Post by oberonfrost on May 28, 2012 23:49:32 GMT -5
Ultimate Crimson Fox #7
Skin Pt. 1 of 2
Sins of the Flesh
Margot strapped a long-bladed knife to her left thigh, then checked the clip in her pistol. “Sometimes, dear sister, you’re more trouble than you’re worth,” she noted as she holstered the gun at her hip. “We’re going to find out who this hero interfering in Daddy’s plans is, and then I’m going to skin her alive.”
Aliki reclined on the divan in the humid apartment she shared with her twin sister. Since her skin had been stolen by the Crimson Fox, she’d pulled DeChampes skin on again, though Zachariah hadn’t yet sewn her into the fleshsuit. The further away her own skin, the more intense the pain she felt in every exposed nerve ending. “Zachariah, sew me up!” she whined and pulled DeChampes’ skin down from her head.
The young blond man dressed all in purple, Zachariah, started toward Aliki, his sewing kit in hand. Before he could take more than a few steps across the oriental rug, Margot slapped the bag of needles and thread away from him, sending it skidding under a armoire. “Not an option sister,” she said sinisterly. “The pain you’re feeling right now, that’s the only way means we have of tracking your missing skin.”
Zachariah couldn’t help but smile at the delicious irony of Aliki’s situation. The only way for her to eliminate the excruciating pain wracking her body, was to search all of Paris in the hopes that she might notice a lessening of her private torture. “Best give me DeChampes’ skin then, let me dispose of it.”
“No,” Margot interrupted again. “She can wear it from the waist down. We’ll tie the upper body around her waist. She’ll be useless if we let the pain get to her legs; I’m not dragging her across the entire city myself.” Margot smiled sardonically at her sister. “Zachariah, I want you to check in with Doctor Poison. The one who stole my sister’s flesh sounds much like the assaulted the good doctor in the Revson building. Compare notes with her and call me.”
He left without another word, his sewing kit forgotten under the armoire. As much as Zachariah hated dealing with Doctor Poison, he still preferred her to the skinthieves that their dark-father called Double Dare. After she had been assaulted in the subbasement of the Revson building, Poison had been set up with a private lab situated in a part of town geared toward tourism. It always took a while for missing foreigners to be noticed, and so she had a never-ending crop of potential test subjects.
He climbed back into the dark sedan he’d used to deliver Aliki to her sister’s gentle mercies. The engine purred and Zachariah floored the gas pedal, sending the sedan speeding down Parisian streets toward the towering form of the Eifel Tower.
Back inside the apartment Margot finished tying DeChampes’ torso and arms around her sisters waist. The scientists face peered outward, the visage upside down covering his otherwise free-swinging manhood. “Walk the perimeter sister, the edges of our home. Where is the pain the least?”
Aliki walked along the walls, sometimes touching the wallpaper with a bloody hand to steady herself against the stabbing pains assailing her upper body. She wandered unsteadily, turning at each corner, steps quaking. Henri DeChampes’ ghoulish, shapeless face flapped back and forth over her groin, making a syncopated slapping noise as she ambled the perimeter.
Finally, Aliki settled on a spot by the northern-most window. She braced herself against the window’s frame with both hands. Her body shook uncontrollably, but less so here than any other point in the room. “Toward the river,” she choked out, watching blood and saliva fall from her skinless lips into the potted fern at her feet.
***
Vivian had taken off as swiftly as she could from DeChampes’ shattered apartment. She sprinted across rooftops, leapt over alleyways, and climbed and swung from balconies and flagpoles. She wasn’t sure exactly where she was heading, but Vivian knew one thing for certain: she had to get as far away from those monsters as she could.
The waning moon cast very little light, as it slipped behind a steady parade of dark clouds. As Vivian raced away, clutching the fleshsuit to her chest with her left arm, she tried to analyze the bizarre things she’d seen that night.
Despite the raucous chorus of Parisian nightlife at this hour, all Vivian could hear was her footfalls on the stone rooftop as she thought of Doctor Henri DeChampes. She had evidence that he was the mole, leaking D’Armis company secrets to their rival, the Revson Corporation. A series of e-mails had proven the link between DeChampes and Revson. E-mails that she’d discovered on her virgin outing as the Crimson Fox, by breaking into the subbasement of the Revson building, where she’d battled a mad scientist who looked like a fetish model.
Vivian vaulted over a narrow alleyway, her sense of smell assaulted by the stench of rotting garbage below. Which was all the link between DeChampes and Revson turned out to be- garbage. DeChampes’ apartment had been easy enough to track down, and that’s where DeChampes had been for quite some time, based on the look of his corpse.
That’s where the really strange stuff started to happen. Instead of the heavyset, middle-aged DeChampes, Vivian had discovered a woman wearing his skin. The skinless thing had called herself ‘Aliki’ and she seemed to be able to slip in and out of her own flesh, and that of others, as easily as Vivian would slip into her costume and become the Crimson Fox.
There had been a fight, and a man had interrupted them. He was unusually strong and hardy, running through an oaken door as if it were made from paper.
The Fox stopped finally. She was crouched on the rooftop of a two-story building, perched right on the edge. The building looked like an old café, abandoned for years. The door and windows were boarded up and she could smell the mold and dust even from her lofty perch.
She looked down at her blood smeared costumed and the fleshsuit pressed against her abdomen. With her free hand she finally wiped Aliki’s blood from around her mouth and breathed a ragged sigh between pants. Vivian didn’t even know why she had grabbed the skin from the closet. It seemed important to Aliki, and to the man who had disrupted their battle. She’d acted on instinct, that much she knew. On this though, Vivian feared her instincts may have been wrong. Suddenly, the Crimson Fox had turned from predator to prey.
***
Margot was dressed in a yellow bodysuit, with thigh high black boots and matching black gloves that stopped mid-bicep. Both boots and gloves were capped off with a large fold of yellow fabric that looked vaguely pirate-like. A yellow and black cowl was pulled down over her face, and her long red hair flowed freely in the night air.
Contrasting her sister’s very put together attire, Aliki looked like a horror. From the waist up she was stripped of her flesh, a tangle of exposed muscle tissue, organs and bone. She dripped blood with every step, and it streaked down the heavy skin of Henri DeChampes that she had tied naked around her waist, like a pair of jogging pants.
They moved as swiftly as they could across the roofs of Paris given Aliki’s never ending pain at being so far separated from her own skin. They traveled north, toward the rive Seine. The closer they got to the river, the less Aliki complained of stabbing pains or screamed in outright anguish. Which meant they closer they got to the river, the closer they came to finding the stolen skin.
“What I wish to know, dear sister,” Margot said before she somersaulted to the next roof, “is why this woman continues to interfere in Daddy’s plans. Who is she and what does she know? And how, dear sister, how does she know what she knows?”
For all the extra weight DeChampes’ pot-bellied skin added, and the nearly overwhelming pain, Aliki remained remarkably agile. Somersaults and back flips were second nature to her. The Marceau sisters had been raised under the yellow and black tent tops of “Cirque de la Lune Noire,” and had been featured on the trapeze at the tender age of six. She vaulted across the alley to join her curious sister on the rooftop beyond.
“Worry about it later,” Aliki coughed, blood staining the white stoned roof of the building.
Margot regarded her sister coolly. “Aren’t you the least bit worried that someone is telling Daddy’s secrets to an outsider? What if one of the others is making some kind of play for Daddy’s power?”
“You’re paranoid,” Aliki said, bending her knees, the skin that wasn’t hers rumpling unnaturally at the joints, preparing for her next jump. Right now she didn’t care about anything other than finding her own skin, the skin she’d been born with. It was the most precious possession, the one thing she’d always kept safe. She knew that if their roles were reversed, Margot would be of single minded purpose as well.
***
Vivian dared not dally long, and she vaulted down from the rooftop to the alleyway below. She needed to find somewhere that she could wait out her pursuers and plan her next move. This abandoned café seemed like an inconspicuous enough a place for the moment. Soon she’d have to move on, find a way to elude the pursuit she knew was coming.
Fox tossed the fleshsuit on the dirty ground just outside the entrance. A flick of the wrist and her claws came out. It didn’t take much effort to slice through the half-rotten boards sealing up the doorway. Another flick and blades retreated.
At the corner, an overturned trashcan lid held a few inches of water. Vivian recoiled at her own reflection in the shallow pool. She cupped her hand and scooped up some of the stale rainwater and wiped the area around her mouth again, finally washing away the last of the dried blood from the kiss Aliki had forced upon her.
She picked up the lid, and dumped the rest of the water over her head and down her leather costume. She rubbed at the dark red bloodstains, doing the best she could to clean herself. The water collected in small pools at her feet, streaked with burgundy gore.
Convinced that she could do no more, Vivian roughly lifted the fleshsuit into her arms and stepped through the café’s entrance….
***
“I’d never seen her before,” Doctor Poison said as she slipped a rolling paper into the machine. “And I don’t know who she is.”
Zachariah watched as mysterious woman poured a dried herb into the machine. “What I do know, is that she took a perfectly good test subject from me. She cost me my multi-million dollar laboratory at Revson. And that tonight, she’s someone else’s problem.”
Poison twisted the rollers, and the paper curled around the filling and pulled out a tightly rolled cigarette. “Marijuana, aged in cyanide and the ashes of an Afghan soldier I tortured when I was studying in Turkey. A few mild hallucinogens and toxins thrown in,” she explained as she twirled one end and examined her handiwork. “A guaranteed good trip, Zachariah. And your kind isn’t hurt by the poisons. Care to spend the night?”
Zachariah watched as she lit the joint. “I’m afraid I can’t. The Double Dare sisters will no doubt need me once they recover the stolen skin.”
Poison coughed as she exhaled dark grey toxic smoke. “I could make you, you know? Doctor’s orders.”
“You’re bold to even think of entertaining my Madame’s wrath. Or the ire of the dark-father.”
Poison was quiet as she sucking in another long drag. Zachariah could tell she was smiling beneath the black latex mask that concealed her face. As the noxious fumes exited her lungs she laughed aloud. “Go then. Let the sister’s know I will expect to be contacted should they find who troubles us mutually.”
Zachariah stood sharply, and bowed his head. “Of course Doctor.”
He spun on his heel and headed for the exit, eager to no longer be in the company of the Doctor. “Zachariah,” she stopped him, “Alive. I expect her alive when I get to her. Remind the sisters that they must always defer to their betters, as must we all.”
“As must we all,” Zachariah said quickly leaving the doctor behind.
***
…to find herself somewhere else altogether. Instead of arriving inside the dark and dusty abandoned café, Vivian had somehow been deposited in a vast otherworldly place that her mind was having trouble processing. A rainbow of colors shifted on the periphery of her vision, never in focus. She could hear the roar of a fire somewhere, but there was no smoke in the air. The floor was made of marble, but it jutted out at odd angles, never level for more than a few feet at a time. To her left there was a chair, perched halfway up the wall, which was an impossible distance away, even though it looked as if she could reach out and touch it.
“It will take some time for your senses to adjust,” a haughty female voice said. It seemed to come from all directions and Vivian could not find the speaker no matter which direction she looked. “You might not even be here long enough for that to happen,” the voice said again.
Suddenly, just inches away from Vivian the other woman appeared. Though now that she saw her, Vivian was sure she’d been there the entire time. “I am the Fleur-de-Lis.”
The words somehow meant something to Vivian, though she had no idea what. “For generations we have been the heroes of the French nobility. Our power tied to the magic of France and the spirit of her people. We protect the nobility from the people by protecting the people from the nobility. But a Fleur-de-Lis must never take action against those we serve, those of France’s noble lines.”
The woman hadn’t said anything, but Vivian had heard the words. At least, she thought she had. “I cannot help you in your fight Crimson Fox.” This time Vivian was sure the woman was speaking, she watched her mouth form the words, even as they resounded from the walls of the room rather than the Fleur-de-Lis’ throat. “You fight a noble; his wickedness is beyond measure and has lasted for centuries. I cannot even speak to you his name.”
Vivian tried to ask a question. She wasn’t sure what the question was, just that it needed asking. Her mind tried to form the words, even as her mouth formed the shapes necessary for speech. Nothing came out.
She tried to move, but was frozen in place. She was a hundred feet away from the Fleur-de-Lis. She was sitting in the chair on the wall. “Burn it,” the Fleur-de-Lis’ voice said. Vivian couldn’t find her again. “Burn the skin to ash. Seek out the whore-queen. The red philosopher. She calls herself Madeline today. Or she did in the yester-now.”
Vivian was back where she’d started. The Fleur-de-Lis standing in front of her, their noses almost touching. “Goodbye.”
***
Aliki’s knees flexed and she vaulted into the air. Suddenly excruciating pain, beyond anything she had ever felt, shot through her. The torture of this new pain was beyond even the anguish she’d experienced when her dark-father had cut the skin from her still living body, making sure she was conscious to watch and feel it all.
She didn’t quite make the leap, and caught the edge of the next rooftop with her fingers. Aliki’s body erupted in a series of spasms, slapping her bloody torso against the brick wall of the building. Her skin was no longer in this world, it was somewhere else, she could still feel it. But it was impossibly far away.
Margot vaulted to the opposite rooftop at top speed and pulled her anguished sister to the roof. Aliki was having a seizure and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She watched, horrified as her sister’s eyes rolled back in her head, with no eyelids the white undersides exposed as she choked on her own bile.
***
Vivian was in her penthouse. Her uniform was clean and looked brand new. The shower was running and bathroom was filled with steam. The eerie fleshsuit she’d stolen from the mysterious Aliki was neatly folded on her desktop.
Hurriedly, Vivian took off her costume and climbed into the warm shower. Despite the relative peace of the moment, she knew that she didn’t have long before everything turned to chaos again. The night was only half over.
Skin Pt. 1 of 2
Sins of the Flesh
Margot strapped a long-bladed knife to her left thigh, then checked the clip in her pistol. “Sometimes, dear sister, you’re more trouble than you’re worth,” she noted as she holstered the gun at her hip. “We’re going to find out who this hero interfering in Daddy’s plans is, and then I’m going to skin her alive.”
Aliki reclined on the divan in the humid apartment she shared with her twin sister. Since her skin had been stolen by the Crimson Fox, she’d pulled DeChampes skin on again, though Zachariah hadn’t yet sewn her into the fleshsuit. The further away her own skin, the more intense the pain she felt in every exposed nerve ending. “Zachariah, sew me up!” she whined and pulled DeChampes’ skin down from her head.
The young blond man dressed all in purple, Zachariah, started toward Aliki, his sewing kit in hand. Before he could take more than a few steps across the oriental rug, Margot slapped the bag of needles and thread away from him, sending it skidding under a armoire. “Not an option sister,” she said sinisterly. “The pain you’re feeling right now, that’s the only way means we have of tracking your missing skin.”
Zachariah couldn’t help but smile at the delicious irony of Aliki’s situation. The only way for her to eliminate the excruciating pain wracking her body, was to search all of Paris in the hopes that she might notice a lessening of her private torture. “Best give me DeChampes’ skin then, let me dispose of it.”
“No,” Margot interrupted again. “She can wear it from the waist down. We’ll tie the upper body around her waist. She’ll be useless if we let the pain get to her legs; I’m not dragging her across the entire city myself.” Margot smiled sardonically at her sister. “Zachariah, I want you to check in with Doctor Poison. The one who stole my sister’s flesh sounds much like the assaulted the good doctor in the Revson building. Compare notes with her and call me.”
He left without another word, his sewing kit forgotten under the armoire. As much as Zachariah hated dealing with Doctor Poison, he still preferred her to the skinthieves that their dark-father called Double Dare. After she had been assaulted in the subbasement of the Revson building, Poison had been set up with a private lab situated in a part of town geared toward tourism. It always took a while for missing foreigners to be noticed, and so she had a never-ending crop of potential test subjects.
He climbed back into the dark sedan he’d used to deliver Aliki to her sister’s gentle mercies. The engine purred and Zachariah floored the gas pedal, sending the sedan speeding down Parisian streets toward the towering form of the Eifel Tower.
Back inside the apartment Margot finished tying DeChampes’ torso and arms around her sisters waist. The scientists face peered outward, the visage upside down covering his otherwise free-swinging manhood. “Walk the perimeter sister, the edges of our home. Where is the pain the least?”
Aliki walked along the walls, sometimes touching the wallpaper with a bloody hand to steady herself against the stabbing pains assailing her upper body. She wandered unsteadily, turning at each corner, steps quaking. Henri DeChampes’ ghoulish, shapeless face flapped back and forth over her groin, making a syncopated slapping noise as she ambled the perimeter.
Finally, Aliki settled on a spot by the northern-most window. She braced herself against the window’s frame with both hands. Her body shook uncontrollably, but less so here than any other point in the room. “Toward the river,” she choked out, watching blood and saliva fall from her skinless lips into the potted fern at her feet.
***
Vivian had taken off as swiftly as she could from DeChampes’ shattered apartment. She sprinted across rooftops, leapt over alleyways, and climbed and swung from balconies and flagpoles. She wasn’t sure exactly where she was heading, but Vivian knew one thing for certain: she had to get as far away from those monsters as she could.
The waning moon cast very little light, as it slipped behind a steady parade of dark clouds. As Vivian raced away, clutching the fleshsuit to her chest with her left arm, she tried to analyze the bizarre things she’d seen that night.
Despite the raucous chorus of Parisian nightlife at this hour, all Vivian could hear was her footfalls on the stone rooftop as she thought of Doctor Henri DeChampes. She had evidence that he was the mole, leaking D’Armis company secrets to their rival, the Revson Corporation. A series of e-mails had proven the link between DeChampes and Revson. E-mails that she’d discovered on her virgin outing as the Crimson Fox, by breaking into the subbasement of the Revson building, where she’d battled a mad scientist who looked like a fetish model.
Vivian vaulted over a narrow alleyway, her sense of smell assaulted by the stench of rotting garbage below. Which was all the link between DeChampes and Revson turned out to be- garbage. DeChampes’ apartment had been easy enough to track down, and that’s where DeChampes had been for quite some time, based on the look of his corpse.
That’s where the really strange stuff started to happen. Instead of the heavyset, middle-aged DeChampes, Vivian had discovered a woman wearing his skin. The skinless thing had called herself ‘Aliki’ and she seemed to be able to slip in and out of her own flesh, and that of others, as easily as Vivian would slip into her costume and become the Crimson Fox.
There had been a fight, and a man had interrupted them. He was unusually strong and hardy, running through an oaken door as if it were made from paper.
The Fox stopped finally. She was crouched on the rooftop of a two-story building, perched right on the edge. The building looked like an old café, abandoned for years. The door and windows were boarded up and she could smell the mold and dust even from her lofty perch.
She looked down at her blood smeared costumed and the fleshsuit pressed against her abdomen. With her free hand she finally wiped Aliki’s blood from around her mouth and breathed a ragged sigh between pants. Vivian didn’t even know why she had grabbed the skin from the closet. It seemed important to Aliki, and to the man who had disrupted their battle. She’d acted on instinct, that much she knew. On this though, Vivian feared her instincts may have been wrong. Suddenly, the Crimson Fox had turned from predator to prey.
***
Margot was dressed in a yellow bodysuit, with thigh high black boots and matching black gloves that stopped mid-bicep. Both boots and gloves were capped off with a large fold of yellow fabric that looked vaguely pirate-like. A yellow and black cowl was pulled down over her face, and her long red hair flowed freely in the night air.
Contrasting her sister’s very put together attire, Aliki looked like a horror. From the waist up she was stripped of her flesh, a tangle of exposed muscle tissue, organs and bone. She dripped blood with every step, and it streaked down the heavy skin of Henri DeChampes that she had tied naked around her waist, like a pair of jogging pants.
They moved as swiftly as they could across the roofs of Paris given Aliki’s never ending pain at being so far separated from her own skin. They traveled north, toward the rive Seine. The closer they got to the river, the less Aliki complained of stabbing pains or screamed in outright anguish. Which meant they closer they got to the river, the closer they came to finding the stolen skin.
“What I wish to know, dear sister,” Margot said before she somersaulted to the next roof, “is why this woman continues to interfere in Daddy’s plans. Who is she and what does she know? And how, dear sister, how does she know what she knows?”
For all the extra weight DeChampes’ pot-bellied skin added, and the nearly overwhelming pain, Aliki remained remarkably agile. Somersaults and back flips were second nature to her. The Marceau sisters had been raised under the yellow and black tent tops of “Cirque de la Lune Noire,” and had been featured on the trapeze at the tender age of six. She vaulted across the alley to join her curious sister on the rooftop beyond.
“Worry about it later,” Aliki coughed, blood staining the white stoned roof of the building.
Margot regarded her sister coolly. “Aren’t you the least bit worried that someone is telling Daddy’s secrets to an outsider? What if one of the others is making some kind of play for Daddy’s power?”
“You’re paranoid,” Aliki said, bending her knees, the skin that wasn’t hers rumpling unnaturally at the joints, preparing for her next jump. Right now she didn’t care about anything other than finding her own skin, the skin she’d been born with. It was the most precious possession, the one thing she’d always kept safe. She knew that if their roles were reversed, Margot would be of single minded purpose as well.
***
Vivian dared not dally long, and she vaulted down from the rooftop to the alleyway below. She needed to find somewhere that she could wait out her pursuers and plan her next move. This abandoned café seemed like an inconspicuous enough a place for the moment. Soon she’d have to move on, find a way to elude the pursuit she knew was coming.
Fox tossed the fleshsuit on the dirty ground just outside the entrance. A flick of the wrist and her claws came out. It didn’t take much effort to slice through the half-rotten boards sealing up the doorway. Another flick and blades retreated.
At the corner, an overturned trashcan lid held a few inches of water. Vivian recoiled at her own reflection in the shallow pool. She cupped her hand and scooped up some of the stale rainwater and wiped the area around her mouth again, finally washing away the last of the dried blood from the kiss Aliki had forced upon her.
She picked up the lid, and dumped the rest of the water over her head and down her leather costume. She rubbed at the dark red bloodstains, doing the best she could to clean herself. The water collected in small pools at her feet, streaked with burgundy gore.
Convinced that she could do no more, Vivian roughly lifted the fleshsuit into her arms and stepped through the café’s entrance….
***
“I’d never seen her before,” Doctor Poison said as she slipped a rolling paper into the machine. “And I don’t know who she is.”
Zachariah watched as mysterious woman poured a dried herb into the machine. “What I do know, is that she took a perfectly good test subject from me. She cost me my multi-million dollar laboratory at Revson. And that tonight, she’s someone else’s problem.”
Poison twisted the rollers, and the paper curled around the filling and pulled out a tightly rolled cigarette. “Marijuana, aged in cyanide and the ashes of an Afghan soldier I tortured when I was studying in Turkey. A few mild hallucinogens and toxins thrown in,” she explained as she twirled one end and examined her handiwork. “A guaranteed good trip, Zachariah. And your kind isn’t hurt by the poisons. Care to spend the night?”
Zachariah watched as she lit the joint. “I’m afraid I can’t. The Double Dare sisters will no doubt need me once they recover the stolen skin.”
Poison coughed as she exhaled dark grey toxic smoke. “I could make you, you know? Doctor’s orders.”
“You’re bold to even think of entertaining my Madame’s wrath. Or the ire of the dark-father.”
Poison was quiet as she sucking in another long drag. Zachariah could tell she was smiling beneath the black latex mask that concealed her face. As the noxious fumes exited her lungs she laughed aloud. “Go then. Let the sister’s know I will expect to be contacted should they find who troubles us mutually.”
Zachariah stood sharply, and bowed his head. “Of course Doctor.”
He spun on his heel and headed for the exit, eager to no longer be in the company of the Doctor. “Zachariah,” she stopped him, “Alive. I expect her alive when I get to her. Remind the sisters that they must always defer to their betters, as must we all.”
“As must we all,” Zachariah said quickly leaving the doctor behind.
***
…to find herself somewhere else altogether. Instead of arriving inside the dark and dusty abandoned café, Vivian had somehow been deposited in a vast otherworldly place that her mind was having trouble processing. A rainbow of colors shifted on the periphery of her vision, never in focus. She could hear the roar of a fire somewhere, but there was no smoke in the air. The floor was made of marble, but it jutted out at odd angles, never level for more than a few feet at a time. To her left there was a chair, perched halfway up the wall, which was an impossible distance away, even though it looked as if she could reach out and touch it.
“It will take some time for your senses to adjust,” a haughty female voice said. It seemed to come from all directions and Vivian could not find the speaker no matter which direction she looked. “You might not even be here long enough for that to happen,” the voice said again.
Suddenly, just inches away from Vivian the other woman appeared. Though now that she saw her, Vivian was sure she’d been there the entire time. “I am the Fleur-de-Lis.”
The words somehow meant something to Vivian, though she had no idea what. “For generations we have been the heroes of the French nobility. Our power tied to the magic of France and the spirit of her people. We protect the nobility from the people by protecting the people from the nobility. But a Fleur-de-Lis must never take action against those we serve, those of France’s noble lines.”
The woman hadn’t said anything, but Vivian had heard the words. At least, she thought she had. “I cannot help you in your fight Crimson Fox.” This time Vivian was sure the woman was speaking, she watched her mouth form the words, even as they resounded from the walls of the room rather than the Fleur-de-Lis’ throat. “You fight a noble; his wickedness is beyond measure and has lasted for centuries. I cannot even speak to you his name.”
Vivian tried to ask a question. She wasn’t sure what the question was, just that it needed asking. Her mind tried to form the words, even as her mouth formed the shapes necessary for speech. Nothing came out.
She tried to move, but was frozen in place. She was a hundred feet away from the Fleur-de-Lis. She was sitting in the chair on the wall. “Burn it,” the Fleur-de-Lis’ voice said. Vivian couldn’t find her again. “Burn the skin to ash. Seek out the whore-queen. The red philosopher. She calls herself Madeline today. Or she did in the yester-now.”
Vivian was back where she’d started. The Fleur-de-Lis standing in front of her, their noses almost touching. “Goodbye.”
***
Aliki’s knees flexed and she vaulted into the air. Suddenly excruciating pain, beyond anything she had ever felt, shot through her. The torture of this new pain was beyond even the anguish she’d experienced when her dark-father had cut the skin from her still living body, making sure she was conscious to watch and feel it all.
She didn’t quite make the leap, and caught the edge of the next rooftop with her fingers. Aliki’s body erupted in a series of spasms, slapping her bloody torso against the brick wall of the building. Her skin was no longer in this world, it was somewhere else, she could still feel it. But it was impossibly far away.
Margot vaulted to the opposite rooftop at top speed and pulled her anguished sister to the roof. Aliki was having a seizure and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She watched, horrified as her sister’s eyes rolled back in her head, with no eyelids the white undersides exposed as she choked on her own bile.
***
Vivian was in her penthouse. Her uniform was clean and looked brand new. The shower was running and bathroom was filled with steam. The eerie fleshsuit she’d stolen from the mysterious Aliki was neatly folded on her desktop.
Hurriedly, Vivian took off her costume and climbed into the warm shower. Despite the relative peace of the moment, she knew that she didn’t have long before everything turned to chaos again. The night was only half over.