Dark Creations: Hell on Earth (Part 5) (16 page)

“Why don’t we all go together?” he asked.  “We could protect each other.”

“No, Kyle,” Amber panicked.  “It’s not safe.  The Hunters will catch your sisters’ scent the moment you open a window, much less step outside.  You guys cannot come with me.  I would never risk it, even if I had something other than a motorcycle.”

Kyle shook his head and glanced between her and his sisters nervously.  Amber, on impulse, reached out and touched his arm.  His body heat burned beneath her fingertips and sent a warm whisper up her arm.

“I don’t want to leave you,” she admitted.  “But if I don’t, we will be in more danger than we are now.”

His face relaxed and his eyes softened.  “You’ll be back though, right?  You’ll keep yourself safe,” he said and placed his hand atop hers.  She felt a blissful rush sweep up her arm and over her entire body this time before coloring her cheeks. 

“I promise I will,” she said and forced herself to look into his eyes despite her deepening blush. 

She slid her hand from beneath his and turned from him.  She raced up the steps, down the hall and out the front door.  She paused on the walkway and listened for the distinct gait of Hunters.  She heard nothing and she saw nothing.  After breathing a quick sigh of relief,
she slid her helmet on, climbed on her bike, started it and took off.

She drove out of Kyle’s neighborhood and past several others.  The sun remained high overhead, but she knew it would soon begin its gradual descent.  She needed to return before that happened.  She’d promised Kyle.

Kyle.  Everything around her reminded her of him.  The warmth of the sun above, the green of treetops and the crystal-blue sky reminded her of his eyes, of his touch.  And the fact that she hadn’t the slightest idea how she was going to save him and his sisters.  Oddly affectionate thoughts of him swirled in her brain with terrifying and horrific scenarios of what would happen if she could not free them from the imprisonment of their basement, from the Hunters.  Pressure built at her temples and forehead.  Her world had gone from frightening and hopeless, to wonderfully confusing and fraught with danger.  She struggled to concentrate on the task ahead.  Terzini had charged her with spying on a farm on the other side of the lake.  Recent activity had put it on his radar.  He had not thought it a threat, but wanted her to survey it, nevertheless.  

After riding for an hour and thoroughly exhausting her troubled mind, she arrived at the border of the property she’d been instructed to evaluate.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she huffed to no one as she looked at a depressing vista.  Tufts of dead grass stretched as far as she could see and surrounded a ramshackle house beside an equally dilapidated barn.  The house had been swallowed up to its first-story windows by tall weeds, and the barn looked as though it would collapse if the wind hurried even to the speed of a breeze.  She would have believed the place to be abandoned were it not for the trailers that had parked along the perimeter of the property. 

The trailers were the only peculiar factor in the entire scene.  Perhaps the sad-looking farm had been sold and the new owners had brought several trailers filled with people to help with its renovation.  That theory sounded more plausible than
any others.  She knew that despite Terzini’s offhandedness when he’d assigned her to inspect the ranch, he was suspicious of it.  Of course, his suspicions were nonsense.  Most of them were.  But if he wanted her to scrutinize a run-down farm, she would.  After all, she preferred missions such as this one over time spent alone with Terzini.

She climbed off her bike and pulled off her helmet then lifted her seat
.  The cushioning had been dug out and she used the space for storage.  She kept a spare uniform in it, as well as binoculars.  She grabbed the small pair of binoculars and peered through them.  All she saw was stretch after stretch of barren land.  She was about to drop her binoculars back in her storage compartment when a man milling about the property caught her attention.

Armed with a rifle that was slung over his shoulder with a leather strap and dressed in long underwear with shorts overtop them, the man wandered along the rickety wooden fence that marked the property line.  He did not look like a farmer.  And he certainly did not look fit enough to perform hard labor.  She turned her head slightly and intensified the magnification of her lenses.  She spotted three more men, all carrying weapons, and all looking as disheveled as the first.  She wondered what they could be up to.  Perhaps a circus was setting up a tent nearby.  Either way, she would have to report it to Lord Terzini.  Having him scramble to dispatch more resources
to the camp would likely create a more favorable environment for Kyle and his sisters to escape. 

Amber turned from the farm and pulled her cell phone from her pocket.  She started to dial but was distracted by the sound of approaching cars.  A pair of engines rumbled in the distance.  They had not yet made their way onto the property, but would soon.  She dropped her phone back in her pocket and raised her binoculars to her eyes once again.  Staring through the lenses, she watched as two Jeep Wranglers rumbled to a stop outside the barn.  Two men stepped out of the first, and then another pair climbed out of the second. 

She turned the magnification dial as far to the left as it would go and the faces of the men came into focus.  Her grip on her binoculars slackened, shock and disbelief weakening it, and she nearly dropped them when she realized who she was seeing.  Gabriel James, Dr. Terzini’s original prototype for their kind, walked with the others toward the barn house.  She’d heard all about Gabriel.  He was a cautionary tale, of course.  He’d been the only creation to develop feeling despite having the same modifications made to his DNA as the rest of them had.  He’d evolved, and lived to enjoy his evolution.  Every member had been given specific orders to kill Gabriel, if ever they saw him, on sight, no permission necessary. 

Amber would not kill him, though.  She envied him.  She needed him.  He would know how to help Kyle and his sisters.  And he would know how to end Lord Terzni’s reign.  She put her binoculars away and retrieved her cell phone.  She dialed Terzini’s direct line, as she’d been told to do.

“Lord Terzini,” she said when he’d answered.  “I am at the sight you sent me to.”

“And?” he asked impatiently.

“There’s nothing here,” she lied, “Just a run-down farmhouse and a barn.  It looks like people are here to tear it down though, workers.”

“Leave them and return to town.  The workers will die soon enough.  I will not waste my resources picking off laborers who likely need help tying their shoes each morning,” he said and laughed cruelly at his own joke. 

She found nothing funny about what he’d said.  And he would not see the humor in his circumstances when he learned that Gabriel James lived just across the lake. 

A slow smile spread across Amber Herald’s lips.  She no longer felt scared and desperate, and she no longer felt confused.  A new emotion filled her heart, one she never imagined she’d feel: hope. 

Chapter 13

Melissa clutched a steaming cup of coffee between both hands and was about to bring it to her lips when the sound of tires crunching over gravel startled her.  She set it down on the haystack she’d been leaning against and walked around the corner of the barn.  A black Jeep Wrangler, Jack’s Wrangler, had just pulled onto the property and was making its way up the driveway followed by another silver vehicle nearly identical to the one Jack drove.  She glimpsed Gabriel in the passenger seat and her heart immediately began its weird flutter.  All she wanted to hear him say was that his trip with Jack and the other pair of men they’d left with had been a waste of time, though intuition told her otherwise.  The fact remained that she wanted to leave.  She wanted to put Terzini and Ed and his militia camp barn behind her for good.  But when the car rumbled to a stop in front of the barn feet from where she stood, she saw Gabriel’s face and knew something was wrong,
very
wrong, and that putting Ed and the others behind her was probably not going to happen anytime soon.  She watched as Gabriel climbed out, took a long drink of his bottled water then slammed it to the ground angrily.  She rarely saw him angry and watched in silent surprise as he paced for a few seconds, alternating between resting his hands on his hip and interlacing his fingers behind his head.  His frustration was tangible, and when his gaze finally met hers, Melissa felt her heart drop.  She knew that they wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon.

She brushed past Jack and the other men she barely recognized and rushed over to Gabriel.  “What is it, Gabriel?  What’s wrong?” she asked him.

He did not answer her right away.  He took a deep breath and stared at her with a tormented look on his face.

“Talk to me,” she said
gently.  “You’re scaring me.”

“It’s bad, Melissa,” he said and his eyes softened slightly.

“How bad?” she asked but didn’t feel confident she wanted to know the answer.

“It’s exactly what they said it was,” he said tightly.  “Terzini is back and he has slaughtered thousands of people.”

“W-what?” she spluttered and felt as if the air had been knocked from her lungs.  “How do you know?”

“I just saw three of his new, I don’t know what to even call them,” he threw his hands up in exasperation.  “They’re
monsters. 
That’s the only word that comes to mind because that’s exactly what they look like, huge, vicious monsters.” 

Both of Melissa’s hands went to her mouth as she gasped.

“These monsters are patrolling the next town over, Taft,” he spat.

“What?  Monsters?” Melissa was having trouble breathing.  “No, oh
God, no,” she struggled and felt her stomach roll fiercely as a violent wave of nausea seized her.  “How do you know it was him?” She could not believe she’d just asked such an inane question, but was grasping at straws.  Of course it was Terzini, only someone as twisted as he would create monsters.

“There isn’t another person on Earth capable of creating anything like them,” Gabriel said as if he’d read her mind.

“Oh my God,” she was all she could manage.

“With his monsters’ help, he has managed to wipe out two towns.  Th
ousands are dead and it’s my damn fault!” he raised his voice and was almost shouting.

“Gabriel, calm down,
please
,” she pleaded.  It seemed absurd, her trying to calm him when she felt as though the entire world had effectively screeched to a halt, panic replacing every other emotion she was capable of experiencing.  Yet, she was; she was actually trying to calm him.  “It’s not your fault,” she continued.  “We thought he was dead.  How were we supposed to know he’d cloned himself?” she said.

“I’m talking about three years ago, before I left Harbingers Falls the first time.  I had a chance to kill him then.  I could have ended it all back then.  But I couldn’t.  I couldn’t do it.”  Gabriel gripped his head in his hands.  “And now so many are dead, because of me,” he continued.  “If I had done it then, three years ago, all those people would be alive.  Instead, thousands are dead – women, children, whole families – gone because I was too weak to do what I knew had to be done.”

Melissa struggled to wrap her mind around the massive mound of guilt Gabriel had placed on himself.  He faulted himself for every death.  Pain twisted in her core,
his
pain.  His remorse was more profound than she had imagined, and undue.

“Gabriel, you couldn’t have anticipated this.  No one could have,” she tried.  “What he’s doing now, it’s worse than his twisted original plan.  It’s worse than anything we could have
envisioned.”

Gabriel’s hands dropped from his head and fell slack at his sides.  He lowered his chin to his chest, his head bowed by shame so
taxing he could not lift it when he asked, “Where is everyone?  I have to break the bad news to them.”

“I’ll go get them,” she said but not before wrapping her arms around Gabriel’s waist.  She did not know what to say to him, how to help him.  She loved him.  His pain was her pain, his guilt, her guilt.  He barely returned her hug and merely shifted his hands to her hips and left them there limply.  With her cheek against his chest, she whispered, “It’s not your fault.”  He did not respond and suddenly the need to pull him to her tighter, to comfort him
, intensified.  But she knew she had to leave him, and that she needed to gather the rest of their group. 

Unwillingly, she released him from her hold and started toward Ed’s house to get the others.  She heard Alexandra’s voice and turned to see that she and Yoshi had just left the main house.  They sauntered slowly, as if they didn’t have a care in the world.  Their laid-back pace irritated Melissa for reasons she could not quite explain.  She began jogging in their direction.

When finally Alexandra and Yoshi were in earshot, she waved her arm for them to hurry.  Alexandra gestured to her with her middle finger, only Melissa found no humor in it.  “Cut the crap and get over here!” she called out.

“All right, all right, jeez!  I don’t know what you’re getting your panties in a wad about!” Alexandra grumped snippily.

“Where’s Daniella?” Melissa asked and had closed the distance between them.  She did not bother to acknowledge Alexandra’s panty comment.

“How the fuck should I know?” Alexandra said huffily.

“Look Alex, I’m not in the mood for your shit right now,” Melissa snapped. “Go get them.”

Ordinarily, Alexandra’s hot temper would have gotten the better of her and she would have argued with Melissa.  But this time, she did not.  Perhaps it had been the tone of voice she had used or the frazzled look in her eye that had warned Alexandra not to fight back.  Melissa would never know.

“All right already, I’ll go get them,” Alexandra said without her usual bite. 

“Thank you,” Melissa said and begged with her eyes for her friend to forgive the sharp tone she’d used. 

She watched as Alexandra ran off toward the main house then walked with Yoshi to where Gabriel waited.  Yoshi did not greet Gabriel verbally.  He simply looked at Gabriel and furrowed his brow then nodded as if to ask what was going on.  Gabriel closed his eyes and shook his head.

“We aren’t going anywhere, are we?” Yoshi asked.

“Nah, man.  We have some real problems,” Gabriel answered just as Alexandra was returning with Daniella and Ryan in tow.

“Now,” Alexandra said as she caught her breath.  “Tell us what’s going on.  What has you guys so rattled?”

Gabriel stared at the ground for a long moment then looked up at them.  His eyes were glassy, his expression sorrowful.  “It’s bad, guys.  I’m not going to lie to you.  What’s going on here is the stuff of nightmares.  From what I saw, it’s everything Jack said it was, maybe even worse.  I have a feeling things are going to get bad, really bad.  I think all of you should head back to Harbingers Falls.  I have to be here, but you guys don’t.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Gabriel.  I have your back to the end, you know that,” Yoshi said and turned to Ryan. “Ryan, take the girls with you and get the hell out of here before it’s too late.”

Melissa could not believe her ears.  Gabriel was trying to send her home.  This subject had been discussed before and she had made it clear to him that she would never leave him again, and he had agreed.  Now, however, the terms of their agreement seemed to be in question.  She would not allow that to happen.

Between Terzini’s resurrection and the creatures he’d created which included monsters, and Gabriel’s attempt to send her back to Harbingers Falls, Melissa felt her anxiety soar.  Her lungs felt as if they’d squeezed the air from them and refused to fill again.  She felt faint.  Suddenly, the voices around her took on a muffled quality as though she was hearing them from under water.  They rose considerably to a near roar
until the sound of another engine yanked her from her watery abyss.  She inhaled sharply and, though still woozy, found her voice.  “We have already gone over this,” she said sharply.  “I am not going anywhere.  I’m staying with you,” Melissa said

“That’s right!” Alexandra chimed in.  “So don’t go getting any ideas about sending us packing.  I’m with Yoshi, and we’re all in this shit together.”

Melissa felt certain Gabriel would have protested had it not been for the sound of a vehicle approaching rapidly.

“You guys are going to need my help too,” Ryan said, though Melissa doubted Gabriel had even heard him.

“What the hell?” Jack called out and everyone turned to see what he was looking at.

An engine whined in the distance.  Only two vehicles had left the compound.  No one knew about Jack’s militia formation apart from the people present.  The sound they were hearing was that of another vehicle, someone uninvited, an intruder.

Hands immediately slid to weapons all around her.  Each of the men on the compound that held a gun drew it and assumed the demeanor of shooting first and asking questions later.  Gabriel reached out his hand to her.  When she reached back, she saw that her hands trembled violently, as violently as her insides did. 

“Go inside the barn,” he told her.  “Quick!”

“I’m not leaving you,” she said firmly and meant it.

His lips tightened crossly before a look of defeat settled over him. 

“Fine,” he said as a motorcycle came into sight. 

It raced up the driveway kicking up gravel in its wake and stopped behind the Wranglers.  The rider climbed from the bike and Melissa immediately saw that it was a female who’d driven it.  Tall and sleek and in form-fitting, military-type clothing that hugged her perfect hourglass figure, the woman pulled her helmet from her head and Melissa swore she heard a collective gasp from the men who’d had her in their crosshairs seconds earlier.

Long, blonde hair spilled like liquid gold down past her shoulders to the middle of her back.  A flaxen curtain veiled one eye seductively, accenting her pert nose and full lips.  She looked like a living breathing Barbie doll, complete with brilliant blue eyes.  She strode confidently past Jack and Joe and several other men whose mouths hung agape.  As she did, her body swayed and moved with every step.  The thick material did little conceal the movement of her ample bosom.  Melissa felt her cheeks burn and she began to fidget and pull at the hem of her own top uncomfortably.  Her eyes dropped, scanning her chest and it became painfully obvious that the fitted T shirt she wore had not been filled as the button-down shirt the rider wore.  Not that she’d needed to double-check by looking; any fool could tell. 

“Who’s that bitch?” Alexandra hissed in her ear.

Melissa turned to her friend and in her peripheral view saw that both Yoshi and Ryan stood, mesmerized by the sexy stranger.  Yoshi’s gawking was not lost on Alexandra who promptly tapped the back of his head with her hand.

“What’re you looking at?” Alexandra asked Yoshi heatedly. 

Melissa considered looking at Gabriel, to see if he was watching the woman with the same wide-eyed fascination, but the thought of worsening the already sick feeling in her stomach did not appeal to her in the least.  She assumed he was.  After all, why wouldn’t he be?  The mystery rider was stunning. 

The
girl marched up to Gabriel, and the nausea Melissa had felt worsened tenfold. “Gabriel James,” she exclaimed and smiled broadly to reveal even, white teeth.  “I can’t believe you’re here!  What’re you doing here?”  She reached out both hands to Gabriel as if she were going to hug him, but placed them, instead, on his forearms and gripped them as though they were old friends.  Melissa flinched involuntarily. 

“Who are you?  How do you know Gabriel?” she shocked herself by asking.

The woman did not bother to look at her.  She seemed unable to tear her eyes from Gabriel.  “We all know who Gabriel is,” she gushed.  “I am Amber, Amber Herald.  And I need to speak with you, privately, if possible.”

“
There’s no way you are leaving that whore alone with him,” Alexandra whispered in her ear again.

“Shh!” Melissa turned on her friend angrily.

“Anything you have to say, you can say in front of my friends,” Gabriel said.

Melissa wanted to interject and say, “
And his fiancée!
” but reconsidered.  She hoped he’d add it on his own.  When he didn’t, her insides prickled, her heart in particular, the sting of hurt and jealousy combining.

“Okay,” Amber said and scanned the group suspiciously.  “In front of your friends it is.”

Amber took a deep breath and Melissa moved closer to Gabriel, hoping he’d hold her hand or put his arm around her, something,
anything
to show he was with her, that they were a couple.  When he made no move to acknowledge her, the pain in her chest intensified.

“As I said before, I’m Amber Herald, and I need your help,” Amber began speaking so quickly, Melissa had to concentrate to keep up.  “There is a boy, a man really, he’s eighteen, and he’s trapped i
n his house with his eight-year-old sisters.  My team and I stormed it in the morning.  His parents were killed and they were about to kill him and his twin sisters, too, but I,” she tried to continue but was interrupted.

“Wait, what?” Gabriel said and folded his arms across his chest.  “Let me get this straight, you took a team of people into this guy’s house, killed his parents then tried to kill him and his sisters, and now you want my help to what, kill the three of them?  You’re out of your mind!  I suggest you get the hell of
f this property before we open fire,” he growled. 

Gabriel seemed genuinely livid and a small part of Melissa was relieved.

“No, no,” Amber backpedaled.  “I led my team because I had to.”

“Oh.  You had to.  Well, that explains everything.  Killing is okay, as long as you have to do it,” Gabriel said sarcastically in a tone of voice Melissa had never heard him use.  “And what did you mean before when you said ‘we all know who you are?’  What does that even mean?”

“You misunderstood me, Gabriel.”

“Oh, I think I understood you just fine,” he cut her off antagonistically. 

“No, you’re not letting me explain, or maybe I’m doing a terrible job of it,” Amber said and seemed flustered.  “I’m
like you
,” she said and leaned in close.  She’d spoken with such intimacy it made Melissa’s blood boil.  The other men did not pick up on what she’d said or how she’d said it.  They were too busy admiring her assets to give a damn what she was saying.  But Melissa certainly was.

“Like me,” Gabriel said and looked surprised. 

“Lord Terzini created me to serve him,” Amber said and her lower lip quivered.  “I am both a trained killer, and a source of his
pleasures
.  Because of that, he created me with emotions.  He wanted me to be grateful.”

“Pleasures? 
Lord
Terzini?” Gabriel asked genuinely perplexed.

“Yes, pleasures.  Lord Terzini, the clone of Dr. Franklin Terzini, has
needs
that his predecessor never had, and for almost a year now, I have been who he sends for to satisfy his
needs
.”

“Oh,” Gabriel said solemnly.

The world felt like it had tilted on its axis and everything had shifted along with it.  Gabriel went from confrontational and prepared to kick Amber off Ed’s property to being putty in her hands.  Amber was both Terzini’s sex slave and executioner, yet somehow, she’d managed to garner her fiancée’s sympathy.  Melissa wanted to scream.

“And I don’t want help killing Kyle and his sisters.  I need you to help them escape.  Hunters have encircled the house they’re hiding out in.  They are in the basement where it’s harder for their scent to be picked up, but they can’t stay there forever.  It’s only a matter of time before the Hunters catch it.  And then,” Amber let her words hang in the air and her eyes filled with tears.  Gabriel seemed moved by her words, by her emotion.  Melissa worried the coffee she’d sipped earlier would spew from her stomach at any second.