Penelope didn’t spare him more than the briefest glance. Merri stepped into the room with her unnerving gaze fixed upon Penelope. “Thief,” she said with a voice filled with fractured ice. “I see you still bear my marks.”
It was difficult not to reach up and touch the scratches that suddenly stung anew on Penelope’s face, but she resisted and gripped the weapon she held behind her back tightly. “I was hoping it would be you,” she said amicably.
The statement surprised the witch. Merri twitched angrily. Her eyes melted into a frozen lake of irritation due to a lack of immediate understanding. “Me? I would have thought you’d prefer Anthony. After all, he’s only human. You might even be able to kill him.”
“But you’re the one who’s the most dangerous,” Penelope said sincerely.
Merri obviously enjoyed the comment. She saw it as a compliment. Her head tilted curiously. “Most humans underestimate this form. They see the beauty and nothing else.”
“And there’s nothing left in there of the original Merri, the one who was once a member of the Enumclaw tribe, the one who was once married to the man you just knocked across the room?” Penelope shifted her grip on the weapon and tripped the safety off.
The frightening smile on Merri’s face increased to shark-like proportions. “I like this game,” she said. “You try to distract me or delay me, and then somehow something happens to keep me from killing both of you. What’s the word for it? Anticipation. Yes, that’s it.”
“I thought I was needed for the ceremony,” Penelope said quickly. It came out as a mark short of desperate. Her palm felt sweaty on the handle of the weapon she was holding.
Merri hesitated fleetingly. It was enough to let Penelope know that Will’s suppositions were correct. The witch almost sneered in her dismay over the scenario. However, her immediate bloodlust was enough to overcome whatever Anthony desired, the ends of which was something that she also desired. “It doesn’t mean I can’t cause a little damage,” she said wrathfully. “You caused me pain. I didn’t care for the sensation.”
Abruptly, Will launched himself past Penelope and threw himself bodily onto Merri. He panted out words in his tribal language as he did so, and it sounded like a virulent curse to Penelope. Penelope wavered as his heavier body smashed into Merri’s. One of his fists came crashing down, and the witch hissed like a wounded feline. She answered in the same language but there was no panting ferocity in her words, only the cold reality that she wasn’t human.
Penelope scrambled forward, and in the mad tumble of limbs, someone shoved her away. One arm cracked against a wall. Her weapon spilled out of her hands and landed on the bare mattress. “Oh, crap,” she muttered and looked quickly. Will’s flashlight was in the hallway. Hers had dropped to the floor and was illuminating the life-and-death struggle. The weapon she’d so cleverly obtained from Ray was lying uselessly on a dirty mattress far away.
Will was snarling now in English. “You’re not Merri, and you never will be! She died the moment she walked into the circle!”
The witch had gained the upper hand. She was astride Will as if riding a wild animal, her legs squeezing together, and grimly forcing him to be still. One of her hands was wrapped around his throat, and the other held one of his wrists. Penelope could see immediately that something was wrong with his other arm. It lay uselessly at his side, crooked at an odd angle.
“Jesus Christ,” Penelope swore and grabbed the only thing she could. The heavy flashlight swung like a baseball bat and aimed for Merri’s head. Drops of black blood splattered in all directions, and a sickening crunch answered her, but Merri didn’t budge from her position. Will still began to choke audibly as the witch’s fingers began to tighten.
Merri’s head swiveled slowly to look at Penelope. “You don’t like this pastime? I thought you humans enjoyed a little challenge. When I broke your friend’s leg, he fought back with all of his might. He was fun.”
Jeremy. She’s talking about Jeremy, Penelope thought with alarm. But then, she answered herself immediately, It doesn’t matter because Jeremy’s dead now.
The flashlight swung again and teeth crunched. Merri rocked only the tiniest bit with the blow. She smiled bloodily at Penelope and spit out two broken fragments of teeth. “Is that all you’ve got, little thief? Because when I’m done with my…husband, I’m going to rip every bit of living skin from your body. But don’t worry, you’ll still be alive. Enough for Anthony to use.”
Penelope dropped the flashlight and stepped back. She turned and swooped for the weapon. Merri watched with some amusement, her fingers pressing even harder into Will’s throat. There was only the stomach-turning sound of his legs thudding feebly on the floor.
Spinning quickly, Penelope pointed the gun-like weapon at the witch. Merri saw it and chuckled. “Modern technology,” she laughed. “I particularly liked the airplane. Did you know that if they opened the door, a spirit called depressurization would pull out several people?”
“Let him go,” Penelope said.
Merri eased up on Will’s throat. Will choked in air, and Penelope knew that Merri hadn’t collapsed his esophagus. He was still alive. His eyes stared helplessly at Penelope and one hoarse, tortured word came out, “Run!”
No more running, she thought. And the thought came from her, not her inner voice, but from her. It was time to stand and fight. If the weapon didn’t work, then she would find another way. Somewhere, somehow, she knew that Will’s life was just as important as anyone’s, and he had saved her as well. She wasn’t about to leave Will to the thing’s whimsical madness.
Merri seemed coldly amused. “Bullets will do about as much to me as the flashlight. Interesting toys but basically harmless.”
Penelope smiled at her, and there was no insincerity in the expression. “It’s not a gun,” she said with extreme satisfaction. As soon as her finger went into the trigger hole, the laser targeting came on and its red mark found the center of Merri’s chest.
The witch followed the line of the laser sight down to her chest, and a frown marred her gory face. “What is that?”
“Since you like to hear so much about technology,” she said, “I’ll tell you. It looks like a gun, but it’s really a Taser. It fires two electrified projectiles into its target. What it really does is discharge an electrical pulse in a way that disrupts the muscular and central nervous system of the human body. 50,000 volts’ worth, by the way. Enough to make you glow in the dark.”
The witch was slow to comprehend the unfamiliar words. She didn’t get it until Penelope added viciously, “The security guard at Cedars on the Ridge used his on you. Since you enjoyed that so much, I thought I’d get one that was about ten times stronger.”
Merri’s face became horrified with realization. She suddenly let Will go and stood up, which was exactly what Penelope wanted her to do. Penelope kept the laser centered on Merri’s chest and fired. The top electrode of the weapon hit just above her breast bone, and the second probe hit the body a few inches lower. It only took an instant for Merri to react. She emitted a deep wrenching scream. Her entire body convulsed with spasms caused by the electrical discharge. She tottered to one side and fell, a few steps away from Will.
Will’s eyes watched in disbelief. Then he looked back at Penelope. She shrugged and ejected the spent cartridge. Rapidly, she reloaded a cartridge into the Taser weapon. When she was done she aimed them carefully at Merri’s still-shuddering body. Then she fired again. The other two probes hit her abdomen. The barbed projectiles were designed to imbed themselves into even heavy clothing and remained attached to the Taser by high voltage insulated wire.
Merri screamed anew. Her back arched upward and clunked back down onto the floor powerlessly. The room suddenly started to grow green with an unknown light source. Penelope had seen it before. In a cave with a black ceremony taking place, with a woman who had realized an instant too late that it wasn’t what she wanted at all.
“Electricity isn’t exactly mode
rn technology,” Penelope said to Will. “And you can consider this an official divorce decree.” Will laid his head back against the hardwood floor and watched the light. It grew into a blindingly strong sheen of greens and then abruptly vanished. Then there was only the sole working flashlight showing Merri’s body lying on the floor.
Penelope ejected the other cartridge and put the Taser back into the safe mode. She tucked it back into the waistband of her jeans and went to check on Will. His face was bluish but recovering color. “Your arm is broken,” she said. “At least it’s not the kind where the bone sticks out of the skin.”
“It hurts like it is,” he rasped. Will’s head turned to look at the body of his wife. Merri’s physical form was decaying rapidly just like a vampire’s corpse in an old Hollywood “B.” Her flesh had sunk inward and turned the shade of blackest night and putrefaction was setting in. The body looked as though it were melting.
“She really was dead,” Penelope said wonderingly.
Will’s hand reached up to Penelope’s cheek and touched her there. He coughed and cleared his throat twice before speaking roughly. “Merri wanted more, and Anthony found the chink in her armor. He corrupted her soul.” The last was a bitter note of regret.
Penelope stared down into his eyes. She broke the look by saying, “Can you move?”
Struggling to a sitting position, Will blanched. The pain of his broken limb was apparent. They could both hear the broken ends of the bone rubbing together. She said jokingly, “You don’t suppose the seatco is here, too? I’m not sure if I could take it by myself.”
“Anthony must have it with him,” Will said, feeling too much pain to joke about it. “You said you knew where to look, so where will we look?”
“You’re going to the hospital,” Penelope insisted vehemently. “Look at yourself. You can hardly stand.” She wrapped his good arm around her neck and shoulder. “I’m helping you downstairs and then we’re going to the nearest emergency room.”
“After I get the cast, then we can continue,” Will said forcibly.
Penelope didn’t bother to answer. The witch had done her one favor at the very least. Will wouldn’t be in the picture for the big finale. It was just the way that she wanted it. And she didn’t even have to taser him. Unlike Jeremy, Jobe, and Sammy, Will would be safe.
*
A harried doctor in an emergency room at Baylor University Medical Center took one look at Will and started issuing rapid-fire directions to his staff. An hour later, Will was undergoing surgery. The fractured bones in his arm were causing internal hemorrhaging.
Penelope sat down and filled out paperwork for Will. She used his name correctly on the forms, but when it asked for hers, she wrote in “Elizabeth Stride.” She listed the address as 1234 Whitechapel Lane in Dallas. When done, she handed over the paperwork to an employee at the emergency room reception area. No one even bothered to look at what she’d written.
Stepping outside for a moment, Penelope dialed a number on Jeremy’s cell phone. A sleepy voice answered two rings later with a grumpy, “This better be worth a lot of money.”
“Artemis,” Penelope said cheerfully. “It’s me. Your favorite client.”
Artemis groaned. “I had to shut down business for two days because of you. Some rotten cop came up and down asking questions about you. You know what happened to him.”
“I didn’t do anything to any cop,” Penelope denied. “Besides I was out of town having a vision quest. My new buddies say my spirit animal is a coyote, which is very rare.”
“Have you been smoking something funky?” Artemis asked seriously.
“You said something the last time we spoke about your favorite pastime.”
“My favorite pastime,” Artemis repeated doubtfully.
“Besides cloning illegal cell phones and charging for information, I mean,” she said.
“Why don’t you broadcast it on the evening news?” he growled.
“Diving,” she reiterated for Artemis’s benefit. “You said something about diving.”
“Yeah, I like to dive. Of course, it’s not exactly a diving paradise around here.”
“Where do you go diving?” she asked slowly, trying to repress her impatience.
“There’s a quarry that a guy opened up in Athens,” Artemis said carefully, unsure of Penelope’s intent. “The water’s not great, but it’s a divers-only park, so no crap from jet skis, fishermen, and boats. Balmorhea State Park has San Solomon Springs, which is too cool, but it’s hell and gone from Dallas. Then there’s this missile silo in Abilene.”
Penelope suddenly thought of the aerial survey and what Will had said about his geologist bud. “My geologist friend said he didn’t know of any, but he’d heard rumors about one east of Abilene.” The scientist had been referring to not knowing about big meteor strikes in Texas but only hearing stories. Could the aerial survey be a military one? Yes, it could very well be. An old military survey. And the military patch. Strategic Air Command.
“Missile silo?” she said. It fits. SAC is in charge of missiles. It works.
“Yeah, there are tons of them around here. Relics of the cold war, says my erudite political science teacher. Not all of them are good for diving, but the one by Abilene is an Atlas Missile silo. Deep sucker, that. It flooded eventually. A lot of them do.”
“Tons of them,” she repeated. “So how would you find them?”
“Duh,” Artemis said wryly. “Atlasmissile.com. It’s got a concise list of sites. Who they’re owned by, whether they’re for sale, present condition, et cetera. I did a paper on them for my poly sci teacher. He totally got into it.”
“How many around Abilene?”
“Atlas? Um. Ten or twelve, I guess. The one is a diving park. Pretty cool place too, but you have to have an advanced certificate. Then, there’s one that was filled in by somebody for some reason. One is on a rancher’s property. He doesn’t let anyone go there, so I couldn’t even visit it. Another one has been renovated into someone’s house.” Artemis paused to think about it. “The other one is a restaurant. They take people down into the silo for tours.”
“That’s five,” she confirmed.
“So there’s five,” Artemis said. “Five, six, twenty, what’s the big deal?”
“How many are east of Abilene?” she asked, remembering the geologist’s comment.
“East,” Artemis said slowly. “How in the hell should I know? Go look at the website. There’s a map and directions for diehard missile buffs. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. That one rancher guy doesn’t like trespassers. He’s got a sign that says ‘Trespassers will be violated and eaten.’ We tried to call him, but he hung up.”
“Why did you try to call him?”
“Divers are always looking for a new spot to dive,” Artemis said smirkingly. “The deeper you go, the better it feels.”
Penelope resisted the inevitable groan. “Do me a favor, Artemis. Get that paper out. I know you’ve got it in a file on your computer.”
“I really hate that name.” Artemis was silent for a moment, and she could hear him rustling around. “Going to cost you, Penelope. You know my advanced schooling will be expensive. Especially if I want to have any kind of life at all on the side.”
“What are you going to be when you grow up, Artemis? A lawyer? A politician? ”
The sound of a computer being turned on filtered through the line. “Just a minute,” he said. “It’s a little slow warming up. And I wouldn’t demean myself to the level of a lawyer or a politician.”
“What then?”
“Well, I’ll tell you if you promise not to tell anyone,” Artemis said warily.
“Artemis, I’m probably not going to live through the week, so your secret is safe.”
“You’re not going to live through the week,” he said doubtfully. “You got cancer or something? You’ve been acting very strange lately. First that DART cop, then the stuff about your professor friend, then you up and vanish, w
ith another cop asking questions about you, and Ray didn’t want to give me my money, but I threatened him, so he finally did. Then that cop disappears. Did you know they found his car over in Mesquite or somewhere like that?”
“Yes, yes, I live a strange life, kid. I told you not to get involved.”
“Me get involved. You keep calling me,” Artemis protested. “Oh, there we go. You want to write them down, or I’ll send you a file.”
“First tell me what you’re going to be, and I’ll go find a fax machine you can send it to me at.” Penelope looked over her shoulder at the hospital. There were probably twenty million fax machines in there, and she could use any of those.
“I’m joining the FBI,” Artemis said seriously. “They need me.”
“Amen to that,” she said and chuckled. The FBI probably did need Artemis. They just didn’t know it yet.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Wednesday, July 16th
To open up (slang, origin unknown, probably 1930s American) - to start shooting or punching
Only two of the missile silos were located east of Abilene, Texas. One was the restaurant aptly called Missile Rob’s Eats and Treats. There was an underline of “Eat at the only missile silo restaurant in North America.” As soon as she got out of the Jeep Wrangler, a middle-aged man dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and baggy shorts, who was standing by his minivan, said indignantly, “That’s not true. There’s one in Arizona, too.”
Penelope ate lunch at the restaurant and got a guided tour. The tour was helpful in that she got an insider’s view of the layout of the silo. There were two major segments of the Cold War era relic. One was the headquarters, offices, and sleeping quarters of the soldiers who manned and maintained the silo.
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