Damn Him to Hell sd-2 Page 12

I geared past the court building and wondered guiltily what the pink ash might have done to the inhabitants. I’d not seen any reactions beyond those of the comatose patients yet. Maybe it took a large quantity of ash and a compromised immune system. The baby docs had said their patients hadn’t been healthy, which might have been why the homeless camp had taken such a hit. Bums didn’t get good medical care. Neither did poor people with no medical insurance, which equated to just about everyone in the Zone, but odds were better that young people were stronger.

  I hoped Julius or Paddy had gone down to help the gun-toting med student and his patients, because I didn’t have time for them. Apparently I was more interested in preventing Andre from getting his head blown off by Gloria’s goons than in protecting comatose patients. I made a lousy goddess, domestic or otherwise.

  Sorry, guys. I hit the pedal heading out of town.

  Since Andre had obviously known Gloria Vanderventer since childhood, he wouldn’t have had the same difficulty I did in locating the mansion hidden down one of a thousand and one narrow lanes in this gazillion-dollar district. I’d only been here once. I remembered her mansion as being on top of a hill overlooking all the luxury homes that had usurped the countryside over the last century. Gloria had the last remaining estate-size acreage in the neighborhood.

  I knew better than to drive through her gates this time. Despite the idyllic, tree-lined country lanes, her place was guarded by security cameras and black-suited thugs with cell phones and walkie-talkies and probably AK-47s just like Andre’s. Gloria really didn’t like surprise company.

  I glanced in as I putted past the main ironwork gate and noted Andre’s Mercedes sports car in front of the house. Despite the hair-raising speed with which we’d traveled, we didn’t have much time.

  I pulled down a side lane, out of sight of any cameras, and halted the bike near a grove of bamboo. “Work time,” I told Tim, unfastening my helmet.

  I knew better than to believe Milo would stay safely with the bike. I threw his bag over my shoulder. Milo and I would just have to adjust to the idea of short life spans.

  It didn’t seem to matter that my rational brain said that visiting Gloria again was a very bad, awful idea. That other overdeveloped lobe where my conscience dwelled said Andre and the other Zone inhabitants had been run roughshod over more certainly than any small farmers shot out by cattle barons. It was John Wayne time.

  “Are you scared enough to wink out yet?” I asked carelessly when Tim had his helmet off. “Can you get over that wall?”

  He flickered just seeing the high stones.

  “I’d give you a boost, but I’m afraid the cameras might catch me,” I said apologetically. “They probably have Wanted posters all over the place with my head on them.”

  Well, maybe not, if Gloria was stupid enough to believe I’d actually saved her grandson. Since Dane had kidnapped me off her back lawn just before he got shot, I was betting she’d ask questions after tying me to a cannon, but maybe she wouldn’t shoot first.

  “What do you want me to do once I get over?” Tim asked with intelligent suspicion.

  “There’s usually an electronic lock on those things.” I nodded at the wrought-iron gates. “Looks like there’s a pedestrian gate. This side will require a key code, but I bet just a button opens it on the inside. Push that to let me in.”

  Tim bravely switched out. The boy took clothes and all with him. I admired that ability. I couldn’t see how he scaled the wall, but after a while, I could hear the click of the electronic security pad at the guardhouse, and the pedestrian gate slid open.

  I probably wouldn’t set off any alarms, but the cameras would see me. I was just hoping a person on foot wouldn’t attract too much interest. Guests, servants, delivery people must walk in and out all the time.

  “How do you know how these things work?” Tim whispered as I joined him.

  “I have a broad education,” I told him. The real story was much too long to tell and involved my peripatetic childhood with my tree-hugging, lawbreaking mother. One didn’t save the whales by owning the keys to places like these.

  I’d learned from the best how to protest injustice. I was just taking a different route than PETA and Greenpeace.

  Watching the shrubbery for black suits, I boldly jogged up the drive toward the Mercedes with invisible Tim raising dust at my side. If I told myself I was just visiting Andre’s car, maybe I could pretend I wasn’t flaming insane. Maybe I could blow the horn and bring him running.

  I spotted two black suits crouched behind the rhododendrons bordering the mansion’s spacious gallery. They were watching the door, not us. Not promising for Andre if they were about to storm in after him.

  I stuck out my arm to hold Tim back. He bumped into me, and I grabbed where his bicep should have been.

  I disappeared.

  13

  Ifreaking disappeared.

  Even I couldn’t see myself. I held up my hand. Nothing. I was a ghost. No wonder Tim was terrified of his own shadow. He never saw the damned thing!

  I tugged him behind a yew hedge, ducked down, and released his arm. Once I wasn’t touching him, I reappeared again. Tim didn’t.

  “What the shit?” I whispered. “Tim, you still there?”

  I thought I heard a sound vaguely like arrghh. Then he flickered, glanced at me crossly, and winked out again.

  “Don’t do that,” he finally said.

  “Don’t do what?” I had every right to ask. “I just touched you.”

  “It felt like electric shock waves,” he grumbled. “I almost lost it.”

  “People touch you all the time, don’t they?” But then I smacked my head. People couldn’t touch him if they didn’t see him.

  He thought about it. “Not when I’m out,” he finally said. “Nancy Rose pats me on the head, but that’s only when she can see me.”

  Wow, that was a lonely existence. Every kid feels invisible at some time or another, but his problem won the gold cup. “What about Milo? Can you pet Milo when you’re out?”

  Had Milo disappeared with me? I glanced down at the sack, but my cat was eyeing a mockingbird in the tree. I was pretty sure sack and clothes and everything had winked out. Milo didn’t seem too concerned.

  “I guess he vanishes when I hold him,” Tim admitted. “It would look kind of goofy if people saw him floating in thin air.”

  “Cheshire cat syndrome. Right. Okay, I’m going to touch you again. This is freaky, but Andre could be in some deep shit, and we need to sneak into the house without getting shot. You won’t run and leave me stranded, will you?”

  Of course he would, but I had to take the chance. I couldn’t tell if he nodded. I just gave him a moment to brace himself, then waved my hand around until I found his arm. I hoped it was his arm.

  He muttered ouch. I peered down and saw . . . nothing. Not even Milo. I patted his head to be certain he was there, and he bumped my palm. Okay, then. Here, but not here. Interesting.

  I could think of a lot of things I’d like to try while invisible. Entering Gloria Vanderventer’s house was not high on the list, not while thugs with guns lingered in the bushes. But duty was duty and Andre had been there when I needed him. I had to return the favor.

  “C’mon, let’s see what the Big Boss is doing. I’ve always wanted to be a ghost.” Fateful words, even if I did say so myself. I had no idea how long Tim could sustain invisibility for both of us.

  Sardonically amusing myself by imagining all the situations I could be in when I mysteriously rematerialized in the middle of a group of stressed-out guards swinging weapons, I led a shivering Tim past the boys in the bushes and up the stairs. The boards creaked. That ought to give the guards something to worry about.

  The door wasn’t fully closed. Maybe they’d think a breeze had opened it. I couldn’t hope they’d flee ghosts unless I rattled a chain and went boo. Probably not even then. Thugs with guns lack imagination.

  I heard shouts the instant we entered the t
hree-story foyer. Atriums echo. That’s about all they’re good for, especially when constructed with marble floors and only columns to serve as walls. I wondered when they’d last played a symphony in here.

  Still grasping Tim’s skinny arm, I tilted my head back to scan the upper halls circling the atrium. Opryland Hotel was more subtle than this joint. Architecture with carved niches containing fake Grecian statues was so over, like maybe since the Renaissance. Wicked bad taste.

  Andre’s shouts carried clearly from the upper tier. “Gloria, money is not worth whatever your chemists are doing! Sell your shares, manufacture something legitimate, but shut the lab down!”

  He and La Vanderventer were on the third circle of this particular hell. Three of her stooges stood behind her. Andre was miraculously unarmed.

  I had to stare to make certain my eyes weren’t deceiving me. After Acme had blown up his warehouse and terrorized his family, Andre hadn’t come gunning for bear? I’d driven all the way out here to save him from killing and he really thought Granny was just a granny and he had no self-defense?

  Damn, but men are so spectacularly dense when it comes to women. I was pretty damned certain this granny had plotted Max’s demise with the help of her evil grandson not too many months ago. She’d certainly condoned my kidnapping from her backyard.

  The stooges behind Gloria wore black suit jackets, probably covering an assortment of weaponry. Dammit, Andre, did you come looking to get killed?

  I clenched a fist in fear. Andre and I didn’t always approve of each other, but the man had saved my life and given me a job when I’d needed it, and I’d occasionally caught glimpses of decency behind his cynicism. I was growing attached to the devil. I didn’t want him killed.

  Besides, I feared I’d have to do something ugly, like give the devil his due, if the guards started shooting. For now, the men kept their hands at their sides, so I couldn’t justify wishing them to perdition. And I wasn’t angry enough to visualize.

  Like a Hollywood star from the twenties, Gloria was wearing something silky long and flowing. Sheesh. And she wore her age well. Slender, her golden hair artfully coiffed, she stood regally stiff, as if Andre were no more than a beggar at her feet, although he stood half a foot taller. I’d have liked to shoot her just for that.

  This was Paddy’s mother. I swear, she appeared young enough to be his wife. Or he looked too old for his age. Whatever. I was betting Granny Themis didn’t look this good.

  A fantasy about old witches running the world formed in my irrepressible imagination before Gloria brought me abruptly back to the moment.

  “The laboratory is working on a product that can revolutionize the world,” she replied with just the right amount of self-righteous, flag-waving disdain. “America can be strong again. It will return us to our superpower days. You cannot expect me to stop experimentation because of a small accident that even the EPA says caused no harm.”

  She sounded convincing, but I’d been there when her vans dispatched all evidence of what the gas had actually done. I’d seen the comatose victims she’d hidden from the cops. I was not the blind, deaf, and dumb EPA. Or the bribed and threatened Tweedledee and Dum. Take your pick.

  Besides—pardon my bragging—I had some experience with superpowers. They were scary and prone to boosting the arrogant stupidity of the people wielding them—witness my standing here now thinking I could actually save the day. Superpowerdom required intelligence and rationality, and the human race—while not actually lacking in both—prefers emotional meltdowns to thinking.

  Superpowerdom in the hands of lying villains was not a place I wanted to go.

  “The gas caused no harm?” Andre asked mildly.

  I recognized that ominous tone of nonchalance. Mr. Cool was back.

  Even from down here, Andre looked laid-back, like he’d just stepped off a yacht, with his thick black hair slightly windblown from the convertible, his naturally bronzed, aristocratic features, and his nose a perfect patrician beak. He wasn’t wearing an ascot, but I’d have bet that billowing shirt was silk. He’d hooked his suit coat over his shoulder, and I swear the man was wearing a vest. Some dark, satin embroidered thing, straight out of a Maverick episode where the Jim Garner character pulls a derringer and shoots the boots out from under the bad guy.

  “No harm at all, Andre,” Gloria said grandly. “If you’re concerned for your family, why don’t you move them out? We’ll campaign for industrial zoning and clear out the neighborhoods, and you can enjoy life instead of fretting about a lot of lazy bums who will never amount to anything.”

  I dug my fingers into Tim’s arm and he grunted. If she was referring to the entire area around the Zone, I was not a lazy bum. Neither were my friends. We’re weird maybe, but not lazy. Not by a long shot. She talked about us as if we were cockroaches. That’s the mentality generated by power, the arrogance of the privileged elite who sincerely believe they know best, though they never descend to the streets to meet or know us.

  I’d have liked to shoot her right then, but I’d have had to justify offing just about every rich, powerful bitch in the country. Not good for my eternal health. Maybe I could visualize them scrubbing floors on an empty stomach so they would know what it felt like down here.

  “You would tear down a community, throw people out of their homes, for what, Gloria? Magic gas?” Andre’s tone remained cool, but his words were edgy enough to make the goons straighten and pat their coat pockets. Definitely holstered guns.

  “It’s not magic,” Gloria said irritably. “My son spreads those ridiculous rumors for his own purposes. It’s a new element, and Acme is the only company in the world to have it. I should think you of all people, Andre, would understand the importance of research.”

  Yeah, because it had certainly helped Katerina Montoya. Comatose, the new fountain of youth. I rolled my eyes and almost missed the most important part of the action. The boss man was fast and way too clever. From this distance, I couldn’t see what Andre held, but it looked more like a tiny aerosol can than a weapon.

  “Then if green gas causes no harm, you won’t mind if I use it in here?” he asked conversationally. “It creates a splendid rainbow effect when applied properly.”

  Before anyone could jump him, he sprayed a pink and green cloud into Gloria’s face.

  Tim was muttering, “Shit, shit, shit,” and I was thinking pretty much the same.

  Beautiful, charming Gloria erupted like a Fury. She came out swinging and punching, no different from the bums back home when the first gas attack hit the streets. Man, I’d never seen an old lady box like a pro. That had to hurt. She had Andre by the shirtfront and was pounding his face as hard she could with her tiny little fist.

  A chemical weapon that caused violence, sweet. Not.

  Apparently unfazed and a hundred times stronger, Andre pried Granny loose and stepped out of reach before she could grab his hair and launch him over the railing. I swear, she was that mad.

  Now what the hell should I do? Andre had started this. I couldn’t punish Gloria for what he’d done. Justice was a real bitch.

  The goons swarmed closer, trying to work around our raging virago to grab Andre. Gloria swung at them, too, calling them names that would make a sailor blush and smacking them around like punching bags.

  “Geez,” Tim whispered in awe. “She’s a berserker.”

  Viking warriors notwithstanding, I dragged Tim across the impressive foyer in some idiot hope that I could persuade Andre to move his ass. Gloria was doing such a good job of keeping her guards occupied that he could have sprinted out of there, but it seemed as if the boss was doing the gentlemanly thing and trying to prevent the mad old bat from flying over the railing.

  That was some powerful gas. Superpowerdom, my ass. Drop a canister of that in the Mideast and I’d save myself the trouble of blowing up the planet.

  Before we could reach the bottom of the stairs, a shot rang out. I froze and jerked my gaze back to the third floor.

/>   Gloria had grabbed a gun from one of the goons and was shooting wildly.

  This was seriously not good. Andre had his back to us. I couldn’t see what he meant to do, but he was wisely not tackling her. She was aiming at her own guards because they were wrestling with her, trying to prevent her from knocking them into next week.

  The shot was apparently the final straw. One thug swung a blow to her jaw, in some dim hope of putting her out, maybe. Just like Nancy Rose after being bashed in the head with a chair, Gloria didn’t go down. Instead, she backed out of reach, shrieked in fury, flung her arm up in the air, and discharged the weapon. The force of the discharge unbalanced her, and she fell backward . . .

  Toward the railing.

  Time slowed. I had a distinct impression that Andre tried to grab her, but he’d backed too far away when she’d hauled out the gun. The goons didn’t even seem to be bothering. Maybe they were waiting for her to fall unconscious so they could tote her off to bed. Or an asylum.

  She fell against the railing with arm still upraised. She didn’t stumble and collapse on the floor but rammed the rail with the momentum of all her weight. The wood cracked and tilted, and the force of her swing tumbled her over. Backward.

  Her head hit the marble floor a million seconds later. Dropping pumpkins would have been less messy.

  “Damn you to hell,” I muttered without thinking, horrorstruck by both the blood spatter and the awfulness of dying in such gruesome ignominy. How could this ever be explained to her family?

  Unable to drag my horrified gaze away, I watched in astonishment as the burning fires of hell blazed red in Gloria’s dead and staring eyes. To my revulsion, it was as if her Botoxed and plastic face momentarily melted, morphing into a fiendishly blackened skull. And then there was nothing but blood and brains.

  I had the urge to hurl.

  Even Tim gagged and quit saying shit.

  Andre stared over the railing, his usually amused expression transformed to one of horror. I didn’t know if he’d seen what I’d just seen or was even realizing what would go down next. He was simply seeing an old family friend and suffering regret. He had worse to worry about.