I stood there in the doorway of the bingo parlor. Across the street sat a forest green hovervan, amber and green FORCE lights flashing at every corner. A muscular man in a red-and-white checkered sport jacket leaned against the front of the van, arms crossed. He smiled at me and nodded, but didn’t move. My whole body shook as I glanced over towards my hotel, wanting to run as fast as I could to the perceived safety of my room and my beloved Chantré. All I wanted to do now was pack my duffle and take a bus to anywhere, as long as it was away from here.
Oh, who was I kidding? How could I possibly hope to escape both the Beast and the Dark Man on my own; she a part of me and he living now in my dreams as inexorably as she had before? I collapsed in the doorway, turning back into the welcoming darkness. A hand lightly touched my arm.
“We can help you, Mademoiselle Duval,” the fox’s voice assured. “Please let us help you.”
I nodded. “I can not run any more. The Beast, I can not control her. The Dark Man, he will torture me. Do as you will with me,” I cried.
I felt soft fabric wrapping around my shoulders. Bright yellow cloth covered my nakedness as the fox helped me to rise, the blanket I had dropped now in Scott’s hands. He handed me the blanket, helping me wrap it tightly around myself before stepping back and letting me tuck it in. I’m sure Tracker’s cape looked a little silly over the green blanket, but I couldn’t refuse his offer of comfort, going so far as to buckle the collar loosely around my own throat to hold it in place.
Another man joined us then, the warrior in the red-checked jacket.
“Hi!” he greeted in a cheerful baritone. “I’m Red.”
“Good to meet you, monsieur le Red. Is that your name, or your favorite color?”
“Both, pretty lady. Both.”
“Then that is good, no? Your favorite color is your name, and your name, the color?”
“Well…” He drew the sound out, almost sounding like a Texan in the way he carried it. “Really, my name is Charlie. Charlie Overton. Everybody just calls me Red, though.”
“I see. Nice to meet you, Charlie. And thank you for helping to drive those Blacksnake people away yesterday.”
“For a pretty lady like you, I’d do it any day.”
“Flatterer.” I turned to Scott, obviously the leader of this little group. “Monsieur, may we go to my apartment now? I would collect my things if I am to accompany you to wherever we are going.”
“Of course, Ms Duval. Do you wish to ride, or can you walk?”
“My hotel, it is just over there.”
“Of course.” He touched his earpiece again. “Captain, follow us to the hotel please. Ms Duval has some things she wants to collect.”
As we walked along, a shadow fell over me. Glancing up, I saw another figure floating silently overhead. I pulled back, staring.
“You! You shot at me last night!”
“I only wanted to stop you, miss.”
“So you shot at me with some kind of power. What? Were you trying to take over my mind?”
“No, miss,” he replied, his voice sounding a little more mature than Red’s, “my powers don’t work that way. I can only make things heavier or lighter.”
“So you were going to make me too heavy to move, is that it?”
“Not really. I intended to lift you off your feet, so neither you nor the tiger could scramble away. I’ve never seen anyone move as fast as you did to escape my beam. Not even Scott. How did you know I was there?”
“I don’t know. I just… felt you. I simply knew something was about to happen and where it was. When I sprang away, I saw you right where I felt you.”
He laughed. “We’ve got us a good one, Scott. She might even be better than ol’ Animal. Even he can be surprised.”
“That’s up to her, Jay. We’ve got no right to assume she will join us. Once she’s rested and feels sure of herself, it’s her privilege to just walk away.”
“No offense, boss man. I’m just saying that if she does, I feel sorry for whomever goes up against her. Did you see that scratch down Pneumata’s leg yesterday? I don’t think anyone has even touched her before! She might have given Vengeance a run for his money had she joined the fight!”
I looked up. “You think so?”
“Little lady, I saw what you did to Pneumata. If you hadn’t pulled her down, I’m not sure the four of us could have come out as well as we did. In that armor, Vengeance is tough enough to keep all of us busy. Having Pneumata and Lumen along for the ride kept us from ganging up on him. As it was, I’d have been hard-pressed just to keep him grounded if someone hadn’t knocked out his jet pack. Was that you?”
“No,” I pointed to the fox man, “He did it–to stop Vengeance from carrying the Beast away.”
“Really?” He looked over at Tracker. “Will wonders never cease!”
By this time, we had reached the door of the hotel. Tracker sprang ahead to open the door while Scott escorted me in, the others following behind. Tracker led the way up the stairs to the second floor, his claws clicking softly on the old wooden steps. At one point he moved a glass bottle aside, standing it upright in a corner against the riser. Once on the second floor, he led the way to my room and stopped by the door.
“How do you know this is my room,” I asked.
“Umm… well?” He glanced nervously over at Scott, who provided the answer.
“We… talked to your boss over at the Nightbirds Club. He told us who you were and where you lived. We’d… well, we ran into a little Cartel trouble yesterday after our fight with the Blacksnake gang. We discovered they’d been looking for someone and had your address in his notes. From some of the things we found in here, we deduced you probably danced at the club, and your boss confirmed it.”
“You broke in my door,” I asked, noticing the way it hung free, the latch broken.
“No,” Scott answered. “We found it that way. The door was already broken and Tracker scented that a stranger had entered your room. We almost despaired that you’d already been kidnapped, but Tracker said you hadn’t been in here for nearly two weeks.”
I shivered. “Two weeks?” Mon dieu! Had I been in the Dark Man’s grasp for two weeks? “What is the date?”
“The thirteenth of June.”
“The last date I remember is second June. I remember it was a slow night and raining. That’s the night I was kidnapped.”
“I can check on that for you, but that sounds right. Looks like we can add a kidnapping charge to Blacksnake’s crime sheet as well.”
I pushed the door open and entered the apartment. Only one room, the bed stood in the corner, against the right-hand wall with its head next to the window. A dresser stood against the front wall, beside me at the doorway. The closet took up most of the third wall, along with the doorway into the tiny bathroom. Everything I owned lay strewn around the room. The drawers were pulled out of the dresser, their contents dumped onto the bed and lay scattered on the floor, joined by what few things I’d had in the closet.
“This is how we found it yesterday, Ms Duval. We didn’t want to move anything in case they came back and assumed you had returned.”
I stepped over to the bed, reaching down to pull out my guitar case from underneath, but I didn’t need to. The case lay open under a pile of clothing, its lid leaning against the mattress. Chantré lay inside, silenced forever by the destructive boot of a Cartel vandal. Falling to my knees, I gingerly lifted Chantré from her bed, tears running down my cheeks. I would never hear her sing again.
