Mania and the Executioner (10 page)

“Hey Tia?
What about supplies?” I ask when I notice our proximity to the hotel.

“I already called the concierge to fetch the supplies and bring them to the room.” Tia replies. That explains who she was calling while I was talking to Natalie.

The car drops us off away from the main lobby entrance and close to the beach elevator. I decide to carry Cheza just for the hell of it; she doesn’t argue and seems rather content, so all the better. I set her in one of the plush chairs before she pulls me down into it to sit beside her. It’s a tight squeeze but we both still fit. Tia sits in one of the chairs across from us, smiling.

“Before we start, I just have one question
: why were the vampires able to go out in sunlight?” I inquire.

“The majority of vampires can, they just get sunburn really easily.” Tia replies.

“Then where did the legend about them catching on fire when exposes to sunlight come from?” I ask.

“
It most likely has something to do with their corpses; vampire corpses rapidly decompose so whenever one was killed, if checked on the next day, all anyone would find is a pile of dust. So, what exactly happened?” Tia asks.

“I felt it when
Cole was shot and when the arteries in his neck were severed. I called out to him and when he didn’t respond, something kind of took over for me. The policeman that was holding me back behind the police line suddenly started screaming and pulled away as if he were on fire. Then I sprinted toward the building faster than I ever have and busted through the door. I ripped the shotgun from a policeman and threw it away, burning his arm in the process. I ran up to the other two officers, grabbed their guns and froze them, which burned their hands too. I rushed over to Cole and saw how badly he was hurt. I could feel that I was about to kill everyone but I couldn’t stop. Then Cole grabbed me and held on as I burned him…” Cheza says until she can no longer continue because she is crying too hard.

“Cheza…I’m alright. You barely hurt me and I know it was an accident at that.” I tell her.

“Don’t lie to me Cole; I could feel how much pain you were in! It was excruciating and yet you still held on to me! Why!?” Cheza yells through her tears after standing up to face me.

I remain silent
.

“WHY!?” she screams.

“BECAUSE I DIDN’T WANT YOU TO TURN INTO ME!” I shout at her and look away.

“I didn’t want you to become a killer…someone who enjoys killing so much th
at they can’t hold back.” I say. I find Cheza’s eyes and speak with renewed determination. “I promised I would protect you Cheza, and I will. So I will handle the killing and I will not let you become…tainted…like me.”

Cheza
sits down on my lap, kisses me, and softly whispers, “You aren’t tainted…not to me.”

I’m about to kiss her back when I remember that Tia is still sitting across from us with this satisfied little smile on her face.

“Ahem…Cheza activated a Protector Drive from what Airi said.” I tell Tia blatantly. “I just hope that her Drive is like mine and she only has one.”

“Wha
t did you think Cole?” Tia asks.

“She was certainly moving faster than human levels but only at maybe half of my max speed. I think that my blood being in her has something to do with it. When I was holding her, I called out to my blood but its response was sluggish
, which leads me to believe that she was either controlling my blood or her circulatory system was frozen during that time. I almost wonder if, though my Drive left me, a part of it still lived on in the blood that was disconnected from me and in Cheza.” I tell Tia.

“Well, I think we should train Chezarei. The more control she has over her power, the less likely she will be to enter any Drive state.” Tia says. I’m about to object when I hear a knock at the door.

“COME IN.” Tia shouts. The concierge comes in carrying a car battery, a large bar magnet, a spool of copper wire, and a pair of yellow rubber gloves. “Thanks, you may leave now.”

The concierge leaves the room. I think that the best place for me to do this would probably be the bedroom’s bathroom so I stand up, grab the supplies, and I walk into the bedroom. I start for the bathroom but then Cheza blind-sides me and tackles me onto the bed.

“Take your shirt off.” Cheza demands.

“Che
za, this really isn’t the time…Please Mistress! At least let me get the pellets out of my chest first!” I joke while ripping off my already shredded t-shirt and tossing it in the trash

“Lay still an
d let me do this.” Cheza says and she snaps the rubber gloves on.

“Okay, now bend over!” she jokes…I hope.

She wires the magnet to the car battery and then straddles me. She moves the bar over the tiny holes, that I’ve reopened, but nothing happens. She jabs the bar on to one of the holes, holds it there, and a pellet comes out; however, it also electrocutes me.

“Cole! I’m s
orry!” Cheza exclaims. “Should I stop? No, we have to get those pellets out of you.”

“Go ahead Cheza, I can handle it.” I tell her.

A dozen pellets later, we hit a tricky one that refuses to dislodge from my chest. Cheza leaves the bar on my skin for almost twenty seconds before it finally comes out.

“Please Mistress, may I have some more!?” I say in a British
cockney accent, making a sexual sounding parody of Oliver Twist…or at least that is what I was going for.

“There are only six left Cole, hang in there okay?” Cheza says, not really in the mood for joking when she is able to feel the pain she is causing me for herself. Six pellets later, I close up the holes and Cheza uncoils the wire from the magnet, disconnecting the circuit, and
peels off the gloves before tossing everything to the ground.

“You know,” Cheza says while wearing a
seductive grin as she leans over my chest, moving towards my face. “I kinda liked it when you called me Mistress.”

“Oh you did, did you?” I ask rhetorically.

“Yeah, I did.” Cheza whispers and kisses me. We make out for a while before Tia comes in.

“Sorry to interrupt, but we need to open Jason’s package.” Tia says. I had completely forgotten about that.

“Right…we should, uh…do that.” I say as Cheza gets off me. I stand and hunch forward, trying to hide the straining in my pants. Tia just looks at my efforts and laughs.

“You control your blood flow, remember?” Tia whispers. Oh, right! My straining
and hunching cease immediately.

“That will be useful for the opposite as well.” Tia whispers to me with a wink. I feel my cheeks
warm slightly.

We go int
o the main room and take a seat when Natasha walks in the front door.

“Perfect timing!
We were just about to open up the cause of this whole mess!” Tia says.

We open up the shoebox-
sized package and inside that package is a 4”x4” package wrapped in silver paper. We unwrap that package and inside is a gold foil wrapped, egg-shape package. We open that, and it’s a chocolate egg.

“Seriously?
All that trouble, just for a chocolate egg?” Natasha asks. I pick up the egg and smash it on the table. Inside it is a baggy containing a piece of folded paper.

“Okay, that makes more sense.” Natasha says. I take the paper
out, open it up, and a key falls on the table. The key appears to be made out of copper or something and it looks kind of like a display case key. I look at the paper and find that it’s a note.

Hey CT,
Good job making it this far. Now I need you to go to the last place where your UE worked before the end. You will know it when you see it. -J

“I guess this means we are going to Greenland.” I say as I put the key in my wallet for safekeeping.

“Not yet. We need to train Chezarei a little before you two go running off on another adventure; it could be really bad if she can’t control her Drive. So all of us are headed home for now. Oh, and the jet’s departure time is in two hours.” Tia replies.

Goodbye Hawaii.

Chapter 7: Doubt, and the return home

Cheza and I
change our bloodstained clothes (me into a new pair of shorts and a white t-shirt, and Cheza into jeans and a red tank top) and pack up the rest into our suitcases. We leave The Kahala by limo and drive to the airport. We get on the jet and I assume my position on the couch. Cheza curls up on my left side, putting both of her feet on the couch and resting her head on my shoulder while grabbing my left hand. She falls asleep like that a few minutes after takeoff. Tia moves from one of the plush chairs, comes over, and sits on my right side while Natasha reads a book in another chair.

“Why the change of heart about Chezarei?”
Tia whispers at a volume that only I could hear.

“It’s actually because of something that Airi said. She spun th
e situation between me and Cheza in a way that allowed me to stop seeing Cheza as a little sister.” I whisper back at the same volume. Tia gives me a concerned look before speaking again.

“Cole, what did Airi think about your show last night?”
Tia asks.

“What? Well, she approved. She suggested that I make an example of him and I agreed fully thinking that I should be able to end the coup and get others to abstain from them in the future.” I say. Now Tia looks really worried.

“Cole, are you positive that Airi isn’t manipulating you?” Tia asks.

“What? No…I mean, I don’t think so.” I say but then I think back t
o the first time I kissed Cheza; that had been at Airi’s suggestion. I also remember her telling me to pick up the P90’s and my compulsion to do jumping jacks when she made that joke.

“Your face tells me otherwise.” Tia says.

“Well, Airi told me to pick up the P90’s and I did thinking it was a good suggestion. She made a joke, telling me to do jumping jacks when I asked her how to get the bullets out of my stomach and I felt something like a compulsion to do them. The first time I kissed Cheza, Airi had told me to do it and I did so without question…She also suggested that I cut off Kamohoali’i’s head, but I was going to do that regardless…I think.” my voice trails at the end.

“Oh, but the
night that Cheza discovered me giving Natasha a massage and then ordered me to have sex with her or she was going to stab me, Airi told me to do as Cheza says and I didn’t do that!” I point out.

“So she’s gotten smarter…” Tia whispers to herself.

“What?” I ask not sure if I had heard her correctly.

“Nothing.
Just be careful Cole. It sounds like her suggestions are becoming more influential to you.” Tia says.

“Do you think I need to? Airi is just another aspect of my mind right?” I ask.

“I’m not so sure about that. Since Chezarei can hear her too, I think she may be a personification of your blood.” Tia says and then goes quiet. I let the connotations of what Tia said wash over me.

“What if my feelings toward Cheza are all Airi’s doing!?” I ask in a slight panic.

“They aren’t; I’m pretty sure you’ve always had feelings for Chezarei, Cole.” Tia says.

“That’s funny, Airi said the same thing…I’ll be careful.” I
quietly tell her, still not entirely convinced that I’m not just a puppet on strings.

What if Airi
really is the one behind it? What if everything I’ve felt towards Cheza as of late has just been the result of Airi’s whim? But then again, is it necessarily such a bad thing even if my feelings are because of Airi? I mean, they feel genuine and they make Cheza happy which makes me happy in return, so is that necessarily a bad thing? But if they are because of Airi, what if her whim changes and she decides that she doesn’t want me to be in love with Cheza anymore? I don’t want that…

We land at the small Goodyear airport six hours later. Cheza hasn’t woken up by the time we have
landed so I scoop her up and carry her. I swear this girl is going to be the death of me if she makes me carry her anymore. She just looks too damn cute; it’s all I can do to resist kissing her let alone not looking at her while walking and slamming my shin into railings…maybe Tia has a point about Airi and that’s why I’m feeling compelled to ‘just kiss her’ when I’m carrying a sleeping Cheza.

We walk out of the gate where Sara is waiting for us with the car. I slide into the back passenger side while keeping Cheza on my lap. Natasha sits
behind Sara and gives me this look that is similar to the look girls get when they watch several puppies playing together. We drive home with Sara shooting me amused looks in the rearview mirror. Cheza is still asleep so I carry her in the house.

“Natasha,
I prepared a spare bedroom while you three were in Hawaii.” Sara asks.

“
Thank you, Sara!” Natasha says.

“Wait,
what’s going on?” I ask.

“As liaison, Natasha will be staying with us in the spare bedroom.” Sara explains

“Are you talking about Uncle Eric’s room?” I ask.

“No, I’m talking about the other guest bedroom. You
know, the one that is in front of you when you walk down the hall to either Tia’s or my room?” Sara says.