 |
 |
The hallway was dark; the only illumination came from the light which escaped from underneath the doors spilling onto the hallway floor keeping the hall from being pitched in complete darkness. It was also abysmally cold. Reina pulled her trench coat around her tightly to ward off the numbing cold. She might as well be wearing no coat at all for all the good it was doing her. The chilly air seeped through the coat as though it was trying to freeze her down to her soul.
Reina pulled unsuccessfully at yet another door. She had been trying to get into any of the rooms which all promised warmth but was thwarted. Doors, which had been open mere moments earlier, slammed shut as she approached them. The disembodied voices coming from the other side of the door mocked her as she heard them complain about the need for air conditioning. The warmth she sought was just on the other side of the door yet she might as well be stuck in the middle of the frozen tundra for all the good it did her.
Every unsuccessful attempt at finding warmth did nothing but bring her closer to the one door which remained open to her. The one from which the frigid blast was emanating in the first place. The portal which she was trying desperately to avoid.
Eventually it became painfully obvious that there was only one way out of the hallway yet Reina was still recalcitrant about taking the route to which she was being led. In a last ditch effort to fight fate she turned away from the door intending to try all the doors again, to find that all the doors had disappeared leaving the only the cold promised by the door ahead of her. Reluctantly she stepped through the door to find herself back at the New York City morgue where she was forced to identify Reynaldo's body. Only something was different. His head was completely missing.
"What do you think? Is it too gauche?" Mark Tuttle stepped out of the shadows with Reynaldo's head mounted on a plaque.
"You barbaric son of a bitch!"
"I've been called worse by people a lot older and wiser than you who were witnesses to true barbarism."
"More of your victims? What did you do to them? Shoot them then torture them before taking their head?" Reina sneered.
"You are destined to become like me you know." Mark Tuttle said nonchalantly.
"You don't know the first thing about me."
"You're an immortal. You will either become like me or like this." He held up his grotesque trophy. "It's up to you and your sword-fighting skills."
"I will never be anything like you." Reina spat in disgust.
"Then you intend to die?"
"I intend to survive at least long enough to take your miserable head." Reina reached for her sword but found it wasn't in its usual hiding place.
Tuttle laughed. It was an unpleasant sound that grated on the nerves. "You plan to make me pay? How can you seriously avenge Reynaldo's death when you haven't even avenged your own? I am to face your wrath when the woman who killed you, your brother, and your friend runs free?"
Reina sat up abruptly from another bad dream. She never told her Godfather but she had often had recurring nightmares about the night she had died for the first time. At least this nightmare, while equally disturbing, wasn't a rerun of the usual imagery. There's only one way to exorcise your demons Reina. She told herself. You have to make Carrie pay.
|
|