by Mario Routi
Her thoughts were interrupted by Turgoth coming into the room. “Okay, my love, our daughter has just reached your old house.”
39
London
After a lavish vegetarian dinner, Mr. Icke drove Leylah and her friends to Rebecca’s old house. Leylah was growing excited about seeing the place where her mother’s roots lay. Despite all the new experiences that were bombarding her, this was the part of the trip which was affecting her most deeply.
“What are you thinking?” Gregory asked.
“I was wondering if my mum ever misses her old house and neighborhood.”
Anna smiled. “Oh, and there we were imagining you were thinking about Alexander.”
“What?” Leylah spluttered. “No... I... um... why would I be?”
“Ha!” Anna prodded Gregory in the ribs triumphantly. “I told you she liked him. You owe me a new sword when we get back.” She turned back to Leylah. “All right girl, tell us your thoughts and what’s said in the limo will stay in the limo.”
Leylah hesitated for a moment, taken by surprise as her friends watched her in anticipation. Then she let down her guard and everything came pouring out.
“Alexander has known me since I was born and I’ve always liked him but recently I find that my liking has turned into something deeper, if you know what I mean. I don’t know how long he has known Larisa, but she’s always flirting with him and I really hate it. Mum always forces Alex on me by inviting him to dinners and setting up private get-togethers, but he just seems oblivious to the whole thing. I don’t know if he likes me like a sister or if he really likes me as a girl, but he is always so careful that it can be hard to tell what he’s thinking. Then there’s the difference in our ages while Larisa’s the same age as him. And they both fight way better than I do. And... well, I just don’t know!”
Anna and Gregory continued staring at her for a moment until they were sure she had finished. Anna let out a loud sigh and sat back in the seat. “Wow!” she said eventually. “You are in a mess. I can tell you that he likes you a lot - that’s obvious. He just doesn’t know how to express himself differently.”
Gregory nodded in agreement. “The fact that he and Larisa aren’t in a relationship after she has been working so hard to make it happen, suggests that it isn’t likely to happen now,” he said. “If anything, he probably just finds all that flirting annoying.”
Leylah’s mouth dropped. “Really? You think so?”
Anna leaned forward and patted her on the leg. “Listen, Alexander is the type of man who’s still very much a boy on the inside. He even went red when I asked him if he had a girlfriend yet. If I asked Gregory, who’s much younger than Alex a question like that, he would just laugh it off because he’s already been dating for some time on Earth. What I’m trying to say is that you will probably have to make the first move if you want your relationship to go anywhere. He’ll probably never get round to saying anything if you leave everything up to him.”
“Listen,” Gregory added, “it took his parents about a hundred years to finally get married. It’s likely that their son is going to be just as slow off the mark. He may be good at physical activities but when it comes to emotional matters it’s a completely different story. Although I hate to admit it, I am going to have to agree with Anna on this one - you’re going to have to lead the romantic dance.”
Leylah raised an eyebrow. “The romantic dance?”
Gregory chuckled. “Oh that’s right, he’ll be your first boyfriend. Okay, let me explain. The relationship game is like a psychological dance. Some dances last forever and some fall short, however it’s all about how well you can move, especially if you’re leading. Rough relationships are like a salsa, but a relationship like your parents’ is more like the tango. Both are rather aggressive people, while they still have a certain grace about them. With you and Alexander, it’s more of a waltz that might lead to a tango if you are lucky. You’re both unsure of yourselves at the moment, although once you get through the first awkward steps of being in a relationship, you will waltz away and the world will start spinning around you with love and intense passion.”
Anna looked at Gregory with wide eyes. “You constantly amaze me.”
“I don’t think I understood a word of what you just said, Greg,” Leylah admitted. “You’ve completely confused me, but let’s pretend for a moment that I understand. You basically say that I have to do what my mother did with my father?”
Anna smiled. “Well, perhaps not exactly. Unless you’re into being captured and almost killed by your true love, then rescued by Bull and your true love, only to finally kill your true love yourself and then find your true love again in another world... ”
“Oh, thanks Anna,” Leylah laughed.
“Just sayin’,” Anna beamed.
Gregory chuckled and then looked out the window. “Hey, we’re here!”
Leylah climbed out of the limo and stood in front of the house, which looked like it was still in pretty good shape for a property that had remained uninhabited for so long. She opened the gate in the picket fence, the hinges rusty with disuse and the wood rotting from lack of new paint, and walked up the overgrown path to the front door. The door was locked. The others watched as she felt along the top of the doorframe and then held the key up triumphantly. It had been precisely where her grandparents had told her it would be.
Opening the door was much like lifting the lid of a thousand year old chest. Clouds of dust swirled up in the draft as they made their way inside. The place seemed to be rather dreary for the home of an Orizon Princess, but when she lived there, Rebecca had been just a teenage human girl. Leylah spotted a fireplace in the living room and a container of dusty logs beside it.
“Hey, Greg,” she said with a shiver, “if we’re gonna be here for a while, can you start a fire while we go rooting around upstairs?”
“Sure, I’ll build a fire in a minute but I wanna check out the fridge first. Mr. Icke said he has put in some food and juices for us.”
Leylah made her way upstairs while the other two explored the kitchen. She knew that her mother had decided to move the family to Utopia many years ago to be safe but, apart from the layers of dust, it looked like they had only just left.
The last door she opened took her into a room which must have been Rebecca’s childhood bedroom. To Leylah it felt like she was opening Pandora’s box. There weren’t piles of stuffed animals like she had read about in children’s books when she was younger, although it was clear to her that this was where her mother’s story began. She combed over everything, blowing the dust off books on culture, the environment and history. She smiled as she realised that her mum had never left her books behind but had just memorized them, carrying them forever in her head.
Leylah lay on her mother’s narrow bed and stared up at a large window contraption in the roof. She could see most of the sky through it despite the moss and bird droppings that caked the outside and wondered what it could have been used for. Then she found her answer above the headboard, where a hand drawn map of the stars was scrawled on the wall. It was obvious! Her mother had spent her nights looking up at the stars - just like she did!
Leylah hopped up from the bed and left the room. Now that she had visited her mother’s old bedroom, she felt she had managed to get to know her a bit better as a person. In a weird way it felt like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders, although she couldn’t exactly work out why.
As she went down the stairs she could hear the crackle of the logs in the fireplace and hurried into the living room to try to rid herself of the aching cold that had permeated her bones since coming into the house.
Gregory and Anna were already sitting cross-legged by the flames, roasting some marshmallows they had found in the kitchen while the sweet sugary scent filled the room.
“Did you find anyt
hing interesting upstairs?” Anna asked.
Leylah nodded. “I found that my mother hasn’t changed much since she was a child here.”
Gregory laughed. “I wouldn’t expect so. She was reincarnated with love in her heart, after all.”
Leylah looked at Gregory with a furrowed brow. “What do you mean?”
“Well, in the Utopian library I found a book that lays out some information regarding reincarnation. There was a short passage written by the Gods at the end that explained the colour of people’s auras. Princess Rebecca’s colour was always that of love and, in that respect, she probably hasn’t even changed from the original person she was thousands of years ago.”
“When we were in the Chamber,” Leylah said, “in the Palace of the Gods, I saw a figurine of a dead Amazon that glowed dark purple.”
Anna gasped. “Purple means that the person who died was immeasurably jealous and particularly vile.”
“Exactly!” Leylah said. “The figurine belonged to General Claudia.”
“Isn’t she the one who tried to steal the Sacred Flame and kill Lady Felicia?”
“Yes. But Mum didn’t know who she was until after she had met my father.”
“Either way, she finally got what she deserved, didn’t she?” asked Anna.
Leylah nodded. She started to say more but her words were halted by the sound of breaking glass coming from the back of the house. Leylah’s fighting instincts flared into action.
“Follow me,” she hissed, running from the room and heading upstairs to the bedroom where she had seen the roof window. As soon as they were all inside, she closed the door silently and propped a chair up against the handle. They could hear running footsteps going through the rooms downstairs. Gregory peered out the window, his back pressed against the wall.
“It’s the Sartani!” he whispered. “There are more outside the house.”
Leylah hauled a small chest of drawers onto the bed and clambered up to examine the ceiling window more closely. As she suspected, much of the wooden frame had grown rotten from years of water seeping in from the outside. It was now only held in place by the screws that remained. She looked down at her friends.
“Do either of you have something that I can remove these screws with?”
Gregory reached in his pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. Leylah snatched the thinnest one and set to work on the four screws that seemed to be holding the entire thing in place. Two of the screws dropped out with virtually no resistance but the third one needed to be unscrewed all the way. It seemed to take forever. They could hear voices and footsteps coming up the stairs. Frantically, she tried turning her wrist faster but the coin slipped through her fingers as the door handle jiggled.
Gregory scrambled to pass her another coin as the voices became audible.
“They’re in here! Fire on my count. One, two, three!”
Leylah leaped on top of the others, flattening them to the floor on the far side of the bed. Bullets exploded into the room, splintering both the door and the chair. Sartani bodies shouldered their way through the wreckage.
“Secure the target and eliminate the other two on my c...”
The speaker seemed to be cut off in mid sentence by a slashing sound. Leylah rolled onto her back and braced herself for hand to hand combat. There was a thump as a body landed on the bed and peered down at her.
“You okay there, Ms Damsel?” Alexander enquired with a grin.
Leylah hit him playfully on the shoulder as she pulled herself up. “You scared the hell out of me!”
“Okay. Let’s get moving. We’re in a war zone right now and the Sartani are everywhere.”
The three of them followed him as he jumped over the Sartani bodies on the bedroom floor. Then Leylah heard the sound of a pin needle drop.
“Get down!” Alexander yelled, barreling Leylah across the carpet.
A loud popping sound went off in her ear, leaving her deafened and dazed. A force that felt like hands pushed her violently across the hallway, throwing her back down onto the floor at the top of the stairs. She lay there, staring at Alexander as he yelled silently into her deaf ears. Realising that she wasn’t responding, he stopped shouting and motioned her to get moving.
Her hearing started to return as they rushed out the front of the house. Alexander ran ahead, crouching behind a parked car and signaling for the others to stay down and follow him. As they reached him, another explosion shook the car in front of them.
Alexander stuck his head out for a second and dropped back down as another shot slammed into the car door, slightly unhinging it. He ripped the door completely off its frame and held it in front of him as a shield. Luckily, he realised that it was bulletproof.
“Okay, Anna and Gregory, I want you to take the back path with Larisa over there. I will escort Leylah up the hill. See if you guys can get the spaceship a little closer to us.”
“What if Earthlings see us get in?” Gregory asked.
“We’ll deal with that when everything is over. Right now, we need to survive. Now go!” Alexander said, giving him a shove. Anna was already streaking ahead.
Gregory felt another shot graze his backside as he ran towards Larisa, only bellowing out in pain once he was under cover once more.
Leylah looked behind her and saw more Sartani moving in on them.
“All right, Leylah, I don’t know how long this car door will last against that gun, so we need to move quickly.”
They stayed close to the walls of the neighbouring houses as they sped in the opposite direction to draw attention away from Larisa and the others. The Sartani that were behind them were drawing closer. Alexander took a sharp turn between the houses and stopped suddenly.
“Run to the ship now,” he instructed her. “Larisa and the others will be there by now. I will hold the Sartani off from behind. Stay close to the backs of the houses and don’t stop moving.”
At that moment a Sartani appeared beside them and Alexander pushed Leylah behind him, covering them with the car door. Leylah bolted to the side, feeling the hot wind from the bullets on her skin as she ran outside the range of the automatic machine gun. She glanced back to see Alexander charging at the Sartani with the door. He took hold of the enemy’s arm and flung him out over the trees as if he weighed no more than a football.
Leylah ran at a crouch along the backs of the houses until she was able to see a clearing through the buildings. As she sprinted towards the spaceship, she could hear Alexander’s footsteps pounding behind her. She turned her head for a second and felt her body slam into something hard, knocking her to the ground. She stared up at a ratlike man grinning down at her.
“Got her!” Ricky Soblett yelled as he scrambled to grab her.
Leylah kicked him off her with both legs and rolled into a small opening between the other Sartani who had appeared behind Ricky. The door of the spaceship was opening and it hovered above the ground, ready to take flight. She could see Gregory encouraging her from the doorway. She jumped towards the platform but fell short as she felt firm hands grab her legs, pulling her back down to Earth. Looking back she saw Ricky dangling off her, clinging on to anything he could grab while she, in turn, clung to Gregory.
The pull on her legs increased and she felt her hand slipping. As she glanced behind her she saw Alexander climbing up Ricky while plunging two crystal daggers into him. Ricky’s grip tightened for a moment before finally letting go as blood bubbled from his mouth and he and Alexander dropped back onto the ground.
Working at the speed of light, Larisa shut off the ship’s engine to allow it to free fall towards the ground. As it passed Alexander on the way down, she shoved the steering wheel all the way to one side and then fired the engines back up. Leylah crashed against the cabin wall as the spaceship turned on its side, allowing Alexander to drop through
the hatch. Larisa then straightened the ship out as they roared away from the hailstorm of bullets.
Alexander slammed the door and ran to the control deck. “Princess Rebecca,” he shouted, “we have Leylah and she’s unharmed.”
Leylah could hear her mother’s relieved voice on the other end. “Thank you, Alexander.”
Everyone in the cabin fell silent as they gathered their thoughts and regained their composure. Leylah was suddenly overwhelmed by stress and she sank back into her seat, shaking uncontrollably for the rest of the ride. There was an uneasy tension in the air.
***
Back below the mansion, the Devil waited impatiently for the report to come out through Ricky’s agonizingly labored breathing.
“We failed,” Ricky moaned.
The Devil leaned in. “Was Alexander with them when they left?”
“Yes, my Lord,” replied Ricky.
“Then you can consider yourself lucky. I assumed you would be killed. I was counting on your failure. Now the real fun begins.”
“What do you mean, my Lord?” Ricky asked.
The Devil didn’t reply. “Get your pathetic self to a hospital, Ricky Soblett,” he said instead, laughing sarcastically as he disappeared into a heavy cloud of dark smoke, leaving Ricky alone and bleeding.
40
Utopia
“General,” an Orizon soldier said, “something strange happened when they landed in London.”
“What is it?” asked General Hunter.
“Only the Amazon, Larisa, disembarked.”
“Really?” The Centaur thought for a moment and then brushed his own question aside. “It was probably a malfunction of the camera. Earth technology always manages to mess things up.”
***
Rebecca waited patiently outside with Turgoth for the spaceship to arrive. It was a massive weight off her shoulders to know that her daughter was coming home safe. She was well aware of the role that Larisa had played in the rescue and she had thus decided that it meant she could safely be taken off the suspect list. If she had been working for the enemy this would have been an ideal opportunity to inflict enormous damage by sabotaging the mission.