I smile as the owner of the shop comes rushing through the doors that lead to the back. She’s holding some electrical cables in her handsbut drops them when she looks up and sees me, trips over the bundle, and goes down between two tables in a tangled web of cables and long, willowy brown limbs.
I walk over to her as she looks up. She’s going to speak, but I lift a finger to my lips, successfully quieting her. I drop into a crouch, sitting on my heels. I note that she is rather pretty. Large lips, dark pink around the edges, lighter pink in the middle. Clear dark-brown skin. Goddess braids that go down to her mid-back, even in a ponytail. She smells like honeydew melon, even beneath the coffee-ground scent that clings to her.
“So, did you call to discuss new VNA uniforms, or was there something else you’d rather tell me?”
“Yes, let me get to the point. The point is that I actually think Idohave something of interest to you, outside of weaponry, intel, and excellent taste in uniforms.” I hand the phone over. Out loud, to the woman, I tell her, “Say hello.”
Her manicured eyebrows pull together over a nose that gently slopes from a shallow brow. “Hello?” she says. Her voice is slightly accented. Very pretty. Even the gap between her front teeth is cute.This is going to be fun,I think with no small amount of pleasure, but a great one.
And any doubts I may have had that this was the right plan, or even a moderately good one, are erased by the Marduk’s response. For the first time since I’ve known him, he doesn’t have one.
“What’s going on?” she says to me, handing the phone back.
“Why don’t you put it on speakerphone, darling?”
Confused as ever, and so naive and trusting, she does as I ask.
“Now, you see, my friend, if you don’t give me your word—a word that Ibelieve—that Monika will be left alone for the rest of her human life by you, the villains, and any and all of your minions, I will be left with no choice but to take matters into my own hands and repay the kindness you showed my woman to yours, with even greater kindness.” I smile to show all my fangs.
The woman is nervous, but still doesn’t seem to realize the danger she’s in. She just stares up at me, wide eyed, even as I send the lightest electrical current tittering over her skin, causing goose bumps to rise on her arms beneath her stained yellow apron and white T-shirt.
The Marduk chuckles. It’s forced. “The Habesha Café owner isn’t my woman. The fact that you’d think that shows you’re a fool. And besides, you think yourgirlwould like it if you did something villainous to another human woman?”
“Oh, my dear old friend, you underestimate Monika—at least, you haven’t seen her response to the power of my new magical blue dick.”
I grin at the woman and waste no time in sending a surge of electricity straight through her bones, electrocuting her from the inside. A few volts higher would incapacitate her entirely. Her whole body spasms, nearly jolting off the tiled floor in a position that’s utterly grotesque and inhuman.
Her mouth is closed and I frown. I release her. “Perhaps that was too much. You couldn’t hear her scream properly. What if I isolate the electrical burns to her feet? That will make it harder for her to run from me should she get that idea.”
I strike her legs with electricity and this time achieve my desired effect. She folds in on herself, reaching for her sneakers, and releases a bloodcurdling shriek that makes even the hairs on my neck rise up. The smell of burning fabric and skin reaches my nose.
I pause while she labors to catch her breath. In the desperate silence, I muse, “My powers are so much more sensational now that I’ve reverted.” I comb my fingers across the top of the woman’s hair. “I guess I have the Elders to thank for that.”
The coffee shop girl screams as I pass that lightning through her stomach, chest, and back. I bend her legs, twist her bones, and when I’m done I grab her by the back of the throat, stand, and begin dragging her limp body behind me out of the building to my car.
The Marduk’s breathing has become labored. He isn’t speaking, so I press, “Have I made my point, or would you like to hear more?”
“No, please! Please!” she screams from the floor of the back seat after I toss her in. She tries to rise, but I give her a little zap between her temples to keep her grounded. She releases a pained moan.
Through the sound of her sobs and shrieks, I hear a voice, as loud as it can be, shout through the rinky-dink little phone, “Enough!”
I cut off the flood of pain I’m causing this innocent, rather pleasant young woman. Well, I cut it offafterI give her one final zap. “Auck!” She’s crying now, tears streaming down her cheeks as she cradles her head between her arms and spasms on the floor.
“You’ve made your point,” the Marduk says, voice gravelly as he struggles to regulate his breath.
I chuckle lightly. “I’m so glad I have your attention and have given you some idea of what it felt like to come upon my female wandering the streets of Sundale with dart wounds in her back and acid crawling up the backs of her legs.”
“This female has no value to me.”
I smile. “Then you’ll have no problem with me torturing her. Who knows? Maybe I’ll break both of her legs. I am, after all, learning from the best.”
“What do you want?” he snaps at me.
“A deal.”
“You can’t possibly. You could never trust that I would simply give you my word not to retaliate. You must know that I will end you and your female for daring to threaten me.”
My cheek tics. I blast his female with a harder voltage than any I’ve used thus far. She releases a wild shriek and then quiets abruptly, now unconscious. “Hmm. That may have been a little harsher than I intended.”
