The Stelter City Saga: Ultranatural (41 page)

One more corner and the thick leafy trees had
vanished only to allow Lee and Lotus passage over a small bridge.
Lee could see it now; before her lined at the base of the jagged
mountains stretched an endless row of warehouses. For a moment, the
sight reminded her of the horrifying car chase back in East Side.
She and Ace had thought they were safe after emerging from a
storage unit only to realize the hunt was only beginning. Before
Ace could dwell in her mind too long, Lotus was already across the
bridge and parking her car in front of a large warehouse shaped
like a barn.

“
This is where they film a
TV show?” asked Lee stepping out and slamming the car door
shut.

From the base of the mountain, Lee could
still hear the rushing of traffic from the highway above chorusing
with the sound of rushing water beneath the bridge they just
crossed. As Lee rotated in a slow circle just to gather her
surroundings, her small flats crunched against the loose
gravel.

“
Well, this is Dylan Dade’s
studio.” Replied Lotus as she crouched beside the side window to
check her lips. “He’s the only one with a studio because he’s the
only one that has a consistent show.”

“
What does that mean?” asked
Lee gazing up at the mountains towering over the already huge
studio. From the base, the mountain climbed so high, even with the
cloudy overcast, Lee had to shield her eyes. As she continued to
pan the scene, Lee noticed that a good sized parking lot separated
each of the huge warehouses and with
Jurassic Park
fresh in her mind, Lee
figured each warehouse could fit three
tyrannosaurus-rexs.

“
That’s a pretty big studio
just for one man.” Lee continued. “What are those?”

Lotus stood up and glanced at her sister over
the convertible top only to follow her gaze up the mountain. “The
radio tower?” Lotus guessed

Against the deep kiwi colored trees and just
beneath the overcast, a narrow steel tower rose from the leaves. A
rusty antenna drooped from its hinges as if it were a stuck in
sadness; probably because no one had used it in years.

“
I’m not sure.” Lotus
replied hastily hurrying to the small front door, “Maybe one of
Dylan’s guys can give you a tour when the interview is
done.”

Lotus held the door open as Lee hurried
inside. Lee wasn’t sure what to find considering the closest thing
to stardom she had ever had was living on Hollywood Avenue in
Tarrillian. But for such a large warehouse, Lee had expected the
lobby to be a little bigger and a little more upper-class. Instead,
a wooden receptionist’s desk sat empty against the far wall as four
fold-out chairs leaned against two other vacant walls. On either
side of the big desk, dark hallways lead to someplace unknown.

Before Lee could ask where they were going,
Lotus had tugged Lee through the hallway on the right of the wooden
desk. For a moment they hurried in silence and near darkness. Only
every third light had been turned on giving the place an eerie
abandoned feel. Several doors lined the halls and Lee glanced
inside the only one that had been left open. A vast office work
space took the inside of the rooms.

They rounded the corner and came face to face
with a flight of stairs. “There isn’t an elevator?” questioned Lee
as Lotus continued up.

“
I think there is,” she
replied as her heels clomped against the cement steps, “but I have
yet to find it.”

Lee hadn’t realized how odd the layout of the
building had been until Lotus’s remark, but for some reason, Lee
figured if her sister hadn’t been there, Lee would have been more
lost then a toddler in a corn maze.

A fire escape door blocked their way from
entering the second floor’s hallway but before Lotus could even
wrench it open, Lee could see through the glass window that the
workers from below had found their way up here. Men and women with
suits and clipboards scurried around from office to office shouting
things in their ear pieces and trying not to spill mocha on their
white shirts. The sisters had managed to take two steps into the
hall before a balding man with a sharp nose and an egg-shaped gut
hurried to great them.

“
Oh Lotus darling!” he
exclaimed with a lisp.

“
Good morning Francis.”
Smiled Lotus casually. “Sorry we’re late.”

“
Oh don’t you worry about
that.” As the man spoke, he continued to walk backwards in front of
the girls as if he had eyes in the back of his head. No doubt it
was a technique developed over many years of his career. “You’re
co-star Zach only arrived minutes before you. My goodness!” he
exclaimed after seeing Lee for the first time. “The resemblance is
remarkable! Oh dear gracious, I cannot believe you are Haileigh
Stelter!!”

Lee smiled as the man clapped his hands in
admiration before whirling around and walking like a normal human.
With the man on the other side of Lotus, Lee could see the other
workers stop thumbing their papers to glance at her as she walked
through.

“
You’re makeup artist is
ready for you,” continued Francis, “But you already look marvelous
Lotus. Maybe just a few tweaks to the hair and—What?!” his voice
had suddenly changed to a rage as he cocked his head to the side.
For a moment Lee thought he had gone mental until she realized he
was shouting into the earpiece mounted to his head.

“
Well clean up the set and
get a fan to help dry it off. We are live in thirty!! And check
Dylan!! Make sure he’s ready!” Francis cleared his throat before
returning to Lotus and by that time, they had managed to make it
through all the commotion in the hallway and had rounded down
another less crowded hall. “I’m so sorry gorgeous, Francis has some
things to do. You know where your room is.”

Lotus smiled, “Same place as usual.”

“
Only for you, lovely.”
Replied the man already turning back to head for the chaos. “You’ll
be phenomenal!” He called then hurried back to finish something
else.

Only a few women stood in the doorways lining
the hall now and when the Stelters walked passed, Lee felt them
glare at her from her toes to her head. Before she could ponder too
long on why they seemed to hate her so, Lotus had tugged her into a
dressing room.

A director’s chair was already waiting for
Lee when the sisters entered and more tugging occurred when the
artists snatched Lee like vultures and threw her down in the seat.
And for the next thirty minutes Lee listened to them gabber about
her looks as they smeared things across her face and tug at her
hair until Francis came back in to tell them they were ready to be
interviewed.

~The smell of mold and mildew had suffocated
Larissa since she decided to make an abandoned radio tower her
home, but now that she had lined the floor with a coat of fresh
palm leaves, she only noticed the smell when she thought about it.
Rust covered almost every inch of the small room like a layer of
chipped paint except the rust had practically eaten everything to
the point that Larissa didn’t bother to wipe the dust off the
electrical boxes attached to the walls for fear the entire thing
would crumble off.

Ithaca, her cousin, had invited her to a
cleaner home only if Larissa would add her unstoppable powers to
their supremacy or something like that. But Larissa had been in
such a miserable mood after Ammon that she didn’t even try to
understand what she was talking about. Besides, Larissa remembered
never liking Ithaca’s family. They were the rich Americans that
would only visit her family to boast about how wealthy they were.
Or that was just one of the very few things she remembered…

Either way, living in a sanitary hazard was
better than living with Ithaca any day. The small shack was hardly
the size of a bedroom. Perhaps even less so since the windows had
caved in to allow tree branches to climb through. But nonetheless,
it was home to Larissa. She had lived so many years of her life in
a dirty orphanage. In more ways than one, this new abode reminded
her of it and Larissa was more comfortable than she was willing to
confess.

Because the place was so abandoned and
filthy, it was sure to ward off any hikers or photographers, which
was exactly the way she preferred to live. But at the same time,
having no social life only sent her mind wandering and remembering
things that had hurt her too much. In those moments Larissa would
simply stop time and rob something. She wasn’t sure what it was
that gave her the idea, but even though she knew it was impossible
to be caught, the rush of doing something illegal lessoned the pain
of reality.

A sofa so new the stench of leather mixed in
with the surroundings as she rested supine atop it. A row of
designer clothing hung from a rope that stretched the length of the
room complete with matching shoes piled into a hammock she had
nailed into the rusty metal wall. Even the fuzzy yellow tennis ball
being tossed from her hand had a family of lookalikes hanging from
a bucket on a branch and with her new supernatural abilities;
Larissa hardly had to watch where the ball was going to land in
order to catch it. Instead she kept her auburn colored eyes glued
to the small flat screen hooked to a solar panel.

“
Welcome back to the Dylan
Dade Show!” Dylan was exclaiming as the camera panned to his
face.

Larissa had misplaced the remote and the
gravitational pull around the couch seemed to grow every moment she
tried to look for it. So she just laid there with her eyes glazed
over in an incomprehensive haze. Lotus Stelter had just been
interviewed and though Larissa giggled once or twice at some of her
comments, their conversation about her latest movie bored her
nearly to tears. Now they were going to bring out Lotus’s long lost
sister and Larissa could only anticipate double the boredom so her
need to find the remote eventually over powered the comfort of the
couch.

“
I’m back with heiress Lotus
Stelter and long lost sister of six years, Haileigh Grace Stelter.”
Dylan exclaimed as Larissa turned her back to the TV and began
searching the small room.

“
Long lost sister,” Larissa
grumbled swatting a designer dress out of the way so she could
search behind the row of clothing.
“Woopty-flipping-doo.”

“
My, oh my, the resemblance
is amazing.” Dylan said just as Larissa spotted the remote sitting
on the cracked window ledge. She was about to change the channel
from behind the curtain of clothes when a familiar laugh made its
way to her ears.

“
Well Dylan we are sisters.”
The voice chimed right after her giggle.

Those words sent chills down
Larissa’s spine and even the hairs on the back of her neck stood on
end. Her hand shook as she reached to pull back the stolen clothes.
As if everything were in slow motion, the dress took forever to
brush to the side. But once she had moved it, there was not a doubt
in her mind that the girl on the screen was Lee. Even though the
smoky shadow and glossy pink lips masked her usually bland
features; that was her
best
friend.

Larissa wasn’t sure how she did it, but
suddenly she was kneeling beside the TV with her hand pressed to
the screen like a starfish. Not a broadcasted word was
understandable through Larissa’s utter shock. All she could
register was the hope now thundering through her veins. She was
living in an unsanitary shack after the only man she had ever loved
had turned back into a beast because he realized who she was. After
hitting the lowest of lows, seeing Lee bounced her right back.
There was finally a companion she could trust.

Not a moment later did it dawn on her that
Lee was only just down the mountain. Larissa had broken into one of
those large studios in search of food, water, and a shower, but had
instead discovered it was the filming station for the Dylan Dade
Show. Not a moment later and suddenly her bare feet were flying
down the damp soil. The humid air stuck to her face and made her
already dirty hair feel even more disgusting. Twigs clawed at her
jeans and t-shirt, but at that moment, Larissa couldn’t care less
if holes were tipped into them. Even with supernatural speed, her
feet couldn’t take her down the mountain fast enough and when
Larissa finally needed to stop, she practically left a cavern
across the loose gravel when she dug her feet into the ground.

The front door was right there, but the only
thing holding her back was the idea that barging in on a live TV
show was probably a one way ticket to getting the TCPD on her tail.
By now Ammon would have exposed who she was, not to mention that
her barging in on Lee might remind them about the fair haired
criminal in cahoots with the villain supernatural. This was time
for strategy, and after glancing at the Stelter Hailstorm parked by
the front door, waiting for Lee to come back to the car was a
better idea. Just the thought sent her hands shaking with
anticipation though. She could be waiting for hours if that was
even her car! Suddenly the idea of sneaking into Lee’s dressing
room crossed Larissa’s mind and having never been rational, Larissa
darted into the studio.

She remembered seeing dressing rooms on the
second floor- or was it the third floor? Either way, as Larissa
hurried through the dimly lit hall to the stairs, all she could
remember was that the dressing rooms neighbored the filming
studio.

After climbing the stairs, her hand had
grabbed onto the fire escape’s door handle just as she glanced
through the glass window. Oddly enough, all the lights were on as
several suited people scurried around. Larissa wasn’t sure why all
the commotion raged in the floor above, but she knew for a fact
that if she were caught, security was sure to show her the
door.