The Stelter City Saga: Ultranatural (56 page)

“
You look… mad.” Cassie
noted.

“
Livid...” Ammon corrected
as Larissa’s number went straight to the disconnected tone. In the
blur of anger and mixed emotions swelling up inside him, Ammon
almost tried to call her back again. But instead he ripped his
phone from the charger and pitched it ferociously at the other end
of the wall leaving a dent.

“
It was Larissa. She came
back. She was on the phone with someone…” Ammon spat his words out
as he paced back and forth. His long fingers swimming anxiously
through the back of his hair.

“
Slow down.” Cassie said
climbing up from the bed with her hands held up. “I thought she
went to Harvard or whatever.” Her voice was calm as if she was
trying to tame a wild mustang, but Ammon wasn’t letting her
in.

“
She’s a supernatural!” be
blurted. Then stopped. How could he have given away such precious
information after he had lied to keep her safe.

Cassie and Josh exchanged puzzled glances
before looking back up at Ammon.

“
You lied to us?” Josh asked
quietly.

Ammon looked at the pair of them. Their eyes
were so worried a twinge of pity mixed in with them. Of course he
had lied. But now he realized he needed their help to find her and
for that to happen, there could be no more lies between them.

“
She…” He sighed, “She’s a
supernatural. I didn’t want to tell you. I thought you would tell
Marsean.”

Cassie glanced at Josh and they both shared
the same puzzled look. “I wasn’t even thinking about telling
Marsean. Were you?”

“
Nah man.” Josh replied,
“I’m actually kinda glad that story about her going to Yale was a
lie. It makes me feel less bad about my GPA.”

Cassie rolled her eyes, “Josh you’re
stupid.”

“
You’re stupid…” he grumbled
before turning back to Ammon. “What else do we need to know about
her?”

“
While we were napping I
thought I heard her voice in my sleep.” Ammon replied slowly so
that he could regain his composure, “It turns out that she was
actually in the other room talking on the phone with-” Ammon froze
in mid-sentence. He hadn’t realized he was staring at a pile of
clothes on the floor until he looked up. “I know where she
is.”

“
Where?” Josh and Cassie
asked in unison.

“
While she was talking on
the phone with someone,” Ammon began as he rummaged the room for
shoes and his indestructible cell phone. “She mentioned that she’s
meeting this person at a filming studio. I heard her say Dylan
Dade.”

Cassie snorted, “The Dylan Dade Show is so
funny but that’s a pretty weird place to be meeting someone. Are
you sure that’s what she said?”

Ammon was hardly paying any attention. In the
time it took Cassie to finish her statement, Ammon had already
found the location of the filming studio on his phone. “Look,
here’s the address.” He said flipping the phone around for them to
see. “It’s not too far from here…”

“
Well then what are we
waiting for?” Josh exclaimed rising to his feet. “Let’s go get her
back.”

He didn’t have to say much more to get his
friends to follow him out the door.

~“Hello people of the Supremacy!” Ithaca
exclaimed when she appeared on stage. Her arms were thrown out wide
as if she were giving everyone in the audience hug.

She stood there dressed like a ringleader in
the center of the Dylan Dade Show with a whip in one hand and a gun
in the other. The furniture that had once decorated the stage had
been pushed out of the way so that there was nothing but Ithaca on
the large wooden scene. A single light shown down on her head,
casting a small shadow between her stilettoes and blacking out
anything else around her.

“
I would introduce myself
once more, but we all know each other, don’t we?” By then her eyes
had adjusted to the lighting. Through the blinding glare of the
overhead light, Ithaca could make out the faces of some of the gang
lords in the audience. Groups from all over the world had flown in
to whiteness this one moment. As she gazed out through the crowd,
she could see them scattered in clusters in the crowd. Nearly a
five foot radius separated each of the gang leaders and their
accomplices making it easy for Ithaca to see who was in
attendance.

Hotaru sat near the front with Heather and
Hamilton on either side of him. Of course they would be here. How
else was she supposed to destroy the evidence of this event without
them? To the right, the leader of the Italian mafia and his crew
watched with cold eyes. A group of Russians sat in the back. As her
eyes continued to skim through the crowd, they rested on a face she
hadn’t expected.

“
Donatello.” Ithaca almost
sang when she recognized his pointed goatee. Unlike the rest of the
members in the room, the leader of the Krome sat alone in the
center of the audience. “I’m so pleased you came.”

Donatello said nothing. He hardly even
flinched when Ithaca called him out.

“
You don’t have to worry
about Trench and the BOA.” Ithaca announced, “They have an excused
absence. This brings me to my first point.” She called making sure
her voice was heard over by everyone. “We have all been rivals for
so long. Look around. Why are we so diverse? Why have we segregated
ourselves from one another?”

A small utterance rolled through the audience
as heads turned from side to side. Ithaca smirked. “I’ll tell you
why.”

Just then a light from overhead shown down on
a spot upstage. In the ring of light a beaten and bruised man was
tied to a chair. Blood stained the front of his shirt and through
the strips of chocolate colored hair, blood dribbled from his mouth
and nose. The blue tint of his ice cold skin made it look as if he
had been badly bruised. It was Michael Caster. He was already dead,
but as he sat tied to the chair every eye in the room thought he
was still alive. Why would anyone want to tie up a dead man?

“
He calls himself the King.”
Ithaca spat. “But what has he done for us? He has regulated our
need for power. He has punished those of us who are more than
capable of greatness. He has confined our influence and has kept
our true potential hidden from the world!” As she spoke, Ithaca
stepped closer and closer to his corpse. “The Era of the King ends
today!”

By now Ithaca was less than a yard from his
beaten body. She raised the hand with the pistol and pointed it at
his chest. “How much more of a man is he than us?” She asked under
her breath.

Three shots. One that punctured his lung. One
that penetrated his stomach. And the last one went straight through
his heart. Blood cascaded from his body and instantly the stench
filled her nose. But it was the smell of victory. Everyone in the
room had to see her kill him. News of that extremity couldn’t have
been passed by ear as easily as it would now be passed by eye
witnesses.

In that moment Ithaca felt it all. A wave of
accomplishment and satisfaction rolled over her as she watched the
blood pool beneath his seat. She hadn’t realized how hard she had
worked, how many lies she had to keep up with, and how many
promises she had to make in order to even get this far. But this
was only the beginning and it was a beautiful beginning.

Now that the audience had seen what they had
come here for, it was their turn to spread the news. Michael Caster
was murdered by Ithaca Iglesias. The Legend had come to an end and
this was the dawn of a new beginning. The beginning of an elite
supremacy.

Slowly Ithaca turned around and eyed the
witnesses in the crowd. “Tell everyone; supernatural and natural.
Make it known to the universe that things are about to change. The
underground has been conquered and with the help of every single
one of you, the corporate elite will be the next thing we
overthrow.”

She eyed the audience once more. Most of them
looked satisfied, but some of them remained skeptical. Perhaps
Michael’s death was too much. Perhaps it wasn’t enough. With the
gloat of victory firm in her chest, Ithaca made the first mistake
of this new beginning. She chose to ignore the unsatisfied members
of the audience.

“
This meeting is adjourned.”
She announced. “You all have ten minutes to evacuate the premises
before Pele burns this place to the ground.” With that she turned
her back on the audience and hurried off the stage.

The rustling sound of members climbing up
from their chairs vanished once Ithaca had rounded the corner of a
hallway back stage. August stood there leaning against the wall
with his arms folded over his chest. “Quite a moving performance.”
He mentioned as Ithaca continued down the hall and he pursued after
her.

“
Has Mason stopped by?” She
asked ignoring his remark.

August nodded and replied, “He took her
before you even got on stage. I made sure that he knows when to
meet us at the airport. How do you know he’s not just going to run
away with her?”

Ithaca scoffed, and then the scoff turned
into a giggle. “You will have plenty of time to get to know Mason
in the next upcoming months. I suppose you could say he’s an
honorable kid. Loyal. He always has been.” Ithaca stopped in her
tracks and faced August when she spoke up again. “But I imagine
deep down, taking the element and remembering whatever he forgot
makes him want to know our side of the story. Do you see what I
mean darling?”

August eyed her skeptically. With stilettos
on her feet, she was nearly the same height as he was and he didn’t
have to look down much to meet her eyes. “Yeah,” he muttered before
Ithaca reached up to pat him on the cheek.

“
Good,” she remarked keeping
her hand against his firm jaw line. “Then I suggest you quit
worrying about him and embrace this moment with me. We’re here! We
made it this far! I’m so glad you chose to double cross Michael all
those years ago. If you hadn’t…” Ithaca let her fingers slide from
his face and glanced at the double doors at the end of the long
hallway. “You might be dead beside Michael.”

Ithaca said nothing more but
continued down the hall. August watched hesitantly as she strutted
to the nearest dressing room. She wouldn’t
really
kill him would she? Was she
implying that their trust was weak? He chose to ignore the moment
and called to her before she could disappear inside the dressing
room. “There’s one more thing.”

Her head snapped up so quickly her ponytail
swung from one shoulder to the other. “And that is…?” She inquired
cynically.

“
Intruders.” He
replied.

Ithaca withdrew her hand from the door and
stood there with her arms folded as an impressed gleam lingered
over her face. “Huh, the cops are on to us already? My oh my…”

“
Not cops,” August
corrected. “Tourists. I think. On my way back from giving Haileigh
to Mason, I heard voices. Two boys and a girl. They were talking
about how nice the Stelter Hailstorm parked up front
was.”

Ithaca arched her eyebrow. “Lotus Stelter
came after all? Too bad her baby sister has already been saved. She
can burn in here. Those tourists can burn as well. Speaking of
burning…” Ithaca dug into the jacket of her costume and pulled her
cell phone. “This place should be nothing but ashes in less than
five minutes.” She said not looking up but instead reading her one
text message.

LARISSA: I’LL JUST MEET YOU ON THE PLANE.

Ithaca shrugged before tucking the phone
away. Larissa had made it seem like such a big deal that they
needed to meet up then suddenly waiting an extra hour wasn’t a big
deal. It seemed strange, but Ithaca didn’t bother to text back.
“Get out of here darling.” She called to August as she slid into
the costume closet. “I don’t want you to burn.”

~The smell of rain overwhelmed Lotus the
moment she threw her car door open. The grey clouds above the deep
green mountains were just starting to morph into a dark purple. A
winter shower was approaching the scene, and from her experience,
the filming studios had a tendency to flood. She could only hope
that Lee's kidnappers would let her go before the bridge became
flooded over.

If it weren't for her muscle memory, Lotus
would have forgotten to put her Stelter into park and pull out the
key. Even as she raced to the studio she couldn’t find herself
thinking about anything but Lee and her safety. In no time at all,
Lotus was throwing the door open to the warehouse sized studio and
calling out her name franticly.

"Lee!" she hollered into the darkness of the
small lobby, but no one was there to reply. Once the door slammed
shut behind her, she was enveloped in an empty vacant darkness.

"Haileigh!!" She called even louder.

Once more, the only thing to answer her was
emptiness and darkness.

Lotus's hand fumbled against the wall by the
door as she tried to find a light switch but there was nothing. Of
all the years she had spent at the studios, not once had she ever
turned on a light switch. That had always been the job of the
maintenance crew. Perhaps there was a power box that light up the
entire studio somewhere hidden in the back. For the time being,
Lotus's cellphone would have to do.

She ignored the numerous missed calls from
Kasper only to activate her flashlight app before sprinting down
the hallway she was most familiar with. Along the way, she threw
every door open and screamed out her sister's name. Nothing. Just
darkness and vacancy. By the time she reached the stairs, she had
begun to question if this were all a joke. If her sister had really
been taken, wouldn't the captors want nothing more than money from
her? But of that were the case, then why was the studio utterly
barren?