Lady in Red: Chapter 4

Lady in Red: Chapter 4

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Commissioned by Sivantic

Wordcount: 2500

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I’d been to the big city before.

Most of my classmates wanted to get out of town and live in it, but I didn’t get it.

The place was loud, dirty, and people were always busy all the time. You needed a car to get around everywhere. The cars in the train were dirty, the trains were always late, and the busses were worse. Everyone ran around trying to get money and barely looked up. Not that they had any good reason to look up, since there was hardly anything to look at besides concrete and glass.

Hmph. You badmouth one of the few good achievements your people have made. Your villages and towns in the past were dirty, worthless hovels compared to these metropolises you’ve now created. Turn your nose up all you wish, child, but know that you look upon a place that many of your kind, in centuries past, would call paradise.

Daiyu huffed as she ‘walked’ beside me. She passed right through any obstacle in her way, while I followed her directions. We’d ditched the car outside the city, to make sure that we didn’t get tracked, but I kept the keys and place we left it in mind. Ma always told me it was always better to have a backup plan, just in case everything went topsy-turvy.

Running away wasn’t the best plan, if Daiyu’s plan didn’t pan out, but at least it was a plan.

Your prudence is refreshing, but your doubt is not.   Daiyu glared at me, while I turned the corner into an ally. For a second, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, until Daiyu took her pipe from her lips and blew into the secluded, dirty path. The smoke drifted through the alley until they revealed a stairwell and door against one side that wasn’t there before. A lantern hung above it that radiated a blue light. As diminished as I am, my followers are still beholden to me. My greatest are gone, but my empire did not grow from their backs. They came to me once I was established in my greatness.

I went down the stairwell and reached the door at the bottom.

It had no handle and there wasn’t a peephole or nothing for anyone to look at me.

Place your hand against the door. I will do the rest.

Sure, ghost lady.

The door looked like wood, but it felt like steel to the touch. It was strange, but I ignored it for the moment, and just kept my hand against it… and felt power surge through me. It felt like when I took the bottle full of weird stuff early, after eating the jerky, but it was leaving me instead of going in.

Feel the power. Remember it. Become more than mortal, boy.

Daiyu said those words mockingly, because there was no way that I could forget the feeling of what came out of my hand and what happened to the door. The feeling of frost coming forth from my fingertips, cold coursing through my veins, and seeing ice spread across the door before me… there was no way that I could ignore it. Despite everything else I’d seen, nothing pounded in the fact that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore more than how made a door frost over with a touch.

You did nothing. I did.

I took note of that, while the door opened.

The room beyond was a small bar, but it looked out of place. It wasn’t a dive bar, or some rinky-dink place meant for guys in suits, but something for millionaires to lounge it up it. There was only four velvet-covered seats at the bar, the liquor shelves only had a few select options, and everything else just screamed bespoke. A kid like me probably wouldn’t even step into a high-end piece of real estate like this one in his entire life, but here I was looking at it after giving a magical door a coating of ice.

Daiyu felt relieved upon finding it all and didn’t waste time leaving my side and appearing on of the chairs. She quickly summoned herself a glass and a martini. The glass filled itself with hard liquor from a phantom of one of the bottles on the shelf, while she helped herself to the martini in her hand.

Boy, get behind the bar and look through the shelves. You should find a phone, money, and some essentials. It felt strange walking through all the fancy stuff in snow-covered clothes and muddy boots, but doing something was better than staring at the place like a goldfish. I walked around the bar past Daiyu and rifled through the shelves and found six briefcases and box full of phones. Not burner phones, but the high-end stuff people lined up hours for tucked into their boxes. Opening the suitcases had me looking at bundles of cash people would kill for in half of them, while the other had small crystal vials filled with liquids that glowed. Hmph. I prepared this place too well. Those elixirs would kill you the moment you drank them, given your mere mortal frame. Help yourself to the drinks.

“I’d rather not, ma’am.” I’d seen too folk get ruined by liquor to touch the stuff. I was tempted, especially since I was sure they were expensive, but it wasn’t the time to try drinking. My Ma was missing, I was being hunted, and I had a lady stuck in my head that could do magic. “I’d rather get moving and find my Ma.”

“Your mother is healthy and hale. Those who want me dead, and those who have her, aren’t the sort to kill innocents… unless it can’t be helped.” Daiyu decided to speak instead of doing whatever she did inside my head. Her clothes shifted to form-fitted black dress and a white, furred jacket along with plenty of gold on her neck and wrists. She was the big-city heiress that my little town never saw. “Like, per say, if one of their most hated of foes is trapped inside a boy and if he dies so does she.”

“I figured that was the case, ma’am… but I’d still like to get a move on. The faster we get things done, the faster you get your body back, and the faster I get my Ma back too.” That earned me a raised eyebrow and a huff of amusement. It was easy enough to push down my irritation, since I knew that it wasn’t worth anything to the woman. She was the sort who found other people being frustrated to be amusing. “So, I’d like to get things moving along.”

“Hm, well then, I suppose that would be better for me as well… so why not? Activate one of those phones. Don’t worry, they’re all the same.” I did as Daiyu said, while she sipped her drinks at the end of the bar. I cleared the bar top of the other suitcases and focused on the phone. “Now, there’s e-mail drafts with addresses ready. Hit send on them all.”

“Huh, for a mystical lady, you sure know how to handle this stuff.” I wasn’t very inclined towards fancy gadgets and the like. Ma and I lived pretty modestly in town. We had a TV and a dvd player from a thrift store and we borrowed movies from the library. Ma was saving up money to buy a home somewhere nice with better work for the both of us. All the money we had wouldn’t even be two bundles in on the suitcase that Daiyu had in this bar. “Done. What’s next?”

“My thralls and allies will come running if they know what’s good for them. The mercenaries who want to get paid will be taking those suitcases. A merchant or two will pop up to offer us all we need. You’ll be trading the elixirs for them.” Daiyu lounged and a smile of satisfaction crept upon her face. She luxuriated in her power. I couldn’t blame her. It was impressive that she could turn the situation around so well with just a few e-mails. “Meanwhile, you’ll be resting so that you can do what I need you to do before they get here: going to every safehouse I have in this city, staying alive, and making sure the transactions are made for the both of us to get what we both want.”

I almost argued, but the relief I felt at Daiyu revealing her hand let me loosen my guard, and suddenly I felt the weight of everything crash on me. I’d driven for almost eight hours, after running my ass off from my kidnapper, and then went through a city as well-hidden as I could until I reached this safehouse.

I was tired.

“There’s a key beneath the last bottle in the bottom shelf, boy. Take it and enter the room behind the door to rest.” Diayu spoke and I felt a surge of energy through my body, like when she tried to take control of it last time, but more gentle. It was a push instead of trying to use me like a puppet, so I didn’t pay it much mind. “You need all the rest you can get. My enemies will converge upon this city soon enough. We will be hunted, while those who come to us as allies will have their own plans and wishes, which we must sate. This may very well be the last moments of true rest you can get.”

Diayu’s words didn’t hold any amusement or frustration. Her eyes were stern and her face set into neutrality. She wasn’t trying to scare me into doing something. Everything that she said was simply true.

“Yeah, alright. I’ll do that, ma’am.” I got the key and forced myself towards the door. My vision blurred a little, but I managed to get into the room. It was all fancy-like and I was sure it was more expensive than the house me and Ma lived in, but I didn’t care much for it. All that mattered was that there was a bed in the room and that I was crashing down it.

It was soft and cool, and I needed to rest well before the next day came, so I did.

…

Fire.

I dreamt of fire, ash, and the screams of people.

I was being dragged forward by a hand through it all. Its grip was tight, but it made me feel safe and protected. Even though I was afraid of everything that was happening around me, I held onto the hand and ran as fast as I could with my legs.

Something whizzed passed me, parting the air, then another and another. The one holding my hand dragged me forward, picked me up, and held me against her chance. The scent of ash and fire filled my chest, but now I smelled the scent of flowers… and blood.

An unfamiliar word, in another language left “my” tongue.

But I knew that it meant “mother.”

A string of words left the woman’s lips, but I didn’t understand them. They weren’t my words and they were garbled and unfamiliar. But I drew from them anyway. I latched onto them, as tears filled my eyes, and as the scent of blood began to seep into nose more and more even as the flames and ash faded around me.

While the grip that held me so desperately began to weaken.

The wind whistled again and this time they almost made my mother stop, but in the end they didn’t. She kept going even as once, twice, and thrice she was struck in her back. Her grip on me strengthened, as if she empowered herself through sheer will, and the speed that we ran quickened even further… until… suddenly… we stopped.

The scent of blood filled my nose, it drowned out the scent of flowers. Stillness replaced both speed… and the heartbeat that had been thundering in my ears as I was held. The grip on me loosened, and I desperately tried to stay with her, but in the end I fell from my mother’s grip onto the road below.

I looked upon my mother.

She was a beautiful woman with scarlet hair and a gentle face. She wore a white oriental dress deeply stained red. The hem of her skirt was covered in burns and ash, while her feet were ragged and bloody from her desperate run. Her back was covered in nearly a dozen arrows jutting from her like wings.

She was dead, but there was a smile on her face, as she stood over me.

Because she saved me.

A foreign word that I didn’t know reached for me and I turned around.

I looked upon my kin.

There were tall brutes who wore necklaces of human skulls on their necks. They carried clubs of iron or entire tree trunks, while stinking of alcohol. There were people with masks with long noses and instead of arms they had wings. In their claws, they held fans and swords. There were large weasels, the size of men, and they carried sickles on their backs and maws.

My mother died, but she delivered me to safety to those who would protect me… and avenge her.

They all saw me and moved past me without a word, towards my burning village. One who passed by looked upon me, before placing a spare blade at my feet, and walking with her brothers.

They were walking past me, beyond me, and I was safe.

But I didn’t want that.

My mother didn’t die just for me to survive.

My mother died so that I would live.

So, I stood up and took the heavy sword, and followed after my kin towards my burning home. It was heavy and I was tired, but the moment I stepped forward, I found myself with more than just kin.

I had guards.

I had allies.

I had people who would fight beside me.

Therefore, I could kill those who hurt me and killed my mother.