“Finally, my Lord, we are here,” announced Hamza proudly.
“Where?” asked the Keeper, trying to keep the incredulity from saturating his one word retort.
“Why at the vault of the Shadow Spark, of course.”
Estefan’s brow furled. “But there’s nothing but a pair of sunglasses in there.”
Hamza Ahmed Khali-Bhall’s smile was so broad it was borderline ridiculous.
The Keeper stared at him in silence for a time, then, “You have got to be kidding me!”
Their host merely nodded.
“Are you telling me the greatest weapon ever known to Mankind is hidden within a pair of Ray-Ban Aviators?”
Hamza rocked back and forth upon his heels, looking quite smug. “It is the final security measure, my Lord, its’ very appearance. The Shadow Spark can be hidden in plain view without anyone being the wiser.
“Sonofabitch!” he exclaimed.
The Keepers wives laughed and giggled like schoolgirls.
~~~~~~~~~~~~♦~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ Chapter 54 ~
(Summer – 2018)
Muto Power
[Not sure if he’s angry or merely annoyed by the trickery he’s endured this day. The ambush, the failure, the loss and the deception have all been taking a heavy toll on him. He needs respite. He needs to forgo this present, for now. He will bask in what has gone before. Maybe, it will help.]
They didn’t dawdle over long. In fact, it was no more than twenty minutes later when Tirza, Sandy and Leda made their way back to “my” side of the Loft, having decided who was sleeping where. The TV went off and we arranged ourselves about my queen-sized bed.
I was flanked by Ramona and Katie, sitting to my left and right respectively. Leda and Sandy were perched next to my cousin. Flavia and Tirza were plopped on Ramona’s right. Johan and Jolene were directly opposite me, closing the circle we had formed about the bed.
“So what’s the big secret, Eff?” asked Sandy, play-exasperation in her tone. Her sparkling eyes told a different story. She could make the Grinch shit lollipops, she was so damned cheerful!
“Well, when you guys were gone, some of us were mulling over these Mutations,” I answered, speaking to the group at large. “Since it appears some of us are getting stronger, we were thinking we should try and use them, maybe even get a degree of control over them… whatever they may be.”
“Is that a good idea?” asked Tirza, worry in the corner of her orbs. I knew she was afraid of me losing control and making her do something she didn’t want to do.
“I’m not talking about me, Tirza. I know how to use this thing that’s inside of me. I have for a couple of days already. The only problem I have controlling it is when I get distracted. The power - or whatever you wanna call it – seems to get away from me. Apparently, it can affect a large number of people.” I tried to reassure her, but the look on her face didn’t change. “I think the rest of you should try,” I went on, trying a different tactic, “except you Sandy.” She frowned. “From what Ramona told me, is your power consists of some sort of nullifying quality.” Her frown deepened. “In other words, our Mutations don’t affect you when you don’t want them to. The only thing we could think you could do at this point is try to project it onto others. You should try using it at all times. Maybe, keep it on some sort of auto-pilot or something.”
“I can do that?” she asked flummoxed.
“Yes - ,” I began.
“Actually,” cut in my girlfriend, “you’re doing it right now.
“I am?” asked Sandy.
Ramona nodded. “Almost from the moment he mentioned an auto-pilot, you started doing just that.” She turned to grin at me. “That was pretty fast.”
“That was, can you ‘see’ anything when you look at her?” I inquired.
She shook her head. “Not a thing.”
“You see, she can’t tell what’s inside you, because your practically a master at your ability already,” I explained. “Besides, you and I have other things to discuss.”
She perked up and Tirza sighed.
I grinned. “We need to talk about escape routes, my dear,” I mouthed around leer. I knew what she and ex-girlfriend had been thinking. “Since you are the only one with a car, we have to figure out the fastest way to my Uncle Roberto’s safe house. Once we’ve done that, we gotta come up with at least three or four alternate routes, should the quickest way be denied to us.”
She pretended to deflate, but became more serious as the import of what I had to say was understood.
“What about me? Do you think I have to practice?” It was Leda, peering at me through her eyebrows, icy, direct.
“I think you have been doing just that for quite some time now, probably within minutes of getting sick the other day,” I countered. I was well aware she was challenging me, daring me to succumb to her mental prowess once again.
She knew she had rendered me helpless within seconds earlier in the day. She knew she could’ve done whatever the hell she wanted with me. She could’ve made me fuck her silly, and I would’ve liked it. She knew this, and so did I. The issue was simply, the little bitch wanted me, but she wanted me to want her just as much. She would fight her thoughts and feelings, tooth and nail, until I reciprocated. Maybe I would, if Leda was as fiery in bed as she was in everyday life, then she’d fuck me raw! Hmmm…
Leda didn’t reply. She didn’t make a sound. She turned away and that alone was confirmation enough. She’d been practicing alright!
“What is it she can do exactly?” asked my brother, pointing his chin in Leda’s direction.
I glanced over at Ramona.
“She can control thought,” retorted my girlfriend, “its’ flow, its’ depth – all of it, she can manipulate. She can cut you off from your own consciousness and turn you into a vessel of reaction as she had with Estefan earlier today.”
I saw the mien of my brother and step-sister dim. They hadn’t known about the unexpected tryst between me and Leda, but Ramona went on. Their discomfiture was overlooked.
“She can do more though, right, Leda?”
Leda smiled cutely, but her eyes were as dull as chrome steel. She had never liked revealing things about herself when she wasn’t ready to share. She hated it with a passion.
She glowered at my girlfriend, who withstood the onslaught of her gaze unflinching. It took a lot to unnerve Ramona Cervantes, and a grammar school friend she’d spent years around just wasn’t up to the task. Leda caved.
“Well shit, if you have to know, I think I can cause pain, but I’m not sure yet!” she said, but a tiny bit too loud.
You’re not being entirely honest, are you, Leda? You know for certain you can cause pain…
“Uh huh,” was all the noise Ramona made.
“Do you think you could tell us more about what we can do?” asked Flavia. She was either ignoring the interplay between the others girls or didn’t care. “I mean, you said we’re all getting stronger, so I am assuming you can tell us about our Mutations in greater detail now, right?”
Ramona nodded in affirmation.
“Ok, tell me about mine.” My step-sister could be bossy when she wanted something to go her way.
Ramona squinted at her, and, for a moment, I thought she was annoyed with Flavia, but I was wrong. “You are a little like Sandy, but not a complete bottomless pit of nothingness as she. You are hard to read, but only on occasion when the mask falls away all I see is strength – a tower of it to be exact.”
“But what does it mean?” wondered my step-sister.
“I think you are, or will be soon, very strong,” was the answer.
“You think Flavia will be strong? How strong do you mean exactly, like a body builder or a UFC fighter?” It was Johan’s turn to question, which surprised me. He typically preferred to stay quiet and observe.
“Stronger.” Ramona reached across the bed and beckoned for Flavia’s hand. “Let me see.”
Flavia complied.
Ramona shivered at her touch. Five seconds passed, then ten. Another brief shudder followed.
Then, as if transfixed: “You will have strength enough to bend bars, to life cars, maybe even stop a bus in mid-motion.” My girlfriend let her go.
Stunned silence ensued.
I stared at my step-sister as hard as I could, trying to divine what Ramona had seen in her, but couldn’t. Flavia had never been one to exude physicality, and, I mean, in any way. She wasn’t built that way. She abhorred working in the yard when yard-work was the chore of the day, hated dirt and was grossed out by the very prospect of getting sweaty. How in the frick was she going to suddenly become some She-Ra¹, Queen of the Motherfucken Mutants? It didn’t make any sense to me. I couldn’t see it. It was all wrong.
“What about me?” asked Jolene, her words startling each and every one of us.
“Give me your hand,” said Ramona, it was a firm request.
It took half the time as it had with Flavia when once again my girlfriend’s face went slack and her voice became eerily disjointed. “A lot like Leda, but in a different way, she controls thought. You can create it. You can make reality of the untrue. You can create memory so vivid, so real that the recipient of such a manufactured thought would know it, for certain, as one of his own. He could never question its’ validity, because to him it is irrevocably the truth of his past.”
“So…,” began Jolene in the subdued manner - her hallmark, “I can insert memory into people’s minds?”
My girlfriend released her hand and nodded.
“And me, Ramona, what Mutant power do I possess?” asked my cousin, her brow creased in thought. “Last time you said something about fire and flames, but I took that to mean something about willpower. Was I incorrect to think that was what you meant?”
“There’s only one way to find out…,” retorted my girlfriend, reaching toward Katie with both hands.
Katie scooted forth to do what Ramona had asked.
It took no more than two seconds.
“Fire, all I see is fire, everywhere within you.”
“Does that mean I control fire?”
It was a simple deduction, but it was one I hadn’t considered and it stunned me. Fire, really? Like that little girl in that ancient Stephen King movie², for real? If it were true, then Katie could be extremely dangerous. I saw my cousin change before me in my minds’ eye. Katie had the foul mouth and the uncouth disposition, but she had never been dangerous. The thought of someone like her, with a Mutant power of such magnitude, was more than a little scary, it was fucking frightening. Crap on a twig, what if she got mad at someone and blasted them into a million pieces?!? How in hell could we stop her from doing it?
When I glanced back at my girlfriend she was nodding her accent. So, there it was, Katie was a Wielder of Fire, whether it was righteous or demonic still remained to be seen.
“What about me?” asked Johan into the quiet as he moved forward, his hand already outstretched before him.
Ramona took ahold of his wrist and within five seconds a smile spread across her face. She knew already. She was getting better at this the more she practiced. I could tell. We all could.
“You are a very mental Mutant, Jo.” It was nickname only his closest acquaintances used. He tilted his head to the side. “Soon, not only will you be able to touch things with your mind, you will be able to read what occurs within others.”
She speaks to eloquently when her power takes over, I remember thinking as I watched them.
Johan’s gaze fell to the bedspread, his breathing evened out as his shoulders sagged at his sides. “Telekinesis and Telepathy, huh?” he asked the bed, and then looked over at Jolene. “Well, at least I will know when you tell the truth.” Abruptly, he laughed and edged his way back toward his girl. “You won’t be able to fake anything with me around.” His voice had dropped an octave or two. Jolene seemed to wilt with a giggle and fell into his arms, a quick peck on the lips passing between them.
The dual connotations of what he’d said weren’t lost on any of us. We older kids exchanged knowing glances, raising our eyebrows in rapid succession. Katie mouthed a silent “Wow” in my direction, which made me smirk. Only Flavia frowned with worry. For some reason, she was still unsettled by the possibility of her best friend losing her virginity at the hand (or should I say, dick) of her step-brother. This was after I had told her of my conversation with Johan, so I guess it was one of those deep seeded sort of anxieties teens that age have difficulty dislodging.
I “Oh well ’ed” the situation, because it wasn’t pressing, filing it away in my head and turned toward Sandy. “So, girl you wanna go and figure out how we are going to get to my uncles’ safehouse from here, while they try to learn more about their Mutations?”
She smiled eagerly. “Sure!” Quickly, she stood and stepped back from the group.
“Don’t bed him while we’re all still awake, Sandra, not sure some of us here are up to seeing such a sight,” said Leda through the side of her mouth, a pregnant wisecrack.
Tirza, clicked her tongue as my step-sister unleashed her grimace upon me. Johan sneered derisively, but it was gone almost the moment it touched his face.
Sandy just smiled, unwilling to let the other teen get under her skin. “Oh, I’ll make sure to wait until only you’re awake, then I’ll jump his bones. That way only you will hear all the squishy sounds right next to your ear!”
There was an eye blink of affronted silence, then a cacophony of laughter, so hard and persistent even Leda had to grin sheepishly at her friends’ witty riposte. It had been a good one, indeed. Ramona had wiped tears from her eyes for nearly five minutes.
I joined Sandy upon Katie’s bed not long after. We were both propped upon our elbows, our bodies stretched out behind us. The crowns of our heads were almost touching as we stared down at our cellphones, our fingers touching and swiping across the nearly unbreakable glass of the device faces every now and again.
“Ok, it installed,” she had been saying, telling me she had imputed latest version of Google Maps Mobile into her smart phone.
“Good, now open it and punch in the following: 5302 Monterey Road, Los Angeles, CA 90042.” I did the same as she. “Hit the view icon and select ‘satellite’.”
I watched her long fingers glide over the device as she did as I asked. My eyes lingered on her fingernails. They were painted red with tiny glittering stars inlaid within the enamel. They were silver and shiny. Of the girls, I had always liked Sandy’s hands the most. They were large, but somehow delicate at the same time. Maybe long-boned was the best way to describe them. They weren’t thick or heavy in appearance, though one would’ve expected precisely that since they were almost as big as mine.
For as long as I’ve known Sandy she had worn her nails shorter than most girls, the edge of her nails never extending more than an eighth of an inch from the tip of her fingers. It was many years after the summer of 2018 when I had finally got around to asking why she wore them that way. I had mentioned to her that I thought all women liked their nails long.
She had said then, while she scratched the lower portions of my back, letting the edges of those very nails trace down, toward the bugle of my ass-cheeks. “I don’t like breaking my nails and longer nails tend to break, so I keep them shorter. That way, I’m not walking around with mismatched nails.”
I remember, I had chuckled and turned to admire her.
She had thanked me with a kiss – soft, tender, lingering.
Simple explanation, but not one I knew way back when I was only seventeen and on the cusp living life as a Mutant. Yet, I think that was the day the question first formed in my head. It had to be it, one night in ’18 when I gazed at her hands as she tapped in the address to my uncles’ safehouse. It’s funny what memories stick with you and what ones don’t… fingers, hands and nails…
“Ok, it’s finished uploading,” she said still looking at her phone.
“Do you
know where it is?” I asked as we put our cells down side by side, but flipped in opposite directions.
“Monterey Road…,” she muttered in thought, “Is that the street that divides into three separate roads with the one in the middle sectioned off by a pair of weird looking walls? Aren’t there with light fixtures from like the 1930’s or something as well?”
“The very one,” I confirmed. “Do you know how to get there from here?”
She bobbed her head in affirmation.
“How many ways do you think you could come up with to get us there if the fastest way is cut off?” I questioned, wanting to make sure she knew what she was talking about.
Her eyes came up to mine – light brown, trimmed in darker eye liner, framed from above by varying shades of shadow, mahogany, bronze, copper, even chestnut. I was caught in her gaze. She looked away. “There are a shitload of ways to get there, Effy. You can come from Highland Park, which is the fastest, or swing east through Mt. Washington and then hook around through Happy Valley. You take the freeway and cut way south and come up from El Sereno or you can take the other northern hook and come down from South Pasadena.” Her fingers were tracing across the digital map almost too fast for me to follow.
The girl knew her shit alright.
“Fuck, Eff, if the shit really came down on us hard, we could even break into the Regional Park on say Griffin Avenue and hoof it through the hills all the way to Monterey Road.”
“What? Really, we could do that?” The two streets seemed miles apart, but when I peered at my own map and checked the legend, gauging the distance in both feet and meters, I was astounded to see that they were only separated by 2,100 feet at the shortest, maybe half again at the furthest! It was amazing, and though the terrain was rugged, especially from the Montecito Heights side, the trek itself wasn’t all that far. Even if we had to double back upon ourselves a few times, the whole journey wouldn’t be more than a mile. To me, it felt like an excellent back-up plan, if ever there was one. Who would’ve thought a little hike through Ernest E. Debs Regional Park might be the trump-card in our back pockets.
Shadow Seed 1: The Misbegotten Page 63