Crime Rave (34 page)

7:50 PM The Barona Estate

L
ily changes from the foul schoolgirl outfit and sets upstairs to emancipate anyone else who might still be in that woman’s clutches. Although, not all of the Countess Barona’s staff are eager to be let go after Lily’s single-eyed mutiny: Yanosh, the butler, threatens Lily with a medieval sword in perfect condition, lunging at her and snarling. As he taunts her in a volley of guttural sounds, Lily realizes that he has no tongue.

“Did she do that to you?” Lily asks.

Yanosh’s startled look tells Lily it’s true.

“Oh my God. Why would you defend a woman who does this to you?” Lily didn’t think anything would ever surprise her again. Wrong.

Yanosh pauses. “Sheee mah maaaaahm.” He says in mostly vowels.
She’s my mom.

Lily thinks about her own mom. “Please, I don’t want to fight you. Just take money and go before I call the police. I won’t even tell them about you. Please just go!”

Yanosh considers, the image of his mother half turned to stone burned in his mind. He drops the sword and nods.

Lily sits in the foyer by the telephone. Waits until Yanosh comes down with a large Burberry suitcase. Lily smiles at him, he responds with a death stare. “Ooon deeey Ah fah ooo Ah illlll ooooo,” he spits.
One day I’ll find you and kill you.

“Good luck with that.” Lily’s sympathy runs out quick.

Gunshots ring from outside.

Yanosh and Lily turn as the front door slams open and Günn runs inside, gun still drawn.

“Freeze, asshole. Put your hands behind your head!”

“Detective!” Lily cries. “You came!”

Günn doesn’t take her eyes from Yanosh, who drops his suitcase and complies.

“Of course I did.” Günn cuffs Yanosh and dumps him on the stairs, taking out her phone and calling the new crime scene in to headquarters.

Günn finally turns to Lily, who has tears streaming from her one eye. Lily rushes the detective and picks her up off her feet in the biggest hug Günn has ever received, Günn’s slim frame enveloped in Lily’s giant one.

“Thank you,” Lily says with a small sob, putting the detective back on her own two feet. “Are you hurt?”

Günn smoothes down her mussed pixie cut. “I’m fine. You?” She can’t see Lily’s only wounds are to her pride. “Looks like you had things under control. Where’s that countess bitch?”

Lily points to the basement door. “Brace yourself. It’s really ugly in there. Self-defense.”

Günn recalls the description of Lily’s orphanage supervisor as a pile of dust, but nothing prepares her for the sculpture garden of pornography in the cellar, courtesy of Lily’s Gorgon eye. Günn puzzles over the scene in the basement. The literally petrified bodies.

And a still-breathing Countess Barona, half turned to stone.

Günn can only deduce they all received the same fate as the man who tried to molest Lily, as impossible as that scenario might have seemed. She also sees a now-catatonic Tawny Porthole, former porn star turned costume mistress, the sole survivor of Lily’s well-deserved rampage.

The video camera still records, making a whirring sound that feels like nails on a blackboard to the detective. Günn stops it and rewinds, watching the time stamp travel backward. Her suspicions come to fruition: she watches as Lily turns each of these people to stone, her eye glowing red. She saves the Countess for last, but doesn’t kill her all the way.

Just when Synthia thinks that this day can’t get weirder—or more awful—it does. A karmic physics of freaky. Günn returns to Lily in the foyer and puts her arm around the girl’s shoulder, waiting for the cavalry on its way. Lily smiles and begins recounting her side of the tale.

7:55 PM Spruce-Musa Hospital

A
sha Kinsella, aka galactic Canary, fluttering above the group, breaks into frantic birdcalls.

“Something’s coming from back here!” Karma shouts, feeling her hysterical strength building up force from the adrenaline rush.

Secrete and Trip turn as Spiederman in full tarantula form crashes through the air duct, jaws gnashing as he tries to bring Asha down. She screeches as his web ensnares her foot. Furious, Asha holds out her hands and fire streams forth. It’s Spiederman’s turn to screech as flames engulf him. Shame he’s fire retardant.

Two supersoldier clones, Smash and Junk, drop down from the air vent in quick succession, gamma ray weapons drawn and fully charged. Fuck the orders to bring these bitches back alive.

Secrete bears down and sprays them with her sleeping juice. They shake it off. Dammit. Immunized.

“NRG, a little help?” She can’t help the desperation that’s creeped into her voice and heart.
They won’t take me alive.

NRG turns. “More!” She screams and the survivors scatter as a new volley of knives pierce the soldiers’ masks and they too fall to the floor, dead.

Spiederman has withdrawn to a ceiling corner, trying to heal his minor burns. Asha clocks him, hands ready for another blast. Might not kill him, but it sure slows him down.

“I fucking hate spiders!” Tashi screeches and begins stabbing at Spiederman with an IV rack. She gets in a good shot and one of his legs goes limp, blood gushing down onto the ground. He roars and launches himself onto her. She’s prepared and gores him through the heart. They both collapse on the floor, he in the final twitches of death throes. She in a charged state of elation. She wipes gore from her face, dries her blood-sticky hands on her hospital gown, and gets herself a new IV rack. “Who’s next, fuckers?” The shriek of a banshee wanting more destruction.

From the emergency exit, more soldiers appear, weapons drawn, shouting in the tongues that only other soldiers understand.

“Scream!” Chamelia yells, looking at Teresa, whose nose bleeds and eyes show petechial hemorrhaging from the strain. Teresa tries, but collapses. Chamelia drags Teresa into the closest room and closes the door.

Icarus fights the blood lust, but after nine blood bags it’s hard. He waits for a soldier to separate himself just enough from the pack and snatches him into the corridor that leads to the waiting room. Fresh blood from a fresh source. Icarus drinks deep until the moment before the soldier’s heart beats its last, a process that lasts all of thirty seconds. He tosses the man aside and charges for the next, the bloodgasm making him extra cocky and extra strong.

Cherie and her three uteri step forward launching a full frontal pheromone assault that drops the remaining soldiers flat. Icarus the vampire has never been so aroused. She’s still menstruating.

New sounds of crashes as soldiers rappel down from the roof and break through windows into fourth floor hospital rooms, one having the misfortune of landing into the blob’s room. He’s eaten and the blob makes a lazy crawl out the window, still growing, and off into the city below.

From the closet Una wails at the nearby noise and gives birth to another protector blob that works its way from under the closet door, and faces the noises from out in the hallway, getting bigger and bigger with each second, preparing itself for a launch. Una passes out from exhaustion and stress.

One soldier grabs Linda Kang in a surprise attack from behind a closed door and drags her in. She doesn’t have time to scream, but she does have time to vomit on his mask. It’s his turn to scream as the acid eats through his helmet and brain. He continues to melt even after she’s shut the door on his remains.

Just outside the emergency exit the Roswell Institute hybrids listen as the second group of soldiers fail.

Two more soldiers emerge from behind closed doors. Lisa Wolverton, weregirl, launches herself over the piling mound of dead bodies and lands on his head, snapping his neck with her werepaws. She howls a sound that puts chills in the air.

Karma Devi and silver-eyed Connie Jones drag bodies and begin stacking them in the hallway, making an obstacle course any other intruders from the fire exit will have to further navigate. They join the rest of the survivors in loose battle formation by the blob’s room.

Lola Calavera is in stealth mode and spies on the final group of the extraction team out in the hallway.

“What the fuck are these things, Colonel?” Gustave II growls into his mic. Ripper Ransom is silent as a whore in church, enjoying the carnage. “Colonel Ransom, do you read me? Copy. Orders, sir.” Gustave II’s heart beats with panic.

Ransom’s voice pipes through, “You have your orders, son of a bitch! Bring all of them to me or don’t expect to live.”

Gustave II looks at Tiburona, whose teeth are gnashing so hard she’s dripping with her own blood.

Jason Mars backs away from the group, shaking his head.
I lost my dick already to a human freak like these, I’m not sacrificing anything else in The Alamo Redux.

Trixter the coyote god and Growl the werewolf spring into full-fledged battle modes, screaming as their bones break into formation.

Only Jekyll stands still, a living statue.

“Shouldn’t you, like, be hulking out or whatever?” Gustave II shouts at her.

Jekyll shakes her massive head. “Ripper’s orders. I’m the last resort.”

“Okay then—and this includes you Jason, you fucking pussy—we’re going in on three. One. Two. Three!”

Expecting a barrage of violence the team of hybrids are surprised to see the survivors have retreated toward the end of the hallway. The only thing that stands between them is the pile of dead bodies artfully arranged to make it as difficult as possible for the extraction team to do their final extracting.

Trixter’s ears prick up. “Something’s behind that door.”

Red Feather’s skin turns to gooseflesh as he stares at Trixter.
Could it be? How could it be?

“Iktomi?”

Trixter hasn’t been called his true name in decades and his guard drops. Red Feather backs away, down the corridor, out of the sightline of Trixter’s companions. Trixter makes his way towards the detective, the fight leaving him as fast as it arrived.

The extraction team raises their eyebrows, but are distracted by the group of smirking survivors, who taunt the Roswell Institute soldiers.

The werewolf Growl’s shackles rise at the sight of the weregirl Trip.

Jekyll forces her heart to slow, though the sight of Prime Target Chamelia threatens to override her adrenaline levels.

“What? Scared of a bunch of unarmed girls?” Lola Calavera hoots, her nails in six-inch form in front of her.

“And a vampire!” Icarus adds.

Tashi’s mouth drops open. “You guys, that’s the motherfucker who raped me! TWICE!” She points at Jason Mars, who wishes there was a word for the anger and humiliation he feels.

“Oh you’re going down, bitch,” Karma screams, twirling her scalpels at Jason.

Growl can’t help but laugh. “You lost your dick to that little thing?” The remaining clones Tranq, Meat, Buffalo Bill, and Glock snicker, pushing Jason Mars to the back. “We’ll save you for your girlfriend for last.”

“Fuck you, assholes!” Jason Mars begins throwing wild punches that don’t even come close to the clones. Jekyll pushes him against the wall and holds him there.

“I’m gonna kill you for real this time, you purple-eyed bitch!” Jason’s voice rises an octave and makes his colleagues laugh harder.

“I fucking dare you, you dickless wonder! What else you want me to take from you this time, motherfucker?” Tashi vibrates with rage and Chamelia holds her back.

“Not yet, Tashi.”

Trying to regain control of the situation Gustave II mounts the pile of dead bodies, displaying his authority. “Everyone down on your knees, hands behind your head, and nobody gets hurt!” He shouts, croc mouth spitting hungry foam.

“Fuck you.” NRG releases a volley of knives so thick the survivors lose sight of the soldiers for a moment.

Expecting NRG’s opening move, the hybrids have activated the Roswell Institute’s newest shield technology. Her knives bounce to the floor, useless

“Come and get us, twat muffins!” Karma Devi shrills, a harridan from hell, scalpels waving in front of her.

The hybrids roar and charge, infuriated by the knowing smiles on the survivors’ faces.

Red Feather and Trixter, otherwise known as Iktomi, the Lakota god, square off down the hall. A silence has fallen around them as they contemplate each other. Time stands still.

“What are you doing here?” Red Feather asks in Lakota.

“I’m trapped in this human body. A spell.” Iktomi replies.

“But how?”

“These people have the bad magic.”

“How long?”

“Too long.”

“Can I help you?”

Iktomi nods, the saddest acquiescence Red Feather has ever seen. “Kill me.” He points to his heart.

Red Feather feels a tear slide down his face, it takes everything in his heart not to sob. He pulls out a cigarette and leaves the offering. “I am sorry I cannot do more.”

“You are doing everything.”

Red Feather raises his gun, but can’t bring himself to pull the trigger. When Atticus closes his eyes to pray Iktomi blesses him with the most grotesque vision of his life. All the things The Institute did to him in captivity, all the things they made him do, all the ways he was forced to betray himself, prisoner in a human body forced to do the evil will of white men. Red Feather opens his eyes, the sob he was holding back comes out in a wheeze, hit with the anguish Iktomi has been living with for all these years. He knows what he must do.

“Thank you, my son.” Iktomi puts his hands in front of him, palms up, and trains his gaze on Red Feather.

Red Feather doesn’t blink. He aims for the god’s heart and pulls the trigger.

The human shell falls to the floor and Iktomi rises out, up and away, like a curl of smoke. He reverts to his spirit shape, grateful to be rid of the Roswell Institute and its spiritual chains.

Red Feather falls to the ground and weeps in a way he hasn’t since his grandfather died. Time reverts back to normal, and the sounds of fighting fill his ears anew.

Chamelia has her arms out, breathing steady, the group behind her.

“What do you think, Tashi? Want some one-on-one time with that asshole before we open this door of whoop-ass on them?”

Tashi flashes back to when Jason Mars raped her, the rage she felt, every muscle in her body tightening. She wants more than anything to snap his neck with her bare hands, tear at his face with her teeth, she wants to breathe smoke over his dead body.

The group looks at her expectantly.

“Fuck it. Let’s just get these guys dead, and the fast way. Open the door.” Tashi lets go of her anger and feels a mountain fall from her thin shoulders. Fighting him is not worth dying, she remembers how strong he is, and how quickly his body regenerates.

“You’re the boss,” Chamelia says, though everyone knows that’s far from true.

Lola Calavera reappears, breathless. “Those
cabrones
are scared fucking shitless. And they don’t even know what we have in there!” She laughs, a borderline hysterical sound from the adrenaline coursing through her body.

“Our reputations clearly precede us,” NRG smirks, and flips the bird to the remaining group of hybrids.

“Fuck YOU, cunts!” Jason Mars yells back, his voice high-pitched and pathetic.

Chamelia steps forward. “Listen here, Roswell fucktards. We’re going to give you one chance, and one chance alone, to retreat back to the fucking circle of hell where you came from. You want my advice? Get out of here, shit waffles!”

Tiburona the shark girl has her eyes on Asha, who flies back and forth above the group’s head. Tiburona takes a few steps forward. The croc boy follows, planting himself in front of her. He’s team leader. He goes first, goddammit.

“You know we can’t do that,” Gustave II says, fear creeping into his two stomachs, wishing he could do otherwise.

Tiburona clocks the bird girl and makes a sudden lunge when Asha gets to big for her britches and flies in range of the Roswell hybrids, taunting them. Tiburona snaps at Asha’s feet as she screams and squawks, a moment of blind terror when the shark girl grabs her foot and pulls her from mid-air.

“Asha! Dammit!” Chamelia screams.

Lola goes back into stealth mode and slashes at the shark girl, her nails not sharp enough to penetrate the woman’s tough hide, but good enough to distract her away from Asha, who flies back to the safety of the group.