostility she felt had vanished and she asked him, “Where are we, my love?”
He smiled without saying a word and pointed to a spot far away in the distance. The thing started as a single tiny white pixel. As it flew toward the two of them, it became a massive moving image, like a ten square mile drive-in movie theatre screen. It was playing for the two of them.
Ivy was astonished when she saw what was on the screen. It was her as a teenager. Only, it wasn’t the scarred orphan. It was someone different, someone who hadn’t suffered that fateful day under the hands of Bernard Mengel. Teenage Ivy on the screen was perhaps seventeen and appeared to be getting ready for a date. The massive movie showed intermingled scenes and flashes of images, reflections of the life she could have had, simple and happy times that never happened, but could have.
On the screen, young Ivy eagerly opened the door to welcome her date. Teenage Dade Harkenrider was standing there. He was holding flowers and even looked nervous to see her. The young man’s face wasn’t battle-hardened like the real Dade. The way he looked at her, sweet and lovingly, seemed far beyond the capacity of the real version.
A saturating white flash on the screen jumped them forward in time. Dade and Ivy appeared naked, wrapped up in one another and fast asleep. They both seemed so comfortable and content that their sleep looked closer to
death. Another flash took them to another time. They were kissing, with Dade wrapping her up in his arms.
There was another white flash and the screen changed again.
It was their wedding day. They were dancing and Dade lowered her into a dip. There was a succession of flashes of them kissing goodbye in a flurry of routine mornings. The complete picture of Dade and Ivy growing old together played as a rapid series of images and sounds.
She and Dade stood in front of the screen as she admired their alternate reality. Whatever hate and bloodlust she felt for him had evaporated without so much as a goodbye. While they stood watching the movie of what their life together could have been, she found herself gripping his hand tighter.
“What does this mean?” She asked him as they stared up at the screen. It was as big as the night sky.
“It’s what could have been,” he told her. “If not for Bernard. This is why he found you, because you’re my soulmate. Our lives, our loves, they matter. That’s the real stuff of the universe.”
“I don’t understand,” she pleaded. “Why would he do all this?”
“To stop something beautiful. That’s what it does. That’s what he does. He’s the opposite of the force of life.”
“How do we get back to this life? I want this life. I don’t want to go back.”
“I’m sorry,” Dade told her. “There’s nothing we can do now.”
“I want to be a human being again. I want this life. I want to be with you.”
“It’s too late.”
...
Ivy opened her eyes to find the purple haze beginning to recede from the restaurant. Dade Harkenrider was in front of her, bleeding from a fork stuck in his abdomen. She immediately tried to help him. “I’m sorry,” she said in horror at what she had done to him. “I’m so sorry!”
Before she could get to him, Dade’s DeathStalker got in her way. It flashed its eyes and made a godawful growling sound in its motors. It kept Ivy back like a loyal guard dog.
Ann Marie's Asylum (Master and Apprentice Book 1) Page 28