Jenny Plague-Bringer: (Jenny Pox #4) (41 page)

“They won’t reply unless ordered to,” Ward said over the speaker.  He watched from
the window above, not bothering to dim the lights to make the window look black and
empty.

“That’s no fun,” Tommy said. “Let’s liven things up.  Ready?”

“Go ahead, Tommy,” Ward instructed.

Tommy took a deep breath, remembering what he’d done in Charleston the night he’d
caused the riot.  His power had been charged up by contact with his opposite, Ashleigh,
but she’d been dead for quite awhile now.  He didn’t exactly miss her, though he’d
learned a lot from her.

The fear wouldn’t be as strong today, without Ashleigh around, but he only had sixteen
people to panic this time, not hundreds or thousands.  He’d had an extra-large breakfast
to prepare for this, and he knew he’d be starving again afterward.

Tommy summoned the fear, a chaotic blood-red energy that teemed with incoherent voices,
whispers and screams that brought flickers of his childhood and his abuse at the hands
of Mr. Tanner.  He imagined himself charging up like a battery, until the fear was
like a thrashing hurricane inside him. 

He exhaled, and a storm of bloody droplets blew out of him, raining down on the soldiers
and absorbing into their skin.  They flinched but remained at attention.  He smiled
and crossed his arms, waiting.

It didn’t take long.  First a couple of them began to shudder, and then one screamed,
and then hell broke loose.  The soldiers scattered, some of them hiding under tables
and chairs, some tucking themselves into corners, three of them falling to the floor
and curling up right in the center of the lab.  They were crying, howling, shrieking,
swatting and kicking at invisible attackers that existed only in their minds, babbling
mindlessly at scenes of unknown horror visible only to them.

Tommy looked up at the window and grinned.  In a few seconds, he’d turned the lab
into the rec room at a state mental hospital, soldiers howling and hiding, a couple
of them fighting each other.  In the window, Ward beamed, while the officer who’d
brought in the young soldiers was livid to see how quickly Tommy had scattered them.

“I’d say the enemy ranks are broken, sir,” Tommy said to him. “Who’s up for a couple
of beers?”

The other officer stalked away, while Ward nodded and gave Tommy a thumbs-up.

After the test, a guard escorted Tommy back to his dorm area, standard procedure for
all paranormals. 

Tommy hadn’t told anyone, but each time he used his power in the lab, it kicked up
the sick, disoriented feeling that this entire place evoked in him, sometimes making
him see ghosts or hallucinations.  He locked himself in his room and opened a can
of Warsteiner.  He guzzled the warm beer, hoping it might settle his stomach.

He heard the creaking sound of his door opening behind him.  He turned to see Ashleigh
there, dressed in a long black skirt and jacket, with a black tie and a crisp white
shirt.  His room had shifted to a drab olive color, too.  It was his recurring dream,
the bizarre one where he wore a swastika and answered to the name
Niklaus
.  The hallucinations were back.  Fortunately, he held a beer in the dream, too, though
the can had a much plainer label and was the kind that had to be punctured with a
bottle opener.  He took a drink as Ashleigh’s gray eyes looked him over.  Her name
was
Alise
, but she had Ashleigh’s eyes, Ashleigh’s golden hair, Ashleigh’s large breasts...

Alise closed the door as she entered the room.

“What do you want me to do now?” Niklaus asked.

“Must I only come to talk about work and give you instructions?”  She stood very close
to him.  She took the beer from his hand and drank, her eyes never leaving his. “Can
I not simply visit my own beloved cousin?”

“Your visits usually involve giving many instructions.” He took the beer back from
her. “It’s been that way since we were kids.”

Alise laughed.  She draped her hands loosely on his shoulders, gazing up at him. “You’ve
always been there for me.”

“Whether I wanted to be or not,” he said, and she laughed again.  Niklaus, because
of his own power, was somehow immune to Alise’s enchanting touch.  She’d learned this
early in life, and always worked to control him in other ways.  He found her intimidating. 
He had other, even more shameful feelings about his older cousin, which he tried to
keep secret, but which she occasionally seemed to encourage.  Even now, she was caressing
his cheek and looking up at him, with something almost like vulnerability in her eyes. 

“I would be alone in the world without you,” Alise whispered.  She rose up on her
toes and kissed him, soft and slow, on the lips.  She had pecked him there once or
twice in his life, playfully, just enough to fuel his own guilty adolescent fantasies. 
This was different.  Her mouth lingered on his and her hand pressed against his heart,
hidden beneath his black uniform.

The kiss summoned every kind of feeling—desire, revulsion, self-loathing.  He couldn’t
imagine what his family would think if they knew.  He also couldn’t resist from grabbing
her and pulling her close.

“We must stop,” he whispered, breaking their kiss.

“Why?” She looked up at him innocently. “Have you never imagined this, Niklaus?  When
we swam at the pond on my father’s estate, did you never once look at me?  Or the
time you watched me in the bath...did you think I didn’t know?”

“That was long ago.”

“Not so long.” She kissed him again, then took off her black jacket. “We shouldn’t
fight our feelings any longer, Niklaus.  Life is far too short not to indulge ourselves.” 
She unbuttoned her long skirt and slid it to the ground.  She wore scarlet panties
underneath, more suitable to a prostitute than a young German noblewoman.

“We can’t.” His voice was hoarse.

“We can do anything we like.  Don’t tell me you want me to stop.” She opened his pants
and brought him out, massaging him as he grew long and stiff in her fingers.  She
giggled. “Oh, Niklaus, it’s so much bigger than last time I peeked at it.”

“Stop,” he whispered, torn by his desire for the forbidden.

“No.” She pushed him until he sat down on the bed, then sank to her knees on the floor. 
She brushed the head of his cock with her lips, then sucked him lightly, teasing him.

“Please.” He squirmed on the bed. “We can’t...”

“We must.”  She stood up, wearing no underwear at all now, her triangle of dark golden
curls only inches from his face.  He licked his lips as she loosened her tie and tugged
it to one side, then slowly unbuttoned her shirt, revealing her full breasts, held
up by a matching scarlet brassiere.  The idea that she had dressed this way before
coming to see him, her mind already made up, only increased his appetite for her.

“You can touch it.” Alise took his hand and lay it between her legs.  He touched her
in awe, then tried to put a finger inside her, but she was far too dry.  She moved
his fingertip higher and stroked it back and forth. “Here.  This way.”

He kept rubbing her, and he felt like he was watching from a distance, unable to believe
his darkest fantasy was unfolding around him.  She pushed his finger back and forth
until she was trembling and damp, then she slapped his hand aside and slung a leg
over him, straddling his lap.

“We should be careful,” he whispered.

“Careful is for the old.”

Niklaus thought he might die of pleasure when she took him in her hand again, then
slipped him inside her.  She grunted as she worked her way down his length, rocking
her hips back and forth, which nearly drove him out of his mind.

“Our family...you don’t want to get...pregnant...” he gasped.

She shoved him back on the bed, pinning his hands above his head. “Why not?  It would
be pure noble blood, pure German blood, with both our powers...”  She ground herself
against his pelvic bone while her face flushed and her eyes closed.  “...would be
a super-Aryan...a god...a new
Fuehrer
for the future Reich...”  She rode him faster, gritting her teeth, and she shouted
at him to hurry up and finish.

Jenny woke to see activity outside the clear wall of her cell.  Men moved furniture
and cardboard boxes into the big concrete laboratory outside, while others watched
Jenny with their TASER weapons drawn, even though she was trapped in her cell with
both airlock doors sealed.

She kept her face blank—a stoic approach was the best way to deal with the seer, she
thought, whether his name happened to be Helmut Kranzler or Ward Kilpatrick.  She
refused to complain or act upset by anything he did, because then she was giving him
power over her.  Her bathroom nook had clear walls like the rest of her cell, giving
her no privacy.  She’d first avoided showering altogether, then broken down and done
a quick few minutes each week.  Now she forced herself to do it every night, after
most of the staff had gone to bed, and act like she didn’t care about the cameras
or the dark observation windows above.  Let them stare at her big pregnant ass if
they wanted.  She wanted them to know that nothing they could do would bother her.

Jenny heaved herself out of bed, which was becoming more of an effort every day, now
that she was six months into her pregnancy.  She eased her weight onto her feet. 
The baby awoke with her, swimming and kicking inside her.  Jenny winced each time
she felt the tiny girl kick—not out of pain, but out of fear that the baby would somehow
kick loose the pox and get herself killed.  The amniotic membrane protected the baby
before birth—Jenny knew because, at times, she herself had been born wrapped in a
caul, and those mothers had not died from giving birth to her.

“I hope we didn’t disturb you, Jennifer,” Ward said.  His smile was predatory as he
emerged from where he’d been skulking, somewhere behind her bed and out of her line
of sight.

She noticed that her breakfast tray had not yet been delivered, which meant no coffee. 
She needed a cup, but wasn’t going to ask for one.

“You’ve been disturbing me since we met,” Jenny replied.

“Aren’t you curious what we’re building here?  It’s quite a little project.”

“I’m sure I’ll find out eventually,” Jenny said. “Then I’ll get bored with it.  So
let’s just stretch out the mystery for now.”

“You should know, Jenny, that you’re the last to resist,” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Everyone else has seen the wisdom of cooperating with us.  Tommy, Esmeralda, Mariella...even
Seth.”

“Yay for Seth,” Jenny said.  She assumed Ward was lying.

“You don’t believe me?  He did it for
her
, Jennifer.  For pretty little Mariella.  They’ve grown very close these last couple
of months.”

Jenny tried to show him nothing.  She didn’t want to think about Mariella’s prediction,
that she and Seth would ultimately be together, how Seth was destined to be the love
of Mariella’s life, that the sex would be amazing, and all that bullshit Mariella
had chattered freely about before realizing Jenny and Seth were together.  Now Jenny
was isolated from everyone, while Seth and the girl were off doing God knew what together...according
to
Ward
, Jenny reminded herself.  Jenny would have to lie here alone, feeling her and Seth’s
doomed daughter splashing inside her womb, until the inevitable happened.

Maybe it was destiny.  Maybe Jenny needed to be sealed off from the world, unable
to hurt anyone.  Maybe she didn’t deserve a happy life, or love.  She was a monster,
and would always be a monster, and not even death could save her from it.  She came
back, and back, and back.

“Does anything look familiar yet?” Ward asked, walking out to where the furniture
had been arranged.  It looked like they’d built a small bedroom right in front of
her cell...
her
bedroom, she realized.  Her own bed, with her own patchwork childhood blanket.  Her
own bookshelf, her posters on temporary walls made of cork.  Her own laundry scattered
right on the floor, as if they wanted it identical to the day she’d left it.  She
realized that it had been at least a year and a half since then, and she was suddenly
sick with worry about her father.  She’d had no way of getting news from him at all. 
Clearly, Ward or his people had been to her house.

“We thought you’d feel more at home this way,” Ward said.

“Did you see my father?” Jenny asked.

“Oh, yes.  Pathetic little man.  He probably survived our visit, but I can’t say I
followed up to check.” Ward smiled at her through the thick, clear wall. “Now, our
special treat, just for you...”

Two men set up a very tall, very wide projection screen at the far end of Jenny’s
reconstructed bedroom.  All the lights in the lab dimmed.  Images appeared on the
giant screen, pictures of Jenny’s victims, kids from school, old people from church...their
faces contorted, twisted, ripped apart by deadly infection.

“This is what you are, Jenny,” Ward said. “You are a killer.  You’ll never change
that.  Your nature is to bring death to others.  It’s your responsibility, your obligation,
that you use it to kill the
right
people, and not the innocent...”