Chapter Thirty Monika
Chapter Thirty
Monika
One hour earlier
“So you’re telling me that the weapons actually belong to us? And we’re the keys to unlocking them?” I say, flabbergasted by everything Vanessa’s told me over brunch.
The Wyvern is supposed to pick us up to take us to the COE building for some meeting Darius called, but Vanessa’s got me way too hyped, so I convinced her to show me her weapon—a weapon currently stowed in the trunk of her car because I persuaded her to let me photograph her with it when we go pick up the weapon I spied in Darius’s penthouse that Vanessa claims belongs to me.
“Exactly,” she says, nodding animatedly and ignoring the Wyvern’s next call.
“But I saw it lighting up with electricity when Taranis was pissed.”
“Were you also pissed?”
I stop to think about it as I give her my key fob to get into the penthouse garage. “I was.”
“Maybe it wasn’t responding to him, but to you.”
“Hmm.” That gives me something to think about as we pile out of her SUV and head toward the elevator. I notice Taranis’s car is gone, which is odd, because most of the time he just flies if he’s on his own.
Vanessa extracts her sword from the trunk, glancing up at the ceiling as she does.
“Don’t worry. No cameras down here,” I explain. “Taranis took them out after . . .” The first time he pulled me naked out of his limo. “He’s just insanely private. He’d rather be robbed than be spied on.”
Vanessa and I ride up in silence. Her phone starts ringing again as we reach the penthouse floor. “I’ve got to take this, or he’s gonna freak.” She rolls her eyes and brushes the back of her wrist over her cheek as she lifts her phone to her ear. “Hey!”
“Are you fucking kidding?” says the voice on the other end of the line, one I can hear clearly.
“Where are you?” He sounds pissed, though not quite as pissed as I’m pretty sure Darius would be if I dipped out on him in favor of a ridiculous plan with one of my girlfriends.
Not that I have many of those. Well, not that I had many of those.
Vanessa’s starting to feel like a promising candidate.
And Cynthia, while not exactly promising, is at least a candidate.
“It’s right through here,” I tell Vanessa as I approach the closed doors to Darius’s office. He hasn’t used it once in the past few weeks, so I’m a little surprised to find it locked. Luckily, I’m coded to all the penthouse biometrics now.
I press my palm to the panel beside the door. It clicks and swings slightly inward. I push it the rest of the way open and come to a dead. fucking. stop.
Vanessa slips into the room behind me and screams.
On the phone, I can hear the Wyvern shout, “The fuck is going on!”
“Oh my God. Taranis has like . . . There’s a woman tied up to the ceiling . . . hanging from the ceiling. She’s dead!”
“I don’t think she is,” I say, clapping my hands over my mouth as the woman starts to cough.
“Auooow,” she groans, and I rush forward, grab a chair shoved against one wall, and start to drag it. It makes a screeching sound over the hard, sadly rug-less concrete floor in here that has the woman wincing as she tries to open her eyes, right her head on her neck, and focus.
“Hey, I’m not gonna hurt you,” I feel the need to say as I push the chair up against her back and then carefully race around her body and try to pull her up onto the seat. She’s taller than I am, though, and starts to struggle, so Vanessa sets down her sword and comes to help me.
Together, we manage to get her seated. We back away from her and I glance at Vanessa, who’s got her pink-painted nails pressed to her mouth. Her cheeks are puffed out. She looks like she’s gonna burst.
“How . . .” I start.
“I told Roland where we are. He’s coming.”
“Good.” I should call Taranis and ask him Why, but I want to get the woman down first.
The woman croaks, her head resting on the back of the chair. She swings it around and blinks her brown eyes open. Seeing us, she starts, “Who—who—who the hell are you people?” And then she squeals, “Are you with the guy? With the lightning?”
“I . . .” I try again, but I’m about to shit myself in shock and confusion.
“We’re . . .” Vanessa starts. “I’m . . . dating the Wyvern. I’m his fiancée.”
Vanessa has one of the most recognizable faces in America at the moment, but the woman gives her a dead-eyed blink. “Who is the Wyvern?”
Vanessa and I share a glance before I sputter, “Are you in shock? Or like . . . injured?” Maybe that explains why she doesn’t seem to recognize the most famous person in the world.
“Yes,” she moans. “Some monster . . . came into my coffee shop . . . and then electrocuted me. I thought it was Mr. Taranis—he’s come into my coffee shop before—but why would he do this to me? He’s never tried to hurt me before . . .”
“Oh my God!” Vanessa says in the same breath that I shout, “Mein Gott.”
Flustered, panicked, guilty, and confused, I flap my hands like a bird.
“Let’s . . .” And then the adrenaline starts to kick in and my pulse settles.
I speak and my voice is sharper than it was.
“Let’s worry about the why after we get you out of here.
Vanessa, can your sword cut through that metal? ”
“I’ll try.” Vanessa lifts her weapon, and the moment she touches the hilt, the blade comes to life.
The woman screams. I offer her paltry reassurance as Vanessa whacks and hacks away at the steel beam connecting the woman to the celling. It doesn’t work.
Vanessa’s sweating as she says to me, “Where’s your weapon?”
I glance at the bookshelves. Taranis shoved his desk in front of them, but I can still reach the strange objects I identified from Mr. Singkham’s book.
I withdraw the short wrist swords and slip them onto each arm.
There’s an inner handle inside each object, and the moment I grip them, twin blades shoot out of the sides of central blades, making me and Vanessa and the captive woman all jump.
And then we scream as a collective when my wrist swords suddenly erupt in electricity that doesn’t burn me at all.
I wave my arms around in a panic and get lucky, because my right arm is pointed at the ceiling when I inadvertently squeeze the blade-release mechanism inside the hilt a second time and a blaze of lightning releases from the tip of the central sword and hits the ceiling above the woman’s head.
“Move!” I shout, and the woman just manages to dive forward out of the chair as the entire ceiling crumbles, the huge metal hook her chain is looped through falling with it.
She lands on her face on the ground, and when I race over to her, she immediately recoils.
“I’m so sorry!” I shout. “I’ve never used these before! ”
I fling the lightning hand swords off my wrists and don’t bother gathering them as they clatter against the wall, shooting off a couple last errant sparks before becoming dull, lifeless alien antiques once more. I drop down onto my knees next to the poor girl and roll her onto her back.
“I’m gonna go grab a glass of water and some towels,” Vanessa shouts, dashing out of the room and thundering down the hall, her sword in hand.
Meanwhile, I help the woman sit up. She’s whimpering, cradling her hands, which look swollen and uncomfortable. They’ve turned a darker brown, almost purplish color.
“Christ almighty,” I hiss. “What on earth? Why would Taranis do this to you?”
“I don’t know . . .” She wipes her nose with the back of her wrist as I prop her against the wall. She tries to tuck her feet underneath her and cries out, pained.
“Hey, stop moving. Is it your feet?” I ask her.
She bites her lips between her teeth, closes her eyes, and nods.
“I’m gonna take your shoes off. What’s your name?”
“Lemlem,” she whimpers.
“Lemlem, I’m Monika. I’m the girlfriend of the guy who did this to you,” I admit, feeling a little weird about that confession. Tears track down her cheeks. “I am so sorry. I can’t understand why he’d do this . . .”
“He tortured me,” she cries out as I untie her chunky black sneakers and gently pull them off. I take her frilly yellow socks next and try not to puke at the sight of burns—electrical burns—open and weeping on the soles of her feet. My stomach heaves. I choke.
“Okay, I’m going to . . . go get . . . someone.” Someone way more equipped to deal with injuries than me. “Actually, I think we should get you to someone. Vanessa, grab me a couch pillow!” I gently stretch out her legs so the soles of her heels no longer touch the ground.
“What?” I hear a drafty reply from way too far away. Where the hell is she?
I need to call Taylor to get an ambulance. We need EMTs up here.
I reach for my phone to do just that when Lemlem sniffles. “He . . . I think it has something to do with a guy that comes into my shop—my coffee shop.”
“Who?”
“Just this guy named Max.” Max? Who the fuck is Max? “He comes in almost every day. He’s the only white guy that does.”
“Vanessa, where are those towels?” I shout.
“What?” She sounds even farther away when she responds too many beats later.
I turn my attention toward Lemlem again and shove the insane manacles farther up her wrists, away from her hands, trying to give them a little relief.
“I’m gonna try to undo the plastic and rope ones.
There are scissors . . . let me grab them.
Tell me more about this . . . white guy. Is he somebody you’re dating?”
She makes a whimper and a snorting sound in the same breath. “No. You think my mama wouldn’t kill me if I brought a guy like that home to Addis?” She balks again for good measure while I retrieve the scissors and cut through the plastic around her wrists first.
“I mean, my guy’s blue. A white guy seems all right from where I’m sitting,” I tease, trying to lighten the mood.
She shakes her head. “No! No, not . . . Aaawwww!” she screams.