Giving Him Hell: A Saturn's Daughter Novel (Saturn's Daughters Book 3) (29 page)

They didn’t even give me time to shower or change but dragged me up the stairs to Andre’s home. All the lights were on. Milo, the wretched fiend, was sitting on the windowsill, waiting for me. He jumped down and followed us in.

My kitty was safe. I was starting to breathe. I knew Andre was alive. He’d just done the nasty with me, apparently. Maybe I could do the same for him.

Not with his mother and father in the same room, I realized after Schwartz hauled me back to Andre’s crowded bedroom. I sighed and sank into the chair beside the bed.

I’d seen Andre still and comatose before. It was a pretty scary sight. He turned gray around the edges, and with his usual expressive face in repose, he looked dead. This time, he had a bloody bandage wrapped around his skull.

“We can’t take him to the hospital,” Julius said. “We don’t even know what saline would do to him while he’s in this state.”

Comatose, beyond the dimensional veil, in the dream world that had held Katerina captive for a decade, was the state he meant. The outside world didn’t understand that. I really didn’t understand it. But I’d been there. I didn’t know how it worked yet, but Andre had helped me. Somehow. I had to help him.

“Bring me some food, please?” I asked. “I’m about to pass out from hunger. And then leave me alone with him.”

I heard protests but didn’t listen. I didn’t think “it’s complicated,” would explain.

But I’d talked to Andre when he’d been out like this. He’d told me he’d been shot. I hadn’t been dreaming. He was over there in that other dimension, all right, the smug bastard.

I just had to bring him back.

Twenty-eight

I was filthy. I stank. I was probably leaving mud and blood rings on Andre’s fancy chairs. But no one objected when I took his hand because he instantly seemed less gray. Andre had apparently come to my rescue—again. We seemed to be developing a pattern: I stuck my neck out exploring the insane in an effort to find solutions, and he yanked me back to safety when I went too far. This time, he’d taken a bullet for me while taking down the maniac gnomes and opening a hole to my hell.

Yeah, he’d also invaded my personal space and more than copped a feel, but that was half my fault.

I didn’t know how I felt about that, but I wanted him here and present before I knocked his socks off. “Out, now,” I told them. “Give me a few minutes alone.”

They probably thought I could wave magic wands. I couldn’t do a damned rational thing that I knew of. But once our audience had departed, I leaned over and whispered in Andre’s ear.

“I’m going to rip your arm off, bastard.” I closed my hand tightly around his.

I swear, the beast almost smiled.

“Or maybe I should rip off something a little less useful.” I slid my filthy hand under the covers. I didn’t know how I’d explain the mud stains to Katerina if she was stupid enough to do his laundry, but that wasn’t my concern now.

They’d dressed him in pajamas. I snorted inelegantly and slid my hand beneath the elastic band. I could swear I felt his blood stirring.

“We have so many problems that I can’t begin to count them on all your fingers and toes,” I grumbled, clasping his penis in my muddy paw. “And you’re gonna lounge around over there on the other side pretending to be a succubus? Or is that incubus? I’m not into that crap. I’m into this.” I squeezed.

He groaned. He squirmed. And damned if he didn’t get hard.

“Wake up now, Andre, or I’ll leave you like this and let you explain to your mother.” I curled all my fingers around him and there was plenty of room left to rub up and down. Hard. And fast.

“Geez, Clancy,” he spluttered, jerking his hips. “You have no class.”

I laughed. I laughed hysterically. I let him go and collapsed against his chest and when his arms circled me, I laughed some more.

Everyone rushed back in, and I kept laughing.

“She’s hysterical. Get her out of here,” Andre said above my head. But he was hanging on to me too hard for anyone to pry me loose.

“I hate you, Andre. You’re a wicked bastard pig. And you’re so going down one of these days.” With that double entendre, I pulled myself loose. “I need a shower.”

Ignoring the platter of sandwiches and cup of steaming coffee Julius and Katerina held, I walked straight into Andre’s decadent shower and turned on the spray, then stripped.

My leg was nearly healed.

I stared at the once bleeding wound in disbelief, then ripped off the bandage on my arm. I couldn’t even see a scar.

***

Cora brought me undies, jeans, a sweater, and my tote bag. I must have left the bag at the homeless shelter when I ran out. Handy, because she couldn’t have got into my closet without my keys. Or carried Milo, who liked his sedan chair and had apparently returned to it.

I checked the mirror when I got out of the shower. The wounds were gone, but my hair hadn’t miraculously repaired itself. I was starting to look like a homeless bum.

By the time I emerged from the bathroom, fully dressed, Andre was sitting up in bed, looking a little more ruddy, with Milo covering his lap.

“Chandelier, Andre, really?” I asked, commenting on his decor. “Marble? Is your toilet the Taj Mahal?” I grabbed a sandwich from the platter Julius swung under my nose.

“She’s still hysterical. Better take her home.” Andre sipped his coffee and ignored me.

“Pretty blue pjs, big boy,” I said through a mouthful of tuna fish and basil. Katerina must have fixed these. Julius didn’t know how to open a can. “I’m not going anywhere until I know you’re here and not sucking around some other world.”

He studiedly ignored me. “I’m accepting MSI’s offer tomorrow. The Zone is too dangerous.”

I staggered from the blow. All my work, for
nothing
? I wanted to send him back where he’d come from.

“Big bad Special Ops boy is afraid of a couple of lunatic gnomes with guns,” I taunted, not letting him know my despair. My stomach knotted, and I wasn’t hungry anymore.

Andre had once been my boss. I knew how tough he could be. He wasn’t lying.

Milo leapt from the bed to curl around my ankles. I picked him up and stroked him to keep my anger level down, but I felt as if I was teetering on a precipice.

“He may be right this time, Tina,” Katerina said worriedly. “If the ground under the harbor is so fragile that it’s collapsing, it could do the same to the town.”

I may have dreamed there was a space alien trapped in a meteorite under the Zone, but I knew for certain that our homes and friends were here, in the Zone. I couldn’t give up.

I took a chair and put my bare feet up on his covers. Milo curled up on the bed to keep an eye on us. “Yes, the Zone is dangerous,” I agreed with a semblance of calm. “Do you want to invite MSI and their patients to suffer in our place?”

“Their problem,” Andre snarled. “I’m buying that warehouse over in Fells Point. I’ll turn it into a condo and retail complex. Makes more sense than staying here.”

I glanced up at Cora, who was regarding him worriedly. “If he does, we’ll move in with him,” I threatened. “I’ll turn his customers to stone, and you can freak out the neighbors. Tim can go
boo
and before long, we’ll have the place to ourselves. Not so bad for anyone except Andre, who’ll have to make the mortgage payments on bankrupt businesses.”

“You might want to try that here,” Schwartz surprisingly suggested. “That foreign doctor was pretty freaked today. Someone needs to make it clear that Acme’s magic element has violent side effects. MSI might change its mind.”

Acme’s magic may have healed my wounds—but it was also cracking open our community.

“I truly appreciate a rational man,” I told him, practically inhaling my coffee. “But if the traitor here strikes an agreement,” I kicked Andre’s leg beneath the cover, “Acme will just take over instead of MSI. They’ve wanted us out all along.”

“Let them have the place,” Andre growled. “I’ll laugh as it crumbles beneath their feet.”

I was pretty worried he was right, and I was wrong, and I ought to just go home for the little while I had it. I’d never had a home so nice. Of course, I’d never talked to space aliens before either.

“Fine, then we’ll all move up to Dane’s mansion,” I sneered instead of shutting up like I should. “I bet I’d look good in Ruxton. Dane could find me a place on his staff. With all that money, I’m betting I could find a place for everybody. You can go live in Fells Point by yourself.”

A pop-pop-popping sound outside broke up the argument. In my despair, I was ready to blast anyone who crossed me.

Schwartz gestured for us to stand back while he put his back against the wall by the front window and peered out. “You’ve got uniformed men with guns pouring out of your place, Tina. Did you leave the gates to hell open?”

Oh crap. I wilted in my chair. “I don’t suppose one of them is carrying Christmas ornaments?” I asked, too tired to care. I’d left the rest of the gnomes scattered about the office, unfettered. Mistake, apparently.

I could feel everyone gawking at me, but I forced myself to take another bite of my sandwich. If I had to fight stoned gnomes, I wasn’t doing it on an empty stomach.

“A couple are wearing red caps,” Schwartz said warily, glancing in my direction.

“I didn’t do it.” I held up my hands in innocence. “I swear, I did nothing. Not to that lot anyway. Maybe the lunatics found them. Maybe Paddy is experimenting with canned gas again. Are they coming this way? Do we need to open Andre’s weapon chamber?”

Andre had a complete arsenal in a bomb shelter beneath the street.

Just as an experiment, I tried visualizing my stoned fascist gnomes into strolling down to Chesty’s for pasta instead of terrorizing the neighborhood. That would be justice, wouldn’t it?

“Nah, they’re stumbling around, looking kind of lost mostly. I think the one with the assault rifle shot up the florist truck Tim left out front. Another freak is holding a holly branch and beating it over his head. And now they’re all arguing and looking for their phones. I’ll go out and see if I can play helpful cop.”

It didn’t sound as if they were heading for Chesty’s. So much for that experiment. The gnomes hadn’t responded to my visualization any better than the frogs. New theories needed. Maybe I needed to be in peril before I could visualize my enemies to Tahiti.

I raised a cautionary eyebrow at our normally taciturn lieutenant. “Give them a minute, see if they put their toys away.”

Unlike Gloria’s hellhounds, Graham Young’s security guards hadn’t spent years drinking in the pollution of Acme and Hell’s Mansion. Chances were good they were just stupid, not evil. I had no evidence otherwise and didn’t want to have to damn them. Not that damning had worked on Kaminski.

Andre threw off his covers and stalked to the window in his blue pajamas. Apparently gunfire had leveled any lingering arousal, but he was still a lithe muscular panther who shot my hormone level sky high, even if he was a selfish, amoral bastard that I had to take down.

“They’re holstering their guns and phoning in for orders,” Andre concluded. “Go out and give them Graham Young’s new address in the psych ward.” He turned and faced us. “Out. I’m getting dressed. Time’s running out if I’m going to be a rich man.”

He’d saved my life. I couldn’t kill him, although beating him with a big stick had appeal.

Schwartz left to steer our would-be gunmen out of town. Looking bewildered and worried, Cora left with him. She sent a pleading look to me, but I was still too shaken to know right from wrong. I knew what I
wanted.
That didn’t mean saving the Zone was right.

Something in that tunnel had healed my wounds—just as it had healed seriously wounded psyches like Andre’s had been. And the mystery of the Zone had given second chances and stronger characters to people like Bill and Fred. The Zone wasn’t all bad.

Which was when my imagination ran away with my logic, and I put together Gloria’s barrels of chemicals and holes to hell and meteorites and confused space aliens and formed a crazed puzzle of them. All I had to do was remove Andre from the equation.

I finished my sandwich and came to my feet. “Sell out, Andre, and you’re opening the gates to hell to MacNeill. I’m not letting that happen.”

He glared and started unfastening his pajama buttons.

Milo and I followed his parents out, leaving him alone. They looked worried as I kept on going, but as Andre had said, time was running out.

Tomorrow was Friday, the last day of the offer to buy the Zone before eminent domain bulldozed us all. I needed a plan.

Twenty-nine

Don’t turn creeps into inanimate or incoherent objects,
I wrote in my mental rule book as I hurried home with Milo hot on my heels.
You only get one chance to make them pay. Make it count.
There was probably a better word for croaking frogs than incoherent but my brain wasn’t yet up to par. It was about to explode, in fact.

I was pretty certain I’d just verified that I could only visualize thugs out of my way once. After that, I was on my own. I could never turn Ned into a frog again, or even a gnome. I couldn’t make the fascists or the ex-frogs stop shooting at me.

I wasn’t even sure I could damn them, since I’d had to drop my last victim into the harbor and bulldoze over him before I got rid of him. Although I may have sent his soul to hell since I’d been rewarded with the saunas packing up and leaving. But my personal goal was survival, not being the devil’s minion.

If my visualization didn’t teach the baddies to be good, they’d wreak havoc forevermore, and there wouldn’t be a blamed thing I could do about it except have them arrested like a normal citizen. That sucked, because here in the Zone, getting justice didn’t happen often.

And based on the guards’ spectacular return from gnomes and frogs, it looked like the visualization only lasted a little while—around the Zone, anyway. I didn’t have time to experiment elsewhere.

Daddy Saturn was a piss poor parent if he left everything up to me to resolve. No wonder my mother had run away and his other daughters hid and skulked in dark corners of the earth. We were all paranoid and hiding because none of us knew what we were doing.