www.thevalentinechronicles.com presents:
Frozen
by
Paul L. Mathews
Body and Soul
With the roar of its thrusters muffled by the
cacophony of the storm, the Faded Lady
hovered over the island and disengaged its
Minutes passed. The ship sat in the rain, the hot
metal of its hull ticking as it contracted. Finally a hiss escaped from its
undercarriage as a crack of light sliced through an airlock in its belly. A
ramp ventured forth. The light flourished and expanded, and the ‘lock opened,
five figures silhouetted in the glare. With the ramp biting into the ash on the
ground, the five figures shuffled forward, hunched under rain capes that
flapped in the gale.
#
The storm continued to batter the idle APC, the abandoned Scythe, and the crashed Hammer. Now,
however, the howl of the gale was joined by a new sound: the Old Bitch. Forcing itself through the
murderous weather, rain bouncing from its hull like stones, the aged shuttle
settled over the clearing. The rain became white scratches on the darkness as
the Old Bitch’s spotlight sprang to life, its beam encompassing the two vehicles.
Inside, Tatiana locked the craft into a holding
position and concentrated on the scanners. The monitor flicked and buzzed, its information distorted and fuzzy. “Come on, damn
you!” Reaching up to prod buttons on a console above her head, she winced as
she stretched the wounded muscles about her ribs.
The redirected power did little to improve the
read-out. She bit her lip and stared through the rain that cascaded down the Old
Bitch’s canopy. She focused on the APC, so still
and so lifeless.
Had Ivan, she wondered, already made his move? If so,
were either he or Boyd still alive?
#
Click.
Boyd pulled the trigger again.
Click.
“What the fuck, Ivan?” Boyd extracted the revolver
from amongst the sharp frame of Ivan’s smashed visor. He flicked the chamber
open with a deft flick of his wrist and inspected it. “You brought an empty
gun?”
Ivan’s eyes were blank slates of grey. His irises
fluctuated slightly as his head stopped lolling. Blinking, lips twitching, his
eyes narrowed before he said, “Only brought gun. To threaten you, to use
language you would understand. Never intended to use it.”
Boyd’s teeth gritted and a bestial growl welled in
his throat. Throwing the useless gun over his shoulder, he used both hands to
shake Ivan.
“You coward! You old, dried up, bent, broken, vicious, twisted old coward!
You won’t use a gun? Christ, no! But you’ll use axes and ‘Lectro-knuxs
and me and Vast and Matinee to do your dirty work for you, won’t you?”
Boyd! What’s wrong with you? —Focus!
Again the smell of satsumas and pine washed over him,
but it didn’t matter. Something else had possession of Boyd now. Something far more feral than Portia, and twice as angry.
“You put the twins in jeopardy, you get Matinee and
Doll Three killed—you get Stanztrigger
killed—and you still won’t use a fucking gun!” His voice rose to a roar, as he
picked Ivan off the floor completely, leaning back to gain leverage. He shook
the limp old man with an ever greater violence. “You use us all to mop up your
mess, to kills freaks like Crepitus and Petrid, to protect you from bastards like
Boyd! You’re becoming hysterical!
“Now I have this thing inside me and Vast has no arm
and Tatiana has a punctured lung and Dolly’s in bits because you’re a bloody
coward! Because you won’t face your past! Because you
won’t take up arms!” Ivan’s limbs and head slew back and forth, blood
and spittle flying through his smashed visor as Boyd shook him with even
greater rage. “What’s wrong with
you?”
Enough of this! Just finish him! Finish him now!
Boyd’s vision began to blur and fade toward the
edges. Little lights flashed in front of his eyes. The smell of pine and
oranges was now so overpowering he thought he might vomit. His movements became
slurred and ill-coordinated as he lost contact with his limbs. Like an angry
drunk, he threw Ivan to the floor and continued to rant.
He didn’t know what he was saying. The words were a
stream of slurred consciousness. He swayed above Ivan and rained vitriol on the
bent old man. All those months of anger and fear, of frustration and anxiety
poured from him like urine as he relieved the burdened bladder of his soul.
All the while Portia continued to bleat in his head,
continued to use her perfumes, continued to douse him with both pleasure and
pain. None of it worked. Just as Boyd had lost control of his temper, Portia
had lost control of Boyd.
#
The Old Bitch touched down just inside the
clearing. With a grunt of pain Tatiana began to rise from the pilot’s seat, but
paused as she took a deep breath and regarded the APC.
If she was right, Portia was in there—and Portia was a killer. She flexed her
long fingers, and chewed on her lip. She might need a weapon. She glanced about
her, looking down at the pilot seat.
Then she remembered Katarina stabbing the alien in
the shoulder with the emergency knife stored in the seat’s frame. Reaching down,
her searching fingers found the blade and pulled it out. She knelt and slipped
the weapon into the lip of her boot. With only its hilt protruding she patted
it, then moved to the shuttle’s side-door, hand on her wounded ribs as she did
so.
She punched at the door controls, and the doors
opened slovenly. Rain burst in. With her hand raised over her eyes, she stepped
out of the Old Bitch. Instantly the
gale seized her, and she staggered sideways, her heels digging into the wet ash
as she braced against the wind and grabbed at the edge of the door. Squinting
through the torrential rain, she focused on the APC.
It was only metres away, but these could well be the hardest metres she’d ever
face. The wind hammered at her with bestial fury. Metal debris from the
destroyed Hammer, Scythes, and Calci gunships was
strewn amongst the ash and jagged rocks. A fork of lighting tore into a dead tree only metres away, destroying it utterly.
It didn’t matter. Lives were at stake. The lives of
two men she loved.
It would take more than bad weather to stop her from
saving them.
#
What are you doing? He’s still alive!
He didn’t care. He wouldn’t listen to her anymore.
Eyes squeezed shut, hand on his forehead, he turned
from the prone Ivan—the old man still and staring at him in alarm—and staggered
to the APC’s back doors. With a kick the doors
buckled and sprang open.
Where are you going, you idiot?
He didn’t know. He didn’t care. All he knew was just
how close he’d come to killing Ivan. Who was next? Tatiana? He couldn’t risk
it. He had to get away, he had to take this monster
inside far away from Tatiana and the Troika.
That was all that mattered.
#
Tatiana had almost reached the APC
when the rear door sprang open and Boyd leapt out. He landed on all fours and
looked about. Tatiana stopped and put her hand to her mouth as she gasped. Her
eyes widened. Christ, he looked so feral. His teeth were bared, his skin shone
with rain. He was covered in blood, mixed to an almost pink paste by that too
familiar thick sweat she remembered from Portia’s body. His hair was coming
away in thick clumps.
“Boyd?” Her voice was small and weak.
He looked at her. Panting, teeth gritted, eyes like
saucers, he scowled at her. She saw no recognition there, no warmth. Just distrust and a savage anger.
He couldn’t hear her, she realised. Not in this
storm. “Boyd?” she said again, raising her voice. She reached out for him.
“Boyd. It’s me. It’s Tatiana.”
#
Deep inside Boyd, locked into his cells and mutating
her host, the complex nucleotides that collectively formed Portia realised she
had lost control of Boyd.
This couldn’t be happening to her! Not again! She
wouldn’t let it. She wouldn’t be trapped here, on this backwater, the way she’d
been trapped on Parlour. She had to regain control. She just had to. She had to
find something, someone, locked deep
in his memory or in his childhood or in his nightmares, and use them. The fear
of Ivan had failed. Who else could she use? Who else might be more useful? Somebody in his past, perhaps? Somebody hidden deep away
under all that denial and alcohol? Somebody like…
Then Portia found her, hidden back in Boyd’s teens
and locked away in a box made of booze and self-destruction. She found her, and
deep inside Boyd, Portia laughed.
#
Boyd had never expected to see her here. He didn’t
even know she was still alive. Yet here she was, stood in the rain and reaching
out toward him. Her mottled hand trembled, and the thin nails jittered as her
skinny fingers shook. The last time he’d seen that hand it was clutching bread
knife. A bread knife with his Da’s
blood on it.
“Boyd,” she said. Her voice was different somehow. Younger. “It’s me. It’s yer ma.”
He couldn’t believe it. How could she be here? She
should be dead by now, or still locked away back home. He backed away slightly.
She shouldn’t be here. Please, Christ, don’t let her be here.
Yet there she stood, covered in his father’s blood.
Tall, thin, and weathered, her lined face was a map of substance abuse that
showed all routes from Marlboro to Bells. The smell of her breath—whisky with a
nicotine chaser—assailed him. He gagged.
“What’s wrong, Boyd?” She smiled. Her teeth were the
same cheap plastic things that sat on top of black and rotting stumps. “Why are
you running away?”
He couldn’t answer. He hunkered down in the wet ash
and put his hands to his head again. He shook it from side to side and tore at
his hair. She couldn’t be here! She couldn’t!
She is, Boyd. She’s here, and she wants to kill
you. I can’t let that happen, Boyd. So you’ve got to kill her. Now.
Suddenly the smell of her of tainted breath was all
about him. It was in the air. It was on his clothes. It was in his mouth.
It was too much. He had to get away. He had to
escape. Even if it meant going through her. He
launched himself forward, and clawed at her scrawny throat.
#
“Boyd! No! What are you doing?”
Hands closed about Tatiana’s throat, and squeezed
hard. Gagging, she grabbed at his wrists. Her mouth fell open as she gasped for
breath and tried to talk. Nothing came out.
She looked into his face. Wild and white, a viscous goo bubbled on his lips,
and that sticky white sweat coated his skin. The smell of her father’s cologne
filled her nostrils, and now Boyd’s features shifted, taking on her father’s
jaw and chin. The lips creased into that same crooked smile. The eyes deepened.
The hair thickened and turned white. This was Portia’s work. She knew it, even
as she fought for breath, her eyesight failing and the roar of her heartbeat
drowning out the sound of thunder.
Panicked and desperate, she reached for his head.
#
With his hands about his mother’s throat, Boyd
squeezed with all his strength. He ignored the whisky slurs of her pleading,
and the stale ciggies on her breath. Now he would
make her pay. Now he’d put his ghosts to re—
His mother let go of his wrists and grabbed at the
side of his head before jamming her sharp thumbnails into his eyes. Pain
exploded through his head. An agonised cry burst from him with a primal fury,
and he staggered backward, hands going over his face.
“Bitch!” he screamed. He took his hands from his face
and clenched them into fists. “You shouldn’t have come here! I will kill you!
You are dead! Do you hear, bitch? Dead!”
#
He recovered so quickly Tatiana had no time to plan
her next move. One second his eyes were a bloody mess, the next they reformed
to fill his bloody sockets.
One hand on her throat and one over her ribs, she
gagged and stepped backward, boots struggling for traction. Even Vast didn’t
heal that quickly. What the hell was she suppose—
He came at her again, or so she assumed. All she knew
was the blur of him moving forward, a flash of pain in her face, and her being
on her back amongst the rocks and debris, dazed. She put her hand to her nose. Blood, thick and blue. It covered her hand and coated her
lips. She blinked as the world refocused. Suddenly he stood over her, a rock
held over his head with both hands. His eyes shone, reflecting the meagre light
that leaked from within the Old Bitch.
They were alien eyes. They were Portia’s.
At she thought of Portia she raised her knee to her
chest, and her hand closed about the knife in her boot. She thought of Portia
killing Ivan, her sister, and Vast. She thought of Portia taking the Troika and becoming some arachnid cancer
amongst the stars.
Well, she’d beaten that arachnid bitch once, and she
could do it again. She was a Valentine. “I’m sorry, Boyd,” she managed to gasp.
#
Boyd brought the rock down, but Ma rolled sideways
and the rock smashed as he drove into the vacant earth. He looked to his mother
just as she rolled back at him. A searing pain burst through his thigh.
Look. Look at what she’s holding!
Now her trembling hand clutched the bloody bread-knife
he’d seen her use on his father. Suddenly he was fourteen again,
cowering in the corner of the kitchen whilst she stood over murdered his
father. Suddenly he was shitting himself again as she turned to look at him,
face splattered in Da’s blood.
He staggered back, hands clutching at his wound and
blood pumping from between his fingers. An instinctive shudder seized him. A
wound like that, in the artery, should kill him in seconds, but the wound
healed. He should have been amazed, but it didn’t matter. He just had to kill
his mother. Now.
She was up already up and on her feet,
breath coming in gasps and wheezes. She rushed at him and stabbed at him again.
The knife sliced into his cheek and sliced through his face as she extracted
the blade. She slashed into his neck, into his shoulders, into his chest, and
with every laceration she sobbed. “I’m sorry, boy. I’m so sorry.”
He didn’t defend himself. With his hands by his side
he stood his ground and let her exhaust herself. As he did, he gloried in the
feeling of his wounds healing, of the skin knitting together. He gloried in the
sight of her becoming weaker and weaker, her assault faltering and slowing
until, with an agonised cry, she fell to her knees before him, hands falling
into her lap and her pained breath coming in ragged gasps. He gloried in this
final victory over his mother, over the ghost who had haunted him for so long.
That’s it, Boyd, Portia cooed in his head. She’s
done. You’ve won. Now kill her, and let’s get out of here.
#
Tatiana looked up into his face. It was blank and
white.
“Boyd, please,” she said with a sob, “it’s me, it’s
Tatiana. Don’t you recognise me?”
He reached down and grabbed a handful of her jacket.
“For God’s sake, Boyd! Fight
her! Can’t you feel her? She’s controlling you!”
He pulled on the jacket. A seam ripped in its
shoulder as he hauled her to her feet and stared into her eyes. They were alien
and alive with hate and mischief.
“Fight her, Boyd! Fight! Her!”
“He can’t hear you, Tsarina.”
They both turned. Ivan stood by at the rear of the APC, Boyd’s maser-rifle held across his chest. An LED
display in its power-pack crept upward with a succession of beeps. Feet wide
apart, vac-suit cracked and bent, he glared at Boyd with a hatred that
astonished Tatiana. Never had she seen him look so angry, and—despite the
swelling purple bruises about his face, despite his swaying and staggering in
the storm—never had she seen him so determined and alive.
“This,” he said, nodding down at the maser-rifle, “is
yours, yes?”
He threw it in the same instant Boyd cast Tatiana
aside. She fell, crying out as a fire of pain burnt her torso. She ignored the
agony to twist in the ash and watch Boyd snatch the rifle from the air as it
sailed toward him. Spinning it, taking hold of its handle and barrel with
practised ease, he raised it to his shoulder and aimed at Ivan even as the old
man jumped to the ground and covered his head.
The ascending scale of flashes reached the final LED,
and the rifle detonated.
The concussion robbed Tatiana of what little air she
had in her lungs. Unable to breath, she lay there flailing as she tried to turn
onto her side and reach for her back. Her back was broken, she could feel it.
Her back was broken, and she couldn’t breath! She was going to suffocate!
No! Ignore it! You’re just winded! she
told herself. Concentrate! Where’s Boyd? And Ivan?
She squirmed, and tried to look about her, tried to
listen. But even in the howl of the storm, the explosion had bludgeoned
Tatiana’s hearing and rendered it into a sharp, protracted whistle. The
explosion lingered over her eyes, reducing her sight to a sheet of milk white
tainted with patches of muted purple and red.
“—iana? Can you hear me?”
Hands grabbed at her, taking hold of her under her arms. “Can you hear me,
yes?” The voice percolated through the whistling. “We must go.”
She was hauled to her feet. She shook her head
vigorously and squeezed her eyes tight. Blinking, she could make out dark
shapes as they began to materialise before her. “Ivan?” she gasped.
“Up, Tatiana, quickly.”
She threw her arms about him. “Ivan! Thank God! I
thought—”
“No time. He is still alive. We must get away.”
He began to walk and drag her alongside. Head
clearing, she could make out the sound of rain and thunder. Her limbs began to
regain their strength, and she pushed away from Ivan.
“We can’t just leave him, Ivan.” She shook her head
and rubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand in an attempt to dispel the
bright lights.
Even the howl of the storm couldn’t mask the fear in
his voice—a fear that made Tatiana shudder. Ivan shouldn’t sound like that. “We
have to. I thought I could beat him, contain him, take
him to Kithaen. But—”
“We can’t leave him.” She blinked her sight clear.
She could see him now, his battered face lurking inside his ruined helmet. The arch of his eyebrows, the thin line of his lips. He was
torn, she could see. He wanted to help Boyd, but…
A new sound reached Tatiana. A sound wet with the
pained wheezing of damaged lungs, with the grating of fractured bone, with
pained grunts forced from a demolished body. With a void in her belly and a
vacuum in her throat, she turned toward the sound.
She choked on a swell of bile and vomit as she
watched Boyd rise on unsteady legs. One hand on her mouth, the other on her
belly, she forced herself to keep watching. Limbs twisted, flesh flayed away to
reveal ripped muscles and splintered bone, Boyd rose to his full height. His
head tipped back, and he stared at her, eyes framing the dark butterfly on his
exposed nasal cavity. The smashed rictus of his teeth
ground together, and the pale irises of his milk white
eyes shifted as they focused on her. With faltering steps he began to lurch
toward her, his every step screaming pain and ruination, but she could already
see his bones straighten and seal, the muscles swell and knit together, and the
small islands of burnt skin expand and rally. But, most of all, she could see
the hate in those eyes. Hate, and no sign of Boyd.
“Tsarina. We go. Now.” Ivan grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her after him
as he moved toward the Old Bitch.
Over the gale she could hear a whine of servos accompanying his every stride.
Still she looked back. Boyd’s pace picked up, and his
faltering steps segued into powerful strides. The broken arms left his side and
flexed as he reached for Ivan and Tatiana. His wounds were swallowed by a tide
of milky, hairless skin. As she watched he became whole again. More slender, more feminine, but whole.
She and Ivan reached the Old Bitch, but it was no use. Boyd accelerated with a dreadful speed,
and fell upon them. His eyes burnt into Tatiana as, with a sweep of his arm, he
swatted Ivan aside. The old man howled in pain as he was thrown into the air
and clattered to the ground. Her peripheral vision picked up his attempts to
get up, but it would be far, far too late.
Boyd glared at her, and she shrank back against the
hull of the Old Bitch. The streaming
water on its flank soaked through her clothes, and a keypad bit into her
shoulder. His arm a blur, he seized her by the throat and lifted her from the
ground before slamming her back against the hull panel. The edge of the keypad
cut into her hip. He drew back his other arm, ready to strike. His eyes told
her this would be the killing blow.
“Don’t do it, Boyd! It’s me! It’s Tatiana!”
“Boyd isn’t here anymore, Tatiana.” The lips moved
into a caricature of a smile. “I’ve put him away for a while.”
“No!” She punched Boyd in the face. He barely
blinked. “He’s in there, Portia. I know he’s in there. He’s stronger than that.
Stronger than you.”
“No, he isn’t. I own him. Body and
soul. And I’m going to use him to get your ship and go home, just as I
planned on Parlour. You understand, don’t you? You know what it’s like to want
to go home.”
She hit him again. “Boyd! Fight her, Boyd!
Don’t let her win!”
He faltered, the fist frozen in place. His eyes
widened a little. A little colour seeped into those blank eyes, and the irises
dilated.
“Boyd, I love you.” She wept now, her tears mingling
with the rain. She reached out, cupping his face. It lacked the scratch of
stubble she knew so well, and what should have sun-kissed skin was now so pale
as to betray the blue veins beneath, but the flex of his jaw muscles under that
skin was oh so familiar. “I love you, I love you, I
love you. Please, I can’t bear to see this thing beat you like this.
Fight her. For me. For us.”
He lowered her a little. His eyes were a steely grey
now, and his fist was trembling. His lips moved as he muttered to himself,
saying, “Kill her, you idiot. She’s lying. She doesn’t love you. She wants to
kill you.”
“No! I could never kill you! Please, come back to me,
Boyd. We’ll go away from here. We’ll settle somewhere and hide from all this
madness. Hide from all the Calci, hide from all spiders. We can marry, have
kids. We can have a boy and a girl. Call them Gregor and Matinee—”
He roared a bestial roar, squeezed shut his eyes and
beat his fist against his skull. Finally his eyes snapped open. Boyd’s eyes.
Throwing her aside, he drove his fist into the
shuttle’s hide. It buckled and split, his fist spearing into the circuitry
behind. Lying in the dirt, Tatiana twisted to watch as Boyd’s body lit up
instantly, the idling shuttle’s power pouring through him. Incandescent, his
body shook violently. Its form shifted shifted and
changed with a rapidity that both bewildered and
sickened Tatiana. The newly formed skin bubbled and popped like boiling milk.
Malformed mandibles speared through the sides of his bulging face. The muscles
on his flank twisted and contorted as spider legs—stillborn and twisted—sprang
forth. Two tiny colonies of eyes arose through skin that heaved about his eyes
like churning seas. All the while his body shuddered and bucked as smoke poured
from it and blood—brown and steaming—spat from gaping wounds.
Tatiana had to look away, hands over her ears. If the sight of him dying wasn’t bad enough, the scream was even worse. Almost porcine in its quality, it was a squeal she’d heard before. Back on Parlour. The first time she’d killed Portia. But this? This was a thousand times worse. This was Boyd screaming.
This was Boyd’s death.
The scream ebbed and faded into a sob, then there was silence. Tatiana opened her eyes. The Old Bitch seemed to give up the last of
her power, the light inside fading, the idling of the engine dying and the
landing lights going out. And as the shuttle died, Boyd’s smoking form fell
away form the side of the vessel to collapse into the ash.
“Boyd?” Tatiana’s voice was weak. She tried again,
louder. “Boyd?”
With no response, she crawled forward. As she closed
in on what was left of Boyd, her limbs shook and her eyes stung. Hysterical
sobs rocked her.
He wasn’t moving. The body—screwed up and burnt like
a stubbed out cigarette—lay smoking in a sea of ash.
Huge holes gaped in his body. Splintered bones poked out of scorched muscle.
His face was a horror of arachnid mutation, lost in a sea of popped spider-eyes
and mandibles. His stomach and chest had split open, and burning organs still
shrank and squirmed in the heat. Amongst that ruination she could see a coagulated
mess of burst eggs and tiny, barely formed spiders. Some still twitched.
She turned away and threw up with such violence she
thought her throat might rip. Hands folded across her chest, she pitched
forwards into her own vomit as she wept with all the passion and power of a
newborn. Gone. He was gone. Taken
from her. Ruined. Mutated.
Turned into a horrific mass of alien flesh and smouldering
bone. And it was all her fault. If only she hadn’t gone to Parlour, if
only she hadn’t persuaded him to go with her…
She kicked and screamed, thrashed and pummelled at
the ground, her fists clenched so tightly her nails shredded her palms. Her fault. All her fault. She made
him go. She’d left him behind when the mutants had attacked. She’d left him
behind for Portia to do what she want—
A slap bit into her hysteria. She froze and looked
up. Ivan knelt over her and grabbed her wrists, pinning her.
“Stop this.” His face was lost in the darkness of his
helmet. “Now is not the time.”
She couldn’t move. She could barely breath. Her damaged lung and the tightness of her throat
conspired against it.
“We are both injured and storm is getting worse. We
must get back to Troika.”
She tried to reply, but could make no sound. A grunt
from Ivan barely penetrated the clamour of the storm as it surged about them,
whipping ash and dead bark into a funnel. Lightning scored across the sky,
smashing into the ground scant metres away. The rain stabbed at them. The
abandoned Scythe and the spent carcass of the Old Bitch rocked to and fro in the gale, and the APC’s aging springs bawled and cried out as the vehicle
bucked and squirmed. Even the mighty Ivan struggled to hold the two of them
upright
She looked to Boyd’s body. It was already falling
apart and being cast to the four winds, as though the elements themselves
colluded against Portia. Ivan wrapped his arms about Tatiana and hauled her
from the ground, staggering. She collapsed into him, as empty and lifeless as
the Old Bitch. She wanted to stay.
She should stay. She wanted to gather
up all that was left of Boyd and bury him with the love and reverence he
deserved. But she knew it was too late. Already his bones jittered across the
clearing, his viscera springing into the air and almost dancing in the
calamitous storm.
She closed her eyes and looked away, body shuddering
with sobs. Boyd was gone.
#
Four of the five figures huddled together. Before them sat the Troika,
undaunted and unmoved by the storm. Slightly apart from the rest of the
group, one the five withdrew a thin and liver-spotted hand from its rain-cape.
Thin black fingernails glinted in the flash of lightning and betrayed her sex.
She held a small projector in her flaccid palm. It sprang into life, offering a
wavering blue image of The Witch of Bleakwinter.
Even in her white furs and brass two-piece, The
Witch’s voluptuous body looked naked without her famous dragon tattoos. Also
absent was her cold and celebrated beauty, her face hidden beneath a mask of
thick and twinkling ice. She stood looking toward the camera that relayed her
image. “Coven,” she said as she folded her arms under her breasts. Despite the
mask, her voice was clear and strong. “Did you find the Valentines?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the figure said, her voice a thick
Confederate drawl. The light from the projector barely illuminating her lined
and haggard face as it brooded inside the cape’s hood. “Looks
like yer son was on the money. The Troika’s here—right where he said.”
The Witch placed her hands on her hips and lifted her
chin. “Then you shall capture the ship and the Valentines. You will hold them
there until
The woman nodded. “Yes ma’am.”
“And Coven? The Valentines
are not to be hurt. You can have your way with the rest of the crew, but the
Valentines are left for me, understand?”
“Yes ma’am.”
The projection peered at the woman, as if trying to
ascertain its true response. The woman’s expression—or what could be seen of
it—barely shifted. Thwarted, The Witch waved her hand dismissively. “Get to
it.”
The projection vanished, and the woman drew her hand
back into the relative warmth of her rain cape.
“S’at true, momma?” One of
the other figures shouted over the baying of the storm. “We ain’t
gonna have no fun?”
The leader’s shoulders shook as though she were
laughing. “Like hell, Scarlett. We got here first, we’s gonna take the spoils and to
hell with the damn Witch.” She looked over her shoulder, black eyes glinting as
lightning tore across the heavens. “Now pucker up, girls. We’s
gonna take the ship, and then we’s
gonna skin us some Valentines.”
The Valentine Chronicles
will continue with Under the Gun
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© 2009 Mathew David
Spaull. All rights reserved.