Chapter Fifteen Monika #2
There’s a short clip of him dropping to his knees in front of Cynthia; then the next still is of him on his feet, blue and busting out of his tuxedo.
The following image is of him with his hand on Cynthia’s arm, and the final image is of Cynthia’s face and the pure elation written across it.
It doesn’t matter that you can only see a little piece of Taranis’s blue profile or that his eyes are closed in it, Cynthia’s face says enough. She’s completely in love.
I’m too busy being annoyed at what the PR team did with my video to notice the like and comment count.
When I do, I nearly lose my lunch, and that’s a pity because I don’t get a chance to eat tteokbokki very often.
There are two million likes and thirty thousand comments, and this was only posted two hours ago.
“Shit,” I hiss, my stomach dropping through my toes, which curl into the tiled floor. I still don’t have any shoes on. Jealousy rears its head in my loins—that’s not right. Schei?e. That’s too many body parts in one sentence. I can’t even think of a good metaphor.
The sudden urge to sit comes over me—sit and stare at what I’ve done—but Cynthia’s sobs have petered out.
She snatches her cell phone from my limp grip and wipes her nose on the sleeve of her sweatshirt, which, the longer I stand here, I start to notice carries a man’s scent. And it’s not Taranis’s.
“Yeah, shit. Take it down.”
“I can’t,” I start to say while the taste of regret coats my tongue, and then I’m hit by the wrongness of her request. “Wait. Why would you want me to take it down? You’re famous. You were taking interviews all night . . .”
“I said take it down, please.”
I take a chance and, instead of retreating, sit on the edge of her bed and watch the way she winces away from me. “What happened tonight?”
Cynthia sniffles and sniffles some more. She wipes her eyes and glances around again at the walls, and she’s not looking at me as she starts whispering, “It wasn’t a car accident.”
“What?”
And then it all comes out in a rush. “I was driving out of town, to my eomma’s estate in North Sumnerville.
” The wealthiest suburb around Sundale and where her mother lives—that all tracks.
“I was feeling myself and wanted to listen to the radio longer, to see if any of my clips had started to play.” That tracks too.
“I took Old Highway 68. I was almost home when somebody appeared in the passenger’s seat. ” That . . . doesn’t track.
I’m about to interrupt with a litany of questions when she says, “I screamed—of course—but they grabbed the wheel. We went off the road, and I saw that we were about to hit a tree, but all of a sudden, we weren’t there anymore.
We were somewhere else. It was dark and cold.
They put me in a chair, and then the Marduk was there.
He asked me how I . . . caused Taranis’s reversion.
” She starts to hiccup while all my blood runs cold.
“I told him it wasn’t me. I told him that Taranis electrocuted me—he doesn’t love me,” she spits.
“But he saw the pictures.” She limply tosses her phone into her lap.
The screen is unlocked and that last picture of her beautiful, happy face is shining up at us, making a mockery of the moment.
“He said that if I was lying and wasting his time, he would hurt me. I told him that you took and posted the pictures—not me.” That bitch.
“But he didn’t care. He asked me where you lived.
I told him, and that seemed to piss him off too.
He told me that if I went to the police or told anyone at the COE or SDD, he’d kill my mom.
And then they broke my legs. I must have passed out, because the next thing I remember, I was in the hospital. ”
I shiver all over. Behind me, the door opens. “Ms. Neumann, the OR doctors are ready for Cynthia. It’s time for you to leave,” the nurse tells me.
I nod and slide off the bed, aghast and horrified and struggling to process. “Why the phone?” I ask Cynthia.
She shakes her head. “He just said to give it to you. He put me in this sweatshirt because I didn’t have any pockets.” She shudders just then and suddenly becomes frantic in her effort to tear it off over her head. She throws it at me. “Get rid of it.”
I nod, and even as the nurse says my name sternly again and again, I hesitate and then rush forward, thinking of one more thing. “Can you tell me anything about the place they took you? Or who the other one was with the Marduk?”
Cynthia’s eyes shut. She shakes her head. “Dark hair, olive skin, I guess. Maybe Greek or something. They weren’t that tall. I’m not sure if it was a man or woman. Only wearing black. Smiling a lot, so fucking smugly.”
“Ms. Neumann!”
“And the place?” I whisper, grabbing Cynthia’s hand and forcing her concentration to my face.
She opens her eyes and shudders as she says, “I don’t know. Some kind of warehouse. It could have been anywhere.”
The nurse shoves me back with force as two other people move into the room and drop the arms of Cynthia’s bed. They start rolling her toward the door. Just before she passes through it, she turns her head to look at me and says, “I smelled the sea.” And then they wheel her away from me.
The nurse gives me an admonishing finger shake before escorting me back to the front desk and then all but kicking me out of the hospital.
I stand there under the brightly lit emergency awning as people filter past me, none looking too worse for wear, except for a woman about my age holding a bloody towel to her mouth and being escorted by her absolutely frantic-looking boyfriend.
I’m still staring after them, back through the automatic doors of the hospital, when an unfamiliar buzzing picks up in my pocket.
I fish out my phone. Don’t see any notifications. And then I withdraw the other one. There’s a text. With fingers that feel like sausages as they bumble around, smashing down half a dozen buttons, I open it.
Meet me at Habesha Cafe. 4am. Or
Or what? That’s how we’re playing it these days? Not even an or else? Just an or?
I snort out a breath of nervous laughter and think through my options, finally landing on just one. I call a car and head to Habesha Café. That or really did it for me, and I’m not interested in getting my or anybody else’s legs broken.
I call my mom as I sit in the back of the car, the driver giving me weird looks and keeping his mask on as if he’s afraid I’m going to infect him with whatever I got at the hospital.
To be fair, with how tired I am and how messed up I look, I appear as if I could be carrying any number of infections.
I give my mom a brief update, tell her about Cynthia’s surgery.
She thanks me and promises to keep trying Ambassador Min-hyuck, and I promise, albeit reluctantly, to check back in on Cynthia in a day or two.
As I hang up the phone, the car pulls up to a normally well-trafficked city street that’s currently dead, as it’s still pitch black out.
I don’t have a key, I don’t have an ID. I don’t even have underwear.
I get out of the car shakily, offering the driver an extra tip of a hundred bucks if he’ll wait around the corner for me.
He agrees, but when I give him a number to call in case I’m not back in thirty minutes, he tells me he doesn’t want any trouble and drives off.
Thanks, dude.
I stare at the coffee shop door for too long before opening it. There’s a light on in the back and movement coming from the kitchen, but that’s not what draws my focus. My focus instead falls on a giant behemoth of a male seated at a dainty little mosaic table directly in front of me.
“Monika,” he says, his voice low and even. “Have a seat.”
“I think I’ll stand.”
Suddenly, I’m moving—being pushed by an invisible hand. Wind gathers at my back and flings me forward. I land on my stomach on his sweatshirt on the table, my head hanging off the end and almost in the Marduk’s lap.
His hand crawls over my back, down my sides to my sweatpants pocket.
I open my mouth to scream. “Don’t scream.
” He speaks before I can follow through on that idea and rips the wind straight from my lungs.
I can’t breathe and clutch desperately at my neck while the Marduk reaches over my body and does something to my pants.
“Sit,” I hear him order, but at a distance.
I can’t hear anything over the sound of whooshing in my ears.
And then I’m thrown unceremoniously back.
I land in a hard wooden chair, which tips back on its legs, threatening to fall before righting itself with a bang. I hold on to my seat, my heart pounding, and when I look up into the Marduk’s cold black gaze, he raises a blond eyebrow and releases me.
I suck in air like I’d been drowning. I was drowning. I know this supervillain has power over wind and thunder, but I didn’t think it worked like that. Ssi-bal.
After coughing to clear my throat, I swallow repeatedly, a funny taste in my mouth that I hope never to experience again. I wait, gaze raking over him, trying to pick up clues . . . something . . . anything! That’s when I see what’s lying on the table between us. What he pulled out of my pocket.
He glances down at my phone. “Why don’t you unlock it for us?”
I can’t do that. We both know that I’m recording all this. I don’t respond.
The Marduk simply tilts his head. “Doesn’t matter either way.” And the phone suddenly explodes from within, bursting apart into thousands of microscopic pieces, never to be salvaged, the recording I’d been taking gone with it.
We wait a moment, staring at each other, before I break the silence. “Nice coffee shop.” I’m still gripping the edges of my chair like it’s the only thing that’s going to keep him from flinging me into Oz.
“I think so.”
“Why am I here?”
“The better question is, why are you late? It’s almost four thirty.
We’ll have to do this quickly, and I don’t have time for questions.
I know that your little friend is not the key to Taranis’s reversion, unless torturing her a little bit somehow triggered it.
I also know that you were there since you took the recording. What caused his reversion?”
I simply lick my lips and shake my head.
“I can only tell you what I saw,” I opt to answer, rather than telling him the truth that Cynthia got her legs shattered for—I don’t know.
“I saw Taranis torturing Cynthia, electrocuting her while she sobbed. I saw her fall, and then the next thing I know, Taranis is falling beside her and rising up again twice as large.”
“And what did he do afterwards?”
Me.
I feel heat rise in my cheeks but am proud of my even tone as I say, “Panicked. He was out of it. I managed to get him out of the South Korean Embassy and to his car, which took him back to his place.”
“And yours. The two of you live in the same building.”
“Correct.”
The Marduk swipes his sweatshirt off the table between us, and as it falls, he does the last thing I’d have hoped he would.
His gaze drops to my clothing. He inspects it for all of two seconds before lifting his nose to the wind.
A slight breeze wafts from behind me, pulling in his direction, and his mouth starts to form a grin.
“My, my. Monika, do you have a thing for villains?”
I heat further, harder, hotter, all the way down to my toes, which curl into the cold floor. I don’t say anything.
The Marduk leans back in his tiny chair and strokes his beard.
His gaze keeps me pinned in place. His arms are tattooed all over in wild symbols that frighten me for reasons I don’t understand.
I’ve got chills rushing over every exposed piece of my skin—not that he’s looking at me like that.
He’s got a detached, almost clinical way about him that makes me afraid in a way Taranis never has.
“I take it you are his key, then.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Only that I’ll have to change my plans and let you leave alive.”
Alarm bells are ringing. The choir sings, “Danger Danger Warning Warning.” “You’re leaving?”
“Unfortunately, yes. You’re free to go. I’ve learned all that I’ve needed from you.”
“And you’re not going to threaten me? Break my legs if I go to the COE or whatever?
” I don’t know why I’m giving him ideas.
I’m just . . . confused. My adrenaline is keeping my voice calm, but my hands still shake.
I’m not . . . cut out for this world. Human-size conflict, I seem to be able to handle, but this is some big inhuman-size shit.
“No. If you’re Taranis’s key, and I suspect you are,” he says to me from the door, “then it wouldn’t do me any favors to hurt you and alienate him. He’s one of my most useful allies and now the most powerful being on this planet.”
I’m surprised to hear the Marduk admit as much, and I watch him stand in the doorway, darkness washing over him like a pall. It’s too dark outside still, sunrise an hour off. This morning, however, feels even darker than most.
The scent of roasting coffee fills my lungs as he watches me and I watch him. I can think of nothing useful to say, nothing useful to ask, and so I chirp, like an idiot, “He is?”
“Yes. He’s fully reverted and number Six.”
A little bell jingles as he leaves, his hands in his pockets. I think he might be whistling a tune as he makes his way down the street.
A clanging in the back coming from the kitchen startles me.
I pick up the Marduk’s sweatshirt for no reason I can think of and follow the path he took on the sidewalk.
I need to call a car. I need to calm the fuck down.
My vision is blurring and my hands are starting to shake real bad.
I feel completely adrift and in way, way the fuck over my head.
I don’t understand what the Marduk’s just told me, and the one person—being—I wish I could confide in is the one who might be first in line to tear off my head.
If the Marduk is right, and I’ve got no reason to believe he isn’t, Taranis really is the bad guy.
I can’t tell him any of this. I can’t even call him now for a goddamn lift.
Sniffling pitifully, I reach into my pocket to grab my phone and pull up any and every transportation app—whichever one can get me home fastest. But what I pull out isn’t my phone. It’s the little brick that the Marduk gave me. The one without internet. Because my phone got exploded.
I stand on the street, look up at the putrid gray sky, and shout at the top of my lungs, “SSI-BAL!”
I’m so fucked.