Crime Rave (8 page)

The Ethereals

I
n a circle you begin the chant that will bring the twelve chosen dead ones back to life. The goddesses of magic, love, revenge, honesty, and sadness: Maga, Amaria, Ganza, Veritas, and Lastyme. You sing the world electric.

Through you justice will have new faces.

Through you the karmic upset released by Kaleanathi will be set right.

Even though The Angel Curiel begged you not to proceed, claiming Mother, The Ancient One has woken and you’ve done enough, you don’t take heed. You pretend not to feel Mother’s anger radiating from her resting place. The Elementals will suffer for what they’ve done.

The Angel Curiel reminds you The Elementals are just as much a part of the celestial ecosystem as you. They have their place, just as you have yours.

But no, you say, this cataclysm was above and beyond what the Elders permit. And now the humans will know. They will have the empirical proof some have always wanted that divine intervention is real. There’s no way now to protect the heavenly secret anymore.

Once upon a time the gods and goddesses walked among the humans. And now because of the smog goddess, Kaleanathi, those days will soon be upon the world again. Our human army must be in place. These few dead are too important to lose: the bottom line of resurrection. Their work is unfinished, their passing into the Spirit Realm not in the master tapestry. For that, The Elementals will atone. The heavens open with new purpose: free the chosen souls from the poison womb of Kaleanathi.

Yet, try as your collective might, you cannot. Another soulscream tears through the multiverse as you realize Kaleanathi has become too powerful feeding on so many thousands of souls at once. She’s tapped into The Source, and she’s depleting it.

In the stone circle of the heavenly Elders you Ethereals meet, stretching your energy as far as it can reach, finding a portal into a neighboring multiverse and drawing now from its Source. You can’t stop breaking the rules, and you awaken and anger new beings in the process.

The Angel Curiel watches on, powerless to stop you from pulling at the threads that will unravel everything.

7:40 AM UCLA Medical Center Operating Theater

T
he air is kinetic, the inside of a Van de Graaff generator making people’s hair stand on end. The Countess Barona tries to smooth her blonde do down, but it will not comply. She keeps trying. She refuses to be photographed with hair like a harridan just emerged from a stint lost in the woods.

Guy Severin watches from the sidelines, feeling the tension rising.
The dead coming back to life.
The energy in the atrium is motile, a force field, charging the tight space. Severin feels the hair on his arms rising, a tightness in his chest, an elephant sitting on him making it hard to breathe. More than anything he wants out. Fresh air, maybe even a toke, though he’s five years sober. The air crackles around him. He feels it in the tips of his fingers and his thinning hair floats around his face. He pats it down, making it worse. He feels an overwhelming urge to pray, but that’s something else he’s quit.

Captain Anderson worries about his pacemaker. His heart thrums in his chest making his fillings hurt. No, wait, that’s because he’s grinding his teeth. Gnashing them, can’t help it.
He pops a cough lozenge in his mouth, hoping it will relax his jaw. It smashes to sugary bits in the back of his throat. He worries he’ll choke on a sliver. He wants to spit it out, but the cameras are rolling. He wants to excuse himself, but he can feel it.
Any minute now. Something’s gonna happen. Don’t choke before it does.

Thirty-five onlookers are crammed into a space made for at most twenty graduate students to watch surgeons perform experimental surgeries. The operating room below is laid out with twelve gurneys covered in white sheets, the hills and valleys of bodies making ridges in the surface. What once were body parts are now whole people.

Nobody wants to ask, but the question is forefront in their minds:
What will happen if they wake up?

The hospital staff make sure the bodies are strapped down tight. They make sure to not uncover the faces yet. The Mayor said he doesn’t want them ending up on the five o’clock news before answers are had.

Mayor Ellis wishes he hadn’t tippled this morning. The start of a headache steals over the left side of his forehead. Anger rises in him, the lead-in to a hangover. He should have drunk the whole flask. What was he thinking? Just a few sips. Idiot. And now he’s gonna have to deal with Barona and the press.
Fuck
. His mouth is dry. A spoonful of peanut butter when you’re thirsty. The sound of his smacking mouth makes the headache move closer to center.
Come on, come on, let’s get this show on the road already.

The observation room gets more and more cramped as CSIs Pete Mazzotti and Tina Vasco squeeze their way in. The window into the room below films over with condensation. Pete uses his sleeve to wipe down the areas around him. Tina continues giving him the silent treatment, then has a change of heart.

“Pete, I don’t feel so good.” Sick sweat shines on Tina’s tan skin, growing paler by the moment. Pete hands her his handkerchief and she wipes her face.

“Did you take your shot?” It wouldn’t be the first time Tina gets so caught up in work that her blood sugar crashes.

She nods. “Do you have any water?” Pete doesn’t.

“Vending machine just outside. Come on, let’s take a breather.”

“I don’t want to lose our spots.”

“Tina, come. Now.” She allows Pete to take her by the arm and lead her out, jostling and squeezing through the packed room. The hallway is cool. Tina rests her clammy forehead against a tile wall. The vending machine whirs and spits out a bottle of Aquafine. Pete cracks the lid open, and hands the bottle to Tina. She takes a long swig, wishing it were vodka.

“Better?”

Tina nods, but doesn’t look much better. She finishes the bottle. Tina feels the fillings in her teeth rattling. Whatever is happening in that operating theater is going on out here, too.
What
is
this?

“Want another one?” Pete looks worried. Goosebumps rise and fall all over his body.

“This isn’t going to make up for you being a dick.” She rubs the new sheen of sweat off her face, dries her hand on her jeans.

“I know.” Pete puts more coins into the machine and another bottle of water falls into the tray.

“Come on, jerk. We’re gonna miss all the action.”

Tina gives him a small smile. Pete moves to kiss her but she shakes her head.
Too soon.

Inside the observation room the air is thick with invisible currents. Everyone’s hair floats from their skulls in assorted afros. It’s hot. Condensation on the window has thickened. A nurse collapses down in the operating theater. A doctor helps her to her feet and escorts her out of the room. Up in observation, the room is abuzz.

“There’s no way that those bodies down there started off as parts. I don’t believe it.” The police commissioner shakes his head.

“Believe it. They’ve documented the whole thing. There’s witnesses,” a Los Angeles Gazette reporter barks back.

“Who reported it?” The commissioner won’t have it.

“I did,” Guy Severin says. “One of, anyway.” It’s the backlash he’s been waiting for. “The limbs made these creaking noises as they grew. Like rhubarb during growing season? It was the scariest shit, um, I mean, stuff, I’ve ever seen, sir.”

Skeptical faces reign. But not from Pete Mazzotti, Tina Vasco and Detectives Red Feather and Günn. Countess Barona looks fascinated, like a young psychopath torturing neighborhood pets to see their death throes.

“You’ll probably have nightmares about it.” Glee drips from Barona’s voice.

Severin’s eyes widen, but he says nothing.

Mayor Ellis looks aghast and doesn’t miss the quizzical stares shot his way at the presence of this hateful woman.

Günn leans over and whispers into Red Feather’s ear, “What the hell is she doing in here anyway?”

Red Feather shrugs and shakes his head. “Do you think Ellis is fucking her?”

“Could be. Although she’s probably fucking
him,
” Red Feather smiles and Günn snorts. The Countess turns her head—Günn imagines she can hear gears turning—and glares at them. Günn flashes her a broad, cheesy smile and wiggles her fingers in a childish hello. Barona is not amused. Red Feather leans in to Günn, keeping his eyes on the Countess.

“Uh-oh. I think she’s putting a hex on you,” Red Feather chortles.

“Me? She’s looking at you, too!” Günn revels in banter that has nothing to do with the growing impossibility below. Her eye twitch takes a brief respite.

Barona sniffs. “How very unprofessional. Indeed.”

Günn nods with mock seriousness. “It is very unprofessional that a civilian be involved in a police investigation.
Indeed
.”

The Countess frowns. “I’m a taxpayer, which means I pay
your
salaries. I have every right to be here.”

“I always wondered whose unintelligible signature that was on my paychecks. Well then. Nice to meet you,
Boss,
” Günn puts out her hand to shake.

The Countess looks at Mayor Ellis, expecting him to come to her defense. He feigns engrossment in the sheet-covered bodies below. Anger flashes across her face as she silently promises:
You’ll pay for this.
With a final glare at the detectives, Barona turns her attention back to the operating theater, already contemplating payback.

“Uh-oh. We’ve got a double hex on its way,” Günn crows.

Mayor Ellis turns. “Can it, you two.”

Barona sneers.
Too little too late, Blondie.

Water runs down the observation window in rivulets. The pressure in the cabin increases, so much that the room falls silent as people struggle to catch their breath. Günn’s reprieve from the unimaginable over as quick as it started.

After what feels like years, the pressure in his chest increasing, the electricity in the room building, and the video camera whining in protest, Guy Severin stares at the bodies, afraid to blink, knowing that any moment the nightmare that has plagued him will surely come to pass. Severin nudges Captain Anderson.

“Sir, I have an awful foreboding they’re waking up.”

Captain Anderson’s eyes widen. It hasn’t occurred to him that’s even a possibility.

The electricity in the room builds to a crescendo, churning the air around them. The video camera conks out with a zap, startling Tina Vasco and Pete Mazzotti who’ve snuck back in.

Günn doubles over, gasping for breath.

Red Feather feels the urge to hold onto something, like the roof of the building will suddenly hurl into the heavens, taking them all along for the ride. Red Feather closes his eyes and is hit with a quick series of images: high ceiling, ornate carvings, a blue sky so beautiful it must be the doorway to heaven, a circle of beings, holding hands, chanting in a language he cannot comprehend but it feels like love laced with an ethereal power that only the enlightened could understand. Some of the beings look up further into the heavens. Some look down towards the Earth. Their voices rise into a scream that snaps Red Feather’s eyes open.
Aho!

In the moment the witnesses feel their hearts will stop beating, the room goes still.

Captain Anderson’s pacemaker is hot in his chest, burning through his shirt. Countess Barona is exhilarated, a cocaine rush. Mayor Ellis’s head thrums.

The electricity in the air makes one last zing and it’s gone. Outside, a funnel cloud—the opposite of the one that sucked up the Crane mansion—makes the building and its environs shake as the air crashes down.

Above, the smog goddess Kaleanathi rages as the dead souls are yanked from her insides.
I am become Hell!
she screams, as the tributes rip an eye in her maelstrom.

Below, the occupants of the observation deck gasp for breath, hair finally laying flat. Tight chests back to normal. The room turns frigid, early morning in the Arctic.

Severin turns the video camera back on. It works. LAPD and company stare down through the glass at the twelve bodies on morgue gurneys.

Movement. Severin’s heart pounds in anticipation.
This is it. It’s really happening!

Another white sheet twitches, then another. Gasps resound.

Tina thinks she’s going to be sick. Barona claps her hands.

Another spasm below strong enough to dislodge the sheet and BAM, the one-eyed girl’s eye is open, panicked, as she thrashes against the restraints, coughing and wheezing.

A moment later the person who started off as just a tail coughs herself awake, the Velcro straps creaking against her strength.

One by one the people who were only pieces of flesh just hours before open their eyes, heaving and quaking, wild with fear and confusion as they fight the restraints.

Dropped jaws catch flies in the observation deck as the thrashing below dislodges covering sheets, they fall to the floor.

“That woman has a tail!”

“I don’t think she’s a woman!”

“A real-life cyclops?”

“Are those nails shooting out of her body?”

“It smells like flowers in here—” The speaker faints.

Below, a smorgasbord of survivors.

The one-eyed girl.

A purple-eyed woman with Tibetan features.

An African-American woman with silver eyes, glinting like mica in the fluorescent light.

A Latina, her curly hair a mess and an acrylic-nail tipped hand trying to work her way out of the restraints.

A full-on lizard woman, forked tongue darting in and out of her mouth.

Cyborg woman, her skin a luminous metallic sheen.

A woman with green-tinged skin, translucent, breathing heavily and emitting a scent like oleander baking in the sun.

A South Asian woman with cacao-colored skin and long dark hair.

A freckle-faced redhead with pale Irish skin.

An auburn-haired beauty with a huge rack, her sheet straining against her massive heaving bosom.

A Korean woman who dry heaves, cannot stop.

A Caucasian man, nondescript, short dark hair.

“Dude,” Severin brays. “That’s DJ-fucking-Fetish!”

Red Feather looks at Günn, envelops her hand in his.

“Detectives, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” Captain Anderson breathes.

Red Feather puts his other hand on the captain’s shoulder. “Agreed, sir. Kansas has gone bye-bye.”

They look down at the twelve figures in the operating theater—miracles in physical form—as they scream to be freed from the straps that bind them.

It’s the end of the world as everyone knows it.

And nobody feels fine.