Mania and the Executioner (43 page)

“Airi…this is my final order to you: keep Cheza safe.”

(Yes Master, but this will not be your final order)

‘Is she lying to me, or just to herself?’ I wonder as I start to slam the hydrogen nuclei together to form helium nuclei.

“Goodbye Cheza… and I apologize that this is the first time I’ve said it, but I love you.”

I look into Cheza beautifully icy-blue eyes for the final time.

Chapter 39
: Yes I am Stricken and can’t let You go

When I open my ey
es, I see Cheza sitting outside. I look carefully and see that she hasn’t moved, but the entire complex has been annihilated. Something on the floor glints in the exact spot that has Cheza’s full attention as tears continue to stream down her cheeks. Cheza scoots herself over to the glint while on her knees, as I hear voices in the distance. Cheza lifts the glinting object to her eye level and I see that the glinting object is a silver ring with a blue gemstone that is cut like a five-petal lotus flower.

“Hurry up and grab the girl before The Faction arrives! My father
still needs that vial of blood!” I hear behind me.

I turn and see squad of twenty vampires being ordered by a man that has to be the ugliest fucker I’ve ever seen. He sort of looks like the movie rendition of Voldemort from Harry Potter but more snake-like and with even less defined lips; this guy can only be Jormungandr.
He must not know that Fenrir already obtained the vial; what a stereotypical stupid pretty-boy.

Two
vampires rush over to grab Cheza. I move to stop them and notice that I no longer have a body. I turn back around to look at Cheza in horror; she is just turning the band of the ring in her hand, seemingly unaware of the situation around her. The inscription on the band reads:

I will always love you, Cheza

The vampires grab each of her arms, which turns out to be the wrong move. Cheza’s eyes shift as the whites of her eyes turn silver, leaving her irises their natural icy-blue color.

Cheza rears back to scream
up at the sky in rage and pain. She slams both of her fists into the ground. The two that are touching Cheza become flash frozen and shatter into meat cubes as ten foot spires of black ice erupt around her. Jormungandr and the eighteen other vampires are raised into the air with horrified expressions permanently frozen on their faces.

Cheza removes the
ring I gave her an eternity ago (despite the fact that it has been less than a month) and slips the new ring on in its place. I watch Cheza’s eyes glaze over as she turns into the living doll that she was ten years ago.

I float there next to Cheza for around fifteen minutes until Natasha and Pinga port to the epicenter of the ice-spire field. Natasha looks around for a moment
, stunned by the spire field, and then she sees Cheza’s state.

“Oh, Chezarei…” Natasha says as she drops to her knees and holds onto Cheza as a few tears drip down her cheeks. The ice spires all shatter
, along with the nineteen bodies that they hold, when Natasha touches Cheza. Tia, Sara, and Kira arrive about ten minutes later. Tia and Sara comprehend the situation the moment they get there. I see tears well up in their eyes, but they ruthlessly quell them before Cheza can take notice.

“Let’s go home Rei…” Sara says quietly as she helps Cheza to her feet.

“You should go as well Natasha. Don’t worry, I can handle everything.” Pinga says gently.

Natasha sniffles and nods. Kira steps forward and puts her hands on Sara and Tia, who have their hands on Natasha and Cheza, and then they port back to the house in Arizona.

“I think it’s about time that we shifted you to the next plane, don’t you think so Cole?” Pinga asks as I recall that Pinga is also a psychopomp in Inuit mythos.

“Yes…I suppose it is.”
I respond quietly. Considering that Cheza just took care of my mother’s killer so I don’t have to worry avenging my mother, there isn’t any real reason for me to hang around.

“Kita, please show him the way to Adlivun.” Pinga says as Kita suddenly appears.

Kita walks to the edge of the cape and I float ethereally after her. When we reach the edge, the aurora borealis flares up and I see a green/blue light bridge that extends out from the cliff and down into the frozen ocean. I follow Kita along the bridge as we travel through the ice and deep into the ocean; after a glance behind me, I notice that the freezing of the ocean is following us downward. I keep thinking I’ll see Rapture and little girls with huge hypodermic needles that they stab into dead bodies while being guarded by giant monsters in diving suits
20
, but all I see are fish and a few seals
that are fleeing the encroaching ice. The bridge leads straight into the ocean floor, but Kita just walks straight through it as the ground ripples (how a ripple can occur when we are underwater is beyond me). I follow her through the ocean floor and everything fades to black.

“Come on Cole, it’s this way!” I hear a vaguely familiar female voice say as a warm hand entw
ines itself in mine to lead me.

The female voice guides me through the darkness for what feels like days. As I travel through the darkness, I sometimes get visions of happenings in the other realms.

“Lila…Ah’m sorry lass…Cole…he’s dead.” Dagda softly explains.

“No…you’re lying…Cole can’t be dead! He just can’t be!” Lila shouts as she breaks into tears
. I see Colton hop into her lap, trying to comfort his upset mother before the vision fades away.

The next vision is several days later. It appears to be a funeral procession; only after I see Tia, Sara, Natasha, Lila,
and Cheza do I realize that it’s my funeral. Lila is bawling into Natasha’s dress as Natasha tries really hard to not cry; the same goes for Tia and Sara, but they are slightly less successful. Seeing Cheza just breaks my heart; she is in the same doll-like state as I was at Jason’s funeral. The only difference is that I’m unable to comfort her like she did for me six months ago.

“It’s only a little further
, Cole.” The voice says gently and suddenly I realize that it is the voice of the fox-girl from my dreams…so that was Kita all along! She’s Kiviuq’s fox-wife from the Inuit legend…I think…at least that makes the most sense.

Approximately two days later, I receive a third vision. I see Cheza lying in my bed, wearing nothing but one of my white t-shirt
s as she cries into my pillow.

“I’m sorry Cole…I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you…I went outside…and now you’re dead…because of me…” Cheza quietly cries.

I agonizingly watch as she reaches across my nightstand, grabs my switchblade, flings it open, and drags it across her wrists before she severs her femoral arteries on insides of her thighs, but she doesn’t bleed.

“WHY!?
WHY WON’T YOU LET ME BE WITH HIM AIRI!?” Cheza bawls. “I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU PROMISED HIM! Just let me be with him…Please Airi!”

Cheza presses the blade against her neck and drags it across, but she still won’t bleed. This is the most painful thing I’ve ever
experienced: I’m forced to watch Cheza’s agony while knowing that I’m the cause of it and that there is nothing I can do about it.

“I can’t take this…
stop it…please…JUST MAKE IT STOP!” I scream as all of my senses fade into nothing.

[End of Book 2]

References

Have you come across something in this book and thought ‘I know I’ve heard that before, but I can’t remember where it’s from’? Well that’s what this section is for! I have painstakingly marked down every reference in this book that wasn’t self-explanatory so that you don’t have to wake up at 3am and shout “Got it!” when you finally remember.

1: Tom Cruise in
Tropic Thunder.

2: I’m told that it’s what you need to dissolve a dead hooker in a bathtub. Something along those lines is also said by Mathew McConaughey to Ben Stiller after the panda incident in
Tropic Thunder
.

3: John Woo - Chinese director that is known for slow motion scenes that involve diving through the air whilst firing two guns and is also known for putting doves in his movies. He directed
Mission Impossible II
and the movie
Hard Boiled
, which was turned into a video game called
Stranglehold
.

4:
Kill Bill Vol. 1
- Lucy Liu

5: What’s My Age Again? by Blink 182

6:
South Park
Season 16 Episode 11 - “Going Native”

7:
Pirates of the Caribbean,
pretty much any of them.

8:
Hitman:
the video game franchise was adapted into a movie, wherein the main character is played by Timothy Olyphant.

9:
Dragon Ball Z

10:
Click:
the movie starring Adam Sandler about an architect that is given a remote by Christopher Walken that is supposed to make his life easier.

11: Parody of
Menace II Society
on
The Boondocks
. Phrase is supposed to be used when someone is caught lying.

12:
The Heartbreak Kid
starring Ben Stiller.

13:
South Park
Season 8 Episode 11 - Quest for Ratings

14:
The Girl Next Door
, the movie with Elisha Cuthbert and Emile Hirsch. Not to be confused with The Girls Next Door, the show about playboy bunnies.

15:
Archer
Season 2 Episode 9 - Placebo Effect

16:
Get Him to the Greek
starring Jonah Hill, Russell Brand, and Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs.

17: Scotty Doesn’t Know by Lustra, theme song of
Eurotrip
. If you’ve never heard it, Google it because it’s pretty hilarious. Note: if your name happens to be Scotty and you just found out that your girlfriend has been cheating on you, I wouldn’t recommend listening to this song.

18:
Avatar: The Last Airbender
- the animated show that was on Nickelodeon, not the shitty M. Night Shyamalan movie.

19: In
Mortal Kombat,
the character Sub-Zero is a ninja with ice-related abilities.

20:
Bioshock:
video game that takes place in an underwater city called Rapture.

*: Hypnos is the Greek god of sleep, as well as the personification of it.

Acknowledgments

First, I’d like to acknowledge that there are some discrepancies in this story. I know that there is no night in Greenland in June and therefore no aurora borealis, but I had to either ignore that fact, change the timeline, or move the location to the southern hemisphere and use the aurora australis. I went with the option that didn’t require major rewrites. The only reason I’m acknowledging this is because I assume that the vast majority of my readers are ignorant to the photon emissions caused by the ionization of nitrogen and oxygen atoms, or how the earth’s tilt drastically affects daylight hours when closer to the poles. I don’t want to be blamed for ruining someone’s summer vacation by being the deciding factor for taking a trip to Greenland because of a misconception that auroras can be seen in June; you’d be better off going to Australia for something like that.

I thank Jerry Magnum Porsbjer for his photograph of the aurora borealis that I altered for the book’s cover. I also thank my Australian Shepherd for sitting still long enough for me to
get a good picture of his amazing eyes.

I’d like to take the time to thank you, the readers. If you enjoyed this book, please tell your friends about it and write a review. The review doesn’t have to be long or complex, just it being in existence helps me continue doing what I enjoy while providing some entertainment and a distraction from the lives of some who really need it. Indie authors thrive based on reviews from readers so I thank each and every one of you that takes the time to write one.

About the Author

A.L. Bridges was born and raised in Washington state. He currently resides in Phoenix Arizona and wonders why in the hell anyone decided to settle in the middle of the desert when it is so stupidly hot there. In the year that he has lived in Arizona, he cannot recall a single instance when he has walked outside and not thought “Damn it’s bright!”

Feel free to email him at [email protected] with comments, criticisms, or suggestions.

For updates on the latest books, visit http://albridges.blogspot.com