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dochermesRESURRECTION EMPIRE II: Pimping Out Zombies In Corona
2/19-2/20/2015
I.
Josef Jubilec found a parking spot and eased the Toyota Matrix into it before anyone else could claim the opening. The Blind Archer was wearing black slacks and suit jacket, with a white dress shirt but no tie. Even his leather shoes were highly polished. Tall and fit-looking, with short sandy hair over a freshly shaven if weathered face, he seemed to be a perfect example of an office-dwelling executive. Behind the wheel, he glared over at the two-story building they had come to find. It was old, the bricks were chipped and stained, the sidewalk in front of it was cracked and had a few strands of weed starting to grow up through the openings. Most of the windows were lit and curtains drawn.
Seated next to him, Haley shook her head. She herself was wearing a KDF field suit, complete with the waist-length jacket that had its own inner layer of armor. "It's just weird to see you without a bow within reach. It bothers me. Not even that folding contraption you hate to use."
Josef shrugged. "No choice. Our captain has sent us here to investigate and I am certain to be patted down for weapons. A longbow is slightly conspicuous. For that matter, you seem uneasy without your Windcatcher costume. No cloak? No white pullover and blue shorts?"
"Same here," she replied. Haley Lawson normally stayed insolent and slightly brash no matter what, but tonight she seemed subdued. Under the dark brown bangs, her green eyes were thoughtful. "Of course I am still wearing the Gem of Air under my collar. I can summon wind from a hurricane or Death Valley if I choose, so I'm not really disarmed."
"I'll be fine."
"I guess." Haley looked over at the rundown building herself, seeing it sat next to a bodega that was still open at this hour. "I don't think I've ever been in Corona before. Where are we? Roosevelt Avenue and 91st Street. Looks overwhelmingly Hispanic to me, even the signs are mostly in Spanish."
"Yes," Josef said, unbuckling his seat belt. "This isn't a bad part of Queens. You can buy some fresh produce here at a reasonable price. Tonight, of course, we are shopping for something more gruesome."
She stuck two fingers in her mouth and made a gagging noise. "Ugh, ick. A brothel. I can't believe places like this still exist in this day and age."
"This is called a 'fast house,'" the Blind Archer told her. "Very common in a lot of Latina neighborhoods. Forty or fifty dollars gets you fifteen minutes with a young chica. Then they toss you back out on the street."
"I think it's disgusting. Even with living prostitutes."
Josef got out of the car and leaned back in before closing the door. "I can't even bring my Link in with me. Just cash. But Megan has rigged a button on my belt buckle. When I press it, your Link will buzz and that's when you charge in to the rescue."
"If you really want to be rescued, ha hah."
"This is just a mission like any other," he said and closed the door. Josef Jubilec straightened up, looking around at the night, and his perception caught that he was being watched from a window of the fast house. He did not glance in that direction. The Blind Archer walked up to the front door with its simple tacked-on number 553 and pressed the white doorbell for a single long ring.
A short stocky man who had not shaven for a few days answered without opening the door more than a crack. In Spanish, he asked if his visitor needed help.
Josef answered in Spanish fluent enough that it seemed completely natural. Before joining Tel Shai, he had worked around the world as a bodyguard and counter-assassin, and he spoke several languages as if he had grown up with them. He replied that he needed the usual help a man requires, and held up two twenties and a ten. The man snatched the bills quickly and let him in.
In a long front hallway, with doors on either side, beneath a ceiling light in a grimy glass ball, the man asked him if he had any girl in mind. Josef managed a smile and answered that of course he wanted the youngest and prettiest in the building. This seemed to amuse the papi. He led the Blind Archer down the hall a ways and opened the fifth door they came to, then said "Only fifteen minutes, remember, then we knock."
At the end of the hall, another man was sitting in a plain wooden chair, studying a newspaper. He was bigger, tougher-looking and he had just stubbed out a cigarette on the arm of the chair. Reading their lifeforce with his gralic perception, the Blind Archer decided at once that these were normal living people even if not in the best of health. It was the ability to fix on a being's lifeforce without using sight that made the Blind Archers so feared. In darkness or rain or fog, their arrows never missed.
Thanking the papi, Josef went through the door into a hot, stuffy room lit by a single ceramic lamp on the wall. There was a chair and an empty nightstand, and aside from that only a Queen-sized bed with dingy sheets. Standing next to that bed was a tall, slightly chunky young woman with long curly black hair. She was wearing a yellow sundress and was barefoot. The vague smile on her face did not waver as she saw him.
Instantly, Josef knew that she was not fully alive. Her aura was faint and unsteady. He decided the room was kept overheated so that customers would not notice her flesh was not warm by itself. As Josef closed the door, she automatically drew the sundress up over her head to stand naked in front of him. There was a deep scar in her left ribcage that they had tried to mask with some sort of flesh-colored putty.
That must be the wound that had killed her, he thought. He asked her what her name was and she promptly replied it was Inez. Then he asked what day of the week it might be and she did not answer for a long moment before telling him he had better hurry and get undressed.
Josef felt a great weariness come over him. This was not a situation he wanted to be in any longer than necessary. In Spanish, he asked the woman if she remembered her family and if she realized what had happened to her. There was no reaction in her eyes at all. She walked closer and reached up to start unbuttoning his shirt.
The sooner the zombies were revived after dying, the more awareness and consciousness they retained. If they had been dead too long, they were mere automatons. Josef saw the stretch marks on her belly and decided to try one more question. He asked her if she remembered her children. There was not even a flicker of response in the blank cloudy eyes. Not anger, not bewilderment, not sorrow. She was acting out a limited choice of responses that had been drilled into her.
"I'm so sorry," he said. Grabbing her by the shoulders, he spun her around and brought down the rigid edge of his hand sharply down at the base of her neck. She dropped as limply as if she had never been resurrected at all, not trying to break her fall as her face hit the bare wooden floor. It was as if she had been eager to go into true death.
Moving slowly, Josef picked her up, tugged her sundress back onto her and stretched her out on the bed. He folded her hands across her chest and closed her eyes, giving her what little dignity she could have at that point. Where was this woman's family, he wondered. Were they still looking for her? Was her face up on home-made posters in some city, HAVE YOU SEEN ME? And would they really want to know what her horrific fate had been? With a face taut as stone, he opened the hall door to leave that room of horrors.
II.
In the stealth copter CORBY heading back across lower New York State, Lauren Sable Reilly read the report from Megan on the screen of her Link. At the controls, Argent kept glancing over and finally blurted, "Well, come on, Sable. At least throw me a bone."
Without looking up, the team captain said, "This goes back much farther than I feared. Long before John Grim was even born... Sheng, the Resurrector is someone who has an arrangement now with the John Grim Institute but he himself has been active for more than a hundred years."
"Stop teasing, Sable. Just come out with it, already."
"It's part of Midnight War history," she told him. "Listen. In 1912, before the outbreak of the First World War, there was a medical student in Massachusets who was doing research in how to extend the period a brain can go without oxygen before there is permanent damage. His name was Wesley Gorsline, from a wealthy and influential New England family."
"Okay, I'm with you so far," Sheng Mo-Yuan said.
"Some of his letters indicate that he knew an Alchemist named Dr Mercado Vitarius. The reagent which the student developed seems to have not been a product of mundane chemistry so much as an Alchemical serum. For almost twenty years, Gorsline experimented with reviving the recently deceased. As time went on, his results became more successful. Before his disappearance in 1931, he had unleashed any number of homicidal zombies which had escaped his custody. But he also was said to have been able to restore people so they could talk and function normally if he treated them immediately after death. They were servile directly to him as an effect of the process."
The Chujiran man shook his head violently. "Ugh. Let me guess. At some point, he was murdering people so he could revive them instantly as his servants."
"Yes. That's what his assistants accused him of doing, anyway. We will be reaching denser population areas soon, you might want to get the CORBY higher."
Argent pulled back on the stick and tapped some buttons on the console before him. "Rising to operating ceiling, captain. With no lights and the Trom radar alignment on, there is almost no chance we'll be spotted. But don't stop! What happened then?"
"Wesley Gorsline was last seen alive by his staff on the night a dozen of his test subjects turned on him," Sable said. "One report said they tore him apart. Another assistant claimed the zombies just dragged him away screaming into the night. But the records which Megan has uncovered just now..."
Argent actually took both hands off the controls to gesticulate in his agitation, something he had been trained to never do. "You're driving me crazy, Sable! What happened?!"
"According to the records which Gorsline himself appears to have written, he had enough time to inject himself with the Alchemical reagent... while he was still alive, before the zombies beat him to death. He rose again only a few minutes after they wandered off. It was the only time a living Human was infused with the resurrection serum. And he's still active and intelligent and ambitious today, more than a century later. I'm certain. Wesley Gorsline is the Resurrector."
III.
The icy politeness from Demrak Jin toward Galvan had gradually worn down to where she was treating him as well as she did her other teammates. That is, not warmly at all but being blunt and unthinking in most cases. Everyone had gotten used to the Gelydra woman's concept of social interaction. Like Haley's sassy comments or Josef's reticence, it was just a personality that had to be adapted to as part of a team. For his part, Galvan was so self-assured and confident that he seemed to just assume that at some point she would warm up to him.
The hatred between Androval and Ulgor went back to 1929, when the Melgarin had invaded the realm of the Gelydrim in an ill-advised campaign that had ended disastrously for everyone concerned. But even for those long-lived Races, that had been a long time ago. The more years Demrak Jin spent on the surface with her Tel Shai friends, the less urgent Ulgoran issues seemed.
Galvan steered the Nissan into a side street by the Battery, far enough down that seagulls wheeled overhead. They stopped within sight of a closed-up one-story building with windows that had been painted white. A faded wooden sign over the door read UNIFORMS USA. The giant Melgar turned off the engine and watched the building suspiciously.
"Sable has been getting reports of weird assassins and enforcers for hire in the metropolitan area," Demrak Jin told him. "These men seem unharmed by bullets or in one case a two by four to the head. She has been charting their appearances and thinks they are being kept here."
"Zombie hit men..." Galvan muttered. "Just when you think things can't get worse."
Jin reached into the back seat and brought up her bone-bladed short sword inits scabbard. "This mission seems to be a straightforward assault," she said. "No hostages. No innocent civilians to worry about."
"Is she absolutely sure about this?" the Melgar wondered. "I'd hate to break in there and just find cobwebs and old newspapers."
"Sable traced its ownership through a realtor to the John Grim Institute. A month ago, she hired a few agents to keep an eye on the area." The Gelydra opened her door and got out of the car, leaning back in to tell Galvan, "She has collected enough sightings of tough guys coming and going into that closed-up store to feel it's conclusive."
Galvan stepped out onto the sidewalk, looming up enormous in the gloom. He was wearing only a white T-shirt, jeans and sneakers, with no weapons or gadgets. The big Melgar smacked his fists together with a noise like two granite blocks colliding. "Well, then, let's do this."
"Wait." Demrak Jin slid the machete-length weapon from the scabbard she had strapped across her back. She ran a thumb along its edge experimentally. "Do me a favor, Galvan. Hold back and allow me to tackle these monsters myself."
For a second, the Melgar stood in stunned silence. Then he chuckled and walked over to the UNIFORMS USA building and slammed its door inward with a casual tap of his palm that snapped the locks. Lights went on inside. Forty of the Undead stirred from where they had been standing in a mindless daze and swung toward the intruders. Some were already holding crowbars or softball bats. Demrak Jin laughed.
IV.
When Josef stepped out into the dank hall of the fast house, he found the papi and the bouncer waiting for him. Both were holding handguns, not aimed directly at him yet but pointed down at the floor. "Something is the matter, mister? You do not find our little Inez attractive? Jesu, check on her."
The Blind Archer did not react. He knew how this was going to play out. Arms down and hands empty, he waited with no expression on his lined face. A second later, the bouncer jumped put from the bedroom yelling.
"She is dead, I mean the real death!" he screamed still in Spanish. Hearing this, already suspecting something was wrong, the papi swung his gun up and jabbed the barrel straight at Josef's face.
As a child, Josef had been sold to the cult of Blind Archers. They were a Chujir-based clan but they liked to have a variety of members who could pass as various races and nationalitities. His upbringing had been brutal and severe. No one could explain how he had kept from having his will being completely broken, but as an adolescent he had been the first to ever break from the clan to wander the real world. Even without his preferred weapon the bow, a Blind Archer was one of the most dangerous Humans in any realm.
As smoothly and effortlessly as if the two men were cooperating with him, Josef seized the papi's extended arm and swung it around so that when the revolver fired, two slugs punched home in the bouncer's chest. Even before that man had started to fold to the threadbare carpet, Josef had seized the papi's elbow and bent the man's arm back upon himself. The third bullet tore up through the underside of the papi's jaw and took off most of his skull as it exited.
Stepping back as the dying man crumpled and sprawled out in a puddle of gore, the Blind Archer took two quick steps and tugged the unfired gun from the hand of the bouncer and made sure it was ready to use. He did not think there were any more truly alive people in that building, but he could not be sure. Down the hall, one of the zombie hookers stuck her head out at the gunshots but obviously could not function well enough to comprehend what was going on. She just stood there watching blankly.
Josef inspected himself automatically to be sure no blood or other splatter had gotten on him. He went to the front door, opened it and waved for Haley to join him. The Windcatcher hopped out of the car eagerly and trotted across the dark street to join him in the doorway. The visor was up on her helmet and as the scene inside registered with her, the smile dropped off her face.
"Damn, Josef," she said in a breathless voice. In her three years with the KDF, Haley had seen a number of fresh corpses and helped to evaluate murder scenes. She was getting used to it, but Josef secretly suspected she would never become really tough emotionally. She had been sheltered too much by a quiet suburban life in her formative years. Now, as she stared down at the two bloody bodies, she tried unsuccessfully to shrug it off. "I take it... they weren't zombies?"
"No," the Blind Archer answered. "They were monsters in the more usual Human way. Listen. I need you to draw freezing air into this building. It's maybe twenty Celsius outside now but that's not cold enough. The Walkers don't generate their own body heat and they will become sluggish and unaware very quickly. Can you do that?"
"Yeah, sure. I study world weather on an hourly basis. Temps are fifteen above in Minnesota right now. How's that?" She pressed a hand to her throat, where the mystic Gem of Air was fastened to a velvet choker beneath her uniform. The only one of the four talismans of the Heir of Buliwyf still in use, the gem siphoned a stiff wind from the sky thousands of miles away. Immediately, freezing wind rushed through that hallway.
"That would be fine," Josef answered. "Fill the building now." As he spoke, he hefted the heavy Colt revolver in one hand and started for the narrow stairs going up to the second floor. "This may take a while," he called back.
Standing in that silent hallway as the air suddenly dropped below freezing, watching as frost gathered on the walls and furniture, Haley Lawson was snug and comfortable in her insulated field suit. When her breath showed as a plume as she exhaled, the Windcatcher clicked the visor of her helmet shut as well. She hated this. Most of her assignments with the KDF involved rescuing innocents or chasing inhuman creatures. Things were usually clear cut and kind of fun in a breathtaking way.
But this was just nerve-wracking. She knew Josef was searching each room and she knew what he was doing... what he had to do to put these poor women at rest at last. She knew she couldn't possibly have gone with him. Not for the first time, Haley wondered if she was really meant for the Midnight War, it could be so heartbreaking.
Every surface from walls to floor was white with frost as she brought in more frigid air. She had lowered herself to a bench against one wall where a few tattered old magazines were piled. Eventually, a hand shook her shoulder and she glanced up. Josef was standing there shivering, his suit jacket buttoned up all the way and the collar up around his neck.
"We can go now," he said. "I'll leave the place locked and the Resurrector can deal with this aftermath. They're all in true death now."
"Rest in peace," Haley replied, meaning the words as she never fully had before.
V.
The grey sharkhide outfit was ripped open in a dozen places and covered with drying dark blood. One sleeve was entirely gone, and the back of the suit hung in tatters. Demrak Jim herself was gouged and scratched as if she had been dragged through miles of barbed wire. One eye was swollen almost shut and a shallow cut across her forehead had left a stream of blood down her face that was just getting sticky. Her chest heaved as she tried to catch her breath. Leaning heavily on her bone-bladed sword, her swollen left ankle keeping her from putting any weight on that foot, she swung around to survey the carnage.
Forty ripped-up bodies were strewn all over the unfurnished room. Toward the end, Galvan had started to interfere with the fight by flinging zombies aside with a force that broke their backs, but for the most part she had met the attack of all these undead herself. Some had necks sliced across or torsos slashed open, many heads had been cut entirely off with open swipes, or faces caved in with blows from a bony little fist.
Demrak Jin laughed long and heartily. There was no hysteria in that laugh, no sense of cracking under strain. She had enjoyed the battle and she was showing triumph. In all her time with the KDF, she had been pressured to always hold back against their enemies. Now she had enjoyed a chance to really let loose and she was satisfied.
"These enforcers have intimidated their last victims!" she yelled happily, then tried limping for the door and fell clumsily. Struggling back to her feet, the Gelydra managed to get up onto a bench against one wall as Galvan came over to her. He had found a bathroom kept for the living lieutenants and he brought a towel soaked in warm water.
Jin did not protest as he gingerly dabbed at her face and hands with the towel to get some of the blood off her. She was in too much of a good mood. Like a child, she sat and accepted the gentle swiping. "How... how surprised were the living leaders?" she asked. "Did you see the looks on their faces?"
"I did," Galvan answered. "It was comical indeed how their expressions dropped from glee to dismay."
"They expected a slaughter and they got one!" Demrak Jin roared. For such a small woman, her voice could get exceedingly loud. She realized that the giant Melgar had gone to dampen the towel again and now he was rubbing it over her body to clean up the ragged sharkskin suit.
"Thank you for standing back," she said. "I know you have the strength of the Legacy of Malberon. But this was a rout I greatly needed to feed my own pride. For a warrior of Ulgor, I have dealt nothing but gentle taps for too long."
Galvan folded the stained towel and put it aside. He himself had not even been scratched. As he rose to his full height, he loomed over her seated form but he would be a foot taller even if she had been standing. The Melgar was not built like a bodybuilder but a blacksmith, his hard muscles had been shaped through use. Now he stroked his short beard with one meaty hand and watched her thoughtfully. "You've taken no small amount of punishment yourself, my friend."
"I'll be fine," she grumbled. The Gelydra tried to stand, grunted in pain and fell back down on the bench with her sword dropping out of reach. "Grelok's Horns...!"
"Sit for a minute," Galvan told her. "I think if you were Human, you'd be heading for the Intensive Care Unit." He dug around the piles of destroyed zombies until he found her raincoat. "Ah, here we go." Returning to where she waited, he draped the beige coat across her shoulders. "Now I think you will not draw as much attention on the street."
"I will heal quickly!" Jin growled, reverting back to her usual surly manner. "I do not need the Tel Shai tagra tea, we Gelydra are born with the spirit of the shark as our kin. What I could use is to soak in salt water and breathe deeply of it."
"If you say so," the giant Melgar agreed without enthusiasm. "Very well, here's my suggestion. We leave this house of horrors as it is. Let the Resurrector clean it up. It's his mess. Autopsies would show that these men had been dead weeks or months already and that their blood is tainted with that green serum. Right now, I will take you back to your KDF headquarters."
Demrak Jin regarded him sourly through her one open eye and then nodded. "You are right, Melgar. I have sea water there to lie in, which is best for a creature like me. Perhaps you would help me to our car?"
Galvan chuckled. Placing one hand across her shoulders and the other under her thighs, he straightened up and lifted her as if she were a child. Jin wriggled and struggled for a second but stopped immediately. He was so strong that she could not make his arms budge an inch. She gave in.
As he carried her across the gruesome litter of the battle, Galvan realized the door to the street had been open the entire time. It was a wonder no crowd had gathered, but then it was late and this was a nearly deserted area after dark. They emerged onto a chill February night and headed across the street to where they had left the Nissan not that long earlier.
Demrak Jin had not been carried this way since infancy. It was oddly comforting, especially since she had so many aches and pains at the moment. She decided to her surprise that she rather liked the sensation of trusting someone to hold her. A few passers-by stared as they went by, but Demrak was clearly not being abducted against her will and had even started to smile faintly, so no one objected.
Helping her into the passenger seat of the car, Galvan went around to get behind the wheel. He looked over at her dubiously as he started the car. "Anyone else with a battering like that, I'd insist on taking her to the Emergency Room."
"It is well that I am not anyone else," Demrak Jin replied. Much of the edge had left her voice. She sounded tired and perhaps even appreciative. They eased out into traffic and headed south. At East 38th Street, Galvan turned into the dead end alley between the KDF building and its neighbor, went down the steep concrete ramp and parked the Nissan in the tiny underground garage. The other car which Josef and Haley had taken had not returned yet.
The Melgar champion emerged, stretched and went over to the passenger door where he found Jin tentatively trying to put weight on her injured foot. Bending down, he easily tore open the sharkhide cuff to show an ankle swollen twice its normal size.
"It is NOT broken," she insisted. "We Gelydrim have a lot of cartilage where Humans have mere bone. I will be fine soon. Still.. if you don't mind?"
"My pleasure, Jin." Galvan scooped her up in his arms again, closed the car door with a bump of his hip and started walking briskly from the garage. They went down the narrow corridor between the vault and the arsenal, past the Trom power generator and water heater, then up the steps that led through the walk-in closet to emerge in the front hall on the first floor.
"I left your weapon in the car," Galvan said as he carried her to the elevator and thumbed the button for the third floor.
"It can wait," she answered quietly. "I think I'm done fighting for the night." They emerged in the hallway where the members had their private apartments. None of the doors were marked. She said, "Go right in, I left it unlocked."
Still holding her to his chest, the Melgar flicked on the lights. Demrak Jin's rooms were austere, undecorated, almost as if no one lived there. The double bed by the window overlooking Lexington, the desk with its computer station and pile of reports and papers, the dresser with the mirror which ran across its top.. all were still in the same layout as the other rooms. It was the bathroom that had been changed. Instead of a modern shower stall, an old-fashioned cast-iron bathtub coated with porcelain took up most of the bathroom. Galvan lowered her carefully to perch on the rim.
Reaching over, Demrak Jin turned the faucets and began to fill the tub. "I am so sorry to keep asking you for help," she said.
"Not a problem, Jin."
"In the closet are some five gallon jugs. Would you empty one into the tub, if it's not a problem?" As she spoke, the Gelydra started untying the straps which held her sharkhide outfit on, although it was tattered enough that she could have probably just ripped it apart.
Carrying a jug nonchalantly in one hand, Galvan unscrewed the cap and poured its contents into the steaming hot water coming from the taps. "Is this seawater? It smells salty."
"Yes. On my days off, I drive out to Long Island and fill a few jugs with seawater. I am a creature of the ocean, after all, and I am much healthier when I soak in my native element." Turning off the faucet, Demrak Jin tested the water and seemed satisfied, then got the last of her suit off.
Only a few inches over five feet tall, the Gelydra woman was sleek and slim, with the long taut muscles of a lifelong swimmer. Her breasts were small and firm, her hips narrow and her backside almost flat. With a sigh of relief, she swung over and lowered herself entirely into the warm tub, letting her head sink to rest under the surface. Bubbles rose as she exhaled.
Looming up over the tub, Galvan watched her with mixed emotions. To see a person lying submerged, calmly breathing underwater, was a bit unnerving. She said something but the water distorted and muffled the sound so much he had no idea what she meant. He gazed down at her pale slender body in the water. Already her wounds were closing up. Her bruised eye had opened fully and her ankle had visibly become less swollen. Even without the tagra, a Gelydra such as herself had a rapid healing ability. They were terrible opponents in war because wounds did not slow them for long.
Catching her eye, the big Melgar raised a hand and turned to leave but she sat up in the tub. "Wait. Please, Galvan, if you don't mind, give me a hand one more time."
"I'm glad to help," he answered. "But I understood you sleep in there most nights."
"Not tonight. Here, help me out. I don't want to fall." She held up a tiny hand and he took it to lift her up entirely into the air. Reaching over for a fluffy white towel that was almost as thick as a blanket, he wrapped it around her shoulders and helped her out of the bathroom.
Demrak Jin sank down on the edge of her bed, allowing the Melgar to rub her dry with the towel. "No one ever takes care of me," she muttered. "I think I could get to like it." Her bristly white hair had already dried as soon as coming into contact with air. As Galvan dried her body, the Gelydra sighed. "It's funny. You are so strong but you can still be gentle."
"Glad you like it, Jin. You look much better than you did a half hour ago." He bent down lower to look her in the face. "I'm happy that we are starting to get along together."
"As am I." Demrak Jin raised her face and pulled his head down so their lips brushed against each other. After a minute, Galvan walked over to turn off the lights and rejoined her.
V.
Just after one-thirty in the morning, Ashley Whitaker paid the taxi driver and stepped up onto the curb in front of the ten-story building which had been so important to her for so many years. She was annoyed at being this late for the assembly, but her mother was out of town and Cory was working nights at the hospital. Getting a sitter in the middle of the night for little April had involved calling in a few favors. The Unicorn was wearing her customary all white, boots and jeans and down-filled jacket, with her platinum hair hanging down free over her shoulders. Strapped across her back was a three foot cylindrical sheath holding her talisman.
She had a sinking feeling that she was much too late and that everyone was already closing the case without her. Sometimes Unicorn missed her KDF days with a pang that was almost physical, as much as she loved her daughter and her boyfriend Cory and would not have given them up for anything. The little blonde flipped open a panel beside the front door, punched in her individual code and entered. Even so, she had to stand in the foyer for a minute while Trom sensors identified her. Finally, she peeked into Sable's office just inside the front door. Empty. Unzipping her jacket, she raced up the wide staircase to the second floor. The conference room was dark and deserted.
Ashley slumped, shoulders drooping. She felt unreasonably stricken at finally returning for a mission and arriving too late. So unfair. After a minute of moping in the hall, she went over to the stairs and walked up another flight. She might as well check out her rooms. Come to think of it, she had not been in there for months and she remembered she might have left some clothes in the closet that she had been looking for recently.
On the third floor landing, she emerged and stood by Megan Salenger's door. Her Trom Girl buddy. A warm wave of nostalgia swept through her. Suddenly she missed hanging out with her friends here, she missed all the excitement and danger but more than that the fun they had in their off duty times. They were a fascinating and colorful gang to be with. Unicorn headed down the wide corridor and stopped short next to Demrak Jin's door as she heard something. Wait, what? The moaning and panting were unmistakable.
Ashley's mouth hung completely open. Jin? Demrak Jin? No way. "You have GOT to be kidding me," she said out loud.
7/23/2016_
2/19-2/20/2015
I.
Josef Jubilec found a parking spot and eased the Toyota Matrix into it before anyone else could claim the opening. The Blind Archer was wearing black slacks and suit jacket, with a white dress shirt but no tie. Even his leather shoes were highly polished. Tall and fit-looking, with short sandy hair over a freshly shaven if weathered face, he seemed to be a perfect example of an office-dwelling executive. Behind the wheel, he glared over at the two-story building they had come to find. It was old, the bricks were chipped and stained, the sidewalk in front of it was cracked and had a few strands of weed starting to grow up through the openings. Most of the windows were lit and curtains drawn.
Seated next to him, Haley shook her head. She herself was wearing a KDF field suit, complete with the waist-length jacket that had its own inner layer of armor. "It's just weird to see you without a bow within reach. It bothers me. Not even that folding contraption you hate to use."
Josef shrugged. "No choice. Our captain has sent us here to investigate and I am certain to be patted down for weapons. A longbow is slightly conspicuous. For that matter, you seem uneasy without your Windcatcher costume. No cloak? No white pullover and blue shorts?"
"Same here," she replied. Haley Lawson normally stayed insolent and slightly brash no matter what, but tonight she seemed subdued. Under the dark brown bangs, her green eyes were thoughtful. "Of course I am still wearing the Gem of Air under my collar. I can summon wind from a hurricane or Death Valley if I choose, so I'm not really disarmed."
"I'll be fine."
"I guess." Haley looked over at the rundown building herself, seeing it sat next to a bodega that was still open at this hour. "I don't think I've ever been in Corona before. Where are we? Roosevelt Avenue and 91st Street. Looks overwhelmingly Hispanic to me, even the signs are mostly in Spanish."
"Yes," Josef said, unbuckling his seat belt. "This isn't a bad part of Queens. You can buy some fresh produce here at a reasonable price. Tonight, of course, we are shopping for something more gruesome."
She stuck two fingers in her mouth and made a gagging noise. "Ugh, ick. A brothel. I can't believe places like this still exist in this day and age."
"This is called a 'fast house,'" the Blind Archer told her. "Very common in a lot of Latina neighborhoods. Forty or fifty dollars gets you fifteen minutes with a young chica. Then they toss you back out on the street."
"I think it's disgusting. Even with living prostitutes."
Josef got out of the car and leaned back in before closing the door. "I can't even bring my Link in with me. Just cash. But Megan has rigged a button on my belt buckle. When I press it, your Link will buzz and that's when you charge in to the rescue."
"If you really want to be rescued, ha hah."
"This is just a mission like any other," he said and closed the door. Josef Jubilec straightened up, looking around at the night, and his perception caught that he was being watched from a window of the fast house. He did not glance in that direction. The Blind Archer walked up to the front door with its simple tacked-on number 553 and pressed the white doorbell for a single long ring.
A short stocky man who had not shaven for a few days answered without opening the door more than a crack. In Spanish, he asked if his visitor needed help.
Josef answered in Spanish fluent enough that it seemed completely natural. Before joining Tel Shai, he had worked around the world as a bodyguard and counter-assassin, and he spoke several languages as if he had grown up with them. He replied that he needed the usual help a man requires, and held up two twenties and a ten. The man snatched the bills quickly and let him in.
In a long front hallway, with doors on either side, beneath a ceiling light in a grimy glass ball, the man asked him if he had any girl in mind. Josef managed a smile and answered that of course he wanted the youngest and prettiest in the building. This seemed to amuse the papi. He led the Blind Archer down the hall a ways and opened the fifth door they came to, then said "Only fifteen minutes, remember, then we knock."
At the end of the hall, another man was sitting in a plain wooden chair, studying a newspaper. He was bigger, tougher-looking and he had just stubbed out a cigarette on the arm of the chair. Reading their lifeforce with his gralic perception, the Blind Archer decided at once that these were normal living people even if not in the best of health. It was the ability to fix on a being's lifeforce without using sight that made the Blind Archers so feared. In darkness or rain or fog, their arrows never missed.
Thanking the papi, Josef went through the door into a hot, stuffy room lit by a single ceramic lamp on the wall. There was a chair and an empty nightstand, and aside from that only a Queen-sized bed with dingy sheets. Standing next to that bed was a tall, slightly chunky young woman with long curly black hair. She was wearing a yellow sundress and was barefoot. The vague smile on her face did not waver as she saw him.
Instantly, Josef knew that she was not fully alive. Her aura was faint and unsteady. He decided the room was kept overheated so that customers would not notice her flesh was not warm by itself. As Josef closed the door, she automatically drew the sundress up over her head to stand naked in front of him. There was a deep scar in her left ribcage that they had tried to mask with some sort of flesh-colored putty.
That must be the wound that had killed her, he thought. He asked her what her name was and she promptly replied it was Inez. Then he asked what day of the week it might be and she did not answer for a long moment before telling him he had better hurry and get undressed.
Josef felt a great weariness come over him. This was not a situation he wanted to be in any longer than necessary. In Spanish, he asked the woman if she remembered her family and if she realized what had happened to her. There was no reaction in her eyes at all. She walked closer and reached up to start unbuttoning his shirt.
The sooner the zombies were revived after dying, the more awareness and consciousness they retained. If they had been dead too long, they were mere automatons. Josef saw the stretch marks on her belly and decided to try one more question. He asked her if she remembered her children. There was not even a flicker of response in the blank cloudy eyes. Not anger, not bewilderment, not sorrow. She was acting out a limited choice of responses that had been drilled into her.
"I'm so sorry," he said. Grabbing her by the shoulders, he spun her around and brought down the rigid edge of his hand sharply down at the base of her neck. She dropped as limply as if she had never been resurrected at all, not trying to break her fall as her face hit the bare wooden floor. It was as if she had been eager to go into true death.
Moving slowly, Josef picked her up, tugged her sundress back onto her and stretched her out on the bed. He folded her hands across her chest and closed her eyes, giving her what little dignity she could have at that point. Where was this woman's family, he wondered. Were they still looking for her? Was her face up on home-made posters in some city, HAVE YOU SEEN ME? And would they really want to know what her horrific fate had been? With a face taut as stone, he opened the hall door to leave that room of horrors.
II.
In the stealth copter CORBY heading back across lower New York State, Lauren Sable Reilly read the report from Megan on the screen of her Link. At the controls, Argent kept glancing over and finally blurted, "Well, come on, Sable. At least throw me a bone."
Without looking up, the team captain said, "This goes back much farther than I feared. Long before John Grim was even born... Sheng, the Resurrector is someone who has an arrangement now with the John Grim Institute but he himself has been active for more than a hundred years."
"Stop teasing, Sable. Just come out with it, already."
"It's part of Midnight War history," she told him. "Listen. In 1912, before the outbreak of the First World War, there was a medical student in Massachusets who was doing research in how to extend the period a brain can go without oxygen before there is permanent damage. His name was Wesley Gorsline, from a wealthy and influential New England family."
"Okay, I'm with you so far," Sheng Mo-Yuan said.
"Some of his letters indicate that he knew an Alchemist named Dr Mercado Vitarius. The reagent which the student developed seems to have not been a product of mundane chemistry so much as an Alchemical serum. For almost twenty years, Gorsline experimented with reviving the recently deceased. As time went on, his results became more successful. Before his disappearance in 1931, he had unleashed any number of homicidal zombies which had escaped his custody. But he also was said to have been able to restore people so they could talk and function normally if he treated them immediately after death. They were servile directly to him as an effect of the process."
The Chujiran man shook his head violently. "Ugh. Let me guess. At some point, he was murdering people so he could revive them instantly as his servants."
"Yes. That's what his assistants accused him of doing, anyway. We will be reaching denser population areas soon, you might want to get the CORBY higher."
Argent pulled back on the stick and tapped some buttons on the console before him. "Rising to operating ceiling, captain. With no lights and the Trom radar alignment on, there is almost no chance we'll be spotted. But don't stop! What happened then?"
"Wesley Gorsline was last seen alive by his staff on the night a dozen of his test subjects turned on him," Sable said. "One report said they tore him apart. Another assistant claimed the zombies just dragged him away screaming into the night. But the records which Megan has uncovered just now..."
Argent actually took both hands off the controls to gesticulate in his agitation, something he had been trained to never do. "You're driving me crazy, Sable! What happened?!"
"According to the records which Gorsline himself appears to have written, he had enough time to inject himself with the Alchemical reagent... while he was still alive, before the zombies beat him to death. He rose again only a few minutes after they wandered off. It was the only time a living Human was infused with the resurrection serum. And he's still active and intelligent and ambitious today, more than a century later. I'm certain. Wesley Gorsline is the Resurrector."
III.
The icy politeness from Demrak Jin toward Galvan had gradually worn down to where she was treating him as well as she did her other teammates. That is, not warmly at all but being blunt and unthinking in most cases. Everyone had gotten used to the Gelydra woman's concept of social interaction. Like Haley's sassy comments or Josef's reticence, it was just a personality that had to be adapted to as part of a team. For his part, Galvan was so self-assured and confident that he seemed to just assume that at some point she would warm up to him.
The hatred between Androval and Ulgor went back to 1929, when the Melgarin had invaded the realm of the Gelydrim in an ill-advised campaign that had ended disastrously for everyone concerned. But even for those long-lived Races, that had been a long time ago. The more years Demrak Jin spent on the surface with her Tel Shai friends, the less urgent Ulgoran issues seemed.
Galvan steered the Nissan into a side street by the Battery, far enough down that seagulls wheeled overhead. They stopped within sight of a closed-up one-story building with windows that had been painted white. A faded wooden sign over the door read UNIFORMS USA. The giant Melgar turned off the engine and watched the building suspiciously.
"Sable has been getting reports of weird assassins and enforcers for hire in the metropolitan area," Demrak Jin told him. "These men seem unharmed by bullets or in one case a two by four to the head. She has been charting their appearances and thinks they are being kept here."
"Zombie hit men..." Galvan muttered. "Just when you think things can't get worse."
Jin reached into the back seat and brought up her bone-bladed short sword inits scabbard. "This mission seems to be a straightforward assault," she said. "No hostages. No innocent civilians to worry about."
"Is she absolutely sure about this?" the Melgar wondered. "I'd hate to break in there and just find cobwebs and old newspapers."
"Sable traced its ownership through a realtor to the John Grim Institute. A month ago, she hired a few agents to keep an eye on the area." The Gelydra opened her door and got out of the car, leaning back in to tell Galvan, "She has collected enough sightings of tough guys coming and going into that closed-up store to feel it's conclusive."
Galvan stepped out onto the sidewalk, looming up enormous in the gloom. He was wearing only a white T-shirt, jeans and sneakers, with no weapons or gadgets. The big Melgar smacked his fists together with a noise like two granite blocks colliding. "Well, then, let's do this."
"Wait." Demrak Jin slid the machete-length weapon from the scabbard she had strapped across her back. She ran a thumb along its edge experimentally. "Do me a favor, Galvan. Hold back and allow me to tackle these monsters myself."
For a second, the Melgar stood in stunned silence. Then he chuckled and walked over to the UNIFORMS USA building and slammed its door inward with a casual tap of his palm that snapped the locks. Lights went on inside. Forty of the Undead stirred from where they had been standing in a mindless daze and swung toward the intruders. Some were already holding crowbars or softball bats. Demrak Jin laughed.
IV.
When Josef stepped out into the dank hall of the fast house, he found the papi and the bouncer waiting for him. Both were holding handguns, not aimed directly at him yet but pointed down at the floor. "Something is the matter, mister? You do not find our little Inez attractive? Jesu, check on her."
The Blind Archer did not react. He knew how this was going to play out. Arms down and hands empty, he waited with no expression on his lined face. A second later, the bouncer jumped put from the bedroom yelling.
"She is dead, I mean the real death!" he screamed still in Spanish. Hearing this, already suspecting something was wrong, the papi swung his gun up and jabbed the barrel straight at Josef's face.
As a child, Josef had been sold to the cult of Blind Archers. They were a Chujir-based clan but they liked to have a variety of members who could pass as various races and nationalitities. His upbringing had been brutal and severe. No one could explain how he had kept from having his will being completely broken, but as an adolescent he had been the first to ever break from the clan to wander the real world. Even without his preferred weapon the bow, a Blind Archer was one of the most dangerous Humans in any realm.
As smoothly and effortlessly as if the two men were cooperating with him, Josef seized the papi's extended arm and swung it around so that when the revolver fired, two slugs punched home in the bouncer's chest. Even before that man had started to fold to the threadbare carpet, Josef had seized the papi's elbow and bent the man's arm back upon himself. The third bullet tore up through the underside of the papi's jaw and took off most of his skull as it exited.
Stepping back as the dying man crumpled and sprawled out in a puddle of gore, the Blind Archer took two quick steps and tugged the unfired gun from the hand of the bouncer and made sure it was ready to use. He did not think there were any more truly alive people in that building, but he could not be sure. Down the hall, one of the zombie hookers stuck her head out at the gunshots but obviously could not function well enough to comprehend what was going on. She just stood there watching blankly.
Josef inspected himself automatically to be sure no blood or other splatter had gotten on him. He went to the front door, opened it and waved for Haley to join him. The Windcatcher hopped out of the car eagerly and trotted across the dark street to join him in the doorway. The visor was up on her helmet and as the scene inside registered with her, the smile dropped off her face.
"Damn, Josef," she said in a breathless voice. In her three years with the KDF, Haley had seen a number of fresh corpses and helped to evaluate murder scenes. She was getting used to it, but Josef secretly suspected she would never become really tough emotionally. She had been sheltered too much by a quiet suburban life in her formative years. Now, as she stared down at the two bloody bodies, she tried unsuccessfully to shrug it off. "I take it... they weren't zombies?"
"No," the Blind Archer answered. "They were monsters in the more usual Human way. Listen. I need you to draw freezing air into this building. It's maybe twenty Celsius outside now but that's not cold enough. The Walkers don't generate their own body heat and they will become sluggish and unaware very quickly. Can you do that?"
"Yeah, sure. I study world weather on an hourly basis. Temps are fifteen above in Minnesota right now. How's that?" She pressed a hand to her throat, where the mystic Gem of Air was fastened to a velvet choker beneath her uniform. The only one of the four talismans of the Heir of Buliwyf still in use, the gem siphoned a stiff wind from the sky thousands of miles away. Immediately, freezing wind rushed through that hallway.
"That would be fine," Josef answered. "Fill the building now." As he spoke, he hefted the heavy Colt revolver in one hand and started for the narrow stairs going up to the second floor. "This may take a while," he called back.
Standing in that silent hallway as the air suddenly dropped below freezing, watching as frost gathered on the walls and furniture, Haley Lawson was snug and comfortable in her insulated field suit. When her breath showed as a plume as she exhaled, the Windcatcher clicked the visor of her helmet shut as well. She hated this. Most of her assignments with the KDF involved rescuing innocents or chasing inhuman creatures. Things were usually clear cut and kind of fun in a breathtaking way.
But this was just nerve-wracking. She knew Josef was searching each room and she knew what he was doing... what he had to do to put these poor women at rest at last. She knew she couldn't possibly have gone with him. Not for the first time, Haley wondered if she was really meant for the Midnight War, it could be so heartbreaking.
Every surface from walls to floor was white with frost as she brought in more frigid air. She had lowered herself to a bench against one wall where a few tattered old magazines were piled. Eventually, a hand shook her shoulder and she glanced up. Josef was standing there shivering, his suit jacket buttoned up all the way and the collar up around his neck.
"We can go now," he said. "I'll leave the place locked and the Resurrector can deal with this aftermath. They're all in true death now."
"Rest in peace," Haley replied, meaning the words as she never fully had before.
V.
The grey sharkhide outfit was ripped open in a dozen places and covered with drying dark blood. One sleeve was entirely gone, and the back of the suit hung in tatters. Demrak Jim herself was gouged and scratched as if she had been dragged through miles of barbed wire. One eye was swollen almost shut and a shallow cut across her forehead had left a stream of blood down her face that was just getting sticky. Her chest heaved as she tried to catch her breath. Leaning heavily on her bone-bladed sword, her swollen left ankle keeping her from putting any weight on that foot, she swung around to survey the carnage.
Forty ripped-up bodies were strewn all over the unfurnished room. Toward the end, Galvan had started to interfere with the fight by flinging zombies aside with a force that broke their backs, but for the most part she had met the attack of all these undead herself. Some had necks sliced across or torsos slashed open, many heads had been cut entirely off with open swipes, or faces caved in with blows from a bony little fist.
Demrak Jin laughed long and heartily. There was no hysteria in that laugh, no sense of cracking under strain. She had enjoyed the battle and she was showing triumph. In all her time with the KDF, she had been pressured to always hold back against their enemies. Now she had enjoyed a chance to really let loose and she was satisfied.
"These enforcers have intimidated their last victims!" she yelled happily, then tried limping for the door and fell clumsily. Struggling back to her feet, the Gelydra managed to get up onto a bench against one wall as Galvan came over to her. He had found a bathroom kept for the living lieutenants and he brought a towel soaked in warm water.
Jin did not protest as he gingerly dabbed at her face and hands with the towel to get some of the blood off her. She was in too much of a good mood. Like a child, she sat and accepted the gentle swiping. "How... how surprised were the living leaders?" she asked. "Did you see the looks on their faces?"
"I did," Galvan answered. "It was comical indeed how their expressions dropped from glee to dismay."
"They expected a slaughter and they got one!" Demrak Jin roared. For such a small woman, her voice could get exceedingly loud. She realized that the giant Melgar had gone to dampen the towel again and now he was rubbing it over her body to clean up the ragged sharkskin suit.
"Thank you for standing back," she said. "I know you have the strength of the Legacy of Malberon. But this was a rout I greatly needed to feed my own pride. For a warrior of Ulgor, I have dealt nothing but gentle taps for too long."
Galvan folded the stained towel and put it aside. He himself had not even been scratched. As he rose to his full height, he loomed over her seated form but he would be a foot taller even if she had been standing. The Melgar was not built like a bodybuilder but a blacksmith, his hard muscles had been shaped through use. Now he stroked his short beard with one meaty hand and watched her thoughtfully. "You've taken no small amount of punishment yourself, my friend."
"I'll be fine," she grumbled. The Gelydra tried to stand, grunted in pain and fell back down on the bench with her sword dropping out of reach. "Grelok's Horns...!"
"Sit for a minute," Galvan told her. "I think if you were Human, you'd be heading for the Intensive Care Unit." He dug around the piles of destroyed zombies until he found her raincoat. "Ah, here we go." Returning to where she waited, he draped the beige coat across her shoulders. "Now I think you will not draw as much attention on the street."
"I will heal quickly!" Jin growled, reverting back to her usual surly manner. "I do not need the Tel Shai tagra tea, we Gelydra are born with the spirit of the shark as our kin. What I could use is to soak in salt water and breathe deeply of it."
"If you say so," the giant Melgar agreed without enthusiasm. "Very well, here's my suggestion. We leave this house of horrors as it is. Let the Resurrector clean it up. It's his mess. Autopsies would show that these men had been dead weeks or months already and that their blood is tainted with that green serum. Right now, I will take you back to your KDF headquarters."
Demrak Jin regarded him sourly through her one open eye and then nodded. "You are right, Melgar. I have sea water there to lie in, which is best for a creature like me. Perhaps you would help me to our car?"
Galvan chuckled. Placing one hand across her shoulders and the other under her thighs, he straightened up and lifted her as if she were a child. Jin wriggled and struggled for a second but stopped immediately. He was so strong that she could not make his arms budge an inch. She gave in.
As he carried her across the gruesome litter of the battle, Galvan realized the door to the street had been open the entire time. It was a wonder no crowd had gathered, but then it was late and this was a nearly deserted area after dark. They emerged onto a chill February night and headed across the street to where they had left the Nissan not that long earlier.
Demrak Jin had not been carried this way since infancy. It was oddly comforting, especially since she had so many aches and pains at the moment. She decided to her surprise that she rather liked the sensation of trusting someone to hold her. A few passers-by stared as they went by, but Demrak was clearly not being abducted against her will and had even started to smile faintly, so no one objected.
Helping her into the passenger seat of the car, Galvan went around to get behind the wheel. He looked over at her dubiously as he started the car. "Anyone else with a battering like that, I'd insist on taking her to the Emergency Room."
"It is well that I am not anyone else," Demrak Jin replied. Much of the edge had left her voice. She sounded tired and perhaps even appreciative. They eased out into traffic and headed south. At East 38th Street, Galvan turned into the dead end alley between the KDF building and its neighbor, went down the steep concrete ramp and parked the Nissan in the tiny underground garage. The other car which Josef and Haley had taken had not returned yet.
The Melgar champion emerged, stretched and went over to the passenger door where he found Jin tentatively trying to put weight on her injured foot. Bending down, he easily tore open the sharkhide cuff to show an ankle swollen twice its normal size.
"It is NOT broken," she insisted. "We Gelydrim have a lot of cartilage where Humans have mere bone. I will be fine soon. Still.. if you don't mind?"
"My pleasure, Jin." Galvan scooped her up in his arms again, closed the car door with a bump of his hip and started walking briskly from the garage. They went down the narrow corridor between the vault and the arsenal, past the Trom power generator and water heater, then up the steps that led through the walk-in closet to emerge in the front hall on the first floor.
"I left your weapon in the car," Galvan said as he carried her to the elevator and thumbed the button for the third floor.
"It can wait," she answered quietly. "I think I'm done fighting for the night." They emerged in the hallway where the members had their private apartments. None of the doors were marked. She said, "Go right in, I left it unlocked."
Still holding her to his chest, the Melgar flicked on the lights. Demrak Jin's rooms were austere, undecorated, almost as if no one lived there. The double bed by the window overlooking Lexington, the desk with its computer station and pile of reports and papers, the dresser with the mirror which ran across its top.. all were still in the same layout as the other rooms. It was the bathroom that had been changed. Instead of a modern shower stall, an old-fashioned cast-iron bathtub coated with porcelain took up most of the bathroom. Galvan lowered her carefully to perch on the rim.
Reaching over, Demrak Jin turned the faucets and began to fill the tub. "I am so sorry to keep asking you for help," she said.
"Not a problem, Jin."
"In the closet are some five gallon jugs. Would you empty one into the tub, if it's not a problem?" As she spoke, the Gelydra started untying the straps which held her sharkhide outfit on, although it was tattered enough that she could have probably just ripped it apart.
Carrying a jug nonchalantly in one hand, Galvan unscrewed the cap and poured its contents into the steaming hot water coming from the taps. "Is this seawater? It smells salty."
"Yes. On my days off, I drive out to Long Island and fill a few jugs with seawater. I am a creature of the ocean, after all, and I am much healthier when I soak in my native element." Turning off the faucet, Demrak Jin tested the water and seemed satisfied, then got the last of her suit off.
Only a few inches over five feet tall, the Gelydra woman was sleek and slim, with the long taut muscles of a lifelong swimmer. Her breasts were small and firm, her hips narrow and her backside almost flat. With a sigh of relief, she swung over and lowered herself entirely into the warm tub, letting her head sink to rest under the surface. Bubbles rose as she exhaled.
Looming up over the tub, Galvan watched her with mixed emotions. To see a person lying submerged, calmly breathing underwater, was a bit unnerving. She said something but the water distorted and muffled the sound so much he had no idea what she meant. He gazed down at her pale slender body in the water. Already her wounds were closing up. Her bruised eye had opened fully and her ankle had visibly become less swollen. Even without the tagra, a Gelydra such as herself had a rapid healing ability. They were terrible opponents in war because wounds did not slow them for long.
Catching her eye, the big Melgar raised a hand and turned to leave but she sat up in the tub. "Wait. Please, Galvan, if you don't mind, give me a hand one more time."
"I'm glad to help," he answered. "But I understood you sleep in there most nights."
"Not tonight. Here, help me out. I don't want to fall." She held up a tiny hand and he took it to lift her up entirely into the air. Reaching over for a fluffy white towel that was almost as thick as a blanket, he wrapped it around her shoulders and helped her out of the bathroom.
Demrak Jin sank down on the edge of her bed, allowing the Melgar to rub her dry with the towel. "No one ever takes care of me," she muttered. "I think I could get to like it." Her bristly white hair had already dried as soon as coming into contact with air. As Galvan dried her body, the Gelydra sighed. "It's funny. You are so strong but you can still be gentle."
"Glad you like it, Jin. You look much better than you did a half hour ago." He bent down lower to look her in the face. "I'm happy that we are starting to get along together."
"As am I." Demrak Jin raised her face and pulled his head down so their lips brushed against each other. After a minute, Galvan walked over to turn off the lights and rejoined her.
V.
Just after one-thirty in the morning, Ashley Whitaker paid the taxi driver and stepped up onto the curb in front of the ten-story building which had been so important to her for so many years. She was annoyed at being this late for the assembly, but her mother was out of town and Cory was working nights at the hospital. Getting a sitter in the middle of the night for little April had involved calling in a few favors. The Unicorn was wearing her customary all white, boots and jeans and down-filled jacket, with her platinum hair hanging down free over her shoulders. Strapped across her back was a three foot cylindrical sheath holding her talisman.
She had a sinking feeling that she was much too late and that everyone was already closing the case without her. Sometimes Unicorn missed her KDF days with a pang that was almost physical, as much as she loved her daughter and her boyfriend Cory and would not have given them up for anything. The little blonde flipped open a panel beside the front door, punched in her individual code and entered. Even so, she had to stand in the foyer for a minute while Trom sensors identified her. Finally, she peeked into Sable's office just inside the front door. Empty. Unzipping her jacket, she raced up the wide staircase to the second floor. The conference room was dark and deserted.
Ashley slumped, shoulders drooping. She felt unreasonably stricken at finally returning for a mission and arriving too late. So unfair. After a minute of moping in the hall, she went over to the stairs and walked up another flight. She might as well check out her rooms. Come to think of it, she had not been in there for months and she remembered she might have left some clothes in the closet that she had been looking for recently.
On the third floor landing, she emerged and stood by Megan Salenger's door. Her Trom Girl buddy. A warm wave of nostalgia swept through her. Suddenly she missed hanging out with her friends here, she missed all the excitement and danger but more than that the fun they had in their off duty times. They were a fascinating and colorful gang to be with. Unicorn headed down the wide corridor and stopped short next to Demrak Jin's door as she heard something. Wait, what? The moaning and panting were unmistakable.
Ashley's mouth hung completely open. Jin? Demrak Jin? No way. "You have GOT to be kidding me," she said out loud.
7/23/2016_
