Post by StoryGirl83 on Jan 20, 2014 21:38:19 GMT -5
Chapter Twenty-Eight - Cold, Dark Nothing
10:49 AM (12:49 PM in Cortland)
Ladybug starred at the empty circle of candles where moments before Franki's many greats grandfather had stood. "I'm not sure what to do with that info."
Franki sighed. "I'm not either," her lyrical voice declared.
"If we were looking for a way to push it off for another hundred and thirty years this would be useful," Ladybug added looking at the paper with the spell they had copied from Kirkland Owens' memory along with the various items he had used to aid in casting it.
"Might the description of the altar used be helpful?"
Ladybug nodded. "It might. The items used in a spell are as important as the words themselves. I just don't know how to use them. My mom was the spell caster in her family and I never could concentrate long enough to really learn anything.
Franki scowled. "Too bad you can't convince one of those warlocks to help you."
Ladybug snorted. “As if that's going to happen. They went to the bottom of the ocean to retrieve the dead body of a toddler and placed that body on an altar where they then laid her mother's living body and killed her mother. What kind of person does that and feels remorse later . . . almost four hundred years later, I might add.”
Franki sighed. “It does sound far fetched. But strange things do happen.”
“Not that strange,” Ladybug scoffed. “That’s insane.”
10:50 AM (6:50 PM in Cambridge)
“What do you mean Tom’s stage four?” Heart Gardner asked stunned. “I talked to you guys yesterday and no one said anything about Tom being stage anything, let alone stage four.”
“Honey, I’m sorry,” Heart’s mom told him. “We didn’t want to worry you.”
“Not worry me?” Heart felt like he’d been punched in the gut. “My brother, my twin brother, has maybe a day to live and you didn’t tell me because you didn’t want to worry me?” How did that make sense to them?
“I’m sorry, son,” she repeated. “It seemed like the right decision to make.”
“The right . . .” he trailed off in disbelief. “You know what, I’m coming home.”
“You can’t!” his mom protested. “You could be infected, too. Your father and I . . .”
“No,” Heart protested. “Please, tell me I misunderstood what you were trying to say just now. You and Dad can’t have this, too.”
There was a sigh on the other end.
Heart groaned. “No, I won’t accept it. I’m coming home, Mom, and you’re all going to be all right. You can’t have this.”
“You are not coming home, Edward Kenneth,” his mom informed him making him gulp. “I will not have you getting this, too.”
“Mom, people are getting sick here, too,” Heart informed her. “And people seem pretty confident that this is getting passed through the water, so if I don’t drink the water, I should be fine. I’m coming home.”
“We love you, Edward, but you need to stay out of the way of this,” his mom told him.
“There is no out of the way of this,” he protested. “Mom, please, if this is going to end badly, then I need to see you, again, all of you.”
“Edward, you can’t get here,” she told him, sadly. “There is no way. Planes aren’t flying and even if you could, it would be too late by the time you got here.”
“No, no, no!” he screamed at the phone, slamming his fist at the nearby wall and then squealing in pain as he pulled his fist away. He got very little satisfaction from the small dent he made in the wall. “No, that’s not possible. There’s got to be a way.” He heaved in several sobs, trying to keep himself in control. “I’ll call Ladybug.” He gulped. “She has . . . Contacts. There’s got to be a way. I love you, Mom.”
As soon as he hung up the phone, he pressed the first number on his speed-dial, something he hadn’t done in a long time.
“Twins are special, aren’t they?” a voice behind Heart commented.
Startled, he turned around to look. The voice belonged to a blonde, petite and pretty, maybe a year or two older than his twenty-two years. Maybe. Deciding to ignore her, he put the phone to his ear and listened to it ring.
“I have a brother and sister who are twins,” she told him, with a little half smile. “They shut me out.”
Heart didn’t know how to respond. As boys, he and Tom had done everything together, but they had other friends, too. With no other siblings, the scenario she described hadn’t been an issue for them.
“It’s not really about them being twins, of course,” she admitted with a little laugh. “Our mother raised them differently than our father raised me.”
Ouch. Heart couldn’t imagine being raised away from Tom. He couldn’t imagine life with no Tom at all as he was likely going to be facing tomorrow. The phone reached Ladybug’s voice mail and he sighed.
“Feel free to jump into this conversation any time,” she told him. “Monologues are boring.”
Seeing no reason he should give her the satisfaction of alleviating her boredom, he hung up and called, again. It might be crazy, but he needed to talk to Ladybug. He couldn’t risk that she would forget to check her voice mail for a day or two.
“Oh, come on,” she pouted. “Say something. You’re making me feel like the evil villain in a really bad B-list horror flick.”
“Are you evil?” he asked, finally acknowledging her. He took the phone away from his ear, but didn’t bother turning it off. He didn’t like the idea of facing someone claiming to be evil alone even if the only person that could help him wasn’t answering her phone and thus of no use.
“Of course I am,” she snorted. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be about to kill you.”
Startled, he squeaked. “Kill me?”
“Of course,” she repeated. “What kind of evil villain would I be if I let you live. Besides, it’s a mercy killing really. This way you won’t have to live without your brother, Don.”
“Tom,” he protested automatically.
She waved a hand in dismissal. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. You reek of Warren blood.” She shuddered in distaste.
“What?”
She considered him and shrugged. “A girlfriend, maybe, because you are clearly not a Warren.” She clucked her tongue at him. “Naughty, naughty boy.” She pushed him up against the wall and stabbed her finger at his chest. “I don’t like Warrens.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he protested.
“He speaks,” she chuckled. “I was beginning to wonder.”
He glared at her.
“And back to silence.” She tapped the tips of fingers together. “So how do you want to die?”
“No thanks,” he spat out, trying to duck out her reach.
She put her arms on either side of him and he found that she was definitely not weak. “You aren’t going anywhere.”
“I think I am,” he shoved her away from him and started running. The sound of his phone dropping to the ground barely registered as his only thoughts were toward getting away from her.
A sound behind him was the only warning he got before a wall of ice built up in front of him. He sucked on a deep breath and kept running. Hitting the wall accomplished nothing except to leave his shoulder hurting and him on the ground.
“Turn around and face me,” she ordered. “It’s thick enough you can’t get passed it.”
“Why ice the exit?” he asked as he pulled himself to his feet and looked behind him. A second wall of ice was a few feet behind her. “Why . . ?”
“Why not kill you with the first blow?” she asked. “It’s pretty messy and noisy. This way, you aren’t getting out and I don’t have to deal with someone interrupting us. Besides, I want to see someone’s eyes when I kill them. I’m no coward.” Now that she had him trapped, she didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry. She walked over to his dropped phone and picked it up. Putting it next to her ear she said, “I’m going to kill him,” she announced into the phone without bothering to find out if anyone was on the other end. “Deal with it.”
Holding the phone in one hand she sent a spray of ice, covering it with ice and then dropping it to the ground and watching it shatter. “Now, we’re all alone. It’s much easier that way.”
Glancing behind him he tried to gage how think the ice was. On the other end of it, he could see that it went partway into the next doorway and that distance was maybe a third of the total distance, even accounting for the distortion of looking at it through ice. Gulping he turned back to look at her.
There was the most peculiar look on her face. “There’s something almost familiar about you, but it will have to be you, because I am not doing this, again.” Holding both hands out in front of her, she sent a steady stream of ice at him.
Diving out of the way, he smashed into the wall with his already injured shoulder. Cringing and doing his best to hold back a scream of pain, he looked around the small area, attempting to locate something he could use as a weapon, though what he could do against someone who shot ice out of her hands, he didn’t know.
“Hold still,” she ordered. “When your brother dies, you won’t want to be alive anyway, and he’s going to die. This time around no one is stopping this.”
He didn’t waste his breath arguing. The was something on the opposite wall in a frame, but he didn’t see how that would be do any good unless he could shove her into it. Unfortunately, that was the best option at his disposal at the moment.
“Why are you so quiet?” she complained, glaring at him. “You almost act like none of this matters. Or is it that? Maybe you realize that I’m right and when your brother is dead, it’s all useless.” She nodded slowly and a smile started to form on her lips. “All the better. If I’m doing you a favor. . .”
“You’re not,” he snarled, making a jump at her and running her into the wall. “Don’t delude yourself into thinking that killing me is in anyway doing me any favors. I want you to feel every ounce of guilt you are owed, because I don’t intend to let you kill me. And I don’t plan for my brother to die, either.”
“There’s nothing you can do,” she snapped at him, wincing in pain as she shoved him away from her into the opposite wall and sending ice at the ground. “No one’s ever survived this. No one. Once they have it, that’s it. Your brother will not live. Even if you somehow manage to escape me, which I doubt, don’t delude yourself into thinking he will live. That’s not on me.”
“I don’t believe you,” he heaved out, looking at the ground. Except for where she stood, blood dripping onto her shoulder from a wound she had apparently gotten when he’d slammed her into the wall, the entire floor from ice wall to ice wall was caked in ice. He’d probably trip standing still, but if he could get her away from that spot, maybe she would, too.
“Believe it,” she ordered, sending more ice his way. When he ducked down and went sliding at one of the ice walls she growled. “I usually can hit my targets. Why can’t I hit a stupid mortal?”
He rubbed his head where it had hit into the ice and looked at her confused. Mortal?
With another growl of frustration, she aimed both palms at him and shot ice at him. “Die, already. I need you to die so that I’m done with this whole mess.”
The ice hit him in the legs and as the cold started to encase him, he heard, “What in the world?!” just before he blanked out completely and oblivion took him.
10:52 AM (12:52 PM in Cortland)
Ladybug exhaled slowly. "I probably should be getting back. The sooner we figure this out the more people we can save, but I should warn you, my aunt doesn't intend to let this last past the end of the day."
"And with what Kirkland told you, it won't," Franki breathed out. "You have the means to push this back once more, but if you don't stop this now, who will? And when?"
Ladybug sighed. "I really don't know."