Obfuscate (6 page)

Trying desperately to steady my legs, my body shook while my hands cleaved tighter onto Briggs and Khaldon’s shoulders. Intense, the odor of infection snapped my brain to attention.

My vampy sense indicated she was alive, but her body was filled with pus and putrefaction. I slammed down my eyelids, praying the heat was causing hallucinations.

Dakota’s head had sunk forward onto her chest. Her own heartbeats were very far apart and faint as a butterfly’s whisper. Her scarred back faced us. The distinct odor of smelted silver hung heavy in the air.

My lips quivered as her name barely escaped. “Dakota?”

Are we too late?

M
onsters
! What did they do to her?

My hands flew to my mouth as rivulets of bloody tears escaped over my cheeks. I gulped at the sight of Dakota’s emaciated body left to die in those iron restraints. Her once beautiful auburn hair hung limp in a matted rat’s nest. This scene was so far removed from the ever vivacious sister I’d known growing up.

No amount of therapy will ever heal this. Dakota will never be the same.

In the corner slumped the remains of what might have been Dakota’s last meal. By the appearance of his decomposing flesh, it looked like days had passed since she’d last fed. The rats busily ate what remained.

Khaldon clutched my arms and steadied me. He whispered, “Cheyenne, we’ve found her.” He kissed me hard and fast on the forehead, releasing me with a look of worry I’d not seen before. His auric energy had changed. Khaldon was no longer calm and collected. His heart beat faster than I’d ever heard and he excreted a strange pheromone I’d not smelled on him before.

What isn’t he telling me?

Harris roughly held my left shoulder, grabbed my face by the chin, and forced me to look away from Dakota and straight into his eyes. “Deep breaths, Chey. Stick to the plan. Ludovic and Briggs will get her out of those chains.” He hugged me with the fierceness as though it could be our last. His heartbeat also ran a mile a minute. The fur on his arms had sprouted, and the nails on his fingers had elongated into sharp, black claws. “Keep calm. Stay vigilant. We’re taking her home.”

The electricity in the air was palpable. I leaned the staff with the green glowing orb against the prison cell wall. Forcing down the contents of my stomach, I focused on the task at hand and tried to check my emotions at the door. “Can we get her out of this contraption without killing her?”

Briggs moved quickly in front of Dakota but was careful not to touch her. He spoke in kind, gentle, and endearing terms in French that I couldn’t quite understand. I caught the words,
mon cheri, je t'aime, and je suis désolé
among the words he spoke quietly into her ear, and I knew his heart was aching as much as mine. He kissed her cheek and studied the iron chains. He removed the bolt cutters from his backpack and set out to free her.

Harris handed me a second pistol he had tucked in behind his back. “Shh. Take this and pull the trigger on anything that isn’t us, okay?” It wasn’t until he handed me the gun that I realized how much my hands were shaking. I fumbled with the pistol, almost dropping it.

“Be careful. The safety is off. Just point the red laser where you want the kill.” He unholstered his rifle from his shoulder strap and aimed for a rat crawling along the far wall. The red light shined on the fat rat’s belly.

“Ok—kay.” I nodded and tried to swallow the thick bile congealing in the back of my throat. I pinched my lips closed with my teeth, biting back the emotion.

Harris let go of my hands. Both he and Khaldon returned my worried glance as I watched them disappear down the corridor, searching for any other survivors.

I shook my head and pushed the torrential terror deep down into the crevices of my mind. I had to turn off my emotions or I was going to fail.

Stay strong for her. You can crumble to pieces later.

Gun in my hand, I stood attentively for any Rakshasa while Briggs and Ludovic disconnected Dakota from her living prison. Stepping closer, little rat feet scampered away and ran across the room. I was tempted to shoot anything that moved, but didn’t want to cause any unnecessary sound.

Briggs was making headway on cutting through a chain that suspended her wing.

I held the gun at my side and brushed Dakota’s filthy hair away from her ear with my right hand.

Gently, I touched her. “Dakota. Sweetie. It’s me, Cheyenne.” I steadied my voice as it croaked with hoarse words. “Stay calm. We’re getting you out of here.”

Her hair was a tangled, gnarled mess around the buckled clasps of a mask fastened behind her head. The face mask reminded me of the one Hannibal Lecter wore. If she were this far gone, could she become disoriented and think we were the bad guys? Remembering the deadly damage Dakota inflicted with her tongue, I thought better to leave the muzzle on.

Dakota’s entire frame shuddered with each breath, enticing consciousness back into her physical body. Incoherent mumbling, she tried to form words. From the crooks of her elbows, festering wounds oozed where rubber tubes had been inserted. The plastic tubes dripped her blood into jars on the floor.

They’re draining her?

Ludovic gingerly removed the blood shunts, and she pulled away wincing. I pulled the other end of the hose and removed it from the jar.

A loud cracking sound echoed down the hall, possibly an old, rusty-hinged door opened.

I turned, held up the gun, and tried in vain to keep a steady aim. The red laser light bounced against the wall, reminiscent of playing
catch the red dot
with a cat. Not sure if a nest of them had been disturbed, more rodents scurried about the floor and along the walls. Some even crawled up on the iron bars of the cell and swung on the door. We stared at one another for a brief moment and then resumed our work.

Briggs cut the manacles with the bolt cutters, releasing one side from the wall. After laying the gun on the floor, I helped ease her right wing down to her side. Dakota was covered in layers of mildew and crud. She groaned with ache as she folded the other wing up into her torso. Her arm hung limp by her side. Her muscles twitched and spasmed with the movement. How long had she been suspended?

Down the hall where Harris and Khaldon had disappeared, chains rattled. It sounded like chairs scooted across the floor. They must have been closer than I’d perceived.

My fingers slimed over incongruent bumps under her skin. The goo sloughed off onto my fingers in a mucousy mass. The fevered, viscous feel to her skin stung and I immediately wipe the ick on my pants. I wriggled my fingers to shake off the tingling sensation.

What is on her skin? Is she growing poisonous dragon scales?

“Go away. There’s no escape,” Dakota hissed in her demonic voice.

I jumped at her words and then breathed a sigh of relief that she was conscious.

“Shh. Stay quiet. It’s okay—we’re getting you out.” I whispered in her ear. “Stay calm. We’re flying out of here.” I picked up the jar of her blood and tried to close the rusty cap onto the rim.

“What’s this?” I held up an ornate key hanging on a chain around her waist. It held an evil eye encrusted in the blood, daring me to use it. It glowed the same green as the orb in the staff, and I sensed the alluring relic had some mystical energy. My hand seemed overtaken by a cryptic pull beckoning me to insert and turn the ornate bobble. Straight away my gut told me not to fall for the trap. I lowered the key closer to my side.

Ludovic stepped closer to Dakota and snatched it from my hand. “Give me that!”

“Wait, Ludovic, stop. This is too easy. Somethings not right.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Time is of the essence,
vrăjitoare
.”

Briggs stopped his cutting and stared Ludovic straight into his eyes. “Did you call ’er a witch?”

Ludovic challenged Briggs’ eyes and ignored his question.

He called me a witch?

Before I finished my protestations, Ludovic inserted the ornate key. The lock clicked, unlatched, and released four chains holding together a hanging metal cage around Dakota’s torso. The chains fell to the floor in heavy thuds, but the metal cage had embedded into her skin.

Ludovic moved in closer examining how to remove the cage, but his left foot stepped on something with a loud crunch. Immediately, a resonant series of clicking echoed off the walls of the cell.

“What was that?” Briggs asked as he smacked an unusually large critter crawling toward his leg.

Ludovic stood frozen. His lips thinned and whitened. Stepping backward, he cleared away the tangle of chains and filthy straw, revealing a small, crushed wooden box with wires running out of it and up her leg.

Dakota’s heartbeat sped up.

My mind tried to reconcile what I’d seen against what my ears registered.

“Hurts—trap,” Dakota grunted a pained wheeze. “Not what you think.”

My eyes closed in defeated understanding. She was wired!

Her heartbeat gained speed as she panted.

“They know we’re here,” I gasped.

A flush of adrenaline ran icy through my veins. The three of us stood looking at one another as Dakota moaned out again in agony.

Blood pooled in her mouth and ran down her chin.

I frantically signaled the
hurry up
motion with my hands.

Briggs continued to cut through the iron chains holding her legs to the walls.

Dakota’s heartbeat sped even faster when a timer started to count down.

The vermin nestled in the straw took flight and ran toward the door and out into the hallway, away from where we stood.

Ludovic tried to quiet Dakota. “Shh—take slower breaths. We’re getting you out of here,
iubirea vieții mele
.”

Briggs leaned down to cut the last two shackles from Dakota’s left ankle. “What dze ’ell?”

In my mind, I screamed
Stop! Run!
But my synapses eclipsed my brain signals, disabling my voice.

Time slowed to a snail’s crawl as I watched in hideous slow motion.

Dakota screamed as she grabbed Ludovic and yanked him to her chest. Her tongue slithered out through the mask and stabbed him in the throat. Her grip on him was that of a vice. She sucked him dry through her straw-like tongue wrapped around his neck.

My fangs inadvertently dropped in primal protection not knowing what she was capable of next. My mouth let out a hiss of defensive posturing.

Briggs stared at me, his eyes wide. “Chey Chey, you ’ave never done dzat before.”

I covered my mouth with my hands. My eyes widened with the realization of what Briggs had said and also from the hideous scene which stood in front of us.

Dakota turned her neck toward us and grinned with a mouthful of bloody, razor blade teeth.

Both Briggs and I had stepped several feet away from Dakota while we watched my baby sister claw and decimate Ludovic with her newly freed hands. She began to eat the torn muscles from where she had bitten him.

Briggs’ body started to shimmer in black scales which covered his arms and legs. He must have been as alarmed as I was.

I listened for the clicking noise once again. It had reached a crescendo and then stopped altogether.

There was a moment of utter silence.

Dakota turned once again and stared me in the eyes.

The only sound was a water drop.

I held out my arms toward her and mouthed the words
I love you
.

With one last click, Dakota’s body exploded into nothingness, taking Ludovic with her.

Briggs was smashed hard against the ground.

I flew backward, slamming into the slimy cave wall from the massive percussion blast.

Glass shards of the jar exploded, covering the heart region of my chest.

I slid down the dank, wet stone as every inch of my body smoked with embedded silver buckshot.

“My eyes!” My face scorched with the precious metal digging deeper into my flesh. In desperation, I squeezed and pushed at my eyes, blinking to dispel the silver, but only managed to embed glass shards into most of my face.

My vision irised in as if it were a camera lens and blackened around the edges. The scalding metal ate away at my sight. Bloody tears flooded my eye sockets.

Breathless, I reached out shaking hands squinting back at the hideous scene where my sister had stood just an infinitesimal moment ago. The last image of my sister was Dakota’s feet standing in the iron manacles from the ankles down.

Hands gripped me and yanked me to my feet. “Cheyenne, we’re getting out of here. Now! I’ve got to get Briggs. I’ll be right back.” Khaldon propped me against the wall, but my legs caved in on me. I didn’t have the strength to stand.

Dakota wasn’t growing dragon scales. They’d buried silver under her skin.

My breath sawed in and out of my chest with each intake of breath. The poisonous metal lacerated every inch and scalded me from inside out where it had embedded itself deep into my muscle layers. The silver pellets scraped against my bones. My mind grew clouded and muted as though I were underwater. Unconsciousness pulled me under with a thick, heavy rope weighed down by an old rusty anchor.

Trying to shake off the inky blackness of passing out, I attempted to rub chunks of metal while it ablated my skin. The silver and glass eroded more skin with every swipe. My vision grew darker, and I didn’t dare move anymore for fear the agony would escalate beyond my pain threshold.

“Dakota?” I struggled to form words. Blood pooled in my mouth. Touching my fingers to my lips, I realized most of my lower lip hung from my mouth as if it were fabric dangling off a curtain rod.

Mostly blinded, I saw a fuzzy mass struggling to stand as another bent down over it. My head reeled and pounded from the blood forcing its way through my body to send healing nutrients to the caustic burns. Through dark, hazy vision, my eyes lied as I strained to see my sister’s shape and only found an empty wall. The sounds of blood, flesh, and bone plopped to the floor.

A conch shell bellowed out through the cave, rattling my eardrums.

The Rakshasa … they knew we were here.

I sensed something in front of me.

“Grab her. I’ll run interference,” Briggs gruffed out in a labored breath.

“Torchy’s on his way.” Khaldon picked me up and threw me over his shoulder. The fireman’s carry almost proved to be more than I could handle. I cried out with every step as it forced the silver deeper under my skin.

Khaldon ran us down the corridor, but he abruptly stopped.

I screamed as razor blades sliced into the backs of my legs. Khaldon swung us around, and my head slammed into the side of the cave wall. Blinding colors fireworked inside my head. My calves were gashed open.