Carlotta and the Krius Scepter (Carlotta Series Book 1) (13 page)

22.
              
Brian

‘She’s done it to me again,
’ I acknowledged to myself as I glanced back down the hill of tailings.
‘Got me running off doing her bidding and not what I wanted to do.’
Carlotta was out of sight, probably halfway to the hut to get changed. I sighed as I continued the climb to the top of the hill. I didn’t know why she’d had such an effect on me, but it had been that way even before the sex. Now that I knew her, I couldn’t imagine my life without her in it. She called out to me in ways I didn’t understand.

I hadn’t told Carlotta what Mom’s reaction had been when I told her I was going back to confront the Mafia. The police had informed Mom that I was probably dead and the body would turn up eventually, so when I’d walked into our apartment this morning she’d been almost hysterical with relief. No sooner had she calmed down than I got her going again by telling her about my rescue mission. Mom just didn’t see it the way I did and wanted to call in the police. I said no.

It didn’t matter to me that Carlotta was older than the mountains, she looked like a girl and she acted like one too, okay I will admit that she was a very bossy self-centered girl, but that was close enough for me. I wanted her and I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. Thinking about her gave me a painful erection, which made it difficult to climb down through the rubble. I took some deep breaths and thought about a teacher I particularly disliked and that did the trick. I adjusted my boxers.

The moon shone on me and I felt more alive than I’ve ever done. One thing you could say about Carlotta was that life was never dull around her. Well, not in the two days I’d known her. The rest of my life might be very short given the trouble we were in, but I could cope with it. This was where I was meant to be.

Looking down the hill, I saw that the other car had arrived.
The Don
and his men would be ready to move as soon as I got down to them. My night vision made it easy to see in the dark even though I couldn’t tell the color of things; it was like a black and white movie down there. I noticed almost at once that something was wrong. There was no sign of movement around the cars. Though I couldn’t be sure, the men weren’t waiting inside them, and I was certain that none of them stood outside. It just didn’t feel right.

I looked at my watch. It was nearly midnight. We were going to be late for Carlotta’s party. Even though that made me feel more anxious, I decided to move with caution. I was more than fed up with being caught and covered in silver every five minutes. That stuff hurt.

When I reached the bottom of the hill, I turned away from the two silent cars. It’s a great advantage being able to see in the dark and I’m not sure how other people, by which I mean humans, manage. I remember going to parties where the other kids groped about and fell over chairs while I could still see what was going on as clear as day. Weird, though it did have the advantage that I always won the games.

A line of bushes lay ahead. I was about to cut in front of them when I saw a flash of moonlight on metal. If someone was out here with a weapon, they would certainly be using night vision equipment, which meant they must have already seen me.

I somersaulted high into the air and heard the swish of paint balls flying through the air below me. My summersault brought me down on top of the bushes. The two men beneath me discovered to their cost that trying to aim a gun in the dark in the middle of a bush isn’t easy. Shots flew wide as I landed in branches that bent and broke beneath me. The men were inches away from me throwing punches in my general direction. I wasn’t sure what to do so I punched both men, rapid jabs using all my strength. The men flew back and fell to the ground. They didn’t get up.

I struggled to get free from the bush, breaking off branches and throwing them away. I was too panicked to think clearly. The noise I was making was loud enough to wake the dead, or at least get them to roll over. As soon as I managed to free myself, I dove for the nearest cover and waited. My breathing was so loud I couldn’t hear anything else. I rolled over, convinced that someone stood over me, but there was nothing there but night sky.

It took me ages to get my breathing under control. Despite all the noise, I concluded that no one was coming after me. Getting up, I checked on the men who had shot at me, slightly surprised that they weren’t making any noise.

Blood looks black in moonlight, kind of like melted tar on the road; it glistens and looks thick and turgid. The men’s faces were covered in dark unmoving pools of it. It took me a few seconds to see that their faces were pushed in. I’d caved in their skulls with my fists.

Vomiting isn’t much fun. It took me a long time to retch my guts out and build up the courage to look at the men again. I didn’t think these men worked for
The Don
, but it was only my opinion based on the clothes they wore. Not even their mothers could have identified them from their faces.

Carlotta! What about Carlotta?

She was expecting us to create a diversion. My watch read quarter past midnight and for a moment I thought that it must be wrong. Surely the fight and everything else had taken much longer than a few minutes?

The Don
and his men must have been caught by Regis. Maybe the mine had surveillance equipment and they watched us drive past. In any case,
The Don
and his men were gone and there was only me on my own. There wasn’t much I could do, unless…?

It took more courage than I thought I had left to walk up to the cars. At every step I expected to go down in a hailstorm of paintballs or bullets. I reached
The Don’s
limo and cracked open the boot. It was full of weapons I’d seen earlier, including the rocket launchers. Maybe I could do something to help Carlotta after all.

Scrabbling around the boot, I found the duct tape I was looking for. I’d watched enough gangster movies to know that after a gun, duct tape was the Mafia’s best friend. I taped the weapons together into a large bundle, which wasn’t as easy as it sounds. Duct tape has ways of fighting back and half the strips I tore ended up sticking to itself or to me.

I made another bundle out of the stuff in the other car. They had sticks of dynamite in a small box, and I took the box after checking I had my lighter on me.

I stared at the heavy bundles of weaponry and wondered if I was being logical. It didn’t seem reasonable that one guy could carry so much stuff while climbing a hill. I would never have attempted it before meeting Carlotta, but she had a way of making the impossible seem normal. My watch said quarter to one. I was nearly an hour late with the diversion.

Taking a deep breath, I picked up the bundles. They were heavy, but I thought I could handle them. I began to walk to the hill, by the time I was a few feet up the rubble I was running. My arms ached with the strain, but my legs felt fine. Loose rubble slid below my feet and I was making a lot of noise, but I was sure getting up that hill.

Just before I reached the top, I put the bundles down. One slid back down the hill and I scrabbled after it. When I’d got that sorted, I cautiously peered over the top of the hill and down at the buildings below.

The first place I looked was the mine entrance. Its massive doors were still open and I sighed with relief. That meant that Carlotta wasn’t trapped inside, at least not yet.

There was a lot of activity going on outside a two-storey building near the centre of the site. It was too far away to see much more than it involved a number of men. Then I remembered that one of the rifles had a telescopic sight.

Have you ever tried to undo duct tape without a knife? Several frustrating minutes later, I lined up the rifle on the scene below and took a look.

The Don
and his men stood with their hands on their heads looking away from me. Mafia suits stood out clearly in the gun-sight and there was no mistaking
The Don
anyway. He was talking animatedly to someone.

I shifted the sight a fraction and saw Regis. My finger flew to the trigger of the gun almost without conscious thought and I tugged at it impatiently. It didn’t move. The damned gun had a safety catch. By the time I’d figured it out, loaded the chamber and got the gun in position, Regis was gone. T
he Don
and his men stood in a dejected group in front of the building surrounded by men with guns.

I cursed. If Regis was dead, the threat to Carlotta would be gone and nobody else wanted that stupid box or the Krius thing. I’d missed my chance and I might never get another.

It took me some time to get all the guns and rocket launchers lined up along the ridge. I made sure all the safety catches were off and that the launchers were powered up. It was lucky that the launchers had their operating instructions printed on them along with little diagrams so simple a child could follow. The manufacturers obviously didn’t have a high opinion of the people using their kit.

My watch read half past one. Surely, Carlotta must be out of the mine by now? Well, she had wanted a diversion and I was going to give her the best damned diversion I could.

The weapons were set up on the ridge up a few yards apart from each other. The line stretched a surprisingly long way. I planned to move down the line firing each weapon in turn. At the very least, it would confuse Regis as to how many people were up here.

The first weapon was one of the rocket launchers. I picked it up and flipped up the LCD screen. It informed me that the weapon was fully primed and that I should aligned the target in the crosshairs and hold the trigger down. It took me a few seconds to line up the mine entrance with the little crosshair in the centre of the screen. Offering up a silent prayer of thanks to the makers of video games who had taught me how to get this far. I pressed the fire button.

23.
              
Battle

As soon as we were sitting in the cart the need for sexual release burst through the temporary barriers I’d erected. Bad word to use,
erected
. I found myself looking at the man driving the cart and wondering how he’d perform. Even Dr Philips was beginning to look attractive.

I took the box off the back of the cart and held it on my lap, one of its legs thrust hard between mine. The cold metal brought some relief. More than I’d expected. For the Fey, this need after shifting was always a problem. The desire for sex after coming back to ourselves was built into us from the toes up. Normally, I’d have found a dark corner and done something about it, but that wasn’t a thing to do in front of an audience.

“What exactly are you?” Dr Philips asked, curiosity shining in her eyes.

“The same as your boss, Regis.”

A look of disgust flittered across her face. “When he changed back from the dog he raped two of my colleagues. He was more like an animal in his human form than he was as the dog creature.”

“Werewolf,” I corrected absently. The box was rocking on my lap and I stopped it before she saw what I was doing with it. “He couldn’t help himself. It’s who we are.”

“But you shifted just now and you didn’t…”

‘Not for lack of a desire,’
I thought and pulled the box harder against my sex. Maybe it was some strange part of the box’s magic, but the lust was receding. I couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.

“I’m older. I have more self control,” I lied. She looked at me skeptically, as well she might.

“And by the way, there’s no such thing as a werewolf, young lady.”

I looked at her sour face and wondered if it softened after sex. Thinking that was a mistake and I hugged the box again. I decided to answer her to take my mind off the subject.

“You saw one with your own eyes and you say that? Humans are capable of amazing levels of self deception.” Maybe an intellectual discussion would calm me down. It was worth a try.

“And what did you become? A vampire, I suppose?”

I shook my head in disgust. What was the point? She took my headshake as a negation to her question.

“At least you’re not stupid enough to try that lie on me.” She snorted and I wondered if our conversation was over. But it seemed there was something else she wanted to pursue.

“You said they scratched your face off that box. What did they use, a titanium grinder?”

“Probably an ordinary bronze knife. The trick to it is not what was used, but who wields the knife.”

Dr Philips pursed her lips as if to launch another put-down, but seemed to change her mind at the last moment. “It’s impervious to everything we’ve tried, extraordinary for a box from the dawn of civilization. But Mr. Regis was right about one thing. There’s something in the base of it.”

That got my attention. I recalled what she’d told Regis in the lab. “You said it couldn’t be scanned.”

“Not with X-rays or Magnetic Resonance, but we got something using Sonics when we cranked the power high enough. There’s a dark shape running front to back down the middle of it.”

“How many people know that?” Death lay nestled in my question and I readied myself to execute her.

Dr Philips seemed unaware of my change of tone. “I couldn’t tell you. By now my techs will have posted the results onto the company intranet. Even Mr. Regis may know.”

I settle back in my seat. She was more useful alive for now. It’s difficult to get answers from a corpse.

“That’s probably just how it was made, a thicker strip of bronze.”

She shook her head. “We’ve taken exact measurements, it can’t be that. But we can’t rule out a different mix of bronze though. Perhaps a scrap of older bronze cast before the box and used to bulk out its base.”

“Has Regis told you what he’s looking for?”

“
Mister
Regis believes that something of scientific importance lies in the box. I didn’t believe him until you touched it. Are you really over four thousand years old?”

I laughed. “Mister Regis is also over four thousand years old. Didn’t he tell you?”

She ignored my baiting and came straight to the point.

“You know what’s in the box.” It wasn’t a question.

“There’s nothing in the box.” Goebbels once told me that if you repeat a lie often enough everyone would come to believe it was true. Stupid
Nazi
, it has never worked for me and it wasn’t working now. I decided on another tack. “Suppose there is something in the box. What would you conclude about its nature?”

Dr Philips looked thoughtful. “Anything that someone has gone to this much trouble to hide must be very important, or very dangerous.”

“Perhaps it’s something that should best stay hidden?”

She frowned and I could almost see the cogs spinning in her head as she sat back in her seat to think about it. I breathed a sigh of relief. If I could turn her, maybe I wouldn’t need to kill her after all.

The journey back had been slower than the one out. Probably because it was uphill and we had a lot more weight on the cart. The place was deserted. A glance at my watch showed it was one twenty two. I couldn’t remember when I’d ever got my timings off by this much. Had my diversion come and gone while I was too deep in the mine to hear? I tied up Dr Philips and the driver, being careful to gag them so they couldn’t scream and went to investigate.

The receptionist was still in her glass death trap untouched by rockets or small arms fire. She was watching a movie on her monitor and wore ear pieces. It must be dull on the late shift. It also meant that she hadn’t heard my approach. I tried the door to her room and discovered it locked. One thing was for certain, I couldn’t have her raising the alarm, especially as my diversion appeared to have been cancelled.

I kicked the door in and stepped towards her. She didn’t notice. At the last moment, I stopped my move to break her neck, replacing it with a tug at her pony tail. She screamed as I pulled her out of the room. I was frog-marching her back to the cart when the world exploded behind me.

We were flung along the corridor by the force of the blast, the girl knocked unconscious when I landed on top of her. On the positive side for her, my body protected her from the debris that came with the blast. I pulled a couple of small pieces of glass out of my arms, which were less well protected than the rest of me. I appeared to be uninjured.

I left the girl on the floor and went back for the box. Dr Philips and the driver stared at me in shock; the blast had pushed them all the way back to the carts.

“You’ll probably be safe here,” I said cheerfully. My voice sounded strange to my battered eardrums. Getting caught in explosions was becoming a habit.

The girl groaned as I ran passed her. I mentally ticked a +1 on my list of people I’d saved from death as opposed to killing them; still some way to go to break even though.

Standing in the mine entrance, I stared out at chaos.
The Don’s
men were firing from the hill, but seemed to be restricting their fire. It was almost as if they were taking it in turns. A rocket blast that came close to vaporizing a toilet block was a case in point. None of the other men fired their weapons for several seconds before and after it launched.

There also seemed to be an internal battle going on between buildings on the road through the site. Machine gun fire from one side was being met by single gunshots from the other. It didn’t make any sense. Why would anybody from my side be there?

My route to the hopper would take me right past the gunfight. I ran from building to building and shadow to shadow while bullets flew randomly over my head. I’d taken
The Don’s
men to be pro’s who would have concentrated fire on specific buildings, but it was amateur night out here.

I slid round the back of the building the machine-gunners were firing at and ran straight into Mike who was holding a piece of two by four.

“You got fed up with using your gun?” I asked.

Mike lowered his piece of wood. “We got caught by Regis. All of us. When the rocket hit the mine, we ran for it. We only got one gun. Since it ain’t you up there doing all the firing it must be the kid.”

The lust I thought I’d conquered came back in a wave of warmth. Brian had come through for me. I’d even forgive him the lack of adequate targeting, well maybe after I’d spanked him. We hadn’t tried that yet. I pulled my thoughts off sex with an effort.

“Maybe I could get Brian to throw down a few weapons.”

Mike gave me a look, the kind that says you’re stupid. “He ain’t Superman, lady.”

Actually, he was pretty close to one and it was all downhill. All he had to do was throw them out far enough and gravity would do the rest. It might be best if I caught them though. It was a better option than trying to climb up the hill with only one untrained person at the top providing covering fire. Also, I had cover in the form of the building we were standing behind.

I stood away from the shadow of the building and looked up the hill.

“OY, BRIAN!”

The firing from above stopped and I waved my arms. I caught a movement that could have been a response.

“What’s goin’ on?”

The Don
had come to join us, what fun.

“Does this mean you’ve left Vinnie with your only gun?” I asked semi-seriously.

“Pat has the gun. He’s our best shot.”

I turned back to Brian. “THROW US SOME WEAPONS.”

There was no response for what seemed like ages. Then there was a burst of machine gun fire from across the street and I saw a dark shape hurtling down towards us. I ran to catch whatever it was and only at the last second did how realize just how big it was.

I put up my hands to catch the package and was smashed to the ground. The world went away.

-

Rough hands pulled me to my feet and shook me. I had bruises and scratches everywhere.

“Don’t you know no better than to get under a bundle of falling guns?”
The Don
asked. His tone suggested he was feeling pleased about things.

I managed to get my eyes to focus and saw
The Don’s
men ripping duct tape off weapons. Despite their recent journey, they all looked to be in excellent condition, no doubt a result of landing on top of something soft.

There was sporadic fire coming from the top of the hill. Brian was apparently content to keep Peleus’ men pinned down while we sorted ourselves out. Rapid bursts of machine gun fire from at least three places across the street suggested Brian wasn’t having it entirely his own way.

Mike grinned at me. “We owe your boyfriend one.” He cradled a large caliber machine gun in his hands like a child and there was something feral about his grin. The other men followed him as he made his way back to the fight.

I stayed where I was with my back to the building and my hands on the box as
The Don’s
men did what they did best. Ten minutes later, I heard a shout of, “We surrender.”

Brian stood up at the top of the hill and began to bounce his way down waving a rifle over his head. I’ve noticed this about American boys; they all seem to be born with an affinity for guns. I waited until he arrived before I stepped around the building to see what
The Don
had achieved.

Peleus and his men stood with their hands in the air, surrounded by
The Don’s
hoods. It seemed that in the real world, insane superman versus the American Mafia was no contest at all.

The Don
had lit another cigar. He turned to me and waved it at the captured men.

“Whadya want we should do with these?”

“They can all go free as soon as I’ve killed Regis,” I replied.
The Don
nodded and Vinnie handed me his gun.

“You tried to kill me once before,” Peleus said imperiously. I could see insanity in his eyes. “Will you not grant me trial by combat as is my right as once and future King?”

There was a strange throbbing noise that was getting louder. Something was approaching us fast and I had a deep suspicion I knew who and what it was.