Chapter Thirty Monika #2
“Sorry!” I have to leverage the thick metal blade of the set of scissors against her wrist in order to apply enough pressure to get through the plastic. “Schei?e!” I finally get through. “I’m so sorry. So what is it about the white guy your mom wouldn’t approve of?”
“Tattoos . . . Ow!” As I do the other wrist, her face twists up and her toes curl, which must cause her even more pain, because she starts to tilt to the side.
I catch her and help her back into a sitting position.
I massage her wrists while she says in a pant, “My mama always thought that white guys with that many tattoos were bad for business.” Her head falls back, knocking against the wall.
Her ponytail sags, her goddess braids frayed.
Her lips twitch. “I thought he was cute, but we never talked much. He asked me one time if he could come host business meetings during my set up as early as four a.m. I told him sure. I didn’t mind so long as he didn’t make many demands.
He never did. He was always pleasant and nice. ”
My own heart is beating a thousand miles a minute. I am starting to get concerned that maybe, just maybe, we should have just gone to the COE headquarters like the Wyvern and Taranis asked us to instead of making this pit stop.
“Is he blond with a thick beard? Looks like a Viking? Black eyes?”
Her eyebrows furrow. “Yes. You know him? Your boyfriend met with him in my shop once. Before he was blue.”
“I got the towels! I found some bandages too!” Vanessa says, storming into the room, bright and optimistic, while my world crumbles around me. She must see something in my expression, because she tilts her head, her pretty puffy curls like a cloud around her. “What is it?”
I whisper-hiss, “I think this is the Marduk’s key.”
“What?” Vanessa comes a few steps forward, but I never get a chance to repeat myself because an alarm starts blaring from somewhere I can’t see, and a moment later, two bodies suddenly appear in the small room between us.
Wind, like a vortex, smashes through the space, slamming me against the wall beside Lemlem and tossing Vanessa out the door and onto her ass in the foyer.
At least there’s a rug there, I think rather helplessly as I place one arm across Lemlem’s body.
The other hand falls out to my right side and bumps fortuitously against my weapon. My. Weapon.
I slide it onto my wrist while the Marduk does a slow turn of the room, and I watch the expression on his face as it finally falls to Lemlem. Key or not, it’s clear by the tightening of every muscle in his body that she means something to him. And she has no idea who he is.
He’s frozen solid, and the being who arrived with him—a being I recognize from the docks—shouts, “Four. Four!” When the Marduk doesn’t move except to blink, his harsh, bleak expression so focused on Lemlem that I don’t have any idea what he’s thinking, the being who I know now to be Three takes a menacing step forward.
Lemlem shrieks.
The Marduk throws his arm across Three’s chest to stop them from advancing, but I don’t give a shit about that.
I’ve already leveled my weapon at Three’s chest and pulled the inner trigger.
Lightning flares from the tip of my weapon and slams into Three fully, hitting the Marduk’s arm first. Both beings go cantering back.
Three hits the opposite wall and surges forward, pissed, but as they advance on me and the Marduk stands slightly off to the side near Taranis’s desk, angrily admiring the blackened stain on his arm where I tagged him, it’s clear they’ve both forgotten Vanessa.
Vanessa releases a battle cry as she flies into the room, her sword blazing. “Fuck you!” she wails like a banshee, and I tilt my head in shock—I don’t think I’ve ever heard this girl curse before. And then my jaw drops open completely when Vanessa swings her sword.
Three is reaching for me or Lemlem or us both, but a thin strip of flaming metal cuts through their forearm just below the wrist. There is only a little blood because the blade is on fire and sears the wound shut.
Lemlem screams as the disembodied hand falls onto her outstretched shins. She tries to pull her legs back in, but her feet are still all messed up.
Three turns to attack Vanessa and releases a carnal roar.
Their inky-black hair stands on end. Their eyes are red and bright, expelling red light onto their cheeks.
Dressed all in black, they move as a blur toward Vanessa, who squeals, but I’m ready.
I fire another round into Three, hitting them in the side.
I fire another round at the Marduk while I’m at it, but Lemlem grabs my arm, pulling it down so that I hit the Marduk in the thigh instead of the chest.
He turns his gaze to me, and it, too, bleeds red.
He charges forward, but Lemlem throws her arm across my chest. “Stop! All of you, stop! Please! Don’t hurt her—either of them. These women saved me. I might have lost my hands if they’d been any later.” She lifts them up and winces, sniffles. “Ow . . .” She curses in a language I can’t interpret.
The Marduk looks at me, looks at her, looks at me again. He lunges toward me, and I lift my weapon, but she grabs it with both of her useless hands and shoves it toward the ground. “Don’t hurt him,” she says.
“Are you crazy?” I screech back, struggling with the aloof woman who clearly wouldn’t be able to recognize danger if it was plastered all over every page of the internet and also waltzing every day into her coffee shop. “This man is the ultimate supervillain!”
We’re sort of fighting for the weapon, though the fight is rather pathetic. Her hands may hurt her, but somehow, her long limbs are getting in my way. I can’t wriggle my weapon free.
And then Vanessa screams. Three has gotten back up and is running toward her.
“No!” Lemlem shrieks.
“Let go of me!” I shout, panic clogging my throat as Three disappears after Vanessa through the doorway.
The next few seconds happen so fast that I can’t track them. Something in the foyer causes Three to shout in pain. The Marduk has a hand raised in that direction, leading me to believe it’s his doing. The Marduk then lunges out of the room, into the foyer, and returns with Three.
He drags Three over to where I’m sitting. I try to block him from reaching Lemlem, but he shoves me out of the way with a powerful blast of wind. I hit the leg of the desk, and when I blink my eyes open, the Marduk has a hand on Lemlem’s outstretched leg but is looking at me.
“Tell Taranis that we’re even.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s over, so long as he doesn’t come looking for me.”
“What? Wait. Where are you going? You can’t take Lemlem with you!” I shout, but the Marduk is whispering in Three’s ear, and a pained, enraged Three roars before suddenly the Marduk explodes into a burst of black smoke, and the three of them disappear like they were never even here.
I’m completely frozen where I’m lying twisted on the floor. I glance up when Vanessa crawls into the room on all fours, looking absurd and diabolical carrying a flaming sword while wearing a pretty sundress. “Are they gone?”
I nod. “I think so.” My heart is pounding. “You injured?”
“Nope. You?”
I take a moment to check myself and conclude, “Nope.”
“What did the Marduk say to you?”
“I think . . . Lemlem might have convinced him to leave us alone.”
“Lemlem? The girl Taranis tortured?”
I make a sound—it’s sort of like laughter, but a hysterical version. “Yeah. I guess, uh . . . his plan worked?”
The sound of glass shattering in my living room has us both screaming, scrambling to our feet, gathering our weapons, and running into the foyer. The Wyvern is there, his horns fully blazing, his eyes a dark red—until he looks up and sees his girl.
“Hey!” Vanessa says cheerily. She sets down her sword carefully against the wall. “So, something kind of crazy happened, but it’s all good now. No need to panic . . . eep!”
The Wyvern wastes no time in rushing over to her, gathering her up in his arms, and squeezing her until she’s barely visible in his muscular chest.
Giving them their privacy, I reenter Darius’s rather destroyed office, set my weapons down on the desk, and pull out my phone.
My chest blazes with too much adrenaline, but my voice is even as I dial Darius’s number.
His phone goes straight to voicemail, but I notice that I have a missed call on my own phone from an unknown number.
I try it, and it’s Darius’s voice I hear.
Before he can speak, I tilt my eyes up at the hole in the ceiling and shout, “Taranis Darius Marcel Smith, did you seriously chain an Ethiopian woman up in our office?”
“Yes,” he says, unrepentant before his voice fills with strain. “Are you okay?”
“No! The Ethiopian woman . . .”
“Yes, yes, yes. Where is she now? I am assuming you released her?”
And why, exactly, does he sound annoyed by that? Oh, right. Because my boyfriend is a psychopath. “Of course I did. But the ‘where’ she is might be a little trickier to answer. Where are you?”
“Out battling villains. Why? What happened?”
“Uh, well . . . I was out battling villains too.”
“What?” he damn near shrieks. My heart fills with little lumps of emotion that should be battered back by the knowledge that my man—my beast—kidnapped and tortured an innocent woman today, but isn’t. So what does that say about me?
“I’m good. All good,” I say, glancing at Vanessa and the Wyvern making out in my hallway.
I shake my head, roll my eyes, and plant my butt on the desk next to my weapons.
I slide the left one onto my wrist and watch lightning travel up and down the beautiful, intricate markings that decorate its every inch.
“But I have to tell you, I’ve had the strangest day. ”
And the worst part? I didn’t get any of it on camera.