(Scenes 5-9)
5
“Wait,” Mara said, “I don’t remember that.”
“Really, are you sure?” Kendra said, looking at her eyes. “What do you remember, then?”
“I remember . . .” She paused for a spell, wracking her mind for any details beyond her encounter with Rancaster on the stage, the death of her sister and her parents, her second encounter with him in the old square at the old Rancaster district, her awakening in the underground cavern and her subsequent encounter with Colbie and Celia and Kendra back in the square during the day, and came up with nothing between that and her awakening in Katherine’s private boudoir. She avoided Nico’s gaze, as well, and shook her head, saying, “I’m sorry. I just don’t remember.”
Nico and Kendra traded glances.
“What did she do?” Colbie said.
“She saved our asses,” Kendra said, then turned back to Mara: “And I’m not trying to blow smoke up your ass, either. If it wasn’t for you, Nico and I wouldn’t be here.”
“Really?” Mara said, almost incredulous at Kendra’s words. “How did I do that?”
“I’m not sure how you did it,” Nico said, “but you really pulled through for us.”
“Even if I don’t remember?”
Again Nico and Kendra traded looks, and both girls remained silent for a spell. Nico thought of her sister’s question and said, “How about we do this: Kendra and I will tell everything we know between us, and hopefully you’ll remember something, because we’re both puzzled at the moment.”
“About what?” Nico said. “About Rancaster?”
“No,” Nico said. “It’s something else. This whole time, I’ve been having all of these visions out of nowhere, as if I were getting them from a different source—as if I were at two places at once . . . as if I were . . . in someone else’s thoughts.”
6
By the time Nico leaned against the wall, just around the corner of some disparate hallway in a labyrinth of hallways, she was winded and her legs were burning from the mad sprint. She had no idea where she was in this maddening labyrinth, for she had turned this way and that way, trying to lose her pursuer and getting lost herself. Now here she was, a proverbial sitting duck in a pond, peering into the reflection of one of the mirrors overlooking the adjacent hall beyond the corner, praying that the ‘bambina’ girl won’t find her anytime soon.
She took a look at her gun, clueless of its make and model, though she remembered Rancaster saying that there were ten rounds in the magazine and one already chambered in the barrel.
The heft of it felt awkward in her hands, and she dared not touch the trigger for fear of setting it off somehow and revealing her location to her pursuer, that gun-toting ‘bambina’ girl, the so-called ‘cat’ in this sick game of hide and seek (and kill). Her parents were hardcore pacifists, and despite their differences, they never allowed either of their daughters to even touch a gun, much less owned one. Hence, Nico had no experience at target practice, no clue how to hold it or shoot it without injuring herself, and no clue how she was going to overcome her handicap against someone who knew how to use it.
Then a shot rang out and shattered the mirror she’d been looking through, and the game was afoot.
Nico cursed and sprinted down the hallway, ignoring the burning in her legs and the aching in her bare feet, and turned the corner just as a round grazed off a chunk of wall close to her head. She flew down the hall past several mirrors and doors, running and running and running, but the ‘bambina’ girl rounded the corner just in time, aimed and fired three shots. One of them grazed Nico’s waist whereon she felt the bullet taking off skin, and now she was gritting her teeth and grimacing against the burn of it raising a welt and staining her shirt with new blood.
By now, the burning in her legs slowed her down as she rounded the corner into another hallway, so she headed halfway between one corner and the next where another hallway intersected. She then wheeled on her feet and raised her gun and aimed it at the corner, waiting for her pursuer to come around.
But the ‘bambina’ girl never came.
Nico still waited and waited, breathing raspy breaths, expecting her pursuer to come down with her gun blazing, but the ‘bambina’ girl was a no-show. She lowered her gun and tried to steady her breathing, leaning her back against the wall and letting the muscles in her legs rest. She noticed the blood stain on her shirt and put her hand to her side, feeling the burn of it—
7
That made Kendra grimace at the same time, doubling her over and squinting against the pain, pressing her hand against her side and noticing the blood spreading on her side and what felt like a welt growing there.
“What’s going on?” Mara said.
But Kendra said nothing as she struggled to stay on her feet, breathing hard and feeling the burn in her legs, then noticed a gun manifesting in her hand without her willing it, as a vision of Nico flashed her mind.
“Nico’s in trouble,” Kendra said, wincing in pain and catching another glimpse of Nico.
“Where?”
“I . . .,” she said, trying to make sense of the sensory input invading her body and her mind’s eye, “I’m not sure.”
“Just try, okay?” Mara said. “Take a guess.”
“She’s in a hallway, but I’m not sure where.”
Mara grabbed Kendra’s hand and pulled Kendra towards the water’s edge (“Hey, where are we going?”) and said to Kendra, “To where my sister’s at.”
“But we’re heading to the lake, not—”
“Don’t worry. You’ll see soon enough,” Mara said, leading Kendra down the embankment towards the water’s edge and stepping onto the rippling mirror sheen of the lake, but Kendra pulled back. Mara turned and said, “It’s okay, trust me. Nico and I used to do this a lot when we were little.”
“Really?” Kendra said.
“Yeah,” Mara said, and with her first tenuous steps onto the watery surface, she walked with Mara several paces from the water margin, when both girls stopped in their tracks on spotting Rancaster standing on the water several yards from them. “Christ, you can’t be serious!”
“Oh, but I am, darling,” Rancaster said.
Both girls retreated the way they came, but they ran head-long into a glass barrier just before reaching the embankment, knocking themselves onto their butts and raising wakes to flow and ebb against the barrier.
“And you found Mara Cairns for me, no less,” Rancaster added. “I owe you, darling. I really do!”
“You don’t owe me squat, fuck face,” Kendra said, getting up to her feet, and raised her gun and fired three shot, but none of the bullets had any effect on him beyond the mere shimmering of his form under the moonlit sky. “Damn it! Why can’t I shoot this guy?”
“It’s the moon,” Mara said, getting up herself and keeping her eyes on the man before her and edging her way along Rancaster’s glass barrier, bidding Kendra to follow her lead. Yet when Kendra looked up, she said, “Not in the sky. Look at it in the water.”
And Kendra did, and saw a blood moon reflecting its twin in the sky, and a queasy feeling lurched in her stomach. Sure, Kendra’s heard of the blood moon as a harbinger of the apocalypse, but to see one reflected on the watery sheen in some twisted dream felt too close to home, too close to her father. So she raised her gun and fired off three more shots, but again they had no effect on the man.
“Don’t waste your bullets!” Mara said, and she stretched out her hand and manifested her Kodachi there, while a swirl of psychic waves collected at her feet and churned the water into ripples. “Look at the reflection!”
Kendra looked, but saw no connection and said, “What am I looking for? I don’t see any—”
She stopped. At that moment, the thought of Dracula from Bram Stoker’s novel flashed through Kendra’s mind, and the skin of her neck where Rancaster had cut her began to burn and itch.
“Now do you see?” Mara said.
In response, Kendra aimed her gun at the blood moon on the mirror sheen of the water. If she couldn’t kill Rancaster’s reflection, she’d do the next best thing, and so she fired and emptied the semiautomatic of bullets, forming cracks on the image of the blood moon and cracks on Rancaster’s form as he rushed at both girls in a blur, drawing his blade like a reaper’s scythe. His blade broke in mid-swing, sending three sizable chunks of it scattering against the glass barrier surrounding the lake and sinking below the surface.
Mara charged Rancaster’s double and rammed the blade of her kodachi through his chest, staining the jacket of his white suit in his blood, and said, “Any day now?”
So Kendra manifested a twelve gauge shotgun in her hands, aimed and fired again, sending a blast of water through the air in a spray of mist.
More blood began pouring from the wound in his chest, but he never screamed in agony, but only laughed and said, “The living kill the living, but you cannot kill the dead!”
That’s when Mara’s stance began to falter, and she lost her grip on her kodachi. She then looked down on herself and saw Rancaster’s blade—what was left of it—embedded in her own chest, dripping blood and dissolving in the water.
“Mara!” Kendra screamed.
Mara’s eyes clouded over, and she fell, motionless, into the water and sank below the surface towards the depths of slow-wave sleep, towards the embrace of her dead mother, where she would linger for a time before waking up in Katherine’s boudoir with the Hearn sisters . . .
“You bastard!” Kendra screamed, firing round after round after round at the blood moon on the reflection, sending more watery sprays into the air, till a psychic force flooded her body and kept her from pulling the trigger. “Fuck you!”
“Nah-ah-ah,” Rancaster’s reflection said. “Bad manners for a woman like you.”
But Kendra fought on, gritting her teeth and grimacing against the strength of the man’s psychic control, digging deep for some hidden reserves beyond those of her declining strength.
“The spirit is willing,” he said, “but the flesh is weak,” and he re-sheathed his blade and took up the same stance he held when Kendra encountered him in the garden. “I gave you my word, darling, and you heeded it not just like your father. Like father, like daughter: one blade, and two severed heads. Honestly, I pity your mother for what I’m about to do.”
As Rancaster drew out his blade with a metallic swoosh, like that of a chef’s knife swiped across a wet stone, ready to cleave Kendra’s head from her shoulders, Kendra fought through Rancaster’s psychic grip and struggled to pull the trigger, to lodge one more round though the bull’s eye of the blood moon reflected in the water, thinking of her mother and father, thinking of Colbie and Celia, thinking of Mara and—
8
Nico’s rest was short-lived, for the ‘bambina’ girl had doubled back and stalked the long way around from hallway to hallway and appeared around the next corner before Nico could see her, aimed her gun and fired off three shots.
And each shot passed through the back of Nico’s thigh just above her knee, and she collapsed to the ground as a massive wave of pain burned through her leg like a forest fire, and she bled out a pool of it on the carpet.
Nico caught her pursuer in the corner of her eye, grimacing against the pain, and raised her gun (“Fuck you, you bitch!”) and fired, but nothing happened. She pulled the trigger again, but still nothing happened. “God, damn it, it’s not working!”
At this, the ‘bambina’ girl lowered her aim and strolled up to her and kicked the gun out of Nico’s hand, then picked it up and checked it. “You forgot to switch the thumb safety off,” she said and demonstrated the action in front of Nico, disengaging the lever with her thumb. She then re-engaged the safety and pulled back the hammer and pushed back the slide against her palm and gripped the trigger to reset it with a click. “You don’t know how to use a gun, do you?”
Nico looked away from her but said nothing, pushing herself up against the wall and leaning against it, putting her hand to her bleeding leg and feeling the residual burn of it against her palm, wincing and squinting back tears.
“Have you ever held a gun before?” she said.
Nico shook her head, but then looked at her and said, “Why are you doing this?”
“I’m just waiting for my debut,” the ‘bambina’ said.
“Why are you doing this?” Nico said.
The ‘bambina’ paused for a moment, then said, “I never meant for you to get involved in this. What happened to you and your family was Rancaster’s idea, not mine,” and she aimed her gun at Nico at point-blank range. “Any last words.”
But Nico never broke eye contact and said, “My name is Nico Cairns. What’s your name?”
The ‘bambina’ paused, seeming to linger on her question in a hesitating stretch of continuous moments, and said, “My name is Auna Wenger. Goodbye, Nico Cairns.”
Yet even as she pulled the trigger, a shotgun blast exploded from the mirror above Nico’s head in a showering shards, peppering the opposite wall with buckshot and rattling nearby mirrors until they (too) exploded in their casings and scattered more shards on the floor, causing a chain-reaction of exploding mirrors in all the hallways. For almost a full minute, the floorboards and the wall panels rattled, and the doors shook in their door jambs, as though the entire mansion were shaking to its foundations, when a strong waft of propellant and gunpowder fluttered into the hall.
And situated in the gray haze stood none other than Kendra, who caught sight of Auna Wenger and said, “Wait, who are you?”
Kendra’s appearance had taken Auna by surprise, who cursed at the sight of the shotgun and fled back down the hallway before she had a chance to use it on her.
“Hey, get back here!” Kendra said, and was about to run.
When Nico said, “Let her go, Kendra.”
Kendra turned back and saw the mess that was Nico nursing her leg. “Oh my God, what happened?” And she crouched down and assessed the bleeding on her leg, then tore off several strips from the hem of her Mandarin dress, dwindling it down to the top of her thighs, and wrapped them around the wounds in Nico’s leg, who grimaced against the burning pressure. “Did that chick do this to you?”
Nico nodded. “Her name’s Auna Wenger.”
Kendra looked at her. “She told you her name?”
“Just before she was about to kill me.”
“Wait,” Kendra said. “Aren’t you already dead?”
“It still hurts, damn it!”
Kendra acknowledged her outburst with a grimace, then grabbed Nico’s hand and placed her arm over her shoulder, so Nico could walk without putting any pressure on her wounded leg. All the while, Kendra kept her eyes trained for any sign of Auna Wenger or Rancaster around every corner they turned and every hallway and door they passed. For a time, they walked on like this, their footfalls crackling over scattered shards of mirror, but it was slow going, and Nico was getting slower and slower by the minute.
“Hey,” Kendra said, “you want me to carry you?”
When Nico said yes, Kendra eased her to the ground and told her to lie down. She then held up Nico’s uninjured leg and did a ranger roll, hooking Nico’s leg over Kendra’s shoulder and lifting her into a fireman’s carry and grasping Nico’s hand to make sure she won’t fall from her shoulders.
She then took off at a brisk pace and said, “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. I’ll watch my twelve o’clock and nine o’clock, and you’ll watch my six o’clock and three o’clock.”
Nico deadpanned, wondering if Kendra was a military brat, and said, “I don’t know what you’re saying.”
So Kendra said, slower this time, “I’ll look out ahead of us and to my left side, while you watch out behind me and to my right side. Is that clear enough?”
“Yeah,” she said, then: “Kendra, are you a military buff?”
“Not really,” she said, “but both of my fathers were cops, so maybe a little.”
“I see.”
“Why do you ask?” Kendra said.
“I don’t know,” Nico said, and was about to say more but let it slide after thinking about it.
“You think it’s strange, don’t you?” Kendra said.
“No,” Nico said, and paused another moment, then: “I mean, maybe, but that’s just because I’ve never met anyone who knew how to use guns. It’s kind of scary, but also kind of . . . appealing.”
“What?” Kendra stopped in her tracks and looked at Nico over her shoulder. “Are you into girls or something?”
“Um,” Nico said, blushing but also knowing that it was okay, because it was Kendra. “Maybe a little.”
9
“Wait a minute,” Mara said, and looked from Kendra to Nico, then from Nico to Kendra. “It’s coming back to me, but I’m . . . I’m not one-hundred percent sure, but I think I know why everything’s so weird with your visions.”
At this, Kendra and Nico traded looks.
“I mean,” Mara continued, “I might have an idea what happened.”
“Did you see something?” Colbie said.
“Yeah,” Mara said.
“What did you see?” Kendra said.
“It’s kind of hard to explain,” she said.
“Just tell us what you can,” Nico said, “and we’ll try to figure it out.”
Mara gazed at her sister, Nico, wondering how she'd react to the information she was about to divulge. So she took a deep breath and exhaled, then said, “Okay, I know this is weird, so bear with me, okay? It’s a little hazy, but when I woke up in Katherine’s private bedroom, I . . .”
