Hush Hush - part 1

[stone_roses]

Who: Mac. Markus. Audr. Vivian.
When: Sorta back dated.
Rating: R for violence.

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Someone was shouting. Alright, maybe it was more a whisper, either way someone was trying to talk to me at the crack ass of dawn. I had regretted the decision to take to the bed without one of those useful body warmers Marty - daddy - always supply for me and I always needed to curl up against like they were my own personal security blanket. I had chosen the one night to want to sleep alone. I could have prodded one of the body warmers out of the bed to see who was from the school of ‘shout louder and the foreign language is immediately translated into the mother tongue of instant understanding.’



In my sleep filled foggy brain I backed up my thinking – foreign. Audr's voice was shouting in my head. I cracked open one eye. My face was still pressed against the pillow. I could imagine how I looked with the crinkles of fabric marking and creasing my face. My room lay in darkness and I strained to hear the noises outside in the corridors. I shivered against the night air, wiggling down further into the blankets. The Fall nights took on a chilly air of late, but something about this coldness wasn’t quite right. I was awake now, thinking about how Markus once said there were plenty of reasons why he taken to disliking the cold. My forehead furrowed recalling his reasons.

Shit.

I did a distinctly ungraceful, un-lady like, crab crawl out of the warmth of the bed and slithered along the floor on all fours, pulling on sweats, a singlet shirt and the first pair of shoes I could find, ridiculous high heels I had worn to work the day before. I almost found myself discarding them and instantly thought of that Bruce Willis movie where he had lost his shoes leaving him racing around in bare feet; and how well that went for him. I was going to go out in heels, I wasn’t Bruce Willis.

I went to the hotel room door and opened it an inch to peer down the furthest end of the hallway. My mouth opened to say something but I wasn’t sure what I actually wanted to say yet. My brain hadn’t yet decided what was going on. I closed my mouth and the door.

Leaning up against the door, I chewed at the bottom of my lip. Grabbing my cell phone I pulled up a number. The signal on the phone was weak and I moved further into the room. A sleep filled grunt answered the call.

Mac.

I knew he’d handle the security breach before Marty. Mac is tough and uncompromising and as ruthless as the villains who are out to get him when he is all business. I hissed out in a low voice giving him the details without my usual flare for over embellishing and threw in a couple of good choice swear words for measure. The line went dead before he could answer. Not that I needed a reply. I could imagine Mac, His granite face with sandblasted type sheen from not shaving, already dressed in a well pressed suit doing what he did best; moving fast. He’d be up here in the corridor saving the day---any time now.

The commotion in the hallway made its way towards my door. I braved the door cracking it open again. I suppose they could have been tricker or treaters; someone should tell them it was too early for Halloween. It wasn’t going to be me. My neighbour opposite must have heard the disturbance in the corridor for her door opened on the security chain, she looked out with her face taking on a look of horror – and then she slammed the door tight shut again. I can’t say I blamed her. It’s what any rational neighbour would do when confronted with demons.

I mean, that’s what they looked like. Even though they looked like big, butch men – the type who Mac would probably eat for breakfast and I don’t mean in the kinky way. They looked mean and it didn’t help they were all a foot and a half taller than me. They all wore long black leather coats and accessorised with very sharp and shiny curved axes. Their faces were expressionless, as frozen as the cold which followed them. I slunk back into the room, creaking the door closed, and came up against a hard form. A hand clamped down over my mouth preventing me from screaming loudly.

“How many are out there?”

Markus.

I badly wanted to cry, but that would be of no use and I couldn’t allow the luxury of panic. I bit my lip and tried to think of anything that might be useful. I replied to Markus.

“Mac is coming up to fix this. I saw ten coming up the hallway from the elevator.”

Markus moved to the door taking in the scene of the corridor. The lights went out and we both swore.

“They’ve brought in shadowwalkers to greet a man.”

I gave him a puzzled look.

“We’ve got bad guy company, love.”

“Mac.”

“We’re not family.” Markus didn’t help with my need to cry. I knew the truth, Mac saves his family first; Markus and I weren’t family. I was going to die, in this hotel room with Markus. I wanted to punch Fate in the face. The voice in my head whispered: “shut it”. I wanted to punch that face too. I could have been content being taken from continent to continent as a sex toy. That was my area – the paranormal or whatever the fuck this was – wasn’t. I wanted to be blissfully unaware any of this existed. If this was supposed to be my fate, my area, why did I feel so woefully inadequate to face it?

“Markus,” I said in the darkness, “You got any ideas of how to defeat the ten big nasty demons and those other things coming through the door?”
I felt Markus press a gun in my hand.

“Whack ‘em hard, love.”

Now guns I understood. I felt a bit better. When the cell phone vibrated in my sweat pant pocket I couldn’t contain the squeal of delighted relief, the fucking Calvary was coming. I eagerly answered the call.

“Mac!” The voice on the line corrected me. “Marty. Allow me to speak to Markus.”

I handed the cell over to Markus, wishing I could hear the discussion. Under the glow of the cell phone light I watched Markus’s expression appear grimmer and grimmer. It seemed as if the call went on for eternity when in actuality Marty spoke briefly.

“What did he say?”

“He’s pulling down the floor to contain the compromise. We’ve five minutes to make it to the laundry chute on the other end of the hallway.”

Pulling down the floor… I had no idea what that mean and I don’t think Markus really understood either. We just had five minutes before it happened. Whatever it was.

I knew the chute he meant. I had seen the cleaning crew using it on my way to work. They would load and unload trolleys of dirty linen into the chute. The type of chute that was big enough for one large person or two if one was small enough. But it wasn’t meant to hold our weight which meant the trip down would be rough, good thing we were Immortals.

“We can make it to the elevator. What about the other people on this floor?”

“You’ve already wasted two minutes.”

“But Mac is coming---“My cry for one last hope trailed off, Markus’s words vibrated in my mind: We’re not family.

“Two and half minutes.”

He pushed me to the door. This was it. This was how I was going to die, arguing with Markus and tottering on ridiculous high heels. I suddenly wish I was Bruce Willis at least he went on to make four more movies or was that five?

“Yippee kayay.” I braved the hallway facing off the demons. If I was going to die, I’d make a stand. Like that gun fight with Wyatt Earp. Or the Alamo. Fuck. Grand deaths, what a crock of shit, death is death and there’s nothing grand about it. I just wanted to be someplace else. I didn’t want to die and not know what true love was.