Giving Him Hell_A Saturn's Daughter Novel

by Jamie Quaid

  They probably thought I could wave magic wands. I couldn’t do a damned rational thing that I knew of. But once our audience had departed, I leaned over and whispered in Andre’s ear.

  “I’m going to rip your arm off, bastard.” I closed my hand tightly around his.

  I swear, the beast almost smiled.

  “Or maybe I should rip off something a little less useful.” I slid my filthy hand under the covers. I didn’t know how I’d explain the mud stains to Katerina if she was stupid enough to do his laundry, but that wasn’t my concern now.

  They’d dressed him in pajamas. I snorted inelegantly and slid my hand beneath the elastic band. I could swear I felt his blood stirring.

  “We have so many problems that I can’t begin to count them on all your fingers and toes,” I grumbled, clasping his penis in my muddy paw. “And you’re gonna lounge around over there on the other side pretending to be a succubus? Or is that incubus? I’m not into that crap. I’m into this.” I squeezed.

  He groaned. He squirmed. And damned if he didn’t get hard.

  “Wake up now, Andre, or I’ll leave you like this and let you explain to your mother.” I curled all my fingers around him and there was plenty of room left to rub up and down. Hard. And fast.

  “Geez, Clancy,” he spluttered, jerking his hips. “You have no class.”

  I laughed. I laughed hysterically. I let him go and collapsed against his chest and when his arms circled me, I laughed some more.

  Everyone rushed back in, and I kept laughing.

  “She’s hysterical. Get her out of here,” Andre said above my head. But he was hanging on to me too hard for anyone to pry me loose.

  “I hate you, Andre. You’re a wicked bastard pig. And you’re so going down one of these days.” With that double entendre, I pulled myself loose. “I need a shower.”

  Ignoring the platter of sandwiches and cup of steaming coffee Julius and Katerina held, I walked straight into Andre’s decadent shower and turned on the spray, then stripped.

  My leg was nearly healed.

  I stared at the once bleeding wound in disbelief, then ripped off the bandage on my arm. I couldn’t even see a scar.

  ***

  Cora brought me undies, jeans, a sweater, and my tote bag. I must have left the bag at the homeless shelter when I ran out. Handy, because she couldn’t have got into my closet without my keys. Or carried Milo, who liked his sedan chair and had apparently returned to it.

  I checked the mirror when I got out of the shower. The wounds were gone, but my hair hadn’t miraculously repaired itself. I was starting to look like a homeless bum.

  By the time I emerged from the bathroom, fully dressed, Andre was sitting up in bed, looking a little more ruddy, with Milo covering his lap.

  “Chandelier, Andre, really?” I asked, commenting on his decor. “Marble? Is your toilet the Taj Mahal?” I grabbed a sandwich from the platter Julius swung under my nose.

  “She’s still hysterical. Better take her home.” Andre sipped his coffee and ignored me.

  “Pretty blue pjs, big boy,” I said through a mouthful of tuna fish and basil. Katerina must have fixed these. Julius didn’t know how to open a can. “I’m not going anywhere until I know you’re here and not sucking around some other world.”

  He studiedly ignored me. “I’m accepting MSI’s offer tomorrow. The Zone is too dangerous.”

  I staggered from the blow. All my work, for nothing? I wanted to send him back where he’d come from.

  “Big bad Special Ops boy is afraid of a couple of lunatic gnomes with guns,” I taunted, not letting him know my despair. My stomach knotted, and I wasn’t hungry anymore.

  Andre had once been my boss. I knew how tough he could be. He wasn’t lying.

  Milo leapt from the bed to curl around my ankles. I picked him up and stroked him to keep my anger level down, but I felt as if I was teetering on a precipice.

  “He may be right this time, Tina,” Katerina said worriedly. “If the ground under the harbor is so fragile that it’s collapsing, it could do the same to the town.”

  I may have dreamed there was a space alien trapped in a meteorite under the Zone, but I knew for certain that our homes and friends were here, in the Zone. I couldn’t give up.

  I took a chair and put my bare feet up on his covers. Milo curled up on the bed to keep an eye on us. “Yes, the Zone is dangerous,” I agreed with a semblance of calm. “Do you want to invite MSI and their patients to suffer in our place?”

  “Their problem,” Andre snarled. “I’m buying that warehouse over in Fells Point. I’ll turn it into a condo and retail complex. Makes more sense than staying here.”

  I glanced up at Cora, who was regarding him worriedly. “If he does, we’ll move in with him,” I threatened. “I’ll turn his customers to stone, and you can freak out the neighbors. Tim can go boo and before long, we’ll have the place to ourselves. Not so bad for anyone except Andre, who’ll have to make the mortgage payments on bankrupt businesses.”

  “You might want to try that here,” Schwartz surprisingly suggested. “That foreign doctor was pretty freaked today. Someone needs to make it clear that Acme’s magic element has violent side effects. MSI might change its mind.”

  Acme’s magic may have healed my wounds—but it was also cracking open our community.

  “I truly appreciate a rational man,” I told him, practically inhaling my coffee. “But if the traitor here strikes an agreement,” I kicked Andre’s leg beneath the cover, “Acme will just take over instead of MSI. They’ve wanted us out all along.”

  “Let them have the place,” Andre growled. “I’ll laugh as it crumbles beneath their feet.”

  I was pretty worried he was right, and I was wrong, and I ought to just go home for the little while I had it. I’d never had a home so nice. Of course, I’d never talked to space aliens before either.

  “Fine, then we’ll all move up to Dane’s mansion,” I sneered instead of shutting up like I should. “I bet I’d look good in Ruxton. Dane could find me a place on his staff. With all that money, I’m betting I could find a place for everybody. You can go live in Fells Point by yourself.”

  A pop-pop-popping sound outside broke up the argument. In my despair, I was ready to blast anyone who crossed me.

  Schwartz gestured for us to stand back while he put his back against the wall by the front window and peered out. “You’ve got uniformed men with guns pouring out of your place, Tina. Did you leave the gates to hell open?”

  Oh crap. I wilted in my chair. “I don’t suppose one of them is carrying Christmas ornaments?” I asked, too tired to care. I’d left the rest of the gnomes scattered about the office, unfettered. Mistake, apparently.

  I could feel everyone gawking at me, but I forced myself to take another bite of my sandwich. If I had to fight stoned gnomes, I wasn’t doing it on an empty stomach.

  “A couple are wearing red caps,” Schwartz said warily, glancing in my direction.

  “I didn’t do it.” I held up my hands in innocence. “I swear, I did nothing. Not to that lot anyway. Maybe the lunatics found them. Maybe Paddy is experimenting with canned gas again. Are they coming this way? Do we need to open Andre’s weapon chamber?”

  Andre had a complete arsenal in a bomb shelter beneath the street.

  Just as an experiment, I tried visualizing my stoned fascist gnomes into strolling down to Chesty’s for pasta instead of terrorizing the neighborhood. That would be justice, wouldn’t it?

  “Nah, they’re stumbling around, looking kind of lost mostly. I think the one with the assault rifle shot up the florist truck Tim left out front. Another freak is holding a holly branch and beating it over his head. And now they’re all arguing and looking for their phones. I’ll go out and see if I can play helpful cop.”

  It didn’t sound as if they were heading for Chesty’s. So much for that experiment. The gnomes hadn’t responded to my visualization any better than the frogs. New theories needed. Maybe
I needed to be in peril before I could visualize my enemies to Tahiti.

  I raised a cautionary eyebrow at our normally taciturn lieutenant. “Give them a minute, see if they put their toys away.”

  Unlike Gloria’s hellhounds, Graham Young’s security guards hadn’t spent years drinking in the pollution of Acme and Hell’s Mansion. Chances were good they were just stupid, not evil. I had no evidence otherwise and didn’t want to have to damn them. Not that damning had worked on Kaminski.

  Andre threw off his covers and stalked to the window in his blue pajamas. Apparently gunfire had leveled any lingering arousal, but he was still a lithe muscular panther who shot my hormone level sky high, even if he was a selfish, amoral bastard that I had to take down.

  “They’re holstering their guns and phoning in for orders,” Andre concluded. “Go out and give them Graham Young’s new address in the psych ward.” He turned and faced us. “Out. I’m getting dressed. Time’s running out if I’m going to be a rich man.”

  He’d saved my life. I couldn’t kill him, although beating him with a big stick had appeal.

  Schwartz left to steer our would-be gunmen out of town. Looking bewildered and worried, Cora left with him. She sent a pleading look to me, but I was still too shaken to know right from wrong. I knew what I wanted. That didn’t mean saving the Zone was right.

  Something in that tunnel had healed my wounds—just as it had healed seriously wounded psyches like Andre’s had been. And the mystery of the Zone had given second chances and stronger characters to people like Bill and Fred. The Zone wasn’t all bad.

  Which was when my imagination ran away with my logic, and I put together Gloria’s barrels of chemicals and holes to hell and meteorites and confused space aliens and formed a crazed puzzle of them. All I had to do was remove Andre from the equation.

  I finished my sandwich and came to my feet. “Sell out, Andre, and you’re opening the gates to hell to MacNeill. I’m not letting that happen.”

  He glared and started unfastening his pajama buttons.

  Milo and I followed his parents out, leaving him alone. They looked worried as I kept on going, but as Andre had said, time was running out.

  Tomorrow was Friday, the last day of the offer to buy the Zone before eminent domain bulldozed us all. I needed a plan.

  Twenty-nine

  Don’t turn creeps into inanimate or incoherent objects, I wrote in my mental rule book as I hurried home with Milo hot on my heels. You only get one chance to make them pay. Make it count. There was probably a better word for croaking frogs than incoherent but my brain wasn’t yet up to par. It was about to explode, in fact.

  I was pretty certain I’d just verified that I could only visualize thugs out of my way once. After that, I was on my own. I could never turn Ned into a frog again, or even a gnome. I couldn’t make the fascists or the ex-frogs stop shooting at me.

  I wasn’t even sure I could damn them, since I’d had to drop my last victim into the harbor and bulldoze over him before I got rid of him. Although I may have sent his soul to hell since I’d been rewarded with the saunas packing up and leaving. But my personal goal was survival, not being the devil’s minion.

  If my visualization didn’t teach the baddies to be good, they’d wreak havoc forevermore, and there wouldn’t be a blamed thing I could do about it except have them arrested like a normal citizen. That sucked, because here in the Zone, getting justice didn’t happen often.

  And based on the guards’ spectacular return from gnomes and frogs, it looked like the visualization only lasted a little while—around the Zone, anyway. I didn’t have time to experiment elsewhere.

  Daddy Saturn was a piss poor parent if he left everything up to me to resolve. No wonder my mother had run away and his other daughters hid and skulked in dark corners of the earth. We were all paranoid and hiding because none of us knew what we were doing.

  With Milo leaping ahead of me, I hurried upstairs to my place to start organizing my campaign to save the Zone in a day.

  I nearly crashed to a halt when I opened my apartment door to find a computer tablet in the middle of the floor, flashing a red and pink exclamation point. I checked inside my tote bag where my tablet ought to be . . . and it was gone.

  Someone had swiped it while I was underground?

  Then left me a message. Themis. At the homeless shelter?

  Cora had my keys, but she would have just said what she needed to say to my face. Sighing, I scooped up the tablet and collapsed onto my couch. Milo hurried off in search of food while I tapped the screen.

  Whatever you’re doing, aziz, don’t let it happen again. I was a virgin when I had your mother scrolled across the screen.

  A virgin. Right. I pinched the bridge of my nose and wondered if I shouldn’t just go to bed and let the world take care of itself. Or lock myself up in the psych ward with Young.

  Not wanting to think about virgin births, I dialed up Max.

  “What’s happening down there, Justy? The TV is reporting earthquakes with an epicenter in the harbor. I could feel the tremors up here.”

  “If you’ll believe me, I’ll tell you. Otherwise, it’s too long a tale and I’m too tired.” I got up and rummaged in my refrigerator for a beer, hummus, and chips. Sandwiches couldn’t fill the empty place in my gut at Andre’s threat to sell out.

  “We had sex in hell, Justy. A priest exorcised a demon in my front room. What’s not to believe?” he asked wryly.

  I’d had sex with two men without body parts touching. Is that what Themis was warning me about? She really believed planetary forces control our bodies? I shuddered and concentrated on the here and now.

  “Then believe Acme is literally sitting on a meteorite that’s eating its way to hell. I’m not a chemist so don’t ask me to explain, but the explosions today were probably a combination of Gloria’s demon heat and the meteorite and Acme’s chemical waste ground. We can’t just blow it up, unfortunately. Whatever elements are in that rock can also save lives—and heal wounds,” I added as all my spinning thoughts attempted to coagulate. “And cause violence. Or maybe Gloria does that. And I think Acme pumping the element out of the meteorite is causing fissures or fractals or whatever in the ground around the harbor.”

  “That almost makes sense,” he agreed warily. “Almost, given what we’ve gone through.”

  I didn’t mention space aliens. That could have been hallucination and wasn’t necessary for this story, but if a living being was down there—that really crippled my alternatives.

  “Acme has offered Andre a fortune to sell out,” I continued, “presumably so they can build a medical clinic and experiment with the healing powers of pink particles.”

  “Almost following,” he said with more doubt.

  “Keep up because it’s going down tomorrow if we don’t stop them. You know your ex-dad better than anyone. How heavy is he into the pockets of the war machine?” I was talking of Max’s dad, not Dane’s. Mike MacNeill had been kicked out of office because of his shady weapon deals.

  “Very heavy,” Max agreed. “Mikey is a lobbyist and picks up funds out of war machine back pockets that I don’t want to know about. Acme got the nerve gas contract because of his contacts. Is that what this is really about?”

  “I have no proof. But ever since Acme gassed the zone with this element, we’ve had outbreaks of weird violence.” Like Sarah carrying guns and shooting anything she came across. Tourists punching each other out for no reason. Goons shooting at me because they got divorced. Weird crap, but again, I didn’t want to give Max too much. “When that gas was sprayed at them, it caused Gloria and her mad scientist to go berserk and attack anything in sight. Do you want to see what happens if we gas the Middle East with that stuff?”

  He sighed. “I can’t shut down Acme because it makes chemicals, Justy. What did you have in mind?”

  “My bet is that your father really wants to turn the Zone into a munitions factory, that cancer research is simply a blind for testi
ng chemical warfare. Persuade your mother and sister not to let him vote their shares. Let Dane persuade them,” I amended. “Don’t let Acme buy out Andre or continue with their pressure for eminent domain. You may lose credibility if word gets out that you’re messing in the family business, but short of sending out witches and exorcists to expel your father, I’m not sure what else we can do.”

  He fell silent while I fretted about making the right decision. Max would be a good senator. I wanted him to have that power and position. I didn’t want him to be humiliated by his ex-father and bad press over the family business. But Acme was sitting on evil, and world peace trumped any one person.

  “I don’t think it can be done overnight, Justy, I’m sorry. Better call in the exorcists and maybe the witches, because I’m afraid Mikey sold his soul to the devil a long time ago. I’ll call and talk to them, but there’s too much water under that bridge for me to hold out hope.”

  “Dane is still their shining star,” I reminded him, needing some hope that if I failed, I had backup. “Don’t think like rebel Max, think like smarmy Dane. Make promises. I’ll call in everyone I can to help. Send Lance and the boys over tomorrow, too, because I’m likely to make a really big stink and may need someone protecting my back.”

  “What are you planning on doing?” he asked in alarm.

  “I’ve just been to hell and back, big boy. I’m going to blow a crater straight to the devil’s private den.” I hung up and sent my calls to voice mail.

  I spent the rest of the evening making calls. Cora helped. We needed to keep the innocents far, far away from whatever I was about to do.

  Someday, I’d ask myself why I had to do it, but I figured it had something to do with justice and superpowers and maybe a personality disorder.

  At one point, I heard a clatter outside and checked out my bay window. In the faint glare of Mrs. Bodine’s porch light, I could just make out a large man in khaki uniform attempting to walk up the street with boards on his boots. It wasn’t until I realized that he was carrying a sawed off shotgun with an evergreen branch stuck in the barrel that I worked it out—Tim’s gnome from the florist shop. Tim had apparently done as promised and glued the statue to the table—and apparently the tree to the gun. Enterprising that our Nazi gnome somehow managed to break the table down so he wouldn’t have to remove his boots. Once his stoned condition wore off, he’d figure out how to remove boards.