What she felt like, actually, was a goddess.
She decided to experiment. She flexed her will and heard the large doors at the far end of the quarters creak open. She thought of the people who had accompanied Ms. Wickman into the room earlier and focused on one of them. A few moments later, one of the black-clad guards came staggering into the room, his legs propelling him forward jerkily as if he were a puppet on a string. He pawed at his holstered sidearm, but his hand twisted painfully away from the weapon with a sound of grinding bones. His eyes popped and jittered with the helpless terror of one not in control of his own body. Then he saw the limp form of his dead Mistress and let out a squeal of fear.
The man Ms. Wickman had referred to as “Captain” came to a swaying halt at the foot of the bed as Giselle relinquished much of her physical control over him (though she kept his hand twisted away from the pistol).
Giselle licked blood from her fingers and smiled at the terrifed man. “Tell me your name.”
In a trembling voice the man said, “I-I am…C-Captain Girard of the B-Black Brigade. The military wing of the M-Mistress’s…organization.”
“I see.” Giselle tongued the last of Ms. Wickman’s blood from her fingers, then wiped them clean on the bedsheet. She climbed off the bed and approached the trembling captain. “As you can see, you no longer serve Ms. Wickman. I am Mistress of this place now, and you will answer only to me from now on. Is this clear?”
Captain Girard appeared to be too stunned by the inexplicable coup d’etat to immediately supply the only acceptable answer. He kept glancing at Ms. Wickman’s body, perhaps expecting her to rise from the dead and reassert her authority. Which, given the condition of her body, was just stupid. Impatient, Giselle snatched the 9mm pistol from his holster and shot him in the face. By the time his corpse struck the floor more black-clad armed men had stormed into the room. Giselle usurped control of their minds in a millisecond. They stood there, terror shining in their eyes, mouths hanging open in shock, their fingers frozen over the trigger guards of their useless weapons.
Giselle stepped over the fallen Captain and advanced to within six feet of the nearest trembling man. “Ms. Wickman is dead. I rule this place now. Captain Girard is dead because he could not accept that. He was a stupid man.” She eyed each of the men in turn before saying, “Are the rest of you as stupid?”
A chorus of muttered denials brought a very slight smile to her face.
“Good. Then know this. I do not wish to kill any more of you. Nor do I wish to upset the essential order of things around here.” She clasped her hands be hind her back and strode slowly back and forth in front of them like a marine drill sergeant addressing a rank of fresh boot camp inductees. “This is a change of command, nothing more. Your Black Brigade will remain intact. If anything, you will have more power than before.”
Giselle allowed a moment for that to sink in. A new, hungry gleam stole into the eyes of several of the men. Giselle supposed the message was getting through. These men had been something of an elite force before, but now they would be backed by power far greater than that wielded by their deceased Mistress.
Giselle said, “I need to speak with your top officer privately. The rest of you go about your business at once.”
All but one of the men hurried out of the room. The big door slammed shut yet again. The Black Brigade officer who remained with her was a tall, thin man with cold blue eyes and close-cropped steel-gray hair. He glanced briefly at the bodies of Ms. Wickman and Captain Girard. Giselle watched him closely, but his eyes registered nothing at all. He was over any shock he’d felt at this turn of events.
Giselle moved closer to him, almost to within touching distance. “And what is your name?”
The man’s face remained expressionless as he said, “Lieutenant Schreck, Mistress.”
Giselle suppressed the smile that wanted to come.
Mistress.
“The Black Brigade is yours to command now, Schreck. Anyone above you will be demoted or eliminated.” Giselle smiled. “Whichever you deem necessary.”
A corner of his mouth twitched, the first indication of any emotion lurking behind the man’s mask of cool indifference. “I understand.”
Giselle moved away from him and sat at the foot of the bed. She crossed her legs and set the pistol next to one of Ms. Wickman’s unmoving feet. “Please bring me up to speed, Schreck. Brief me on the things I most need to know about this place.”
Lieutenant Schreck cleared his throat and began a concise recitation of a number of basic facts. Some of what she learned then increased her contempt for Ms. Wickman. Her handling of the slaves, for instance, bespoke a pathetic lack of confidence in her ability to forestall an uprising like the one that had brought down the Master. This would not continue under the new regime. More pleasing was what she learned about the ongoing efforts to rein in the survivors of the Master’s former domain. She wanted to see those people again.
The briefing finished, Giselle allowed herself a silent moment of contemplation. She looked at Ms. Wickman’s corpse and felt a tingle, a ghost of the powerful erotic charge that had flowed through her own body during their brief but electric coupling. That tingle intensified and Giselle became keenly aware of an awakened taste that had not yet been sated.
“Tell me, Lieutenant. You are no doubt familiar with all the Apprentices in service here. Of the females, whom would you say is the most beautiful?”
Schreck’s answer was immediate. “That would be Ursula, Mistress.”
“Have someone fetch her for me. But first…” Giselle turned her head to look at the open French door and the red sky beyond. “Have this cunt’s body taken to that barren place and burned. I would like to watch this happen from my balcony.”
“As you wish, Mistress.”
She dismissed him then and he departed the room at once. Giselle again arose from the bed and ventured back out to the balcony. She observed the diminutive forms of the hooded, toiling slaves and thought of what Schreck had told her about the edifice they were constructing.
An actual pyramid, she thought, wonderment again filling her as she imagined it.
She smiled again.
She couldn’t imagine a more appropriate place for the sacrifices to come.
PART II: THE CRIMSON HIGHWAY
CHAPTER ELEVEN
One month later
The strange little girl in the yellow rain slicker was looking at her again. Laughing at her again. The girl made her nervous. She had a weird glint in her eyes. And there was something about the set of her features and the angle at which she was holding her head that made her expression look like a grown-up leer. A hint of lasciviousness one shouldn’t see in the eyes of one so young. Though Dream couldn’t hear the sound of the girl’s laughter over the wind and the rushing water below, she was certain it possessed a mocking tone.
She wasn’t positive the little girl was really there. Another apparition, maybe. She was glad of the dozen or so yards that separated them. If she moved any closer, Dream would bolt back across the bridge to the parking lot where they’d left Marcy’s van. The girl put a cupped hand to her mouth to cover a giggle.
Dream shifted her attention back to the natural wonder in the distance. The stiff breeze stirred her hair and the fine mist of rain made her flesh glisten as she leaned over the railing of the Rainbow Bridge and watched the distant churning foam of the water at the bottom of American Falls, the U.S. half of the famed Niagara Falls. The sky was overcast and the temperature had dropped into the thirties, with the stiffening wind adding an extra bite to the chill. It was late afternoon drifting toward evening, and the already bruised sky was growing darker by the moment. The nasty conditions had thinned the usual tourist crowds to nearly nothing. Dream had an eerie sense of standing alone at the very edge of the world as all of existence teetered on the brink of some unfathomable apocalypse.