Giving Him Hell: A Saturn's Daughter Novel (Saturn's Daughters Book 3) (22 page)

On stage, Sarah was practicing a pole dance routine. Her stubby legs would never rival Ginger Rogers, but her newly-glorious hair hid a lot of flaws. Her stiff, cone-shaped boobs poked out from the Lady Godiva tresses. She was wearing pasties.

I considered turning around and walking out, but she spotted me. Pulling on a long t-shirt, she clumped down the stairs in her awkward heels. “Tina! Ernesto said he’d try me on the stage. Isn’t that cool?”

What was cool was that six months ago, she’d been an abused wife who had jumped at shadows, and now she had the nerve to stand in a spotlight. That’s what the Zone did. And why I couldn’t condemn it as Paddy wanted to do.

“If that’s what you want,” I said guardedly. “We’ve got lights back?” It still felt chilly in this barn of a room, but it would take time to heat.

“Frank’s got people working on it. Your office is pretty crowded still. Ernesto said I could sleep in a storage room here, if I wanted. You don’t mind?”

After she’d painted half my second floor Pepto-Bismol pink? I shrugged. “Do what’s best for you but don’t trust Ernesto.”

She giggled. “He wanted to charge me rent and to dance, too. I told him it was a trade. He’s sorta cute, isn’t he?”

I used to work for him. No way in ten million years was dumpy, greasy, penny-pinching Ernesto anything but a douche bag. But I smiled optimistically. “He grows on you, I guess. Glad it’s working out. I’d better get back to the office if everyone is still there.”

I checked out the bar’s arrow-slit of a window to be certain my bike wasn’t surrounded by thugs. Reassured the coast was clear, I drove back to my office, where chaos reigned supreme.

My lopsided, fragrant Christmas tree sparkled with lights, and apparently tinfoil decorations, courtesy of Jane’s kid and maybe Ned, who was currently helping a pink-coated Tim carry a palm tree out to an already over-full truck.

“Hey, Tina, can we set the rest of these palms in the window of your apartment until we know for sure the heat’s staying on?” Tim called as he propped the door open with his heel.

I glanced up at my barren bay window across the street. “Milo won’t eat them?”

“Won’t hurt him if he does. Give me your keys.” He held out his hand, and I flung the apartment keys at him.

I admired the twinkling lights lending cheer to my front office and let my chilled body regain some warmth while listening to signs of life all over my once-empty building. I wasn’t a loner by any means. I loved the buzz of a hive.

Mostly, I was scared someone would take it all away from me. Again.

Even as I acknowledged that fear, a boom shook the office, and the Christmas tree swayed.

Twenty-two

The porch of my boarding house across the street exploded. Leaping back from my office door, taking Ned back with me, I added my screams to his. Smoke and flame billowed from the Victorian’s porch. Boards, bricks, and shattered flower pots incinerated into raining shrapnel. In the eruption of dust, I couldn’t see Tim—not exactly unusual.

Recovering from the first shock, I ran out, sending frantic prayers to unseen entities for Tim’s and Mrs. Bodine’s safety.

The palm tree Tim had been carrying was reduced to ash and charred soil in the middle of the street. I frantically visualized dousing the fiery porch, but Saturn only produced justice, not general wishes.

“Damn you, Saturn, make them be alive,” I muttered, sobbing and patting the street around the palm tree remains in search of Tim.

If Saturn damned himself, I couldn’t tell.

Andre and Leo ran out of various buildings with fire extinguishers and hoses—far more practical than cursing planets.

I didn’t find Tim until Cora ran into the street and tripped over him. She dropped to her knees, and I crawled carefully in her direction. Unlike Cora, I tended to blink out—go invisible—when I touched Tim, so I didn’t really dare test him for a pulse.

“Tim? Blink on for me, please?” I pleaded.

Beneath the screams and sirens and crackling flames I thought I heard a moan. Cora started patting the ground, presumably in pursuit of his wrist. I thought I saw a flicker of pink.

“Tim, please, focus. We have to see you to help.” I was choking on sobs. Tim was just an innocent kid. He’d had a hard enough life.

The keys I’d given him dropped to the ground. That couldn’t be a good sign. A second later, a melted pink down jacket gradually materialized. Swallowing my cries, I poked around for the zipper, but it had melted, too.

Cora produced a knife and ripped the jacket open. The rest of Tim returned. Unconscious, he lay sprawled in the street on his back. We could see the outline of palm leaves etched in the soot and burns on his face. His untidy crop of brown hair was scorched. But it appeared the hated jacket was impervious to flame and had taken the brunt of the blast.

“Tim, can you hear me? I’ll buy you more jackets in pink and purple if you’ll just wake up,” I pleaded.

Cora cut off the jacket sleeves. His clothing underneath seemed untouched. Knowing Tim, he’d just passed out in terror.

Across the street, the flames were almost out. The front porch was nothing more than charred posts and dripping shingles. One of the DGs, or maybe the interns from next door, helped Mrs. Bodine totter down the narrow alley between houses. Her wrinkled face crumpled in tears at sight of her porch.

And I was pretty damned certain it was all my fault.

Tim moaned and his seared eyelashes blinked. Once I knew he was alive, I went through the motions of reassuring him and myself, but my mind traveled on to criminal warfare. I was bringing down one demented frog. Or maybe a pack of them.

“If you were really fair, you’d let me wish them dead,” I told Saturn. He didn’t have to answer back. I already knew I couldn’t do it. Saturn might not need evidence, but
I
did before I could damn anyone. Fact-finding mission coming up.

Andre was caught up in dealing with disaster or he might have recognized my rage. As it was, he merely glanced our way, ascertained that we had Tim in hand, and went back to shouting orders.

Fire engines arrived. Mrs. Bodine was led over to the house next door that our interns occupied when they weren’t sleeping in hospital hallways. D-Gers arrived in groups carrying building materials and tarps and I’m not sure what all.

I should have been reassured. I wasn’t. I needed heads to roll.

I hoped Dane’s trust fund was paying for the materials because Acme was as much to blame for this warfare as I was. The frog-men had obviously been polluted by the green violence element—except Ned, who liked pink and scarfed up the good element.

I let Cora take Tim over to be examined by the baby docs. Milo had joined the crowd in the street. Bless my kitty! He always appeared when I needed him, if he could. I needed to know he was safe. I hugged him and whispered sweet words in his ear. He did not respond but studied the chaos around us as if I were merely his throne.

“You don’t think you’re needed to deal with terrorists?” I asked my cat.

Milo sniffed in disdain.

“Fine then, off you go.” Reassured, I handed him back to Ned.

I’d once turned Ned into a frog, and he’d come out a better man.

If Kawinski was any example, his fellow frogs had
chosen
evil, while Ned had chosen good. Just watching Mrs. Bodine weep and Tim shiver built my case against vengeful frogs.

First, I had to verify that the explosion wasn’t accidental. I was pretty damned certain it wasn’t, but I had to be fair. This was not a situation that required immediate action. I had time to weigh the evidence for a change—not that Saturn seemed to require it but my overdeveloped conscience did.

I located one of the firemen rolling up his hose. I was still wearing black leather, so I couldn’t precisely mimic Average Citizen, but I tried not to look too crazy as I approached.

“I’ve called the gas company,” I said innocently. “Is there any danger of more leaks?”

“That was no gas leak,” he said angrily. “That was some stupid bum planting a pipe bomb on an old lady’s porch. We’ve called the cops.”

I refrained from snorting. Despite their promises, the cops had been conspicuously absent lately. Acme must have sent them on paid holiday.

“I’ll let the gas company know, thank you,” I said politely. “And a cop lives there, so I assume that’s who the prankster was after. They’ll get him. Thank you for coming out so quickly.”

Information for information was fair trade, even if I was half lying. The fireman nodded approval, I thanked him again, and using the fire engine to hide my actions from Andre, I slipped down the street.

I had utterly no idea how I’d figure out which of the utility workers were Kaminski’s pals. Like Frank said, they all looked alike.

But the evil minions I’d turned into frogs had all been over six feet and well-muscled. I’d start there. Their time out as frogs apparently hadn’t harmed them physically. Morally, they’d all been questionable at the time I’d zapped them. I could have killed them. Maybe I should have. But Ned had turned out okay. One in five ain’t bad.

Unfortunately, that apparently left four willing to kill
me
. And who didn’t care who got hurt in the process.

For the security of Tim and Mrs. Bodine and other innocents, I had to stop vengeful cretins. Lance obviously wasn’t the answer if my enemies meant to up the ante every time I tried to teach them a lesson. Hardhats had access to detonators and explosives that I didn’t. Like any war, escalating skirmishes didn’t resolve the problem.

Maybe I should offer a peace pipe, but they’d tried to
kill
me twice now, and that wasn’t counting the pre-frog attempts.

I took the back alleys where I could hide in shadow. The day was gray and getting darker, so I blended nicely, just as I used to do. Although these days, the Dumpsters tended to shift out of my way instead of blocking me. I hoped that was a sign of approval from the Zone.

I was starting to think of the Zone as a sentient beast with its own opinions.

The bulldozers were still running inside the chain link along the harbor, so it wasn’t quitting time yet. Not that the utility guys I was after seemed to be working—they seemed to spend a lot of time in bars and beating up unsuspecting motorcycles. Of course, they could be part of the spa crews drilling holes in our parking lots.

Standing beside an abandoned gas station, I gazed down the long harbor alley. The chain link had been disintegrating for years, but it looked as if it had been deliberately removed to allow better access to the spas that dared to crop up closer to the water.

A vaguely carnival atmosphere had developed back here. It was
December,
but nuts were creating palm tree oases around steaming baths and heated tents. So that’s who Tim had sold the palm trees to.

People in down jackets lined up to enter the tents. Others jostled about trying to peer inside, curious. There were probably carny barkers out on Edgewater extolling the virtues of miracle healing, but I wasn’t interested in showing myself on the main drag just yet.

Even demented frogs wouldn’t expect that pipe bomb to hit a moving target like me—they had been deliberately drawing me out. Which meant they were lurking, waiting for me to hunt them down.

If there were actually four of them, I was outnumbered. Even if Kaminski was in the hospital, three was too many when they had guns and size and I didn’t. Without my visualization powers, I was at a severe disadvantage. But this Saturn justice kink in my head wouldn’t let me risk any more of my friends.

My tire iron had been confiscated the last time I had taken out a menace to society. I needed a new weapon to focus my fury. Except the Zone didn’t have guns and swords lying about for me to harvest. I found a splintered two by four in the trash beside one of the Dumpsters. It would have to do.

As I studied the harbor and the various crews of hard hats, another geyser spouted high above the buildings. How much water was down there? This couldn’t all be from the mains. Was the harbor seeping under the town? I’d ponder the sinister implications after I took me down a few mean frogs.

I slipped through the alley shadows. The saunas had started down by Bill’s, on the north end of the street near Acme. They were gradually working their way south, nearer our homes. Cradling my lumber, I focused on a group of hard hats working to channel the new geyser with pipes.

Two more utility vans raced toward the geyser from either end of the alley. I raised my eyebrows as the vans played chicken and nearly met in the middle. At the last second, one veered over the broken fence and into the harbor grounds.

Both trucks advertised saunas and spilled men in khaki overalls, one set with blue lettering, the other with red. As both teams raced for the gushing geyser, a brawl broke out between the blue and red. Guys in khaki swung fists and rolled through the trash and dirt, beating the crap out of each other.

I swear, it was a scene straight out of Dante’s
Inferno
, not that I’d ever read it, but I’d seen pictures of paintings. Men writhing in the mud, fighting each other for no good reason, looked like a circle of hell to me. Too bad they weren’t naked like in the painting.

The hard hats around the geyser merely continued working, siphoning heat from hell into pipes.

It sure looked as if our conclusions had been verified and that the portal to hell had opened in the Zone. If I were superstitious, I’d believe that the sins of avarice and wrath were escalating. Interesting twist of the devil’s, using healing water to promote evil.

“The devil doesn’t exist,” I growled at invisible gods, counteracting my ever-vivid imagination. “And I don’t believe in Hades either.”

I was hoping Saturn was a good god, and this violence was a result of chemical pollution.

I was past Chesty’s now. I could hear the grunts and blows as the two crews flailed at each other. These weren’t professional fighters. They looked like ordinary working men smacking and kicking and having temper tantrums. I could buy them all a beer and they’d sit down and exchange jokes. But the Zone had affected them.