Helens-of-Troy (52 page)

Helen perked her ears. “Sweet Chariot?
Is Willie whistling Sweet Chariot?”

“Well, I’m guessing it’s probably not
Tom or Jacey doing it. He’s doing his best to give us a clue, bless
him. This is one time we’re actually going to enjoy a Willie
tune.”

“I love that man,” Helen
beamed.

“It’s probably not the best time for
that either, Helen,” she cautioned. This was no time for Helen to
get any romantic notions in her head. Helena needed her daughter’s
killer instinct front and centre. She reached back into the corners
of the trunk and pulled out what appeared to be two elastic bands
with lights on them.

“What the hell is this?” Helena asked,
as Helen handed her one.

“It’s a headlamp. These I do get from
L.L. Bean,” she replied. “Just put it on, it’s going to be dark in
there.” She sighed. “Just the way they like it.”

“Won’t it tip them off?”

“They’re going to know we’re here,
Helen. So it doesn’t really matter. No sense breaking a leg before
we get to them.”

The women followed the whistling sound
as long as they could, the light on their head leading them down
the dark path. The sound became louder as they came nearer, then
suddenly stopped as they arrived at the abandoned
schoolhouse.

“I guess we’re on our own now,” Helen
sighed.

“He’s done what he can for us. Now I
need you to concentrate,” her mother instructed. “Reach into the
back of your mind, Helen. Where is Ellie?”

Helen closed her eyes and took a deep
breath, exhaling very slowly. “I’ve got her on my radar,” she
whispered. “I know where she is.”

“Good. Then let’s do this.” Helena
whispered back, pulling the crossbow closer to her body. “Those
burning schoolhouses at the fireworks stores are going to have
nothing on this one when we’re done. I’m looking forward to
this.”

“I’ll go first,” Helen instructed. “You
watch my back.”

Helena nodded in agreement as Helen
began to use her extra sensory perception to lead them into the
school, through the dark hallways, past the gym, around the corner
and down towards the bathrooms.

They could hear a heated argument from
behind the door that read BOYS, and for once, Helen was thankful to
hear her next door neighbor dropping a continuum of f-bombs. “How
do you want to do this?” She asked her mother, as they stood
outside the door.

“I want to make an entrance, of course.
Although I know I’m really going to regret it tomorrow,” she
replied. “Stand back.”

She turned her body slightly to the
left and raised her leg a few inches higher than her hips. After
pausing a moment to take aim with the sole of her boot, Helena
pulled her leg back to the ground, took a couple of steps backward,
then swung it out again with full force and proceeded to kick the
door in.

“Hello, Hell. Meet the hand basket,”
Helena announced to the stunned occupants of the room.

She evaluated the scene like a triage
doctor would. “Four kids, two wraiths and one son-of-a bitch
vampire. All living and breathing,” she affirmed to Helen. Good
news and bad news. The forces of good were a tad more battered than
the guardians of evil, it appeared.

Helen followed with a more concentrated
overview of the warzone. She saw Ellie huddled in a corner, chained
up like a dog, obviously scared out of her mind. Her heart broke at
the sight, and she had to remind herself that every move she took
had to be a calculated one. This was no time for maternal instinct
to take over. She motioned for Ellie to stay put. Ryan was near the
sprinkler fountain fully cognizant of what was going on around him.
His eyes moved from her to Helena and back again, and she thought
she saw him give a sigh of relief. Tom—at least she assumed it was
Tom—was rubbing his head in the corner with his other arm around
Jacey, who was not looking at all pretty at the moment. That left
three others in the room—the twin patrolmen and the teenager she
presumed was her half-brother, Gaspar.

“Just answer me one thing,” Helena
requested of Colin. He was moving towards her with venom in his
eyes. “Why did you have to go and kill the Clarks? The parents, I
mean. What did they ever do to you? I get that Gaspar did what he
did, but what are you and your brother’s parts in all
this?”

“We’re the clean-up crew,” Colin
replied. He glanced over at Gaspar. “The boss doesn’t like loose
ends.” His contorted mouth let out a screech that sounded like a
cat in heat, as his neck tilted backwards. “Party!” he cried out.
“Welcome to our new eatery. It’s called the Death Zone.”

“Yeah, yeah” Helena mocked him, “I’ve
never been very big on Vampire/Wraith fusion. She turned her
attention to Gaspar. “And how exactly did you become the
boss?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Gaspar
sneered. He watched Helena raise the crossbow to her own eye-level.
“Playing Robin Hood are we? Am I supposed to be afraid?”

“You know, you three look so
miserable,” Helena taunted him. “Have you ever stopped to consider
why the unjust are so much crankier than the just?”

“Not lately, no” Gaspar scoffed. He
motioned for his henchmen to take care of Helena. “Go ahead,
pretend you’re going to shoot me. I know you won’t. If you had it
in you, you would have let me die this summer.”

“It’s not always about you,” Helena
mocked, spinning her body around towards the wraiths. She closed
her eyes and drew the arrow towards her body. “Well here’s a big
happy, happy, joy, joy to both of you.”

“For the love of God, Mother. Open your
eyes,” Helen screamed. “You’re going to miss.”

Helena released the iron trigger and
the arrow took flight. “I told you. I never miss. I just hate it
when it’s easy. It’s all about the angle of trajectory.”

Cody let out a blood-curling screech as
he lurched towards Colin from behind. He grabbed him, trying to
move his brother away from the approaching quarrel, but the
projectile had speed and force on its side, and easily penetrated
through the front of Colin’s eye socket. Blood began to spurt from
the entry wound as the arrow’s momentum continued through Colin’s
head and into the left ear of Cody. When the arrow’s flight was
finally over, Colin was dead, face-down on the floor with blood
oozing from the back of his neck. Cody’s body was pinned to the
wall, grey matter from his brain seeping out through his ear
canal.

“Holy crap,” Ryan exclaimed.

“They just don’t make weapons like this
anymore,” Helena said proudly, looking at Helen. “And you wondered
why I always made you play pin the tail on the donkey.”

“Are you sure they’re dead?” Helen
asked cautiously. “I’d hate for them to split again. Quadruplet
wraiths would be a pain in the ass.”

“They’re dead,” Helena
insisted.

“I’m not taking any chances this time,”
Helen replied, pulling a hidden Ginsu knife from between her leg
and her boot. “I took it from your knife drawer back home. I’ll get
you another one for Christmas,” she promised her mother. She
grabbed Cody’s bloodied hair in her hand to give herself a clear
view of his neck. Her cut was swift, and she watched the deputy’s
body spew even more blood from his once pulsating carotid artery.
“That ought to do it,” she said icily.

She turned to his twin. “Femora, femora
on the wall, who’s the fairest one of all?” she said in a guttural
voice. She then made two deep incisions, cutting open his upper
legs one after the other.

“Still want to do her?” an ashen-faced
Tom asked Ryan.

“I just want to stay the fuck out of
her way,” Ryan replied.

Helena turned to Gaspar. “As for you,”
she said with bitterness, “shall we make it swift, or shall you
suffer a slow, lingering death? Retribution for the pain and
suffering you have caused others?”

“Let he who is without sin cast the
first stone,” Gaspar sneered.

“Baby, the Bible ain’t gonna help you
now,” Helen interjected. “Not even the ‘do unto others
part.’”

“Stop it!” Ellie screamed, finding her
voice from beneath her fear. “Leave him alone! He’s right. Don’t
you see? Just because you kill in the name of what you think is
good, it doesn’t make it just.”

“It does!” Ryan tried to tell her. “It
makes it okay…really okay.”

“Be quiet, Ellie,” Helen snapped. “This
is none of your business.”

“It’s ALL of my business,” Ellie
shouted back. “That part isn’t complicated at all.”

“If you kill me,” Gaspar smirked with
evil, turning his gaze from Helena to Jacey, “I won’t be able to
tell little Goldilocks over there where her baby is.
Pity.”

Jacey’s eyes and mouth went wide. “How
do you know about that?” she asked nervously.

Tom glared at Jacey. “Baby? What baby?
You told me you never did it.”

“I never said never, Tom.” Jacey
answered, afraid to look at her friend. “Think back. I never said
never.”

Tom removed his arm from around Jacey
and looked helplessly at Ryan.

“
Chics,” Ryan shrugged. “I
tried to tell you.”

“Please don’t kill him,” Jacey begged
Helena. “If he knows where my baby is, please don’t kill
him.”

Gaspar walked over to her and kicked at
Jacey’s once fabulous boots. “You’re not the only one who can
Google. You’re quite the little traveler, aren’t you?”

“He’s lying, Jacey,” Helena insisted.
“He knows it, and I know it. He’s tugging at your heart strings,
buying some time. He’s good at that. I should know.”

“Maybe he isn’t,” Jacey said
solemnly.

“He likes to play the distraction
game,” Helena said, emphasizing the adverb. “It’s his little ploy
for empowerment. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Are you
feeling particularly lucky now, Gaspar? With your two friends
dead?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Helena
saw her granddaughter reaching as far as she could across the
floor. She kept Gaspar engaged in conversation.

“I thought we had a deal, Gaspar.”
Helena continued. “I thought we agreed you would come to me when
your hunger began to torment you.”

“I don’t need anything from you,”
Gaspar sneered.

Ryan was also watching Ellie. She was
after something. He extended his right leg and managed to get the
fallen javelin to roll towards her.

“Nor I, you,” Helena said to the
vampire.

Ellie stood up, the javelin in her
hands, and pointed it towards Gaspar. “You’re not the only one who
can be deceitful and manipulative,” she told him. “You didn’t
really think I felt anything for you, did you? You didn’t really
think I would choose you over my own family? You didn’t just lose
your mother that day.”

She hurled the javelin towards Gaspar’s
torso. It tore through his jacket and into his left ventricle.
“Huh,” Ellie exclaimed, admiring her own prowess. “What do you
know? Sports Day was good for something after all.”

Gaspar grabbed his chest and screamed.
He screamed for what seemed like an eternity, his body contorting
backwards and forwards until it finally collapsed to the
ground.

“Dude,” Ryan laughed uncontrollably,
seeing an end to his nemesis. “I told you not to hit girls. I tried
to tell you.”

Jacey dropped her head and began to cry
uncontrollably. Tom was numb.

Helen’s mouth dropped open. Her baby.
Her little killer of a baby…she hadn’t had a prouder moment in her
life. “Will that do it?” she asked Helena, unsure if Ellie’s wound
would keep him dead.

“It’s a start,” Helena said. “I’ll
finish the bastard off myself.” She took some salt from her pocket
and opened the little locket.

“What are you doing?” Ellie
asked.

“Making a Vampire cocktail,” her
grandmother replied. “A little salt, a little holy water, mixed
together in silver…talisman.” She shook the contents, then removed
her thumb and poured the mixture on Gaspar.

His body turned into a festering pool
of rotting flesh, emitting an aroma that had the survivors
gagging.

“Peto Abysuss,” Helena chanted, waving
her arm over Gaspar’s remains. She then went to the twins and did
the same thing. “Peto Abyssus quod subsisto illic.”

Black smoke rose out of the three
corpses, removing what was left of their temporarily supernatural
life forms.

“See, Jacey,” Ryan whispered. “That’s
how you do it.”

“How am I ever going to explain this?”
a voice said from behind the activity.

Helena turned around to see Roy
standing in the doorway, his pistol drawn. He entered the room,
walked around and counted the dead bodies, stopping momentarily to
tell the Dayton twins they were officially fired.

“Did you do this?” he asked Helen, as
he stood over Gaspar’s body.

“Technically, no,” she replied. “The
other two…”

“Be quiet, Helen,” her mother said
sternly.

Roy looked at Helena. “I have no
words…” he said. “I asked you time and time again if you knew
anything about all this.”