The Mustang sped down the highway to the county three road and hung a left. It went down past the sign that said “Wildman’s Farm”, making another immediate left onto the road that led to Stillman’s Creek. Helena hit the high beams to illuminate as much of the unfamiliar area as she could. They were almost up to the bridge when Helen noticed Ryan’s car, the rear doors still ajar, parked on the side of the road.
“Kill the engine,” Helen instructed her mother as they pulled up close to the vehicle.
“Kill. I’m feeling a love for that word right now,” Helena admitted. She parked her car next to the Toyota and immediately got out of the vehicle. “What is Ryan’s car doing out here?”
“Maybe it’s still here from the other night?” Helen offered, joining her mother by the side of her neighbor’s car.
“Not a chance. Roy would have had it moved as part of the crime scene. That much I’m certain of.”
“Well, we know Ryan’s in jail…”
Helena subconsciously tilted her head. “Then why do I get the feeling he isn’t?’ She stuck her head into the back seat area of Ryan’s car and sniffed. “Interesting. I get a mix of Axe cologne and Paris Hilton perfume.” She sniffed again. So…I’m thinking Tom and Jacey were here quite recently, in the back seat.” She also knew that left someone else driving the car.
“It might smell good in there, but it just reeks out here. What is that smell?” Helen asked, wrinkling her nose. “Skunkweed?”
Helena sniffed the air. “It’s coming from the water,” she said, turning her head in that direction.
“Phew. It smells like rotten eggs or…sulphur?” She looked at her mother for affirmation. “Burning sulphur?”
“You’re right,” Helena confirmed. “I think,” she said slowly, considering her answer carefully “the creek is covering the fires of hell.” She watched for a reaction of her daughter, but Helen had her best poker face on. “Pull your scarf over your nose. It won’t block the stench out entirely, but it’ll help keep your senses clear,” she instructed.
“You have a hellmouth near Troy?” Helen asked, doing her best to keep her cool as she ignored her mother and plugged her nose with her gloved hand.
“I don’t think it’s so much of a mouth, but it is definitely a crack in the crust,” Helena suggested. “It also explains some other things.”
“What other things?”
“This is probably not the time to tell you,” Helena said softly.
“Great,” Helen sighed.
“Where are the kids?” Helena asked, looking around. The full moon was allowing her natural eyesight to scan a good part of the area. She didn’t see any sign of the teenagers. “This doesn’t look good,” she mumbled, walking back towards the rear of her Mustang. “I think we’d better prepare ourselves for the worst.”
“You know,” Helen began, “the writers of Supernatural gave Dean an Impala for a reason. They were going to give him a Mustang, but the Impala had a bigger trunk. I read that somewhere. It might be something to consider next time you’re in line for a new vehicle.”
“That may be a valid point for some people,” Helena replied. “But I’ve been doing this quite a bit longer than the Winchester men. It’s not the quantity of the ammo, it’s the quality,” she said, opening the trunk of her car.
Helen’s mouth fell open as Helena waved her hand proudly over the arsenal of weaponry she had stashed under a blanket. There were knives made from a variety of metals, guns of varying sizes, bags of salt, a five gallon bottle of water and a host of other assorted weapons of destruction.
“Whoa,” Helen exclaimed.
“Well, the water and the salt help the Mustang’s traction in the winter,” Helena explained with sincerity. “The rear end fishtails a bit in the snow.”
“You always were a good packer,” she admitted to her her mother, surveying every nook and cranny of the trunk. One item in particular caught her attention. “Where the hell did you get that crossbow?”
“This old thing?” Helena asked, pulling it out so Helen could get a better look at it. The weapon appeared to be handcrafted out of wood and iron. Although it remained rust-free, the wooden surfaces were well worn, and the string had obviously been replaced at some point in time. “I think it’s just what we need for the job.”
“Well, it’s not like you can order it through L.L. Bean…”
“Actually, you can get them on line,” Helena offered.
“Not like that one you can’t,” Helen insisted. “C’mon. Spill.”
Helena’s glove rubbed the metal surface with unusual affection. “This one dates back to the Crusades.” She was almost giddy with delight.
“And you came upon it how?”
“Your grandmother gave it to me. She had some nasty business to take care of with Henry Tudor and the Church of England… at least that’s how the story goes.”
“Oh, that’s comforting,” Helen replied. “Not.”
“Relax. They’re used for sport today.”
“I’m sure they are,” Helen replied sarcastically. “You know, for those situations when a rifle with a scope just won’t do the trick.”
“Do you have a better suggestion?” Helena paused impatiently for an answer. “I thought not.”
“But you’ve only got one arrow. Is there a spare under the utility wheel?”
“I don’t need one, Helen. I never miss. Besides, I have another use for that,” she said, lifting the spare tire easily from its mount. Hidden beneath the safety device was a pair of hand weapons.
“Of course. It’s where you keep the grenades,” Helen said sarcastically. “Maybe you should tighten the bolts on that tire lock a little better when when you put the wheel back on. Or tell your town council to pave the county roads.”
Helena took an explosive and stuffed it into her coat pocket, handing another one to Helen.
“Seriously?” Helen asked. “I’m not big on pineapples.”
“Do I look like I’m joking?” Helena asked.
“Okay, okay,” Helen said gingerly taking hold of the weapon. “Honestly, the things you make me do,” she said, reluctantly putting it into her own pocket.
“When I count to three, you pull the pin and pitch it like you’re throwing to the outfield, got it?”
“Sadly, yes. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather take a gun? You seem to have more of them in that trunk of yours than the sporting goods section of a Texas Wal-Mart.”
“Guns are over-rated,” Helena replied, reaching into a bag of road salt she had opened for the use it was intended on the first snowfall of the season. She poured the heaping handful into her other empty pocket before pulling a small plastic department store bag from the trunk as well. “I was going to give this to Ellie for Christmas,” she explained, pulling a necklace from a little blue jeweler’s box tucked inside. “But I guess I’m going to have to use it.”
“Is that a talisman?” Helen asked.
“Some people call it that. I call it a locket,” she insisted. “I’m just going to open it and put a few drops of the holy water in it. Holy water is like vanilla. You only need a little.”
Helen watched her mother remove the cap from the water bottle and dip her finger into it, allowing a few drops to be transferred to the necklace’s chamber.
“That huge jug of water you’re lugging around is holy water?” Helen asked.
“It’s like premium gas to me,” Helena explained. “I like to keep it filled up.”
“Why do I get the feeling you’ve done this before?” Helen asked, watching her mother. “I just hope we’re in the right place to find Ellie, and it’s not just where Tom and Jacey do what Tom and Jacey probably do out in a place like this.”
“We’re in the right place alright. Listen. Can’t you hear it?” She put her finger to her lips indicating for Helen to be quiet. “If I’m not mistaken, I can here the low melodic sound of a gospel hymn.”
Helen perked her ears. “Sweet Chariot? Is Willie whistli
ng Sweet Chariot?”
“Well, I’m guessing it’s probably not Tom or Jacey doing it. He’s doing his best to give us a clue, bless him. This is one time we’re actually going to enjoy a Willie tune.”
“I love that man,” Helen beamed.
“It’s probably not the best time for that either, Helen,” she cautioned. This was no time for Helen to get any romantic notions in her head. Helena needed her daughter’s killer instinct front and centre. She reached back into the corners of the trunk and pulled out what appeared to be two elastic bands with lights on them.
“What the hell is this?” Helena asked, as Helen handed her one.
“It’s a headlamp. These I do get from L.L. Bean,” she replied. “Just put it on, it’s going to be dark in there.” She sighed. “Just the way they like it.”
“Won’t it tip them off?”
“They’re going to know we’re here, Helen. So it doesn’t really matter. No sense breaking a leg before we get to them.”
The women followed the whistling sound as long as they could, the light on their head leading them down the dark path. The sound became louder as they came nearer, then suddenly stopped as they arrived at the abandoned schoolhouse.
“I guess we’re on our own now,” Helen sighed.
“He’s done what he can for us. Now I need you to concentrate,” her mother instructed. “Reach into the back of your mind, Helen. Where is Ellie?”
Helen closed her eyes and took a deep breath, exhaling very slowly. “I’ve got her on my radar,” she whispered. “I know where she is.”
“Good. Then let’s do this.” Helena whispered back, pulling the crossbow closer to her body. “Those burning schoolhouses at the fireworks stores are going to have nothing on this one when we’re done. I’m looking forward to this.”
“I’ll go first,” Helen instructed. “You watch my back.”
Helena nodded in agreement as Helen began to use her extra sensory perception to lead them into the school, through the dark hallways, past the gym, around the corner and down towards the bathrooms.
They could hear a heated argument from behind the door that read BOYS, and for once, Helen was thankful to hear her next door neighbor dropping a continuum of f-bombs. “How do you want to do this?” She asked her mother, as they stood outside the door.
“I want to make an entrance, of course. Although I know I’m really going to regret it tomorrow,” she replied. “Stand back.”
She turned her body slightly to the left and raised her leg a few inches higher than her hips. After pausing a moment to take aim with the sole of her boot, Helena pulled her leg back to the ground, took a couple of steps backward, then swung it out again with full force and proceeded to kick the door in.
“Hello, Hell. Meet the hand basket,” Helena announced to the stunned occupants of the room.
She evaluated the scene like a triage doctor would. “Four kids, two wraiths and one son-of-a bitch vampire. All living and breathing,” she affirmed to Helen. Good news and bad news. The forces of good were a tad more battered than the guardians of evil, it appeared.
Helen followed with a more concentrated overview of the warzone. She saw Ellie huddled in a corner, chained up like a dog, obviously scared out of her mind. Her heart broke at the sight, and she had to remind herself that every move she took had to be a calculated one. This was no time for maternal instinct to take over. She motioned for Ellie to stay put. Ryan was near the sprinkler fountain fully cognizant of what was going on around him. His eyes moved from her to Helena and back again, and she thought she saw him give a sigh of relief. Tom—at least she assumed it was Tom—was rubbing his head in the corner with his other arm around Jacey, who was not looking at all pretty at the moment. That left three others in the room—the twin patrolmen and the teenager she presumed was her half-brother, Gaspar.
“Just answer me one thing,” Helena requested of Colin. He was moving towards her with venom in his eyes. “Why did you have to go and kill the Clarks? The parents, I mean. What did they ever do to you? I get that Gaspar did what he did, but what are you and your brother’s parts in all this?”
“We’re the clean-up crew,” Colin replied. He glanced over at Gaspar. “The boss doesn’t like loose ends.” His contorted mouth let out a screech that sounded like a cat in heat, as his neck tilted backwards. “Party!” he cried out. “Welcome to our new eatery. It’s called the Death Zone.”
“Yeah, yeah” Helena mocked him, “I’ve never been very big on Vampire/Wraith fusion. She turned her attention to Gaspar. “And how exactly did you become the boss?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Gaspar sneered. He watched Helena raise the crossbow to her own eye-level. “Playing Robin Hood are we? Am I supposed to be afraid?”
“You know, you three look so miserable,” Helena taunted him. “Have you ever stopped to consider why the unjust are so much crankier than the just?”
“Not lately, no” Gaspar scoffed. He motioned for his henchmen to take care of Helena. “Go ahead, pretend you’re going to shoot me. I know you won’t. If you had it in you, you would have let me die this summer.”
“It’s not always about you,” Helena mocked, spinning her body around towards the wraiths. She closed her eyes and drew the arrow towards her body. “Well here’s a big happy, happy, joy, joy to both of you.”
“For the love of God, Mother. Open your eyes,” Helen screamed. “You’re going to miss.”
Helena released the iron trigger and the arrow took flight. “I told you. I never miss. I just hate it when it’s easy. It’s all about the angle of trajectory.”
Cody let out a blood-curling screech as he lurched towards Colin from behind. He grabbed him, trying to move his brother away from the approaching quarrel, but the projectile had speed and force on its side, and easily penetrated through the front of Colin’s eye socket. Blood began to spurt from the entry wound as the arrow’s momentum continued through Colin’s head and into the left ear of Cody. When the arrow’s flight was finally over, Colin was dead, face-down on the floor with blood oozing from the back of his neck. Cody’s body was pinned to the wall, grey matter from his brain seeping out through his ear canal.
“Holy crap,” Ryan exclaimed.
“They just don’t make weapons like this anymore,” Helena said proudly, looking at Helen. “And you wondered why I always made you play pin the tail on the donkey.”
“Are you sure they’re dead?” Helen asked cautiously. “I’d hate for them to split again. Quadruplet wraiths would be a pain in the ass.”
“They’re dead,” Helena insisted.
“I’m not taking any chances this time,” Helen replied, pulling a hidden Ginsu knife from between her leg and her boot. “I took it from your knife drawer back home. I’ll get you another one for Christmas,” she promised her mother. She grabbed Cody’s bloodied hair in her hand to give herself a clear view of his neck. Her cut was swift, and she watched the deputy’s body spew even more blood from his once pulsating carotid artery. “That ought to do it,” she said icily.
She turned to his twin. “Femora, femora on the wall, who’s the fairest one of all?” she said in a guttural voice. She then made two deep incisions, cutting open his upper legs one after the other.
“Still want to do her?” an ashen-faced Tom asked Ryan.
“I just want to stay the fuck out of her way,” Ryan replied.
Helena turned to Gaspar. “As for you,” she said with bitterness, “shall we make it swift, or shall you suffer a slow, lingering death? Retribution for the pain and suffering you have caused others?”
“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” Gaspar sneered.
“Baby, the Bible ain’t gonna help you now,” Helen interjected. “Not even the ‘do unto others part.’”
“Stop it!” Ellie screamed, finding her voice from beneath her fear. “Leave him alone! He’s right. Don’t you see? Just because you kill in the name of what you think is good, it doesn?
??t make it just.”
“It does!” Ryan tried to tell her. “It makes it okay…really okay.”
“Be quiet, Ellie,” Helen snapped. “This is none of your business.”
“It’s ALL of my business,” Ellie shouted back. “That part isn’t complicated at all.”
“If you kill me,” Gaspar smirked with evil, turning his gaze from Helena to Jacey, “I won’t be able to tell little Goldilocks over there where her baby is. Pity.”
Jacey’s eyes and mouth went wide. “How do you know about that?” she asked nervously.
Tom glared at Jacey. “Baby? What baby? You told me you never did it.”
“I never said never, Tom.” Jacey answered, afraid to look at her friend. “Think back. I never said never.”
Tom removed his arm from around Jacey and looked helplessly at Ryan.
“Chics,” Ryan shrugged. “I tried to tell you.”
“Please don’t kill him,” Jacey begged Helena. “If he knows where my baby is, please don’t kill him.”
Gaspar walked over to her and kicked at Jacey’s once fabulous boots. “You’re not the only one who can Google. You’re quite the little traveler, aren’t you?”
“He’s lying, Jacey,” Helena insisted. “He knows it, and I know it. He’s tugging at your heart strings, buying some time. He’s good at that. I should know.”
“Maybe he isn’t,” Jacey said solemnly.
“He likes to play the distraction game,” Helena said, emphasizing the adverb. “It’s his little ploy for empowerment. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Are you feeling particularly lucky now, Gaspar? With your two friends dead?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Helena saw her granddaughter reaching as far as she could across the floor. She kept Gaspar engaged in conversation.
“I thought we had a deal, Gaspar.” Helena continued. “I thought we agreed you would come to me when your hunger began to torment you.”
“I don’t need anything from you,” Gaspar sneered.
Ryan was also watching Ellie. She was after something. He extended his right leg and managed to get the fallen javelin to roll towards her.
“Nor I, you,” Helena said to the vampire.
Ellie stood up, the javelin in her hands, and pointed it towards Gaspar. “You’re not the only one who can be deceitful and manipulative,” she told him. “You didn’t really think I felt anything for you, did you? You didn’t really think I would choose you over my own family? You didn’t just lose your mother that day.”
She hurled the javelin towards Gaspar’s torso. It tore through his jacket and into his left ventricle. “Huh,” Ellie exclaimed, admiring her own prowess. “What do you know? Sports Day was good for something after all.”
Gaspar grabbed his chest and screamed. He screamed for what seemed like an eternity, his body contorting backwards and forwards until it finally collapsed to the ground.
“Dude,” Ryan laughed uncontrollably, seeing an end to his nemesis. “I told you not to hit girls. I tried to tell you.”
Jacey dropped her head and began to cry uncontrollably. Tom was numb.
Helen’s mouth dropped open. Her baby. Her little killer of a baby…she hadn’t had a prouder moment in her life. “Will that do it?” she asked Helena, unsure if Ellie’s wound would keep him dead.
“It’s a start,” Helena said. “I’ll finish the bastard off myself.” She took some salt from her pocket and opened the little locket.
“What are you doing?” Ellie asked.
“Making a Vampire cocktail,” her grandmother replied. “A little salt, a little holy water, mixed together in silver…talisman.” She shook the contents, then removed her thumb and poured the mixture on Gaspar.
His body turned into a festering pool of rotting flesh, emitting an aroma that had the survivors gagging.
“Peto Abysuss,” Helena chanted, waving her arm over Gaspar’s remains. She then went to the twins and did the same thing. “Peto Abyssus quod subsisto illic.”
Black smoke rose out of the three corpses, removing what was left of their temporarily supernatural life forms.
“See, Jacey,” Ryan whispered. “That’s how you do it.”
“How am I ever going to explain this?” a voice said from behind the activity.
Helena turned around to see Roy standing in the doorway, his pistol drawn. He entered the room, walked around and counted the dead bodies, stopping momentarily to tell the Dayton twins they were officially fired.
“Did you do this?” he asked Helen, as he stood over Gaspar’s body.
“Technically, no,” she replied. “The other two…”
“Be quiet, Helen,” her mother said sternly.
Roy looked at Helena. “I have no words…” he said. “I asked you time and time again if you knew anything about all this.”
“And I told you what I could,” Helena told him firmly.
“But not everything,” Roy insisted. “So much for the trust in our relationship.”
“I’ll take care of it, Roy,” she told him. “Just like the Fourth of July.” She could sense that the bond they between them was now broken, and it saddened her.
Helen could sense it as well. She put her arm across her mother’s shoulder. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, giving Roy a look that may or may not have been deserved.
The seven of them left the building in silence.
Helena glanced around. “Are we all out?” she asked, as they started to head away from the schoolhouse and back towards the bridge.
“Yes,” Ellie gasped.
“We’re not done yet, Helen,” Helena reminded her. “On three…”
“I’m already there, Mother,” she informed her, turning around, pulling the pin from the grenade and hurling it through the still opened doorway.
Helena did the same with the device in her pocket, lobbing it through the glass window of the basement washroom. “Hit the deck,” she told the others.
Two explosions immediately followed.
“Is everyone okay?” Helena asked once the ensuing smoke and debris had cleared. One by one the six others nodded.
“I suggest you say it was a gas leak,” she told Roy tersely.
He walked away from them, shaking his head as he did so. The man in him knew that it was a good thing the three—whatevers—were dead, but the officer in him was having a hard time with the rights and wrongs of the situation.
“Now what? Helen asked. The strength she had summoned from within had been totally exhausted, and she began to tremble.
“Betty’s got that bottle of whiskey with our name on it,” Helena replied. She gave a sigh of relief and smiled a little, watching the four teenagers head back to Ryan’s car, their arms around each other in a formation of love, peace and hope. “I’m thinking that’s a start,” she laughed, putting her arms around her daughter.
EPILOGUE