TEMPTATION - A Bad Boy Romance (40 page)

This particular night he was on his way to work and was out of uniform. Karanzen would park in the back of the restaurant most of the time, but this evening he was forced to take a bus into work because he needed to get his car repaired. He had non-standard windbreaker jacket and pair of rumpled pants. His uniform he never wore outside of work and always kept it in the same locker room the cooks used.

He was on his way down the street to the restaurant, ready to start his shift when a familiar tone rang behind him. “Excuse me, sir,” the voice said, “I wonder if you could help me.”

Karanzen turned around to face a slovenly dressed white youth with a silver pendant dangling from his neck. The man appeared to be twenty years of age and was in bad need of a shower. Karanzen felt his blood pressure begin to rise. He’d seen this punk on the roam outside his place of work. The kid stayed far enough away from the parking, so he had no idea how Karanzen appeared up close. This was the reason for a very bad mistake he’d just made.

“I need fifty cents,” the man said to Karanzen.

“What do you need it for?”

“A pizza. I’m hungry and need to buy a slice of pizza.”

“Really?” Karanzen snapped back at him. “I’ll go buy you one. I don’t start work for another half hour. Come on; let’s go get you something to eat.”

The young man’s face changed instantly. “Uh, no, that’s alright, I’ll be moving along.”

Karanzen could tell the panhandler’s eye had spotted another mark and he was about to move on. The young man tried to move away from him, but as he did, he felt a vice tighten around his shoulder. As he winced in pain, he turned around and saw a hand clamped on him.

“Where you going? I thought you were hungry and wanted something to eat. Are you going to turn down my hospitality?”

“Please,” the mendicant said, “I need to go. Please, I didn’t want to start anything…”

Karanzen saw his opportunity. There was an alley between the nearest two buildings and it was still too dark for anyone to see what was about to happen. As the young man struggled, he pulled him to the passageway between the two buildings.

Karanzen slammed him up against the wall and starred right into his eyes. “You know what, sonny boy?” he snarled at him. “I think you have been driving business away from my boss because you don’t like to work. I think you have some serious issues which need addressed.”

“Please,” he cried out, “just let me go.” The young man didn’t think the man who held him to the wall could see his hand slip down to his pants’ pocket, but he was wrong.

The knife hit the ground as Karanzen used his other hand to smack it out of the street person’s hand.

“Not smart, punk. You lied to me about being hungry didn’t you? Now why don’t you look into my eyes and tell me the truth?”

He looked into Karanzen’s eyes and watched the pupils disappear. They were replaced by the image of something that had no form a sane mind could comprehend.

No one was close enough to the alley to hear the screaming, which lasted for a good two minutes. When it ended, Karanzen continued on his way to the restaurant and his shift, a big smile on his face. The day had turned out decent after all.

Three days later the state hospital took in a new patient they’d never seen before. The police brought him in and let the orderlies strap him down as the young man was found walking down the street while crying at shadows in the air. He claimed the ground was full of tiny creatures who were laughing at him. It took a long time for the duty physician to get his hysterics under control. It was another three months before they located his wealthy family in New York and told them their wayward son was located in Scipio, Ohio.

A few minutes later, two of his boys, Lab and Woody, were with him walking around the outside of the mall. To everyone coming inside the mall, they appeared to be on their rounds, in the performance of some job crucial to the security of it. One or two people stopped and asked them if everything was all right, Karanzen assured them he was in the process of checking out some electronics in the lot. It satisfied them and he continued on his tour with the two men.

“The mall owner is not happy about what happened yesterday,” he repeated to them from the message from Matt. “We need to do better if all of us want to continue working here. I happen to like my job and I don’t need to worry about making the people in the tower mad.”

“I don’t know what else we can do, Boss, “Woody said to him. “We did everything we were supposed to do yesterday. No one was hurt and you had those kids in your office for a while. I thought everything was fine.”

“They’ve got it in for those two. I don’t know why, but they don’t want me to ban that kid Dion or any of his little friends from the mall. They seem to think they can handle the situation better than I can. Fine. We’ll be on standby until they want us. In the meantime, continue to watch them and look out for anything funny. Keep in mind there are four of them today.”

“Funny like those cheerleaders who just disappeared?” Lab asked him. “They just popped away when that Dion kid faced off to them. The weird thing was that no one seemed to act as if anything strange happened. The audience walked away as if they’d never been there.”

“Keep a record of those kinds of incidents,” Karanzen said to them. “I want to know about them. The management may be playing with fire and I don’t want to get burned.”

“What do you think they might be up to?” Woody asked. He tended to be the suspicious one. Years of clandestine missions in the jungles of South East Asia had taught him not to ask too many questions. It also made him suspicious of the motives of anyone who gave an order.

“I’m not sure. I don’t like it, I will tell you that. Right now, we work for the mall directly, I’m sure they’d like to save money and hire an outside security contractor. If that happens, we’d all have to find new jobs. Not right away, but I can assure you they would try to replace every one of us.”

“Not always.” It was Lab, who looked on the positive side of life. “I worked for a post lieutenant who kept his job through five different contract companies. He had some inside with the plant management so they always had him appointed as lieutenant.”

“I don’t think we’d be so lucky,” Karanzen told them. “Just watch for anything strange and careful what you say inside the mall. Too many ears in those cornfields. I don’t worry out here because I doubt the management can reach this far. But I can’t be sure. If I suspect anything else we might have to start meeting off-site.”

He didn’t tell them what he knew about the nature of the mall. All of them would quit if they realized they were positioned over the abyss. Who would stick around if they knew they were supposed to guard the passage over the bottomless pit of midnight? He felt guilty not telling them the truth, but the truth was more than anyone of them could tolerate. Even
he
couldn’t fully deal with the truth and he knew what the mall was all about the day they hired him.

Karanzen closed his eyes and tried to forget the day Matt had found him living in the van near the Atlantic shore. He’s been sleeping in it every night since the dreams started. The dreams, which took him, back to Korea and human wave assaults. Every night he would find himself walking out from behind the tank to see the endless wall of Chinese soldiers walking down the hill in his directions with their bayonets fixed. He couldn’t tell them about it, not the gunfire and the solid steel pin of fear that went through him when he saw what he was up against. Not the cries of his men as he turned and ran in the other direction. No one knew about it, except Matt when he knocked on the side of the van and told Karanzen he had a job for him.

“You alright, Boss?” Lab asked.

Karanzen opened his eyes and saw the two men starring at him. “I’m fine,” he said and turned in the direction of the mall. “I thought about another meeting after work, but I’ll hold off for the time being.”

Chapter 6

“I think we need to go back and see Hobbs.” Dion said to his friends as they wandered through the mall.

Something seemed very wrong about the atmosphere of the mall. Dion had the map and knew where the location of Jupiter Hitch’s hobby store could be located, but the cheerleaders’ sudden appearance worried him. The elementals knew he was there and would do everything possible to keep him away from the Grandmaster. Plus there was the issue of the security guards.

“Why do we need to go see him?” Lilly asked. “You need to buy something else from his store?”

“I might. I’m not sure about the kind of people who are inside this mall. He might have something to help me plan things out today. If anyone would have what I needed, it would be him.”

“That short guy who runs the head shop?” Sean asked him. He wasn’t sure if Dion had noticed him talking to the cheerleader Randi or knew that she wanted to get the map away from him. It still sickened him that Emily paid Dion so much attention. Why? Couldn’t she just leave him to Lilly? What was it that these girls had to compete for attention? It made no sense to him.

“That’s the man I’m talking about,” Dion said. “We need to go back to the other side of the mall and have a word with him.”

The trip to the part of the mall where they had been the previous day went quick. Lilly noticed a few of the ghoul cleaners who bowed to Dion as they went past, but otherwise didn’t say a word. The whole atmosphere changed in this section once they were inside it. Dion was master of the earth elementals and they were prominent in this section.

She also noticed the bull platform was gone, hauled off since it hadn’t done what it was supposed to do. Even the pharmacy where he’d been bestowed with the full powers of the earth elemental was closed. There was an “On Vacation” sign on the window with a notice of who to call until the owner returned. Lilly wondered if the owner, the Earth Elemental Grandmaster, Athena West, hadn’t planned that vacation a long time ago and waited until Dion came to her before she took it.

Emily found the little underground shop where Dion took them to be funny and amusing. It wasn’t the sort of place she would have willingly spent much time, but she enjoyed it. She liked the abundance of black light posters on the wall and the record bin full of ninety-nine cent specials. Then there was the stuffed bear at the front. It, like everything else, was for sale. But nothing had a price tag she could find. What matter of store lacked price tags? What kind of place was this?

“Hello again, Dion,” the short man from behind the counter said. “I see you have some more friends with you. How did the seer stone work out?”

“Good, I have it in my pocket today, although I don’t think I need it. We have the map back and the lettering is stuck on English. Is it locked in place because of the stone?’

“No. The stone makes it possible for the holder of it to read the map and anyone close to him or her. If you can read the map and not hold the stone, then the map was fixed on the last language used. It depends on the map, but most of the maps made for what you are using it don’t have that ability.”

Sean had found the aquarium with Emily. Both of them were looking at the strange creature inside it. Sean tried to move close to her, but she only let him casually make contact. The moment he brushed up against her, she pulled away. He doubted she would do that if Dion bumped into her.

“You have any idea what this thing it?” she asked Sean. “It doesn’t appear to be a mouse or any kind of rodent I’ve ever seen. Wait, I think there it is again.”

The creature poked its head out of a hole and crawled over to a water pan where it took a long and slow drink out of it. Now that she could see it better, Emily realized it was some sort of lizard. It only had two front legs, but resembled a reptile in every other fashion. It was about ten inches long and turned to look at her with a scowl. Whatever it was, the creature didn’t seem to like them starring at it.

“A tatzelwurm,” Hobbs called out to them. “Be careful and don’t get too close. He’s harmless most of the time. I keep him around because he lets me know if anyone is trying to shoplift.”

“It can do that? How would it know?”

“Go ahead and reach behind the counter,” Hobbs told her.

Emily shrugged and stuck her hand on the other side of the glass case.

The moment her hand touched the other side of the case, the creature in the aquarium turned and looked at her. She looked back at Hobbs with a “Well?” expression on her face. Nothing had taken place.

Then a loud wail came from the aquarium, which caused every other customer in the store to turn in its direction. The wail emerged from the small lizard inside it. As Emily jumped back, she heard it continued to make the wail with its snout open. How could a little thing like that make such a loud noise? The moment her hand was down by her side, the wail began to die down. Soon it was gone, but the tatzelwurm continued to glare at her, its tail twisting inside the aquarium.

“Now do you understand?” Hobbs said. “Just don’t do it to spite him, because then he’ll get really mad.”

Emily backed away slowly from the tank and walked over to Dion. Sean followed. He made a mental note of how she’d instinctively gone to Dion and ignored him when she was frightened.

What am I, invisible?
he thought to himself.
All this time and she still can’t fall back to me when she’s scared.
It made him recall all the other times Emily had called him for support, only to find reasons not to take his calls later.

“Where did you get that monster?” Emily asked Hobbs. “That thing scared me to death with that scream.”

“I thought it was time I showed him off. I’m sorry if he frightened you, but it’s been too long and people tend to forget he’s in the aquarium.”

Hobs turned back to Dion. “So what did you need this time?”

“Those security guards are a nuisance,” Dion explained. “Whoever owns this mall has them following me all over the place. Every time I turn around, they are there. Do you have something which will let me know when they’re about to show up?”

“I have just the thing for you,” Hobbs announced as she ducked below the level of the counter again and brought up another carved box. This box was much larger than the last one and he sat it again on the counter. As the four friends looked on, Hobbs unlocked it with a key from a collection of them in his pocket. He opened the lid to let them see what was inside.