Everyone Dies in the End #86

Summer’s Call Part I

Wow, Wednesday took a long time to get here, no? Blame it on the weather. Summer is the best. No qualifier is needed, it is just the best. Cookouts, swimming, beeches, game conventions, baseball, sentences without verbs, and the new Harry Potter movie. Just kidding about the Harry Potter movie.  Always felt that Harry was fantasy for people who couldn’t deal with fantasy. Me? I’m more of a Black Company kind of guy.

Anyway, here’s another installment. As you might remember, we’re in and around the cathedral. Susan the witch wants to do good, and is facing off a couple of Vader’s thugs, Cindy the teleporter has been captured by Ramzke the vampire and awaits an audience with the aforementioned Vader, and Katarina—sister to Ramzke and all around bad ass—with the help of Cindy’s friend (and perhaps future lover?) Zak, is about six seconds from tearing into the cathedral, Vader’s guards, and the big man himself.

Give me lights, give me cameras.

And action.

Katarina

He was good in a fight. Kept his head. This man named Zak. That was enough for her. Katarina stepped onto the pavement, her eyes on the guards across the street. She was glad to have the help, not glad for the memories it stirred. Memories of a man name Mike. The crowd had thinned. For a moment she worried that the guards would see them approach, but no, they had been drinking, and were as inattentive as they would be slow. And it was not her nature to worry. Neither was it her nature to love, but still the man named Mike haunted her thoughts.

Enough!

She would NOT think about the human, Mike. Not the shoddy apartment, littered with books, toys, and games, and warmth…the warmest she had been in four-hundred years. She would not! She would think of how to eviscerate the humans inside the den of hypocrites, how to murder each, without feeling. No, she smiled, there would be feeling when she killed the man who had touched her without permission. Sweet, bloody feelings.

Beside her the human Zak’s footsteps clipped the pavement. The street was crossed, people drifted down it on either side, and the lights illuminated the steps of the cathedral. At the top the two guard-men leaned on a massive marble column and shared a bottle, paying no attention to Katarina and Zak’s clipping footsteps.

They ascended the broad steps and Katarina shifted to her left, placing the column on which the humans leaned between the guards and herself. Her erstwhile partner shifted with her, remaining silent. He knew what he was about, there was no mistaking that. At the top now. A crow passed low overhead, its wings beating the night air.

The world slowed. Across the asphalt a streetlight hummed, the Galilee porch smelled like urine and beer, a breath of air caressed her cheek, light on her scar. She stepped from behind the column.

One guard had his back to her. Dressed in a brown leather jacket, worn and discolored around the collar. He smelled like garlic. Trashy American stuff, not the sweet smelling garlic from Romania. The other guard faced Katarina.

Stepping from behind the pillar, she rested the sawed-off shotgun on the neck of the leather-jacketed guard and pulled the trigger. The gun bucked, but not too much. Her kind were strong; certainly strong enough to control a shotgun with one hand, certainly strong enough to kick the shattered corpse aside, step to the other guard and throw him against the wall, but she never got the chance. Before she could touch him, the human Zak’s gun burped, and the second guard caught the three, 9mm slugs with his face.

She nodded. “Nice.”

The man didn’t answer. She didn’t care. All that mattered now was speed. She jerked open the nearest double doors and stepped inside. She felt Zak just behind.

Several guards pounded down the long center aisle toward them. Behind her and to the left, Zak’s submachine gun fired again, and the foremost guard pounded no more. The ones behind began firing, and she saw Zak dive behind the wooden pew to her left. She glanced at him.

           “Cover me, human,” and then she was bounding across the pews.

Summer’s Call Part II

Oh yeah, the Mike that troubles Katarina is Mike Hudson. Soldier, Renaissance man, and my all-time favorite male character. See World at War: Revelation to see what he and Kat have going on.