GOING DOWN IN the speeding elevator, I pondered the fact that I’d grown up twenty to fifty miles from The Most Wanted Vintage Film in the World.
I’d expected it to be found, if ever, in someplace exotic like Rio, but Augusta, just outside Wichita, Kansas?
Umhmm, Irma agreed. I wouldn’t expect you to practically lay Snow in Wichita, either. You sure got hyper once you resolved your supine position issues.
We have some kind of weird power struggle going, I told her. Seeing Metropolis was a teensy overexciting, and so was seeing that silver metal superwoman, even if the plot destroyed her at the end. They always do that to independent women.
I hugged the glitzy green bag to my navy chest. Snow obviously couldn’t be trusted around me when I was wearing vintage evening gowns. His problem. And then … getting my very own ruby red slippers.
You are so typical of the modern female’s bad media image, Irma huffed. You want it all. Sex, power, rock ’n’ roll, and girly accessories.
Even as I savored the recent, unexpected triumphs, reality was starting to drop over me like a gray wool cloak of conscience, a descending storm cloud of regret. I’d been up in La-la Munchkinland, carried away by the Emerald City makeover.
This was not an episode I could explain to Ric. Or mention to Ric, although Snow had given him some major compliments. I let myself bask in those positives. Even Snow had called Ric my “true love.” Why, then, had he let me … goaded me … seduced me … into, ah, behaving badly? And, what was worse, predicted more of the same?
Time to stow the self-reflection and get back to what was happening on ground level. Were the boys having any luck tracking El Demonio from WTCH? Did I want them to? He was the Boss of Bosses now and mucho bad medicine.
The elevator opened on the ground floor and I strode out, the green foil bag swinging from my hand.
Somebody grabbed that wrist and swung me around by it.
“Not so fast, puta.”
Puta? Maybe a bit misguided sometimes, but hardly a prostitute.
As my attacker swung, I swung. My free hand, now accessorized at the wrist by a sawtooth silver cuff, slashed open his cheekbone.
The man dropped my wrist to stanch the flood of blood, so I skittered down the yellow brick road for the safety of Ben Hassard’s office, only realizing as I crashed through the slightly open door that it was Siege Central.
By the look of the unwelcome guests, I was back at the Cold Creek Drive-in Midnight Horror Show.
A metal-collared chupacabra on a chain dragged its spined tail back and forth over the floor in one corner, its red eyes gleaming in defiance of the Emerald City’s all-green ambiance.
Ben Hassard slumped in his desk chair, his limbs bound to it by silver duct tape, a beaten, bloody parody of himself. Meanwhile, a group of squat, amphibian-faced men with pitted skin and totally black eyes prowled his office, every knuckle on their pudgy hands scraped bloody, their mustachioed upper lips lifting in almost a communal hiss as they spied me.
Certainly they weren’t zombies or any other unhumans, but they were even worse. I’d seen this subhuman type on TV and internet news sites being taken away by small armies of international law enforcement. These were the terrifying drug cartel musclemen, the men who prefaced hits with unimaginable tortures, offed whole innocent families, and killed by gruesome beheadings and acid baths.
They were all looking at me now.
Freshhhhh meat, Irma echoed my fears.
I immediately adapted my modestly high heels to a useless bimbo-spike stutter and ran into the danger instead of away. Time to embrace Dumb Blonde Gringa mode.
“Oh, gosh, Ben,” I breathed. “Am I interrupting an important business meeting? So sorry.”
All he could do was cough up blood, which I appeared to be too ditsy to see.
“Say, Ben. Got a minute? Here are some goodies from upstairs. Everything looks good to go for the hotel opening.” I gazed around, blinking vacantly. “So these guys here are the new security crew masquerading as bellboys and parking valets? Wow. They really set the tone. Speaking of ‘tone,’ I left my phone with all my listed shopping destinations in here.”
I scooped up my cell phone from the desk.
On I babbled. “And, Bensy, you promised, promised, promised to have this phone covered in Austrian crystals at the hotel shopping promenade by now.” Stamp of klutzy pump heel as I dumped the bag under a guest chair. I cradled the phone to my cheek and eyed the screen. “I’m so disappointed.”
A text message from Ric read “W. Goose chase. Back ASAP.”
“Look, this stupid phone won’t even work,” I whined, punching my fingernails against the phone screen’s keyboard like a demented typist. I managed to get off “Prisoners at EC” before one of the Reptilian Guard smacked the cell phone out of my hand to the floor.
I blinked at them, mainly because they didn’t seem able to.
“Twist-tie the stupid bitch,” my abrupt personal phone operator barked.
Two of the poisonous toads jumped me. I resisted taking a bow before I was smashed to the floor with my wrists and ankles bound by wire cable.
“Now,” said one of the thugs, circling Ben. “You’re gonna tell us who got the Augusta Theater goods the boss wanted.”
The film? Metropolis? These bozos were after the film? Why?
Ben’s unresponsive eyes had rolled up in his head like a saint’s ascending to Heaven. I hoped he was just unconscious, not dead.
Half of me wanted to sic these creeps on the penthouse suite, where Snow was alone and rapt in his landmark film and maybe the … aftermath of me. Serve him right. I also suspected Snow could unleash some nasty containment spell on them. My other half knew that my quota of guilt over Snow was full up for the moment.
So, only I could get Ben and me out of this murderous mess. To do that, I had to unravel why Torbellino wanted or needed the Metropolis film more than Snow.
What would link Ric and his ancient enemy, El Demonio, to a rare film now bound to become an unbeatable attraction for Snow’s Vegas empire?
Besides me?
UNFORTUNATELY, A FEMALE presence did not encourage the drug cartel thugs to restrain themselves.
Their flaunted lighters and straight razors, though, could only produce bloody gurgles from Ben Hassard. These minions were too stupidly brutal to get any answers that would satisfy their absent boss. So, they were primed to commit mass slaughter to take their minds off El Demonio’s reaction to their failure. I didn’t want Ben to die.
I had few options, but at least I was being ignored. I’d be safe until they decided to off witnesses, or play games with the helpless girl. I really had nothing to lose here but time to act.
So, I baaed softly. Baaaa-maaa.
Call me goat-girl.
The chained chupacabra in the corner perked up.
My, what a multibreed beastie it was seen close-up, a little like Barney the purple dinosaur if one wanted to put a soft and cuddly spin on it. The leathery gray-green skin and the quills defining its spine and tail gave it a lizard-like quality, and its blunt-snouted and fanged face flaunted a black forked tongue. Every exhalation broadcast the reek of sulfur. Too many bean burritos for lunch? Or was “dragon” a part of its pedigree? I gathered it would eat me rather than fry me long-distance. Chupacabras were notorious for draining the blood of goats, and I was certainly tied up like a Judas one.
I’m a versatile chick. I puckered my lips and made sucking noises. Snow one hour, a chupacabra the next. Dolly and I have dual exhausts and aim to please. Come on, Chupie, come to maaa-maaa.
I saw the creature make a mighty lunge forward, straining the chain.
Behind me, Ben Hassard was groaning unintelligibly.
Bastards!
My low-key baas only spoke Chupacabra and I repeated them mindlessly, until the creature broke loose with a snap of its chain and a weird baying sound.
That’s when I rolled under the knee hole in Hassard’s desk, pushing his chair toward the back wall, hearing the unleashed monster behind me pinning the first responders in his path and sucking their blood with mucho gusto … a Dios, El Demonio’s henchmen. …
My silver familiar shifted into a workman’s switchblade—an X-Acto knife. In my fingers the heavy blade sawed through my wire wrist and ankle bindings.
Still curled in the shelter of the desk’s knee hole, I managed to grab the star-shaped rays of Ben’s desk chair base and spin it like a lazy Susan until his duct-taped ankles came my way. An X-Acto knife would mangle the rubbery tape. The familiar morphed into heavy pinking shears and snapped its edged jaws right through.
By the time I dragged myself up to look over the desk, the once-captive chupacabra was ranging free and dining on drug cartel muscle. Literally. Its fangs pierced major arteries in their fat-solidified bodies as its black tongue sucked up the pooling blood like a straw.
The familiar was just chomping off the bonds on Hassard’s wrists when the outside glass window shattered. Quicksilver leaped through to knock down the last retreating thug and run to me, leaving the downed man for the oncoming chupacabra.
I grabbed Quick’s collar.
An instant later, Ric waded through the shards of broken glass to sweep us both to the back wall while Tallgrass edged around chupacabra and victim to pull Ben Hassard’s rolling desk chair back to our defensive position.
The chupacabra celebrated its freedom by draining every last drop it could from the last downed thug. With loud, impolite slurping sounds.
The three conscious men, dog, and I panted in exhaustion against a wall.
Chupie straightened to scan red carnivore eyes in our direction. And burped. Full. Slowly, it waddled to the broken glass panel to make its way into the night.
“I’m glad El Chupacabra drank its fill of El Demonio leavings,” Tallgrass said.
He was bending over his friend, stanching the mass of bloody wounds with strips from Ben’s tattered white shirt.
“We need to get him to Emergency,” Tallgrass said.
Meanwhile, Quicksilver had thrust his big wet black nose between Tallgrass’s hands and Ben’s bloodied chest.
“Away!” Tallgrass’s angry frown turned ferocious.
Quicksilver returned a deep, rumbling growl and burrowed his nose even closer to Ben.
“Woman, get your dog off me,” Tallgrass ordered.
“Get your hands off Ben,” I ordered back. “He doesn’t need EMTs. Don’t you sense it? He needs Quicksilver.”
Tallgrass lifted an elbow to shove Quicksilver away. I instinctively moved to protect the dog. Laughable, yes, but no one raised a hand to Quicksilver while I was around.
Ric’s forearm slashed out of nowhere to meet and stop Tallgrass’s blow. The gaze he directed at the older man was even more powerful. I saw the night’s events had jolted out the contact lens and Ric’s silver eye was fully obvious … and fully potent.
“Let the dog do his work, amigo,” Ric said. “He knows what he’s doing.”
Whether he responded to Ric’s authoritative look, sound, and action … or the gaze of his altered eye, Tallgrass visibly lassoed his rampaging emotions. He pulled back, holding up a leathery palm, a gesture calming himself as much as Ric, me, and Quicksilver.
Quick had not waited for human resolution. He was hunched over Hassard in chupacabra-over-a-victim fashion, licking the bloody shirt fabric like it was a tasty vanilla wafer atop a scoop of after-dinner ice cream.
Hassard moaned and turned his pulpy features out of a horror movie toward Quicksilver’s busy muzzle. The dog’s tongue swiped the man’s face, leaving swaths of clean, unmutilated skin behind.
A deep breath relaxed Tallgrass’s bunched shoulder muscles. “Oh, Ty-ohni, forgive me,” he whispered.
“They tortured Ben for information,” I explained. “Superficial wounds were the most hurtful. They didn’t want to kill him.”
“I knew that, Miss Delilah,” Tallgrass said, “and I saw the noble Wolf in your Quicksilver. I just didn’t know that your ‘dog’ had a shaman’s healing power.”
“He had no way to tell you,” I answered.
“Shamans are not used to explaining themselves,” Tallgrass said. “It is up to us humans to be humble and trust. My fear for Ben overcame my instincts. I apologize.” He looked at me. “You have a healing power as well, don’t you? But it is”—his stone-faced expression crumbled—“tied to things this old Indian has no business inquiring into. As for my amigo, Ricardo … I don’t know what to make of you at all.”
Ric slapped the man on the forearm.
“Forget the mystical stuff, Tallgrass. That made for tales around campfires on our stakeouts, but we have dead cartel muscle here and the attack at the Augusta Theater to figure out. Also, where that damned El Demonio is and what he wants so badly he’ll expose the long-reaching tendrils of his drug operation.”
“What about the Augusta?” I asked.
“Quicksilver tracked El Demonio’s car to the theater parking lot,” Ric explained. “Tallgrass and I went in to question the staff, and they were acting like … zombies.”
“Real zombies?”
“That came later. No, they were just intimidated people who’d been roughly interrogated. Turned out some invading mob types were after certain old movie reels one of their sponsors found in the debris in the theater basement and took away to examine on his own.”
“One of their ‘sponsors,’” I repeated.
Ric’s grimace confirmed my guess. “Right. Tallgrass’s pal Ben Hassard. We decided to come back here to figure out what was so damn precious in those old film reels, but when we tried to leave, we discovered the parking lot was being watched.”
“El Demonio’s men.”
“We should have been so lucky.” Ric eyed the carnage on the office floor. “No, his henchmen were all here already ‘interrogating’ Hassard. El Demonio had left some other forces at the theater.”
“Zombies,” I guessed. “How’d you get away?”
“This is crazy, but with the practice Quicksilver and I got repulsing zombies at the Cold Creek Drive-in, we did okay.” Ric lowered his voice. “I lost my contact lens, deliberately, and found I could, ah, use it to polish up the silver discs on Quicksilver’s collar. I could focus and then bounce the … effect. It’s the weirdest thing, Del. It’s like I can dowse for the dead with my silver eye now. I can find them, raise them, or—since we’ve encountered some really rapacious ones—suck the undead life out of them. Don’t tell Tallgrass. He thinks we just fought hard and got lucky and had a dog with a mystical amount of wolf in him on our side.”
I didn’t know what to make of Ric’s account any more than Tallgrass had.
Mulling it all over, I watched as Quicksilver stepped back to lick his big paws and start swabbing his nose and mouth blood-free. Ben struggled to a sitting position, his hands wiping his unhurt face and running over his equally sound arms and chest.
“It’s a miracle,” he said. “I dreamed I was in the hands of devils with their hellfire pitchforks and then I was touched by an angel with the most beautiful blue eyes in all of heaven.” He gazed at me like a freshman nerd meeting a prom queen.
I was not about to tell Ben his real “angel” needed a major shave and a claw-cut.
“What did those devils want?” Ric asked, using the dazed man’s terms of reference.
“Some old film cans that were found in the basement of the Augusta Theater during renovation.”
“Why would you know right away about what was found there?” I asked.
“I underwrote most of the Augusta Theater restoration. Having another tourist attraction nearby would enhance the Wicked Wild West concept. My backers and I planned to rope in Dodge City’s tourist exhibitions too, make it into an auto-tour ending at Emerald City. You know, from fantastic Kansas history to extraordinary Kansas fantasy. Saloon shoot-outs to a genuine restored movie palace to the biggest Kansas-set move of all time.”
“Ben,” I said, sort of gently, but not too. “I know what was found in the Augusta’s basement, and that you realized its value and skedaddled with it to someone who could get you the CinSims you so desperately needed for the Emerald City.”
Tallgrass watched his friend like an outraged hawk. “You stole something from the civic restoration project? Something valuable?”
Ben shrugged unhappily, still rubbing his restored arms and shoulders. “It was just an old film, Tallgrass. I needed something new for the Emerald City, something modern like the bigwigs in Vegas have. CinSims.”
“Those animated celebrities?” Tallgrass asked with disdain. “We could do that with a wax museum and animatronics.”
Ben shook his head. “Last century, Tallgrass.”
“So you found a big-time buyer?” Ric asked.
“No. That was the beauty of it. He found me. The bigwig was a cinema freak. Showed up. Knew about the old film being found somehow. Already had the perfect Cin-Sims, the only ones available for Emerald City. We made the deal and everyone was happy as clams. Hundreds of thousands of clams.”
“You were cheating the theater restoration project of the proceeds of its property,” Tallgrass said.
“I donated plenty to them,” Ben said, quivering at his friend’s anger. “More than they know what to do with. I tell you, everyone was happy.”
A moment later, a sizzling bolt of lightning shivered down from high above Emerald City.
“Somebody up there sure isn’t,” I said.
Outside the complex, thunder cracked its muscles, strained its sinews to the breaking point, and strode the sky to break its back again and again.
Earth below buckled.
Emerald City towers above trembled.
Inside the massive construction, we mere humans were gripped by the oldest gods, caught tight in the fists of thunder and fixed in the fierce eyes of the lightning.
Ric’s arm clasped me tight. He whispered in my ear. “El Demonio has failed to find this film on two fronts, at the Augusta Theater and in breaking down Ben Hassard. He’s not done. I’m afraid he’s loosed his local accomplices, the weather witches, on Emerald City and us. I think they’re a bigger force here than we guessed. I’m sorry, Del.”
“I’m sorrier,” I was able to shout back into the wind. “Weather witches? Like Sheena at WTCH?”
“More than one TV weather girl is behind effects like this,” Tallgrass huffed in a basso fury. “Wichita has had an entire secret coven of weather witches going back long before the Millennium Revelation, which only empowered them more. They can blackmail and they can be bought. They’ve provided weather cover for El Demonio’s drug drives. Now that his thugs are chupacabra meat and Ric and Quicksilver scorched a crew of his zombies to ashes, he’s bought or forced the weather witches to bring us to our knees until he has what he wants. I can’t believe this is all for a few thousand feet of old film footage.”
Neither could I. Something much bigger must be at stake.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, knowing no one could hear me.
Snow’s Fortress of Solitude was about to be shattered anyway, by … weather witches and … me.
