Dark Creations: Dark Ending (Part 6) (4 page)

“What do you have, dog?” one of them offhandedly addressed the Hunter carrying her. 

The beast released her and she dropped to a floor below, not outdoor terrain.  She realized she was indoors, inside a house, but there was nothing homey about it.  Last she checked cozy homes were not complete with weapon wielding drones intent on murder. 

With their intentions in mind, Melissa considered running.  She did not know where she was or how she would possibly slip past all of the guards, but knew that if she stayed, she would die.  She
felt her muscles bunch and twitch, preparing for flight.  The Hunter beside her, as if sensing her thoughts, leveled his amber eyes at her, warning her not to even think about it. 

Her shoulders slumped in defeat.  The beast would maul her before she ever took a step or a shot were fired.  She was trapped. 

When a nasally voice whined from just beyond the doorway of the room, she felt dread unlike any other scuttle across her skin like innumerable insects moving at once. 

“Stand
down, dog!” the nasal voice commanded as soon as he stepped into the room.  “Filthy beast,” he spat disdainfully. 

Th
e Hunter put some distance between them, but not enough for her to feel comfort of any sort.  That, and the fact that Franklin Terzini stood before her, made her feel as if comfort were something she would never experience again.  The Franklin Terzini that stood with his chest puffed out and his shoulder blades joined uncomfortably was not
the
Dr. Franklin Terzini who had created Gabriel, but his clone, the one who’d sent team after team to storm the homes of innocent people and murder them.  She had never laid eyes on either the original or cloned Terzini, but knew she was in the presence of Lord Terzini, nevertheless.  Thick, black hair and beady eyes the color of coal combined with his small stature and pallid complexion resembled the vivid image Gabriel had painted for her over the years.  But it was not his appearance alone that had revealed his identity.  The crazed look in his eyes had.  The overly rigid posture of a man who never doubted himself for a second helped as well. 

His wild eyes roamed over her body then rested on her face.  She knew that her hair was matted, that blood, dirt and saliva had caked in the knots and tangles.  Her
clothes had been torn and filth clung to her.  Terzini did not seem to miss any of it.  His features puckered unattractively and he crinkled his nose as though he smelled something foul.  Slowly, he peeled his eyes from her and settled his gaze on the Hunter.

“So, you led your pack,
your brothers,
to their death,” he began with a tone laden with acid.  “And you did it without orders, no less!  Bravo, dog!  With one stupid decision, you managed to destroy my hard work,” he continued to fume while jabbing his index finger in the direction of the beast.  “What you failed to consider, what your tiny little mind did not understand, was that you were not designed to think.  You were designed to follow orders!  See what happens when you don’t follow orders?”

Melissa watched as the Hunter, a hulking and powerful creature, lowered his head as if shamed.  After several seconds of hanging his head, he raised it and nodded toward her.  As absurd as it seemed, she could not help but think how pathetic the beast was, how despite quadrupling Terzini’s size, he still acted like a cat that had brought a mouse to its master seeking approval.  Little did the beast know, Terzini did not dole out his approval.

“Oh, you think one little girl makes up for the destruction of my team of Hunters, rushing my plan to end humankind and threatening my entire objective?  Is that what you think, dog?” Terzini asked with bone-chilling calm.

Melissa watched from the corner of her eye as the Hunter dropped his head again and whimpered softly.  She was about to turn
her entire head to face him when Terzini withdrew an oversized pistol from an inside pocket of his sport coat.  Before she had time to react, the muzzle of the gun was at the Hunter’s temple.  A loud sound thundered through the house accompanied by a flash. 

Brain matter and gore splattered in every direction.  She felt it dot her face and the bare skin of her arms. 

“I do not tolerate disobedience,” Terzini said coolly.  “Ever.”

Screams clawed at her throat, begging for escape, but froze where they were.  Melissa gasped and covered her mouth with her hand to stifle her panicked panting.  Her body shook so forcefully, she saw clumps of her disheveled hair on either side of her face quivering as well. 
She looked down at her trembling hands, covered in the carnage of her captor and felt the world tilt on its axis, the phantasmagoric sequence of events too much for her mind to process.  Her stomach contracted violently and she doubled over clutching her belly.  The sudden urge to retch overwhelmed her.  She fell to all fours, gagging and heaving, yet nothing came up, just sobs that choked the air from her lungs.

When hands gripped her face firmly and yanked it forward, Melissa did not have time to
respond.  Terzini squeezed her cheeks tightly and stooped so that his face was just inches from hers. 

“You are going to get something for me, do you understand?” he hissed. 
“And you will not disobey me as Zogg did.”

“I-I-I don’t know anything,” she barely managed in a voice that quivered with emotion. 

“Oh, dear, sweet girl, I beg to differ,” he said and his grasp tightened.  His eyes were lifeless rounds of onyx.  “You know where Gabriel is, and you will lure him here to me so that he can watch you die before I kill him.  Only his will be a long, slow death, a tribute to the late Dr. Franklin Terzini.  I owe him that much, don’t you think?”

Terzini’s words
immobilized the blood in Melissa’s veins.  She wanted to say something, anything, to lash out, but the words, along with her body, had been arrested, seized by fear and shock.  All she could think of was Gabriel.  Terzini would kill Gabriel once he had him.  Melissa could not allow for that to happen.  She
would not
allow for that to happen. 

The grip on her face relaxed and Terzini straightened his stance.  To the men in the room who stood with rifles at the ready, he said, “Take her away.  I cannot bear to look at her
grimy face any longer.”

Two guards clutched her arms and yanked her to her feet.  “You will never catch Gabriel,” she said with confidence that surpassed what she felt.  “He is smarter than you think,
smarter than you
.”

Terzini spun and snapped his head in her direction before closing the distance between them.  With impossible speed, his arms launched out and the back of his hand struck her cheek.  Her face
throbbed, stinging and swelling where he’d slapped her.  She wanted to cry, but willed the burning behind her eyelids to cease.  She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her tears.  Instead, she tipped her chin defiantly and trained her gaze on him.  She watched him with disgust, focusing all of her fear, all of her hurt like daggers aimed at him.  He did not flinch and she had not expected him to. 

He laughed a cruel laugh that
was befitting his merciless personality.  “Such a fool,” he sneered.  “Get her out of my sight immediately and clean her up.  Scrub her skin raw with the stiffest brush you can find and do not bring her back to me until she’s spotless!”

Terzini turne
d on his heels and marched off in a self-righteous huff.  Melissa felt hatred unlike any she’d ever felt before bubble and brim within her as both men wrenched her arms and began dragging her.  She closed her eyes, only this time, her life did not flash before them.  She did not see a blood crusted mane of gold lashing through fragmented clips of her past.  And she did not dare to dream of Gabriel and weddings and domestic bliss.  All she could see were images connected with the words that whispered through her. 
Kill him
. 
Kill Franklin Terzini
, they urged her, and she envisioned the maniacal leader dying by her hand.  She would not let him lure Gabriel to his death.  She would take Terzini’s life and sacrifice her own if need be. 

As she was hauled down a long, carpeted hallway, Melissa Martin silently vowed she would do whatever it took to save the man she loved
, if he still lived, even if it meant an end to her own life.

Chapter 4

Amber raked a hand through her hair and wondered what her next move would be.  The van with the virus was gone, which meant Arnold Gathers had been dispatched to unleash Terzini’s plague on the world.  Gabriel had left in search of Melissa, who was surely dead by now.  She knew that Gabriel
had likely ridden off to his death, a probability that saddened her deeply, but was of his own choosing.  Arnold was another case completely.  If she did not stop him, an entire planet of unsuspecting victims would fall, including Kyle. 

She glanced over her shoulder and a found a familiar pair of hazel eyes watching her.  Kyle dropped his gaze to the ground below as soon as she made eye contact with him, and in that moment, her next move became clear. 
She knew she needed to try to help those around her.  She needed to hunt down Arnold Gathers and stop him before he fulfilled his task. 

If she were going to find Arnold, she needed a vehicle, a fast one.  Her motorcycle was gone
, as were the ATVs, though an all-terrain vehicle would have been useless as it was not capable of traveling at a fast enough speed to close the distance between her and Arnold.  She knew Terzini had planned for him to release the virus in the most heavily populated place in the country.  He had told her that it would be released in Manhattan.  She needed to trail him now.  Time was running out. 

She scanned the clearing around
the dilapidated farmhouse in search of Jack Downing, the former soldier Gabriel had trusted enough to follow and fight alongside of.  When her eyes settled upon his tall, broad-shouldered form, she strode to him immediately. 

“Jack,” she began and interrupted a conversation he
’d been having with a white-haired man wearing long underwear and knee-high rain boots.

“See, I told you they were aliens!” the man was saying agitatedly
as he gestured to the head of a Hunter that no longer had a body attached to it.  “Mutant, alien dogs that were trying to overrun the world!” he ignored her interruption and continued.

The old man was half-right, but she did not want to egg him on.  More pressing matters were at hand.

“Jack,” she said in a louder voice.

Jack patted the man’s arm and said, “All right, Ed.  Settle down.  We got all the mutant dogs.  We’re okay now.  Everything’s okay.”

He turned to face Amber and she was about to ask him why he’d lied to the old man, why he’d told him everything was going to be okay when everything was far from okay, but stopped when Jack trained his razor-sharp gaze on her.  “Isn’t that right, Amber?” he said tightly. 

S
he shifted uncomfortably under the weight of his stare then reluctantly nodded in agreement. 

“Did you need me for something?”
Jack asked her.

“Yes,” she said and looked to Ed then added, “May we speak privately for a moment.”

Whatever reasons Jack had for keeping Ed in the dark about their circumstances were his own.  She was not about to rile the old man further with apocalyptic discussions in front of him. 

“Ed, I need to go talk to Amber for a minute, okay,” he said to Ed as if
the man were a child.  “You go on inside.  There’s a pot of coffee brewing.  Have yourself a nice big cup of it and I’ll be right in to help you plan how we’re going to clean this mess up, okay?”

The old man’s red and rumpled f
eatures relaxed a bit and he offered Jack a half-smile before he lumbered off toward the main house.  Jack turned and faced Amber.  His face was no longer composed as it had been when he’d spoken to Ed.  His mouth was pressed to a hard line and the muscles around his jaw flexed continually.

“What’s going on?  Any word about Melissa or Gabriel?” he asked concernedly.

“No, not yet,” she regretted answering, for his brow furrowed deeply, his worry became plain.

“Dammit!” he said and kicked a tall tuft of weeds in front of him.

“They’re gone, Jack,” she said softly and hated that she was the one who had to force him to think realistically.  “You saw the Hunters.  You saw what they did to the men they caught.  Melissa was probably dead before Gabriel even left this place.”

“You shut your damn mouth!” Jack surprised her by
growling.  He stabbed at the air before her with his index finger, punctuating his point with every poke.  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“But I do, Jack.  Don’t you remember?  I was an officer in Terzini’s ranks.  I do know,” she tried gently and knew she was treading in dangerous waters.  But allowing Jack any optimism at this point would only set him up for greater disappointment in the future, if there were a future.  “And there are thousands more in his army in Taft right now.  Gabriel was headed for the heart of Taft.  If members have not caught him by now, they will soon.  They will not let him live, Jack.”

“Stop it, all right!  Enough!  Just stop!” Jack said with less conviction than he had a moment ago.  He turned his head away from her and wiped his face with the back of his hand.  He cared for Gabriel and Melissa.  Everyone did.  But unfortunately, caring for them did not improve their chances of survival.  They all needed to let go of Gabriel and Melissa.