Nico dropped the woman. She removed the glasses from Re’shawn’s face and went over to paperback girl to put them on her face. Then she pulled hard on paperback girl’s chains.
She pulled her chains’ fixture out of the wall and wound the links around the man’s neck.
The fixture burst out of the floor.
“No one’s going to touch you like that, ever again,” Nico told paperback girl.
She and Bear left the room.
Outside, Tex had brought down the woman who’d fled the draining room and was sucking on her torn throat. His legs no longer appeared broken. The machine ahead continued to whir, and Nico walked on, glancing into empty rooms and searching for Esche. Fast gasps emitted from one. She looked in the doorway.
Broody boy was on his knees before someone.
He wore no restraints, and his body, covered with small, deliberate cuts and simple bruises, held no major injury. The second tennis man from the elevator stood before broody boy, an autoerotic strangulation device hanging from a frame and secured around the man’s neck.
Nico stepped inside and stood behind second-tennis man.
Bye, tennis bitch.
She tripped the mechanism on the apparatus, causing it to constrict, then stepped around the man as he choked, his body jerking. Nico looked down at broody boy while the man asphyxiated, her switchblade in hand.
“Hi, bait boy,” Nico said. Broody boy looked up at her and burst into tears.
“Where’s the boss,” she said.
“He’s past the—there’s a room...a room.” He sobbed. “You can hear it.”
Nico held her knife out a moment more, then lowered it.
Carve TRAITOR in him, Nicky, her maker said.
“Shut up,” Nico said.
“Iris,” Tex howled suddenly from the draining room.
Nico left broody boy weeping before the hanged man. In the hallway, the industrial machine’s whir grew louder. She turned the corner.
“IRIS,” Tex wailed.
The hall was deserted, and beyond the ending doors lay a warehouse space. The clean and bloody scent of vampire bodies wafted. She stepped to where the whirring noise grew louder.
Chop.
Nico turned at the sound of a cleaver hitting a block, and smelled blood strongest from the darkened doorway the sound travelled from. But when she stepped for the door, a ghastly sensation chilled her gut and sickened. A sound filled her mind. It was the faint, then escalating resonance of a ghost screaming.
Nico stepped back, unsteady. She turned her head and saw into the room with the whirring machine.
An assembly line of men in bouffant caps and aprons worked at butchering and processing meat. The first man in the line filleted a hindquarter with his knife. But it was not the leg of a four-legged animal. In the tray next to him, a girl’s hand protruded, the nails painted black.
Nico blinked. Boxes behind the man bore golden labels that said: Prochnyy Kolbasa.
Monkeys wantin’ immortality, her maker said from the VCR.
The man picked up the slender forearm, chopped off the hand with the black painted fingernails, and stripped the limb of skin. The one beside him fed the filleted meat into the whirring meat grinder and added a spoonful of flakes that sparkled. A third man loaded the sausage casings.
The Prochnyy, Dorothy said, hand-raised, highly cultured rare meats rejuvenated via a secret, ritualistic process and stuffed with precious gold flakes and sacred herbs.
Nico heard the dull roar of a cryonics machine, flash-freezing the sausages.
I made all a’ this fer ya, her maker said from the VCR.
The man pulled another limb from the tray; Esche’s left forearm. He chopped off her hand.
Ye’re so late, Nicky.
Was she yer friend, Nicky?
What did I telt ya about—
“You stupid man,” she whispered.
She stepped in and shut the door behind her, and the man with the hand looked up.
When Nico left the room, the meat grinder sat silent.
She held up her bloodstained knife. No sound came from the darkened room across except of heavy breathing and the scuffles of a struggle. She took a step, and a gruesome sensation seized her gut once more. Fear stained the air, permeated her mind, and mounted. Her knife hand shook.
I’m sorry. Nico crept closer. I’m sorry I’m too lat—
The mind-scream is a psionic ability with no design parameters, Dorothy said.
Esche’s mind-scream slammed into Nico’s head, a psychic explosion expanding, and Nico collapsed. A film reel played behind her eyes, turning her into Esche. A man was killing her in a dark room, his eyes emotionally lobotomised. No mental touch reached him. He raised his meat cleaver as Esche clawed his face.
Chop.
Esche screamed, projecting her cry across dimensions.
Chop.
She slowly died, aware of every limb lopped off and every organ forcibly removed from what was left of her body until—
CHOP.
The C-1 vertebrae, permanently severed.
Her maker carved into Nico’s chest, humming, and Nico smelled the earth of her shallow grave before dying.
“Enough,” Nico uttered. She stood up.
Esche’s psychic imprint pounded as Nico stepped into the dimly lit room and smelled the death that Esche had. A chopping block where two figures wrestled and grunted in the dark; sawdust on the floor to absorb the spilt blood. Knives and saws neatly hung; a pile of discarded clothing on the floor. Esche’s choker with the tiny spikes lay atop. Nico brought up her knife.
Eton boy struggled on the butcher’s block, his shirtless body pinned down by a hand at his throat from a human male in leather apron and with corded muscles. Eton boy’s trousers hung low, his braces swinging. One of his arms was chopped off at the elbow, the other desperately holding back Chop Man’s upraised fist that held aloft his bloodstained cleaver. Chop Man’s dull face, clawed by desperate nails, held no expression. He wore Eton boy’s tortoise shell glasses.
Nico walked up and stuck her knife into Chop Man’s C-5 vertebrae.
The cleaver fell from his deadened hand. The man collapsed, and when Nico pulled him off Eton boy, Eton boy tried to punch her. She saw the tattoo on Eton boy’s pale chest. Over his left pectoral muscle was inked: GAIL.
“It’s me,” she said, her voice faint and strange as Esche’s scream echoed inside her skull. She stilled Eton boy’s remaining arm so he could look at her. “I got him. I’ll get all of them.”
“The glasses,” Eton boy gasped. “The lenses record.”
Nico kicked Chop Man over, his slack mouth drooling as he tried to breathe. She pulled the glasses off his face and put them on Eton boy. She picked up a limb.
“They can reattach it,” she said, putting it in Eton boy’s remaining hand.
“That’s not...my hand.”
“Oh.” Nico took it back and dropped it on the floor. Esche’s scream grew louder. Nico dragged Eton boy out the door.
“The girl?” he said, head swivelling.
“We’ll save her,” Nico said.
“So—horrible. We must stop....” Eton boy’s eyelids fluttered.
“We got him,” Nico said.
“Jerry’s not bested us,” he uttered.
“That’s right, Tommy.” Nico pulled him down the hall and as far away from Esche’s mind-scream as she could. She set him down against the wall. “The Nazis won’t win.” Eton boy shut his eyes and went still.
Nico straightened Eton boy’s glasses, then walked to the end of the hallway for the warehouse floor.
She stood in the shadows of the hall and peered into a warehouse space measuring two thousand square feet and two storeys high. At the end was a metal staircase leading to a balcony and an office unit, its windows protected by steel, rolling shutters. A man knelt at the balcony’s railing with a machine gun aimed. Six other men were positioned around the space and behind boxes and crates, their weapo
ns pointed.
You don’t lure Vengeance and Bear into another dimension to end it like this.
She looked up. A giant bubble hung above with wires connected to it. Suspended in the liquid that trembled from electrical currents, a female Po shuddered. She floated upside down.
A tortured Po. A Po gone mad.
Nico withdrew back down the hall and returned to the chopping room. Esche’s continuous scream made her stumble. Tex’s distant cries echoed, incoherent. Nico straightened and entered.
When she returned to the hall’s end, she pushed the wheeled butcher’s block with one of the dead meat packers seated atop. The wheels squeaked, echoing, and her vampire’s hearing detected the sounds of weapons being readied. She pushed hard and sent the block rolling into the centre of the warehouse floor.
The men opened fire with pulse blasts and bullets, decimating the meat packer’s body. Nico stepped in and threw a butcher’s knife for one shooter to the left, hitting his throat. She flung another far across the room and the man on the balcony dropped down with the blade deep in his chest. The third knife flew to the right and found a man’s eye socket. Something burst through the mental door inside Nico’s head.
FORGET, the Po shouted into Nico’s mind, and Nico replayed the memory of Esche’s death-scream back, a mental tape recorder clenched in psychic fists.
I am her champion, and I am not done.
The command FORGET fragmented inside Nico’s head. Nico threw the cleaver at the Po’s bubble. It smashed, spilling liquid as the Po resonated, a mind-scream greater than Esche’s. Somewhere unseen, four other women shrieked, their twisted psychic faces flying at Nico’s mind.
Four Baba Yagas and a captive Po.
Nico fell to her knees as the Po plummeted to her death, impacting the warehouse floor. The four unseen women went silent and the men dropped their weapons and writhed.
Don’t pass out now, Nicky, her maker said, sticking his knife into her.
Stop it, Nico said when he stabbed her again, and she saw the night stars above the treetops as she lay dying.
Nico swayed, then stiffly regained her feet. She walked, wooden, and continued to replay Esche’s death to push back the Po’s. Nico walked by cowering men and mounted the stairs to the office, one step at a time. Once she reached the door, she pressed the chime and waited.
When the door did not slide open, she pressed the chime again.
The door slid open, and Nico stepped in.
Her feet touched thick carpeting, and antique clocks ticked. A table with silver candlesticks and a meal of kolbasa laid on fine china sat abandoned. The slices glittered from the precious gold flakes mixed in the pale meat. The wine glass did not exude the scent of wine, but of undead blood. Nico looked at the great oak desk at the end of the room and at the bearded, grey-haired man who stood behind it, dressed in a tailored black suit.
Fedotov. Who is Fedosov.
Vasili was small, only a little bigger than Nico, and he shook with a fear similar to that of the smitten upon sight of his idol, or of the doubter, witnessing his god for the first time.
Do we know each other?
Nico walked slowly forwards and stared, thinking him dry and colourless, nondescript and unmemorable. He seemed someone who was simply nothing unless he possessed something. He raised a trembling hand as if to ward her off, and it held something.
Two torn strips of paper; her and Bear’s signed name on the Again Friends’ sign-in sheet. Her credit card with her signature on the back. All three pieces sealed together by an iron nail, driven through the centre. Wound with black string, thirteen times. Nicolette Alexikova and Bear, in triplicate.
Nico raised her wrist, displaying Shayla’s blessed bracelet.
“All that you hurt,” she said as she approached, “for money?”
Fedosov only looked at her, frightened and seemingly uncomprehending. He backed away.
“Money,” she repeated. Fedosov backed into the wall.
“Bear and me, on your label,” she said. “Like a pooka.”
She stepped closer.
“How many vampires did you kill, wanting it to be me?”
Why do you look like you’re dreaming?
“You’re not him.” Those aren’t his eyes. “You’re just....”
She stepped again, and Fedosov’s hands went up, as if in surrender.
“Ahhhhh,” he screamed when she stabbed his hand that held his talisman, pinning it and his hand to the wall. She waited, but no blood exited the hand to bloom on the paper with her signature.
“Ahhhhhhhhh,” he continued to cry.
Nico stared, wondering at his pain.
When Fedosov’s cry faded away, Nico heard a heavy step on the carpet. She turned her head.
Tough Guy stood within the room.
“Desist, potential citizen,” the Makepeace said.
***
Special Agent Yoo rushed in with agents, filling the space with moving bodies and noise. The agents hurried past Nico to secure the room and see to Fedosov. Nico looked at the Makepeace, who stood statue-like as agents passed between them. An agent wearing a medical insignia came to her side, carrying a tagger.
“Ms Alexikova, we’re going to administer a dose of Conquer,” the agent began.
“Don’t touch me,” Nico said, turning to keep her arm away from him. Someone laid a firm, but reassuring hand on her shoulder and she looked up. Tough Guy had crossed the room and towered above her. “I don’t want any,” she said to the Makepeace.
“Ms Alexikova, you’ve been exposed to the death of a captive Po and the residue effects of a psionic’s mind-scream,” Yoo said, approaching, and Nico listened, feeling the agent were a thousand miles away. “Conquer does not affect your memories, only the fear and pain that comes with them.”
“No.” This isn’t him. I can’t find him if you give me drugs.
“She has said no,” Tough Guy said. He turned Nico and walked her to the door.
Medics rushed in, and Yoo barked commands about getting Nico’s switchblade out of Fedosov. Tough Guy walked beside her with his hand on her shoulder, a big brother with a big gun who, like in the movies, was supposed to nod his approval because she won the karate fight, girl in high school, or secret kingdom, and then take her for ice cream. But the peace of some storybook victory was just that, a story. He still eluded her, causing her to quake within, an eruption building. As they descended the steps and proceeded down the floor, Fedosov’s dazed thugs sat in the custody of OI agents, exhibiting no fear or suffering at all.
Why did you give them Conquer? Shoot that one. And that one. And that one. Beat them up for me.
“I had to do this all by myself,” she accused, her voice hoarse.
“You did well,” Tough Guy said, and they walked.
When Nico and the Makepeace entered the hall with the chopping room, the hallway was empty, Eton boy no longer present. But Nico heard agents investigating the meat grinding room. They swiftly tagged and inventoried.
One piece of Esche, two pieces of Esche, three pieces, four.
Nico abruptly turned for the chopping room and Tough Guy let her go. She entered, Esche’s scream amplifying, and she snatched up Esche’s choker from the discard pile. Her hands shook as she fastened it around Bear’s neck.
“Tell me I did okay,” Nico said, turning to the Makepeace.
“You have destroyed a monster,” Tough Guy said from the doorway.
Nico’s gaze fell to where Chop Man lay. He blinked.
When she looked up, Special Agent Rotherhithe stood hidden in the shadows, his vampire visage to the fore. His lip curled and he held a meat cleaver.
Tough Guy offered his hand.
Nico left the room and the last vestiges of Esche behind.
They turned for the hall with the draining room, and the surviving human suckers and sex customers sat, cuffed, while the agents processed them. They appeared unharmed, and therefore, untouched by Tex. Nico stared at their inviolate
state.
Kill them all, Nicky.
Kill them.
Kill them.
“Shut up,” Nico said, and Tough Guy laid a hand once again on her shoulder.
The draining room: straws lay scattered, one of them glittering with encrusted jewels. The hooks hung empty while agents moved, attending to victims, and the freezer door stood open, its porthole smeared with blood. Tex huddled, holding someone, and his scourged back bled streaking, bloody tears. Paperback girl sat outside with a medic who fed her blood packs. She watched dazedly as Nico passed by with the Makepeace.
“Don’t—arrest her,” paperback girl ejected, and blood dripped from her mouth. “She helped.”
“It’s okay,” Nico said. “He has wings.”
They walked on and turned for where the duplicate dorms lay.
Within the boys’ dorm, the man still hung from the rafters. A silver metal arch stood by the bed where her taut electrical cord emerged, a disappearing rope trick leading to nothing. An agent documented the dead with an Id while another conversed with him. The agents then chuckled with each other, but to Nico, their mirth amplified into grotesque laughter.
Look at them.
They’re all me, Nicky.
“No, I will not let you tell me,” Nico said.
She and the Makepeace walked through the gate.
They stepped out into the boys’ dorm in Again Friends, her electrical cord tied to the bed frame. She walked with Tough Guy out of the room and down the steps, ignoring the investigating agents moving about. When they stepped into the entry hallway, Dann’s caged booth stood empty, and Tough Guy removed his hand. Nico continued walking and did not hear him follow. She did not look back.
Outside the entry door that she had jammed, hydraulic jaws had been set between the door and the frame, bending metal. It left a gap to squeeze through. The dark outside was well lit with spotlights, and a curious crowd gathered, marked off by strung tape and an erected barricade.
Before she reached the door, Nico saw her. Shayla stood on the inside of the barricade with a three-quarter length corduroy coat over her waitress uniform, talking to an officer in blue who blocked her from entering. Nico passed through the door’s gap and stepped outside.
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