Out of the Black (24 page)

What is wrong with me, Anne thought amid the corpses, trying hard to feel bad. Hawthorne stared at her in abject astonishment- unhidden, unqualified. Anne looked at the three bodies on the floor around her with much the same expression.

"What..." Hawthorne stopped, eyes flitting from woman to corpses to the broken footprints up the destroyed wall.

"Told'ya, Spinach." Anne said inside the cloud of falling gypsum, completely lost. Hawthorne moved her head back a few centimeters; it might have been part of a nod, or perhaps just partial recoil from the strange woman who stood before her, unmasked.

The stunned silence was broken by a confiden male voice from the hallway. "By now, those of you left alive are probably wondering what..." he broke off as he sauntered around the corner and saw his three men on the floor.

"I bet you are." Anne said through a sudden flash of fury. She favored the new arrival with a wicked grin because it seemed the appropriate thing to do. She wondered in passing if her new teeth had popped out yet. She probed with her tongue- nope.

He was athletic, a little less than two meters tall, black hair- crazy handsome. He wore an expensive dark suit and a quickly dissipating smile. Perhaps his most distinguishing feature was the stat-cast he wore under his suit from neck to wrist. It wasn't too bulky, though it could be perceived beneath the jacket if you were looking for it. The cast was most noticeable because it held his left arm fully extended downward and his neck completely straight. It gave him an aura of Frankenstein's monster, which Anne found amusing. She wondered when the wolf-man would put in an appearance.

"You've got some 'splaining to do." Anne leveled a finger at him, utterly failing to get the grin off her face. She hoped she was scaring him, because she was terrifying herself.

His initial answer was an ill-conceived dash back out the door. She caught him by his immobilized arm and throat. She spun him back into the room and tapped him against the wall for emphasis. The sheet rock cracked and partially deformed under the impact.

"Wait!" Hawthorne said behind her, "We need information." She came out of her chair, but then turned partially toward her fallen partner.

Anne had the strangest feeling. First it seemed that static electricity moved around and through her. Then the tingle became the gossamer tugging of water on a swimmer submerged in a river that had just changed course.

Things began to slow again as her combat awareness revved up. The ethereal current continued to intensify. She knew this feeling implied danger, but she didn't know why. Her skin crawled with caffeinated electric eels. Her clothes began to move. The man in her grasp was smiling now- eyes more than glazed. Perhaps it was a trick of light or perception, but a fire seemed to blaze there now, a cold fire composed of deep patterns of white and electric blue. Pressure built, phantom wind tossed her hair, rustled her clothes, a sound like a slow crashing wave filled her ears, then the unseen force ripped her off the floor.

Backwards through the air- upside down, then not- surrounded by sound and fury- impact. A cloud of misty white gypsum dust surrounded her from the damaged wall she was now pinned against. Across the room, she saw the hard face and burning eyes of the cast-man. Behind her, the wall shuddered and she was pressed a few more centimeters into it. It seemed to Anne that she was under the surface of a raging river, pinned to the wall by its barely-visible currents. The currents seemed to focus through the cast-man, burning in his eyes, bending to his will.

Hawthorne went for her pistol. She was quick, but not as quick as Mendez- not as quick as the cast-man, either. As her gun cleared her shoulder holster, his hand twitched toward her, fingers flicking. Another torrent of power leapt through him and Hawthorne's pistol jerked back and cracked painfully against her temple, dragging her arm with it. Anne could see her strain to pull the pistol away, strain to move her head out of the way, but, like Anne, she was caught.

Though Anne wouldn't have guessed it were possible, the cast-man's grin became more disturbing. He began to speak hewthorne.

"Ssssssssssaaaaaaayyy ggggggooooodd..."

No! She was quick enough. She had time. She struggled against the river of fury that was pushing her through the wall. No use, she couldn't get any leverage against it, couldn't...

Through the wall! She began to use the force of the river to help her attack the wall behind her. Her foot drove through to the next room, her elbow shattered one of the synthetic wood studs. Ouch. Her other foot drove through and her body began to slip through the hole in the wall, feet first.

This was too slow. She would never get through the wall and around to the door before the cast-man had pulled the trigger on Hawthorne's gun. She hoped he was going for a complex sentence, but he didn't look like the wordy type. Then she could no longer see either of them as she turned her full attention to the wall that was now passing her waist.

"ddddbbbbbbbyyyyyyee."

The sound of the shot struck Anne like a blow. She fought harder; denial replacing the fragile hope the shot had killed. The second then third shot reached her in close succession. The river that was now aiding her through the wall abruptly stopped. Caught off-guard and mind on other things, she teetered forward. Her hands went out to keep her head from hitting the floor. She wondered who was in the room next door, wondered what they thought of the two hefty legs protruding up into their room at waist level. She was glad she wasn't wearing a skirt.

Obviously the cast-man had discovered her little ploy and was compensating. Now she was going to have to compensate too, of course she didn't yet know how. Being stuck upside down and wedged in a wall wasn't the best starting point for any plan. She pushed with her arms, pedaled her feet, but didn't make much progress. This would be funny if she wasn't about to die.

"Ggggggooooooooodddddddbye!" Mendez said as the slow motion of her combat fugue came to an end.

She pressed up on the floor and craned her neck to get a look. Hawthorne held her gun at full extension, pointing it as far from her head as possible. She gasped desperately, left hand on her face. Mendez was on the floor, propped on one elbow, still holding his gun toward the remains of the cast-man, not satisfied that he was dead. He fired into the corpse twice more... yep, not satisfied at all. Then he slumped onto his back, the gun hitting the floor as his arm relaxed. He sighed heavily.

"When will they learn that... evil bravado never pays?" He croaked.

Hawthorne snapped somewhat to her senses and rushed to her fallen partner. She knelt beside him, examining the two ragged holes in his torso. "Well, at least we're in a hospital." She gave him a reassuring grin.

"Maybe after you get the doctors you could give me a little help?" Anne said, still upside down. With no leverage, she was hopelessly stuck in the wall. One of the broken studs shifted and she slid down through the crumbling sheet rock, wedging tighter.

***

Rae was through being strong. There's only a certain amount of bravado and denial that anyone is capable of, and she was far past her limit. She sat in Roy's living room, holding her man, looking through the panoramic windows, across the choppy lake, and into a gathering storm. She trembled, bones seeming to knock together. She'd like to be able to pretend that this was any other Saturday nigt, that they were just relaxing after a day whose biggest frustrations had been boredom or work... perhaps after one of Alex's failed dinners.

Instead, she was transported back to another killing time. In the same near-fetal position, holding her mother, desolate with tears. At thirteen, she'd been old enough to understand that "Daddy's gone away for awhile," meant something more sinister than vacation. At least then she didn't know the killer. Today it would be other children's time to weep. Though they couldn't know her, they too would wish her dead.

Alex was being strong for her... holding her, closer when the shaking took her for a while. He waited patiently for her to be ready to talk. Early this morning, after they had all stumbled off to bed, Alex had come to check on her. She'd been unable to hide her tears, so he had held her then, and they had broken one of the major rules of their relationship.

Over a year ago, when she grudgingly admitted they were more than friends, they had set major and minor rules. Even now, in her misery, it brought a smile to think of it.

The minor rules were mostly tongue-in-cheek, one of Rae's was 'no rubbing my head', Alex's big one was 'no consequences for anything I say while I'm working'. The minor rules were often violated out of forgetfulness or playful mischief, but the major rules were serious. The major rules basically boiled down to three:

Number one was Rae's, but two and three came from Alex. She didn't understand at first, but as time wore on and she realized he was serious, she began to believe that he might have bigger plans for her. Of course, after she found out about the Loom, she thought those plans might involve virgin sacrifice, but finally it became clear that Alex's big plan was for them to have a chance for a respectable life together with no regrets- it also seemed less likely that Alex was just in gay denial.

Her teary smile broadened even as the sobs wracked her. She held him tighter. She still wanted to punch him sometimes, but she loved him in an encompassing, visceral way. Even now she was more comfortable just being near him.

After they had been together for six months, she had to call Alex on rule number one. This led to a quandary for Alex, a decision, and Rae's introduction to Wonderland. He came clean with the simpler facts about the Underworld, and the strange metaphorical Loom "down there" that was accessible to people like Alex and Ivo. At first she didn't believe him, but there's only so much cup levitation, spoon bending, and hypnotic suggestion you can take before you get at least a little curious. All doubt had been dispelled when Alex had taken her to see Ivo. He'd shown her things that simply have no other explanation. Once he'd Cast some kind of doohickey on her that allowed her to see him working the Loom. It was the strangest combination of glass blowing and silicon etching, with just a little ironmongery and textile manufacture thrown in. It had looked like a factory, a foundry, and a little like an electric butterfly. But to say these things was to ignore the other senses: the feel of electric serpents through the flesh, the taste of carbonation, the smell of... somet blue maybe?

Alex wouldn't say what it was that made him and Ivo different, at least not more than he wasn't born that way. It was a gift given by Ivo based on Ivo's estimation of his natural talents- whatever that meant.

This morning they had broken number two on the big rules list. Alex had held her until they both fell into a troubled sleep. They'd woken in the evening, all rumpled clothes, itchy shoes, stupid grins and morning breath, but the world seemed somehow more right. Looking into his sleep-squinty eyes, laughing at his morning hair, she felt almost human again. At times like that, it was even possible to forget that you're a multiple murderer.

Sure, it was self-defense. Yeah, they were trying to kill her, Alex, and their little plucky detective. They probably liked to kick puppies and spit in fish tanks. But these thoughts were logical constructs, and mostly irrelevant in the battle for her broken heart. She had done the work of death and there was no turning back. Though her mind would fit, she could not wrap her heart around it all. Therefore tears, therefore despair.

Who was she? Could she kill and just go on living?

Images of her crimes pushed their way back onto her mind's stage. She was too tired to fight them back into the wings, so the images of blood and ruined flesh passed before her again. She saw the surprised look on their faces as her bullets stole away their lives. She wanted to sleep, wanted to just give up for a while.

Alex waited patiently to talk; arm around her, acceptance in his eyes. Whoever she was, that was okay with him.

***

Josh from Physical Therapy pulled on her right arm. He was a handsome Nordic type with shiny blonde shoulder length hair. Hawthorne pulled on her left arm. Behind Anne, in the women's bathroom, a nurse and an orderly were trying to force her legs up enough to unwedge her from the wall.

Anne was laughing like a moron. Fortunately it was an infectious moronic laugh, aided by a repressed fear and a general sense of uncertainty. At least she didn't have to do it alone.

Mendez had been whisked away to the ER. A needle had torn through his gut, another through his upper right chest. The police had arrived shortly after the conflict. They were now doing preliminary reports on the four corpses on the other side of the room.

Back over at the Anne-hole, the four people laughed, pushed and pulled. Finally, they unwedged her from the wall and slid her forward to the point where she could get a little leverage with her hands. She pulled herself forward, then stood up, brushing sheet-rock and splinters from her tattered clothes.

The laughter petered out into uncomfortable silence. Attention turned inexorably to the police across the room and their grisly work. No one knew what to do next. On the other side of the room, the four befuddled officers documented the scene around the corpses. One looked in obvious confusion at the half-arch of foot-sized gashes in the wall that terminated near the top of the doorframe. His stylus tapped uncertainly on his tablet.

The lights flickered. They were only out for perhaps a second, but the instant of darkness left everyone disproportionately concerned- things like that don't happen in hospitals. It's funny how you take light for granted until the darkness explodes around you. The brief, lightless pause left an almost physical sense of foreboding behind.