Dark Creations: Dark Ending (Part 6) (23 page)

He quickly depressed the contact icon on his phone and scrolled through the information of his members until he found Arnold Gathers.  He called Arnold’s cell phone and waited.  After several rings, Arn
old answered.

“Hello?” Arnold’s voice echoed through the receiver. 

“Arnold, are you there yet?  Has the virus been dispatched?” Terzini asked and could not keep the urgency from his voice.

“No sir.  I am approximately a half-hour from the city,” Arnold answered.

“You were supposed to be there hours ago!” he boomed furiously and felt every last hold on the reins of his temper fall away.  “What the hell has taken you so long?” he screamed into the receiver and spittle sprayed in every direction. 

“I encountered setbacks,” Arnold said impassively. 

“What?” Terzini huffed incredulously.  He was about to rant and vent the overwhelming rage he was feeling, but caught himself.  He took a deep breath to calm his chafed nerves and bit back the tirade he’d intended to unleash.  “Never mind,” he said.  “Just get there and release the virus,” he enunciated each word to emphasize their importance.  “Call me when it is done,” he concluded and ended the call.  He placed his phone back in his pocket.  His head smarted and a cramp complained at the nape of his neck. 

He began rubbing the bunched muscles there when
more shots rang out close by.  His head snapped toward the window, toward the sound.  The grounds were cloaked in bruised shadows in the predawn hours and he did not have a clear view of what was happening.  He immediately moved to the hallway and saw two members patrolling.

“Find out what’s going on out there
!” he ordered them.  “Assemble a team.  I heard shots fired in the courtyard again.  Go now!”  He commanded the six guards outside to make sure the perimeter was secure.  Melissa was not a threat, so their presence was not necessary in the face of whatever was going on.  And something was, in fact, going on.

Warning rac
ed across his flesh like an icy wind and chilled his blood.  He did not know what the hell was happening and why his plan seemed hell-bent of falling apart.  But he would find out. 

He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed Lee, the member in charge of the team that remained in Taft.  He instructed him to mobilize forces there at once and bring them to his compound.  He needed to beef up security and would only feel properly protected
with close to eight hundred members guarding him.

Fate might be determined to upend his plan, but he was fully prepared to erect both middle fingers at fate as he always had.  Reinforcements would arrive soon.  In the meantime, he had
many men monitoring the surrounding area. 

He made every effort to remind himself of that as he left his bedroom and office and strode down the hallway to the front of the house.  There,
he found a short staircase and ascended it to the main level of his compound.  Furniture had been pushed to the perimeter of the room and a large window filled one wall.  He stood before it and gazed out into the eerie glow of early dawn.

When he realized that
the bleached landscape of daybreak, bled of its rich darkness, had become an unearthly electric blue and was blanketed in ghostly cyan silhouettes, he knew he’d need to activate his outdoor lighting system.  But he froze midway when he felt cold metal pressed to the back of his head. 

“Turn around, slowly,” a familiar voice commanded him.  He felt his scalp shrink and prickle as if it were two sizes too small.  Awareness whispered up his spine and he realized in that moment, that it was Gabriel who spoke, and that the muzzle of a gun was pressed against his skull.

Chapter 19

Gabriel heard little over the roar of blood behind his ears rushing frenziedly and matching his pulse rate.  Terzini turned slowly and Gabriel fought to keep from gasping.  The man before him was the man who’d created him, at least outwardly he was.
  But he knew that their similarities were limited, that Lord Terzini was far worse.  He held Melissa somewhere in his lair.

“Take me to her now,” Gabriel commanded him and pressed the muzzle
of his gun to his temple.  

“She isn’t here anymore,” Terzini said and
tried to keep his face smooth.  But a tiny tick at the corner of his mouth betrayed him.

“Don’t lie to me,” Gabriel growled.  “If you don’t take me to her now, I will shoot your left kneecap first,” he said as he lowered the barrel of the gun he held and aimed it at Terzini’s knee. 

Terzini’s entire body twitched and he squeezed his eyes shut.  “Okay,” he said hurriedly.  “Okay.”

Gabriel raised the gun and trained it on his head once again.  “Let’s go,” he said and prayed Terzini wasn’t
lying.  He jabbed the gun against his head and nudged him along.  Terzini took the not-so-subtle hint and began walking.  Gabriel followed him down a staircase and down a long, carpeted hallway.  He stopped outside a padlocked door.

“Open it,” Gabriel demanded
and struggled to steady his shaking hands.  He did not know whether Melissa did, in fact, wait on the other side of the door or whether a trap awaited him.  For all he knew, he might be led into a deranged version of a member break room where all of Terzini’s drones sat and oiled their guns for relaxation.  He did not know, but would soon enough.

The clicking of the padlock mechanism followed by the quiet creaking of hinges
made his pulse gallop wildly.  When the door opened fully, Gabriel saw that the room was not a member break room.  It looked like a bedroom.  Sparsely furnished with just a small dresser and cot, the room appeared empty.  He stepped inside and did not see Melissa.  He ground his teeth together and felt the muscles around his jaw flex with every second that ticked by, seconds he did not see Melissa.  He hardened his features to match the hardness he felt and positioned his body to cock his arm.  He was about to skull Terzini with the handle of his gun before blasting his knee with a bullet, as promised, for lying and wasting his time when a small huddled shape in the corner behind the door caught his attention.

A curtain of highlighted hair fell across her face, covering it
, and her knees were drawn to her chest.  She wore a torn satin dress and her feet were bare, but he knew right away that the girl huddled in the corner was Melissa.

Gabriel’s heart sprung to his throat but lodged there when she looked up.  Her hair spilled over her shoulder
s and he stepped toward her, and when he did, her chin tipped upward.  Her face became visible and her eyes widened.  “Gabriel!” she cried.  “You’re alive!”

Melissa tried to stand, but her legs did not seem strong enough to support her.  But Gabriel was not looking at her
legs.  He was held by her face. 

“Did he do this to you?” he asked of the a
ngry red welts that marked her cheeks and forehead.  One eye was swollen shut and more bruises blotted her upper body.

She nodded and confirmed that Terzini had beaten her.  H
e had to force himself to smile when he said, “I am here, Melissa.”

As the word
s fell from his lips, he felt a strange sensation overtake his body.  It started like a ripple of moonlight on water, a cold, flowing feeling that swiftly spread and branched until the chill grew so cold it burned like white-hot flames.  The fire in him flashed and stirred without warning, and roused a mighty a beast within him.  Awoken from a yawning pit of darkness deep inside him, it stretched and flexed its deadly talons, readying to strike.  He spun to face Terzini, felt the beast in him primed to attack.  He stared into the black eyes of the man responsible for Melissa’s injuries.  And in that moment, Gabriel was every bit the monster he’d always feared he was. 

“What have you done?” he heard the primal snarl of his voice.  All the while, pressure arose inside of him, climbing up to his ears and screaming for release, a guttural war cry that demanded blood, Terzini’s blood.  “What have you done to her?” he screamed and released the beast.  Gabriel gripped the front of Terzini’s shirt, lifting him off his feet, then threw him wi
th strength he never dreamed he possessed into the far wall of the room.  Terzini’s body slammed against the plaster with a loud
thud
but was never given a chance to slump to the floor below it.  Gabriel descended on him.  He hefted the gun high overhead and whipped it against Terzini’s face.  The blow drew an arc of blood and Gabriel swore he could smell the coppery scent of it.  He hit him again and again, feeling justice with every crack that met his skull.  He only stopped when Melissa’s voice, soft and calm, called to him.

“Gabriel,” she said and he felt his hand freeze in midair.  He did not deliver another blow.

She was close to him now.  She had managed to stand and walk to him.  Up close, her injuries were worse than he thought. 

“Melissa,” he breathed as he took her
in his arms.  He felt her body crumple, her form melding to his.  He inhaled deeply and smelled an unfamiliar scent, fruity and overpowering, not her usual sweet vanilla, coconut and caramel fragrance.  But he did not care about what she smelled like.  All he cared about was that she was in his arms. 

He looked down
over her shoulder at Terzini and felt a fresh swell of anger riling.  Lying as he was, Terzini was little more than a filthy, contemptible insect.  Loathing filled Gabriel.  The bug was drooling snot and blood together, the ugly wet slop burbling across his face.  He was not the powerful destroyer of mankind he believed himself to be.  He was a vile bug, a vile bug that had hurt the woman he loved.

He embraced her tighter, felt the steady rhythm of her heart thrum through him and calm the frantic beat of his own.  “I love you,” he said and felt a wave emotion crash against him
, tempering the beast.  His eyes burned and tears filled them, spilling past his lashes. 

“I love you, too,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper. 

Everyone had thought she was dead, even him at times.  Yet here she was, hurt, but alive, and in his arms where she belonged.  He could not bring himself to tell her that he’d thought he’d lost her.  He just held her close for a moment, enjoying the feel of her warmth.

The moment ended, h
owever, when gurgling sounded from Terzini.  The gurgling gave way to garbled laughter. 

“They’re coming,” he wheezed.  “Neither of you will make it
out of here.”

Gabriel reluctantly released Melissa and climbed on a stout burea
u to look out a narrow window high on the wall. 

“Shit,” he said
as he saw a tide of black sweep across the lawn.  A wave of uniform-clad members stormed the property and was setting up a perimeter.  Gabriel’s thoughts immediately went to Yoshi.  Yoshi was out there in the woods beyond the compound, armed but alone.  He regretted leaving him as he had, but could not think of anything other than rescuing Melissa.  Now he worried.  He would not allow his friend to die at the hand of Terzini’s men.

As if reading his thought
s, Terzini sputtered and offered another awful sounding laugh. Gabriel jumped down from the bureau and marched over to him.  Terzini flinched reflexively, the first intelligent thing he’d done to date.  At least his body knew instinctively that he was in the presence of someone who would take his life without a second thought.

Gabriel knelt down beside him and placed the muzzle
of his gun against his right eye.  “So, I hear you have a very special weapon,” Gabriel began.  “I hear you have a weapon that kills your pathetic creations.”

“I have no such thing,” Terzini dribbled.  Gabriel felt his stomach churn.

“See, I told you before,
don’t
lie to me,” he allowed his index finger to gently squeeze the trigger.  His act was not lost on Terzini.  His eyes, beady pinpoints of ink, zeroed in on his finger.  “You better hope you have it, or you are dead.”

“You are going to kill me either way,” Terzini said and his voice trembled with fear Gabriel did not think him capable of feeling. 

“If you give me the weapon, I won’t kill you.  You have my word.”

“You’re lying,” Terzini
rasped, his lower lips quivering and his eyes darting back and forth. 

“I’m not,” Gabriel promised and meant it.
  “I do not lie, you should know that.”

“It will kill you, too, Gabriel.  You’re made of the same DNA as my new creation
s, the members.  All in the new race were made identically.  You will not live.”

Gabriel was not sure whether he
’d told the truth at first, but then a thought occurred to him.  “You would not have even told me if that were true.  You would have just let me die,” Gabriel said and watched as Terzini’s brows rose in surprise.  “Yeah, you’re not the only smart one in the room,” he couldn’t help but add.  “Besides, you are a creation of Dr. Franklin Terzini, too, aren’t you?” Gabriel asked him and did not wait for an answer.  He already knew the answer, they all did.  He continued, “You engineered your new race to be susceptible to this device so that you could ensure control.  That’s the kind of paranoid maniac you are.”  Gabriel shook his head slowly and made a clucking sound with his tongue like a disappointed parent.  “You don’t even trust your own handiwork to not turn against you.  Pathetic,” he spat.