07-. The Blood's Faith
Pt. 1
In spite of the high fever that had just left her after a whole week of traveling, in Rosa's mind the memories of that night, the last night they spent at the Tetherby's estate, were still quite fresh. Every time she closed her eyes she could still see her... that woman who looked exactly like her mother laughing hysterically, as the Ronalda she knew had never done while surrounded by fire and destruction.
Rosa knew that she was not the only one who had seen the way in which the fire had been started that had swept through the mustard crops... so why had neither her father nor Mr. Batson done anything to prevent it? Was it some secret spell from her mother? The girl had thought that after traveling for some time with a real witch she would soon be initiated, or forced to learn some of the rites and mysteries that would lead her to possess a similar power, after all, aren't witches supposed to be evil women...? but surprisingly that never happened and she was very grateful to be given that freedom.
For days and days, they traveled the alternate routes to the main roads, always avoiding the busiest roads and the police patrols and platoons that they encountered, little by little they advanced north and east, always heading towards the edge of that nation that was so strange and unknown to them. They never entered a big city. As the days passed, nothing happened. Ronalda, that woman that at first Rosa watched from afar and with an almost animal fear, never did anything to increase her fears.
Eventually, after arriving in Michigan, and after the couple's daughter learned, like her father and half-brother, some fairly basic English, the Manzano family finally separated from Billy Batson.
"And remember, everything you may need will be there when you arrive.," the man's parting smile seemed to belong more to a child than to a hardened and imposing journalist, " I promise you that a good job and a welcoming home will be waiting for you in Great Lakes."
"The last time we were promised those same shits we ended stuck without pay in a shithole." Agustín stood on his tiptoes and puffed out his chest as he spoke in an attempt to look bulkier. "How can you promise us that the same thing won't happen to us again?"
Billy's grin grew noticeably bigger; placing both fists on his hips and puffing out his cheeks a little, something that made him look more like a child than the muscular grown man he was, he said proudly in perfect English.
"I know the person you are going to meet this time, I can assure you that he is a good guy... and I ask you, Agustín, and your family to write as soon as you can."
Nearing the end of the year, when the empty streets were beginning to fill with snow, the Mazano family arrived at the town of Great Lakes, a small country bordering Ontario and surrounded on three of its four sides by the water of three of the largest lakes; Lake Superior, Lake Huron and of course Lake Michigan. Once there, they confirmed their suspicions, Miguel Puga, the one Billy Batson had sent them with was a young man just coming of age and like them, was a Latino immigrant, the man was a cartoonist for the local newspapers and surprisingly seemed to be doing quite well.
The house he'd gotten them, though spacious with a fireplace built solidly of brick, and like all gringo houses, whit hollow walls made of wooden planks, looked a lot like the home they'd left behind in Mexico: a single room and a kitchen barely separated from the rest of the flat by half a wall. With only two beds and no room for more, it wasn't hard to decide who would sleep with whom.
They also discovered that everything Billy had told them was true; Agustin and Roberto would work as bricklayers building the burgeoning town, Ronalda would go with the other immigrant women to the big textile mills while Rosa would work in the convenience store of one of Miguel's friends.
At the end of her first day at work, Rosa said goodbye to her colleagues and hurried to get home before the others. When she got home, she went straight to her cot and lay down on her stomach.
She needed to find a way to be able to calm down enough with her mother to at least get to look her in the eye, or else all her nights would be long and oppressive, and it would surely make her even more nervous.
As she thought, pondering her options one by one, she felt someone watching her, the feeling of being watched began to weigh on her chest however she was so melancholy that she couldn't and wouldn't open her eyes, at least not until she heard the sound of footsteps approaching from behind.
Then, when Rosa opened his eyes, she could see that the house was now dark. It must have been nearly half an hour by now, any of her relatives could have arrived in that time. Then a deadly fear began to grow in her chest, for her mother was standing there in the doorway, her gaze seeming to radiate a white-hot light.
Without saying a word, the woman turned on the lights, walked past Rosa and put her coat in the cardboard box. Then, she sat on the bed next to her daughter.
"Mija… I know how you feel. I still cannot forget how scared I was the first time I discovered this curse."
Truth be told, her mother had looked crestfallen during the whole trip, but Rosa was so scared that she hadn't paid much attention to her.
"That first time I was so scared... I remember throwing up everything I ate for a whole week."
"I don't know what you're talking about... ma'am..."
"I know you saw something at the Tetherby estate," said Ronalda, "you saw through the crack in the door, when that disgusting man and his main foreman made your father and me leave the cot."
Rosa didn't answer anything.
Ronalda knelt down by the fireplace. Then, still on her knees, she said in a quiet, remorseful voice, as if in apology.
"I know you are terrified, I am too, but something must be done, we can't go on avoiding each other forever," Ronalda's peculiar tone began to make an impression on her daughter's mind. "Maybe you are too young to make this decision... but I am not going to make it for you. If you want... I can ask Mr. Puga to send you to another place... with another family, maybe then you can have some peace."
Rosa was speechless, truly surprised. She loved her mother, that woman who with a few words always reached people's hearts, that woman who, although severe had never been cruel and seemed to be unaware of true anger; she loved her and until that moment she knew it with certainty. Rosa looked at her mother, now leaning in a corner between the opposite wall and the fireplace, she remembered the strength she had given her with just a few words at the river in their old village.
"Ma'am," Rosa moved closer to her mother and as she took the woman's dark face in her hands she discovered that she was crying silently, "you're not going to get rid of me that easy, Ronnie."
She wrapped her arms around the grief-stricken woman's body, and for the first time Ronalda felt the freedom she needed to cry freely.
Thus, hugging and crying on each other's shoulder, both women were found by the men of the family returning from the construction of a residential building.
-o-
Peter Highsmith couldn't remember any visit to the mayor's office, on the top floor of the Grand Central mall, in which his attention was not drawn to the curiously, and no less disturbingly, elegant minimalist décor of the premises.
As the African-American officer gazed raptly at a small bronze statuette that Amanda had described as a "faithful representation of a Martian," his subordinate and the mayor spoke more like a pair of friends than like a leader of the executive branch and a police officer.
"I'm glad you came, Pamela," the mayoress said to the officer from the opposite side of her desk. "I was just about to call you… though now I think it was for something unimportant."
"No problem ma'am, let's talk about your business first," Officer Foster said after settling into her seat, a cushioned chair that was beginning to make her drowsy. Highsmith sat to her left, his long legs unable to rest properly on the wooden chair he'd been given.
Amanda Waller scratched her fat double chin with her surprisingly large hand, inhaled deeply and leaned back comfortably in her ergonomic chair, one identical to the one Pamela was using.
"It's a curious thing, and you may well call me neurotic, but I suppose the matter that troubles me is the same that has brought you and Mr. Highsmith here... I mean the illicit laboratories that we dismantled last Friday night, the ones between Hazeltucky and our beautiful town."
Both policemen unconsciously pursed their lips. Slowly, Highsmith put the bronze statuette back in place and sat up as straight as the uncomfortable chair would allow.
"You guessed well, actually, we came all this way to talk about it."
Amanda smiled without showing her teeth at Peter's words.
"Very well! So, let me say that I am very happy about that victory... I just wish I had been aware of the raid before it was carried out."
"We didn't have time to check the veracity of the reports sent to us by a certain health officer," Highsmith said without hesitation. "We judged it best to use some patrols who would not be indispensable for the next few days. Let's call it an unofficial operation, but an excessively necessary one."
"An unofficial operation," the mayor repeated slowly. "Well, at least we can say that you... that is, our trusty police force, managed to arrest those… drug dealers? I'm sorry, I'm still not clear what those guys were, I was hoping that at least you could clear up that doubt."
"No, it wasn't a real victory," Pamela clarified. "And all the people in charge of those labs fled before they were arrested, so we don't even know what they were doing in those places. The only thing we managed to get from that operation is a tiny sample of an unknown substance, phosphorescent green and slightly toxic. Which, we suspect, is a new strain of anabolic steroid... or some other kind of muscle stimulant."
"Oh... excellent, really excellent... all that trouble over an illegal protein supplement... Listen, I don't plan on giving you guys any lessons on politics, but the truth is that now, with an unofficial war unleashed against organized crime in the major cities of the state, we need to be more sensible with the campaigns we undertake and the targets we assign our forces to, all if we want to get good results in the midst of this madness," Waller shook her head, making her jowls move in the opposite direction of her head. "I guess that's it for now, you're dismissed, agents. Do what you need to do to disrupt the operation of these criminals."
The policemen rose in silence and headed almost marching towards the exit, Highsmith left without another word but before Pamela Foster passed through the electric door she turned and spoke one last time to her friend and supporter of the last few years.
"There's just one more thing, Mayor, because of the recent cases of intoxication, we think there may be another one of these clandestine laboratories in this very place. Maybe it's disguised as a simple shop. Do you think you can provide us with permits to inspect the mall?"
"Pamela, that would be extremely counterproductive if you get the same inconclusive results as last time... but I must admit that if I were in your shoes I'd make the same request… of course I'll help! all for the common good," the mayor relaxed a little to be alone with the agent she trusted so much. "Now, I'd like to keep this between us, yes? I know that the 'health officer' who discovered all the labs was my namesake, Amanda McCann, that redhead is more efficient than the whole Health Department put together, but... let me ask you something, didn't she tell you how she found them? Didn't she talk about any new method she's using in her inquiries?"
"As far as I know, it was all thanks to an anonymous source... although I think she mentioned that she contacts her exclusively by calls from pay phones."
When the plump police officer finally exited the precinct, she found Mercy Graves, the mayor's personal secretary and second in command, standing in the doorway. The blonde woman did not greet the officer, but merely hurried inside and closed the door behind her; she looked extremely nervous with her eyes fixed straight ahead and her face flushed a faint shade of pink.
"Ma'am, news came from Great Lakes, about the men we sent out on Friday."
"I hope yours are better than the ones I just got, Mercy… I just found out that we're going to have to move the project back into the basement ASAP... and that someone's been spying on us and telling our secrets... anyway, tell me what you've got."
"Aside from informing you that we discovered the exact location of several of the 'Venom' samples lost last month, I should tell you that one of our men who was caught in the fire woke up in surgery a couple of hours ago, the doctors say he will be able to fully recover both physically and mentally in the long run, with the necessary help, of course..." uncomfortable with the subject, the secretary lowered her voice and averted her gaze, "He also claims to have maintained anonymity, so nothing directly links him or his men to us or our operation."
Without much effort, which was incredible considering she was a rather fat woman, Amanda stood up and walked away from her chair, her back to her subordinate.
"What is his report on the mission? was it successful this time?"
"Yes... although the target disappeared from the radar after the first encounter, the result of our research is positive, our men confirmed that it was a person who started the fire by superhuman means... but it's not who we thought... I ask you to reconsider the plan, it's just a girl!"
"That's an unfortunate situation... but I am sure that this and the other little peculiarities that occurred in this specific case will play in our favor if we move our pieces well," Waller turned around to face his secretary once more. "Send some agents immediately to Great Lakes and order them to wait; if we want this capture to go the way we want it to, we must be patient."
-o-
In the privacy of her small apartment, Nikki kept trying to get Ronnie to talk to her, but her friend was so crestfallen and self-absorbed that she was barely responding with gestures to her friend's pleas, the young adult was beginning to get exasperated... though for a different reason.
"Please Ro... we could always talk about anything, why not now? Come on, tell me something, say whatever you want, but talk to me" for the first time since she took Ronnie to her improvised home, Nikki couldn't distinguish any reaction of annoyance or displeasure in the Latina's face. "Do you remember... do you remember when you caught me leaving a motel with a guy? I know you remember! Come on, you even scolded me for days while you were trying to find me another way to make a living! Even then you wanted to talk to me, is this even worse than finding out your best friend whores herself out for food?"
Then, for the first time Nikki could see a change in friend's countenance; her eyes that were beginning to fill with tears stared at her, and looking directly into them the blonde could feel all the pain and conflict her friend held in her heart.
"Was what the bookstore bitch did to you really that bad?" Now, the one who started crying silently was Nikki, "Damn it Ro, you have to talk to me or it'll be too late to remedy the situation!"
A loud knock on the front door interrupted her, with her breath caught in her throat and her eyes wide open, Nikki jumped on Ronnie and to the latina's surprise, she hugged her tightly. Minutes passed and both friends stayed in the same position. As the tension reached a peak, the blonde's arms began to tremble as the tears that had formed during the "woman-to-woman" talk with Anne, began to fall freely down her face.
"Hey, girls, how long before you're done with your talk?" Sameer spoke from the other side of the aluminum door, "Please, even my boogers are freezing out here."
"I'm... I'm sorry, dude!" Nikki slowly loosened her arms and almost as if she didn't want to, she let go of Ronnie and took a couple of quick breaths to calm herself down, "We still have a bit more to go, you know, tell us the last details and stuff! Do you think you and Casey could hold on a bit longer?"
There was no answer, but that didn't worry the homeless woman. Almost without wasting any more time, she placed her gloved hands on Ronalda's shoulders and gave her a look full of concern and sorrow, an expression the latina didn't like at all, because that was one she had seen enough: the one when they had to move in with her grandparents, the one she detected in the Louds every time she visited Lincoln after the accident... the same one her mother had as she ran to her to restrain and calm her down.
"We can't waste any more time, Ro. Believe me we need to talk... seriusly, okay?" Her lips, purple from the cold, twisted bitterly when she didn't get an accurate answer "To hell with the niceties! Listen to me. When we found you terrified after running out of that witch's bookstore, I feared the worst, and I made the mistake of calling the police. I know it'll take them a while to come because of all the work they have to do because of the shit that happens every day in the streets, but they'll be here any minute, we need to plan a way to tell them that you didn't start the fire, that all that was an accident," Nikki firmly grabbed the Latina's shoulders, "I know you would never do something like that, right? And we need to convince them too."
A different silence, one charged with pain and fear covered the entire apartment. Ronalda Santiago, the same girl who appeared to be extremely tough and incorruptible in her convictions, began to cry inconsolably. That broken cry was all it took to confirm how true the rumor circulating in the streets was. Still, Nikki refused to lose faith in her friend, if she had started the fire that had destroyed the entire building were her family lived surely there was another explanation.
"Then... I'll help you explain everything to them, make them see that you're not really to blame for all the shit that happened," As she spoke, Nikki knew that this would be a losing fight without extra help, who would believe a trio of street kids and a suspected arsonist? They would need a voice with some authority backing them up, and she knew exactly where to get it. "And if my words aren't enough, I'll see that someone else supports us, I know Father Blood personally, he helped your cousin get the money needed to help you and Lincoln... I don't know for sure what it was he was giving the little boy, but he's a good man and I do know that he'll be more than willing to help us."
Then, as Ronnie heard those last words, the flood of memories coming back to her mind at full speed hit her once again, she could see the last moments she spent in her house. They weren't alone her cousin and her, there was someone else there with them during the fight... someone who had forced them to keep fighting, and then forced her to burst in fire... it was a person with silver hair and a wrinkled face, but unlike the other times when she was recovering her memory this time she couldn't remember clearly the events, when she tried to remember the face of the person she could only see a pair of red eyes. During all the time that Ronnie was trying to remember, Nikki hadn't stopped talking, looking for a way to save her friend... the same way that girl had saved her from the bad decisions she had made.
A small groan and another pair of loud knocks on the door interrupted the pair of friends again, this time the incessant knocking irritated them both.
"Damn it, Sameer, couldn't you wait three damn minutes...?" A knock, much louder than the previous ones, one that even managed to batter the door, cut off Nikki's shouting, she unconsciously guessed that the one behind the door wasn't her fatty friend.
And as if the silence inside the apartment was an incentive, or the mark of the "start!" races, the guy outside began to bang harder and harder on the tin door; he banged three more times before Sameer's bloodied head came through on the other side. As soon as the gap opened, the same hand with almost inhuman strength pulled the jumble of blood, flesh and curly hair from the hole to enter up to the elbow and thus remove the lock on the door from the inside.
At the almost surreal scene, Nikki sat in the middle of the apartment, frozen and stunned at the sight of her protégé dying; if Sameer was gone, where was Casey? Luckily for her, Ronnie had her nerves on edge and her adrenaline pumping. Before the burly guy in the white uniform even managed to pry the door open with his fumbling fingers, the Latina was already on her feet and fighting her friend's bewilderment to get her on her feet. Finally, after a couple of tugs, Nikki managed to pull herself together and holding hands, they hurried towards the fire stairs. Halfway before they reached the window, the blonde bent down and grabbed three plastic bags; Ronnie recognized them as the "emergency packs" her friends used to store all their valuables before occupying a new abandoned building. Without further ado they both prepared to jump out of the window and down to the street using the iron ladder on the side of the building.
It was a typical nightmare scene; the same one where you run with all your might to escape the fearsome monster lurking in the shadows, but no matter how hard you try you can't get far enough away and just when it seems all is lost, you wake up safely in your bed... unfortunately for both girls, they weren't dreaming and unlike the dreams, the monster in the door didn't magically disappear.
An inhumanly muscular hand closed over Nikki's shoulder, blinded by fear and the adrenaline rushing through her body, the blonde didn't try to pull it off her to run away, instead she kept pulling... until the fabric of her blouse ripped and because of the uncontrolled impulse, both friends ended up falling out of the window into the void. The last thing the blonde managed to do before falling the six floors of her building was to cover Ronnie Anne's body with her own.
-o-
The pain she felt all over her body forced her to remain motionless for a moment on the snowy alley so she simply lay there for a few moments, letting her heartbeat echo in her ears and the coldness of the air seep through her clothes.
Once again, she had brought pain and doom to someone who had tried to help her.
And suddenly, she heard a noise different from her heartbeat and more muffled than her own pained moans, the gasps at her side, steady and short, reminded her of those distant times when a much younger CJ slurped jelly straight from the jar, making both her grandmother and mother angry.
Turning her head towards the source of the noise, and despite the darkness that reigned in the alley, Ronnie managed to see clearly; Nikki was resting next to her on the snow-covered alley floor, her eyes wide open staring into nothingness and her body twisted in an unnatural position as thick bloody bubbles escaped from her open mouth. It wasn't hard for the Latina to understand that those noises she heard were her friend fighting for her life. And suddenly she felt very clearly how a horrible soundless scream struggled with her rapid breathing to get out of her throat. Ronnie covered her face with her bloody hands, and staggered up from the icy ground. Her only coherent thought was to run, to run into the unknown to hide from her curse and her shame forever.
After advancing a couple of steps towards the injured blonde, Ronnie's feet got tangled and were about to make her fall flat on her face, but at the last moment she regained her balance by leaning forward a bit, causing the volume of the pounding she felt in her ears to increase in turn.
She didn't want to see Nikki in that state, but she simply couldn't help it, her face deathly pale, her breathing labored, teeth and eyes bloodshot. Trying to deny what had happened, the cursed girl walked away from her friend's body, heading straight for the street.
A little more recovered from her fall, Ronnie broke into a run as fast as her legs would carry her. She hobbled briskly down the narrow alleyway, right between the two buildings. Suddenly, out of the corner of her eyes she caught a glimpse of him. The same red-haired man in the white suit she had seen since the Friday afternoon, in the moonlight he appeared to be just a suit and top hat floating in the night. The shiny shoes, the taut fabrics and the gleaming hat floating without a body to bind them together, were pushed aside as she passed him, and despite there being no one wearing the clothes, Ronnie caught a glimpse of his laughter. Then, as soon as she left the dark corridor, another immensely strong hand grabbed her by the neck from behind and in one fluid motion threw her with impossible force to the ground, leaving her prostrate with her hands and knees on the ground. Now aware that there was another of those white-clad gorillas beside her, Ronalda waited for her head to burst against the floor as Sameer's did against the door.
But the fatal blow never came, instead, the Latina managed to hear a desperate scream behind her back and awkwardly turned around. Her heart rate quickened even more as she saw Casey struggling with all his might to maintain an attempted wrestling hold on the big man's neck, who effortlessly dislodged the black boy from his shoulders and with the strength that seemed to characterize the pair of pursuers, slammed the young man to the ground. Casey's head bounced off the asphalt of the street while his body lay sprawled on the sidewalk. Without waiting any longer, the guy raised one of his huge feet and dropped it on the boy's shaved head. The last Ronalda heard of her most fearless friend was his scream of terror and death.
With awkward movements, Ronnie began to crawl backwards, never daring to turn her back on the pursuer «the boys are dead, my curse, my plague killed them». She moved a little over ten yards before the assassin on the sixth floor managed to get down to meet his companion. As soon as the laughter of the man in the alley stopped, Anne stood still as well, gasping for breath through her nose to keep from crying, her face burning against the coolness of the frigid winter air. New tears, of shame and helplessness rolled down her cheeks as she watched the duo of brutes approach her. They had defeated her, making her lose all hope... she was a scared little girl who knew it was all over for her.
«Patético ¿Dejarás que todo termine así, chicharrón?» that mocking voice, and an endless chorus of voices repeating similar phrases made her angry. They made her feel the need to scream with all her strength, would she give up again? Would she run away with her family to a place where nobody would know her? She wouldn't run away again, not for the next hours... days... DECADES OF HER LIFE!
Slowly she stood up. It was time to teach them a lesson. He laughed hysterically as he remembered his curse... HIS POWER!
Smiling hysterically, making a superhuman effort not to limp, and with her heart beating at a frantic pace, Ronnie approached her pursuers who, as if they were mindless automatons, did not react in the least.
"You want my blood, you'll have it! I'll give it to you once we meet in hell because you lit a fire and it won't go out until everything burns to ashes!"
Anne opened her mouth and instead of letting out a low, menacing scream, a war cry, what escaped from her throat was the shriek of steam escaping under pressure from inside her.