Successors (9 page)

Determined not to be beaten by the foreign invaders she  scooted further in, to flank the front line. Just as she suspected, the powdered-sugar festooned buggers were preoccupied defending their position on the south.

She moved forward, ducking low, and avoiding the plastic crinkle wrappers that littered her path. Two feet away in the pantry cabinet, she gathered the lone surviving bag of tortilla chips and a fiesta trail mix that no one was going to eat, because it was ridiculously hot.

She searched for the others, but they were gone. Chocolate chip cookies. Gone. Cheesy crackers. Gone. Those little doughnuts covered in that coconut crap. Gone!

Overcome by digestive grief she stepped wrong and planted her foot right on a cupcake package. The crunching plastic might as well have been a call to arms for her wayward enemies.

They turned to face her. Six little triangular green faces, each more angry than the next. They hissed, chittered, and screeched before leaping up and over the counters. All but one scattered, taking so little of their abominable smell with them.

The remaining critter sat on the counter by the stove hissing at her. Denying her claim to the kitchen and the food therein contained.

“You want this, you little bastard?” She flaunted the chips at him. “Come get it!” She moved sideways and tossed the two bags out the open front door.

The goblin screamed in displeasure, but didn't move from his perch. Cori dusted off her hands and moved back into her newly established territory.

“Don't like that?” She popped open the fridge and found its contents similarly diminished. She pulled out the jelly. “I bet you didn't even know what was in here.” She opened the jar, courtesy of her opposable thumb, and waved the jelly around. The creature leaned forward and sniffed the air. 

“You want that? Go get it.” She tossed it out the front door. She came back to the kitchen and searched the cupboards. “Wait til I find the peanut butter. That is going to blow your mind.”

She found the peanut butter, safely ensconced in a critter proof jar. She pulled it out and turned to exhibit it, but she had to duck to avoid another object being thrown at her. It hit the wood cabinet above her with a solid
thwack
and stuck.

Cori looked up at the potential headache and found an eight inch chef's knife embedded in the wood, inches from her skull. She looked back at the goblin hopping up and down gleefully on the island. An entire wood block of knives was only inches from his clawed fingertips.

She screeched and ducked again, avoiding the continued onslaught of his cutlery ammunition. After narrowly escaping the loss of an ear, she surrendered the front line, and retreated to safer ground.

He had won the battle, but not the war.

14

Even before the first official section, the hot humid air bathed them with the smell of a cattle yard. As they continued on, the smell was joined by sporadic brays, cackles, and shrills that echoed through the high ceilings.

“This is our animal sanctuary,” Danato said loudly over the animal outcries. “These creatures are either animal mixes or humanoid-to-animal mixes. Either way, the only way to maintain them is through zoological standards. We take as much care feeding and tending to these creatures as a zookeeper would a cage full of lions, maybe more.”

Ethan had thought the creatures in the basement were strange, but the animals here looked like lab experiments gone wrong. From folklore to mythology, this place was definitely the sum total of Dr. Moreau’s wet dreams and then some.

After they moved through a dizzying arrangement of metal and glass enclosures, they slipped through an air lock. On the other side, the air became notably more humid. The jungle hullabaloo was replaced by the deafening hum of water pumps. The manure smell was a fragrant memory compared to the dead fish smell that lingered in this section. Ethan raised his hand to his nose, defending against the upheaval of his breakfast.

“These are obviously our water-bound serpents and sprites,” Danato said. “There are a few mermaids and mermen in this area. They won’t come out while I’m here. They are tricksters, though, so don’t make any assumptions when you’re in here. I would much prefer to have them on the fourth floor, but we don’t want to move the water system. Anyway, mermaids are a generalized term for us as well. The type you are familiar with are seductive sprites, while the type I am familiar with… well, let’s just go back to the part where I said all the inmates here are human killers.”

They walked between cylinder aquariums that reached ten feet tall, and up to fifteen feet in diameter. He saw several mermaids, or sprites as Danato had called them. They pushed against the glass, blowing him kisses and rubbing their hands over their scaly feminine bodies. He kept his head low, but he couldn’t help but peek over at the fisherman’s fantasy.

It wasn’t until he bumped into the back of Danato that he realized they had reached the next airlock. Danato glanced back at him. Ethan had expected to give him a lecture about paying attention, but he gave him a knowing smile. “Look, but don’t touch.”

Ethan cleared his throat and bit back a smile as he felt heat rise into his cheeks.

Through the next air lock, there was no particular smell. The air was drier, and the temperature was noticeably warmer. There weren’t any cages either. The room was an indoor forest. Gigantic potted trees, much like one might expect to see at a mall, lined the walls. “What is this, a conservatory?” he asked.

“Aviary.”

“For what?” he asked, probing the air for any manner of flying creature.

“Come on. She’s more afraid of us, than we are of her.” Danato moved on, and Ethan kept right in line with him.

After passing the west entrance to the infirmary, they finished the remaining loop of enclosures and ended up back where they started at the east elevators. They took the lift up another floor.

15

Cori screamed and flung the vicious creature from her shoulders. He landed in the fireplace, which was sadly not lit. She ignored the searing pain in her back and picked up the broom from the floor in front of her.

She raised the straw bristles high and continued to smack the annoying goblin that was swinging on the dining room chandelier. “Get off! Get off! Get off!” she chanted through gritted teeth.

The dexterous little brat was quick, but she did manage to get one good whack that launched him into the living room where he collided with a lamp.

She turned her broom to face any other attackers, but there were none in sight. She felt something warm on her leg and looked down. The smallest of the slime-balls wasn't much of a fighter, but he was the sneakiest. He looked up at her, sneering, or perhaps grinning as he freely peed on her leg.

Cori raised her head and screamed into the rafters. “I hate this place!”

16

The elevator doors opened with a muted “ponk” rather than the usual melodious “ping.” Ethan started to exit, but Danato put out his arm to stop him. “This is our part-time level. We don’t need to tour through the whole level. Even with full attendance, we barely use a third of it. For the most part, it’s all lycanthropes. They maintain themselves well enough on their own with the exception of a few days out of the month, which, if registered with us, they are obliged to check-in for.”

Danato pushed the button for the next floor and they went up again.
Ponk
. This time Ethan waited. The large man chewed his cheek as he looked out onto the floor before them. He opened his mouth to speak, but stopped.

“Do you want to skip this one too?” Ethan asked just as the doors started to close.

Danato shoved his arm in the way, and the doors receding again. “No.” He cleared his throat. “These are our transmorphs, as we call them. You may be more familiar with the term shape-shifters. We only house about a dozen right now. Again, the remainder of the floor is virtually empty. Someday we may have the ability to track down more of them, but as you might imagine, they are difficult to identify and even more difficult to acquire. Alive, anyway.”

Danato paused, chewing his cheek again. “We don’t have a lot to fear from them, while they are in containment, but they can change into anyone they have seen, in person or in a photograph. As long as you know that they can do that, there really shouldn’t be any threat.” Danato stepped out of the elevator, but abruptly turned back. “That’s not to say that they aren’t dangerous. They are very talented manipulators.”

“I get it.”

“No, I just need you to understand that I have been here many, many years, and every time I come in here, they are different. No matter what you see, it is not the truth. It’s always a lie.”

“Okay,” Ethan said.

They went into the hallway of barred cells. There was nothing to see. Humanoids standing, sitting, leaning against the bars. If Ethan had seen this level first, he would have assumed this was a normal prison.

No one had strange faces or animal parts. None of them hissed or clawed to get to him. In truth, it was boring compared to the previous levels. They walked through without any events.

Danato growled as they headed through to the next section that was uninhabited. “That was too easy.”

“What?” Ethan asked as he looked over the empty cages.

“They know I’ve warned you. They are trying to underplay my concerns, so that you will drop your guard. I hate transmorphs; they
are
dangerous, but not in an obvious way. I hate that.”

“Do they eat people too?”

“No, actually. They don’t eat humans, but they will kill humans so they can take over their life, and some of them have the additional ability to encase the body of their victim. They become a rubber mask on the original being. Those are worse than others, because they are harder to identify. They have the ability to read the thoughts of their host, which allows for more realistic interaction.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, there’s a
big
file on them.”

They trekked down to the west elevators and headed up to the next floor, which, Danato reminded him, was the seducers level. Judging by the twist in his mouth Ethan assumed Danato was about to bite straight through his cheek in regards to the danger posed by these inmates.

They arrived at the level and Danato led the way into the first section of cells. Ethan followed observing the beauty that each enclosure contained. Behind thick glass or heavy metal bars were the aptly-named seducers. Hardened criminals they weren’t. If the mermaid was a fisherman’s cabin-fever fantasy, this place was the sane man’s fantasy. Nothing short of the playboy mansion could compete against it.

“If you discount the destructive nature of the next two floors of inmates,” Danato said softly, as if he didn’t want the prisoners to hear him, “this floor is likely the most dangerous group you will ever meet. These are the seducers, mostly women as you can see, all beautiful, all sexy, and all very dangerous.”

Ethan offered some kind of a response. It might have started out as ‘mmm-hmm,’ but it seemed to stop at the mmm.

“Are you listening?” Danato elbowed him.

“Yes,” he said. Whether it was true or not had yet to be determined.

“Oh, that reminds me, some of them are in soundproof glass. If for any reason the glass becomes compromised, plug your ears and run like hell.”

“That doesn’t sound reassuring.”

“It wasn’t meant to.”

As they walked through the first section, a feminine giggle caught Ethan’s ear. He glanced over at a cell with a woman in it. She wore a kimono and her hair wasn’t hair, but rather long barbs like a porcupine. They came nearly two feet off her head.

He smiled at her, amused by her outrageous hair. He was about to laugh when Danato’s hand clamped tightly around his mouth. “That’s Harionna. We don’t laugh at her,
ever
.” Danato released his face and they walked on.

Harionna giggled behind them, but Ethan had lost the tickle in his funny bone.

17

It was just after four when Ethan and Danato finished touring the upper levels. The details of the caging, restraints, and schedules for the seducers, sorcerers, and the elementals was boring beyond tolerance, but each detainee was as dangerous as the last and Danato wasn’t remiss in reminding him of that with each and every prisoner.

He tried to make mental notes in his head, but after the hours, each detail blurred into the next. He wanted to explain to his self-appointed teacher that he was a bad student and couldn’t remember an important phone number, let alone the specifics of the different inmates, but Danato was oblivious to his brain fog.

They made their way back down to the main foyer to bundle up for the cold arctic temperatures outside. Ethan was famished; his cafeteria lunch was now only a memory to his stomach. He was looking forward to a home-cooked meal. He hoped beyond hope that Missy had already prepared the meal and that he only needed to sit down at the table and serve up his plate.