BOSS LEVEL
Stephanie was at work painting her evil pentagram. She had, at first, decided to try to get her zombies or her skeletons to do the work for her. But, it seemed, there was something that prevented them from doing the job properly. Jesse had explained to Stephanie, impatiently, why; Stephanie couldn't delegate the job.
Stephanie could let the walking corpses move the dining tables to the sides of the rooms (the tables had been left in place from where they had been set for a convention some sixty years ago). But Stephanie just could not have them draw the pentagram. There was some sort of resistance, although they were supposed to be reanimated bodies wholly without souls.
The skeletons were left guarding the main corridor leading to the double doors of the grand ballroom. A couple of black-eyeballed zombies were left inside the room; two rail-thin girls, an old woman, and Pete, the steam-scalded other bellboy who had just recently been called in with a platter of roast beef, horseradish and mashed potatoes for Erica. And black coffee.
"Is it dinner already?" said Erica with a yawn to Pete. "This is so boring? Won't you stay?"
"He's just the bellboy" said Stephanie, dismissing him with a wave. "After dinner, Erica, you can always practice your cheers. It might be your last chance."
"Before the big game?" said Erica.
"The biggest game" said Stephanie, with a laugh.
Stephanie said a couple of Latin words and made a hand-gesture, while looking at her witch's spell-book, the black tome with blood-red characters. Stephanie recited a spell so evil that, saying it while knowing the meaning of the words, would have condemned her soul had not she not already sold it to the devil incarnate.
Yet, the immediate effect of spell was simply to close the ballroom curtains, hiding the fog-shrouded grounds of the hotel that should not have been there.
Then, the doors to the room rattled, as if a truck or a train had close passed by.
And now the room began to glow eerily, a dull red as if lit by a distant fire.
Back in the basement theatre, Ethan had been forced tell Sarah his plan. And Rory, too, listen agape.
"You can't be serious!" Sarah exclaimed. "It would make more sense for Benny to distract Stephanie with a message while I come from behind Stephanie to fight her. Cheerleading doesn't make you a match for even a green belt."
"But, ma'am" objected Benny, with a salute. "Her magical powers."
"I didn't say it was a perfect plan" Sarah retorted. "I said it makes more sense than Ethan's."
"But I'm serous" said Ethan emphatically. "It's the only thing I can do to take away her powers. Long enough to take her powers away for good. Sarah, I swear, I know what I'm doing!"
"But . . . it's sick" said Rory. "Dude, you sure your werewolf instincts aren't playing with your brain?"
"I don't know" said Ethan. "But it'll work."
"I'll help you try" said Sarah skeptically. "But consider me your backup."
"Thanks, Sarah. I just know it has to be done my way."
Under Ethan's plan, Benny still was the decoy.
Benny walked down the marble hall with military precision. His footsteps were in beat to the loathsome chorus that again pounded in his head. "YOU'RE A BELLBOY, YOU'RE A BELLBOY. At the Leeblain HOTEL."
Benny's dead-black eyes gazed at the skeletons at attention on either side of him. He thought, idly, that at this moment it really helped that his emotions were dulled.
"Message for Stephanie from Mr. Black. CALL FOR STEPHANIE."
One of the skeletons nodded its approval.
Benny didn't wait at the door. But using his zombie-strength, such as it was, Benny pushed them open and looked in dull surprise at the room that was bathed in a dim red light, much of which seemed to be emanating from the lines in the pentagram drawn on the floor.
Erica was practising cheerleading moves, in her Whitechapel Devils outfit, in the middle of the evil symbol.
"Message for Stephanie from Mr. Black" Benny repeated. "CALL FOR STEPHANIE."
"You . . . bellboy" said Stephanie, turning from her witch's spell-book in a quiet fury, "You wait at the door before entering. A little later and you would have ruined the ceremony of sacrifice. Again!"
"Mr. Black insisted it was important" Benny replied, with a salute. "And the ballroom is a public room unless specified otherwise. Hotel policy . . . ."
"I make hotel policy" said Stephanie.
"Mr. Blaine makes hotel policy" said Benny.
"Mr. Blaine's been dead for years" Stephanie replied.
"But not in 1956."
"Never mind" said Stephanie, raising her hand while her eyes glowed red. "You know you take orders from me."
"I take orders from you" repeated Benny.
"Now" ordered Stephanie, with an evil leer, "apologize for breaking into my ceremony."
Benny stood still. Something in him, resistant to the spell, made him react with disgust to so much as pretend to be sorry.
"Mr. Black complains that Sarah is still not responsive" said Benny, instead of apologizing. "He wishes to have an effective love spell. He'll be sending her up directly by way of the kitchen."
Stephanie looked suspiciously at Benny. Finally, she frowned.
"Tell that loser if he doesn't stop bothering me about his love life I'll sacrifice Sarah too. Even if her soul with escape the master's clutches. And tell him that while I transferred to him Rory Keener's life, that I can also force him take on Rory's appearance. If he interrupts me again, I will! And I'll do it slowly."
There was the muffled sound of a indignant teenage boy's voice . . . abruptly being cut off as if by a hand placed over his mouth. It seemed to come from the direction of the swinging doors leading to the hotel kitchen. But Stephanie dismissed it, as Sarah, and Sarah alone, walked out from that direction.
It was good that Sarah had some practice acting. She bore a rictus grin and was careful not the express the least surprise or anger as she walked into the eerily glowing room.
But there was yet another entrance to the room. This one from a back stairwell to an outside door. And here Ethan stealthily took his entrance in his oversized-socked feet, leaving his shoes at the door.
The size fourteen shoes, Ethan was afraid, would make too much noise.
Sarah ignored Ethan and looked deadpan. Benny stood still stuck in a salute. Rory listened from behind the kitchen doors, waiting for his cue and rubbing his jaw where Sarah had clapped her hand over his mouth.
"I don't see why I should keep you alive" Stephanie told Sarah. "I want you to suffer, but you're way too much in the way."
All of sudden, Stephanie thought she heard something. She turned round to look behind her.
It was too late. Ethan take hold of her right arm in grip like steel. Anger, and lycanthropy, gave him extra strength.
"How did you . . . ." started Stephanie. "You're supposed to be stuck in your true form."
The malevolent red glow played havoc on Ethan's features, dominated as they were by his burning yellow eyes.
"Good's stronger than evil" Ethan said. "Evelyn Weir's always told us that. Everyone but you knows that. And, get this clear Stephanie . . . a counterfeit werewolf isn't my true form!"
Stephanie struggled to move her arm, but Ethan twisted the same way Jesse had one fateful night.
But Ethan delayed. He hesitated. At heart, he didn't want to do what he felt he had to do.
"You would hit a girl?" said Stephanie.
Of course, Ethan had been told since he was a little kid not to hit or fight girls. Of course, Ethan wouldn't.
"You're not really a girl" Ethan said.
Sarah, Benny and now Rory left to watch. Erica continued to practice her cheers.
"Any of you step closer you'll see what my power really is" said Stephanie. "You forget that I don't need my arm to put my just curses on you. You have no right to say its good versus evil."
"Your curses weren't just or good" said Sarah icily. "They were evil curses masquerading were punishments."
"Evil curses masquerading as punishments. You can speak like a comic book" said Rory impressed.
"If I feel like it" said Sarah, with a smile. "An A-student and former drama-club member."
"Let go of my arm" Stephanie demanded of Ethan.
Stephanie struggled, before her eyes glowed red. Ethan avoided her gaze. Then, muttering a spell very different from Benny's own floating spell, Stephanie rose, lifting toward the ceiling with Ethan grasping and hanging from her arm.
It was now or never, as the Stephanie floated ten feet above the floor . . . Ethan pulling down her arm.
And then, in the same move Jesse had once pulled on him, Ethan gave Stephanie's arm a wrench and bit into it . . . letting her scream.
Stephanie and Ethan fell to the floor in a heep.
The enormous black tome, the witch's spell book, burst into red flames and fell apart into crisp cinders.
Sarah and Rory jumped and stared.
"No! No!" cried Stephanie as she rubbed the ugly bruise on her arm.
"When I was turning into a werewolf, slowly and painfully, Ethan said, and it was obvious from his strained diction he was working hard to keep his voice from a growl, "On the first of what you intended to be my 2 to the power of 10 times turning into a werewolf . . . Jesse mentioned my being born a seer helped my soul fight it off very well. My soul fighting of the curse, not just my body like a normal disease. You have no soul left to fight off your own counterfeit curse. You sold it. So the effect on you is instant."
"I understand what you mean" said Sarah. "If it took out the powers Ethan and Benny were born with, it takes away the powers Stephanie sold her soul for."
"Where's Jesse!" demanded Stephanie, whose own voice was rough as if it already wanted to come out in a growl. Her stricken look was replaced by pure malice. "And what's Rory doing back in his body?"
"Jesse's gone back to . . . hell" said Ethan bluntly, breaking his childhood habit of dodging "real" swearwords. "You're lucky to be get off like this, just a counterfeit werewolf. But we don't need you to be one either. So . . . who'll do the honours?"
"I will, sir" said Benny.
Benny removed his phone from the chin-strap bellboy hat. He played Evelyn's spell de-powering Stephanie. Its effect was instant. Where the young Stephanie had been, was a wrinkled woman with artificially-coloured blonde hair.
"I wouldn't care about turning into a werewolf" Stephanie said spitefully. "Just to tear you apart."
"Now the undoing spell" said Benny.
All through, Erica had been practising her cheers off to the side, indifferent to all that had been happening. She was still singing and doing cartwheels.
"Donavit mihi totis viribus die genitus fueram Proponebat mihi maledictione pessima solvere" said the pre-recorded voice of Evelyn Weir, out of the smart-phone.
Evelyn repeated the words three times.
From the sound of her voice, Evelyn had really put her heart into it. What this meant, roughly translated to English, was simply "With all the powers gifted to me on the day of my birth, I undo the evil curses set before me."
The red glow from the pentagram ceased as the vile etching on the floor reacted, burnt and blurred black as if by an explosion.
More so, because an invisible force pushed everyone, living or dead or worse than dead to the sides of the room, as if they had been repelled there by a magnet.
Stephanie was laying senseless on the floor near the double doors. Erica, having dropped her pom-poms was next to Stephanie, dazed but conscious.
Sarah, Rory and Benny were pushed to the back door were Ethan had entered. Rory, in fact, had somehow ended up wearing Ethan's Size 14 dress shoes on his hands, before flinging them down in disgust.
"Your shoes stink, dude" called out Rory. "Hey, buddy, your eyes . . . ."
Ethan had sat up, stumbled to his feet, with a pounding in his head. He nearly fell down again. His socks were slippery; stretched out of shape, way too big for his feet. Ethan felt the naturally circular tops of his ears, and the peach-fuzz on a face that couldn't yet grow a beard.
"I'm back!" Ethan exclaimed loudly. "Not . . . a . . . werewolf. Real or counterfeit!"
And, Ethan noticed, to slight embarrassment, his eyes were glowing bright white. Enough to work like a flashlight! He could see the light shine on the other side of the room.
"It must be because your power's been blocked, Ethan" said Benny from across the room, as he compulsively threw his chin-strap hat to the ground. "And dude, listen up! You're never going to get me to call you sir again. Because . . . Bennny Weir, awesome spellmaster, is back!"
"That explains why you look as if you've been shocked" said Sarah to Benny.
"It looks sort of cool" said Rory. "Like you're a mutant or something."
"Huh?" said Benny.
Benny's hair stood up into the air, and gave off an occasional spark. More so, when he tried to flatten it down. Benny tried to snap his fingers, but let out not one but several dangerous sparks.
"Awesome" said Benny, casually. 'It's something about being born a spellmaster and naturally metabolising magic. And that being blocked. Sarah, what about my eyes?"
"Brown" said Sarah. "In white eyeballs."
"Good time to take a selfie" observed Benny, who tried to do just that.
Except he somehow overcharged his phone, and it chose to start "Enacting shutdown to preserve the battery."
"You should take a group shot with the other ex-zombies" said Rory. "But . . . their eyes are still black . . . it must be because they're actually dead."
"Where are they going?" asked Sarah.
The zombies; the thin girls, the old woman, and Pete the bellboy, carefully avoiding the burnt pentagram, started wordlessly out the double doors behind Ethan, Stephanie and Erica.
"Old school zombies, that have been dead, go back to their graves" said Benny loudly, as he continued to try to put out the built-up magical energy that he hadn't been "metabolizing." This time, by patting his clothes and letting off even more sparks.
"Will you stop that!" said Sarah.
"Maybe I should cast a spell?" said Benny, as in desperation put the chin-strap hat over his sparking hair. Benny looked toward the floor. "I think I want to kill what's left of that penta-scar with a lightning-ball."
"We are so not staying around to play games, I just want to leave" interrupted Erica, sitting up drowsily. "Sarah! Where's the car!"
"Don't cross that floor!" said Ethan, suddenly. He blocked Erica and looking her in the eyes with his still glowing-white pupils. "Just don't!"
"Why not!" said Erica impatiently. "We've won, you and magic-boy are human again. I've completely humiliated myself doing cheers for you geeks, I'm sick of this ghost town and ghost hotel. I just want to get somewhere and do something real!"
"There's a reason the zombies didn't go that way."
Ethan didn't give any further answer. But his vision could see a plume of black swirling smoke rising from the centre of the ruined pentagram and enveloping the room. Below it, flickering red flames with no plain source. It was lethal, as Ethan could see the smoke ink out everything it touched.
Ethan was stranded with Stephanie and Erica. Sarah was with Benny and Rory.
"Go out the side door" Ethan yelled to the three of them. "We can't cross the room."
"Why not!" demanded Erica.
"Benny, float those shoes over to me!" said Ethan.
"Shoes flotum nummow" said Benny, jauntily.
The shoes floated in the air, but suddenly crumbled into dust while crossing the pentagram.
"I see what you mean" said Erica cooly.
"We can't you leave you here!" said Sarah. "We can go around."
"We'll meet you outside!" said Ethan. "This hallway goes right to the lobby. Just get the car started! It's out by the main entrance!"
Sarah, Rory and Benny, looking back with some misgivings, ran down the stairs.
Stephanie looked around.
"Take me with you" begged Stephanie.
"Between us, we can carry her" said Ethan, looking toward the middle of the room uneasily.
In his vision, more black oily smoke was rising every second.
"Her!" said Erica.
"Yeah, her!" said Ethan.
"After what she did to you?" said Erica. "What she did to me! Ethan . . . geekboy . . . get it in your head. You're not a comic book hero!"
"She's a living woman" said Ethan stubbornly. "Not a vamp, not a monster. And she's next to helpless now. We can't leave her here."
"She is a really old woman" said Erica, shrewishly as she looked contemptuously at Stephanie.
Erica didn't feel like arguing the point, but if she was going to have
At that moment, the doors out of the room locked shut.
The red glow returned, although not from the pentagram.
Ethan and Erica looked to one another. Ethan's eyes suddenly faded to their natural brown.
The swinging doors to the kitchen shone bright red, as if from heat.
Erica sighed relief when it appeared that no less than five bellboys stepped out.
"No!' said Stephanie softly from the floor, where her eyes looked upon them. "I served him well!"
"What are you whining about . . . they're just another five zombie dorks" said Erica.
"Erica . . . don't!" said Ethan earnestly. "Erica, they have eyeballs. But . . . ."
Ethan shook his head, in a frightened tone, as he looked at them and the bright white returned to his eyes.
"Sorry, Erica" said Ethan, as he impulsively grasped her wrist.
"What do you think . . ." started Erica, but she dropped her objection.
They were, at first, non-descript. That is, although the appeared to be teens with normal eyes, somehow Ethan's mind refused to process anything other than they were bellboys. Like a blurry picture.
It was through Ethan's glowing white eyes that the vision cleared, and the bellboys came into greater focus.
Then, it became clear that the eyes were the same red that Ethan had only ever seen in demons' eyes. With, in their case, flaming red hair to match the eyes and the uniform.
"Stay back!" said Ethan tremulously. "We have . . . ."
"You . . . have . . . nothing" said one, or all five of the demons. "Just the right to see through us, but that won't protect you."
They spoke without moving their lips. In a strange voice, booming yet almost sounding like a whisper.
They began to walk to the far side of the room. Only, they didn't walk in the ordinary sense of the word. After entering the room, they stood in place for a few seconds . . . then they disappeared and instantly appeared a few paces away. Where they'd be if they had been walking the whole time.
Standing, disappearing and reappearing a few paces away. Standing, disappearing and reappearing a few paces away. "Walking" around the room.
"We're not natives of Earth or albinos" laughed the "bellboys". "And definitely not your friends."
"The phone" said Erica. "The spell."
"It won't work" said Ethan glumly, as he could see envision it melting in Erica's hand. "Don't even try. . . ."
Erica tried to start her phone, to use Evelyn's spell, but it melted away to the floor.
This time, Ethan's vision had literally come true.
"Think you can use your powers to put us in a trap, Ethan Phillip Morgan!" sneered the demons in their malevolent whisper. "We're not here, but at the master's call. You have no way to hold onto us!""
The demons continued to make their strange circuit of the room, making sure to go into the blasted pentagram.
"They're powering up" said Ethan quietly, as he and Erica stood fearfully against the door.
"We'll fight them" said Erica sullenly.
"As long as you don't see the reds of their eyes, you're okay" said Stephanie fearfully.
"What's she talking about?" said Erica. "We can!"
"She can't see what I can" said Ethan.
"Then let go of me!" Erica said selfishly.
"Not seeing won't help" Ethan objected.
"It will!" said Erica.
Erica pulled her wrist from Ethan's grasp. But, it turned out, that let Ethan's vision focus on the demons even more. Ethan's eyes would have shown his terror, had they not been glowing white.
Ethan's gift was powerful, all right. In Ethan's sight, the last of the "bellboy's" disguise was stripped away. They were everything demons were supposed to look like. Horned, hoofed, with skin burnt as red as their uniforms.
