Vivienne

Landing hard enough to shatter the kitchen table and all of the objects sitting on it, Sylvie briefly smelled the scent of fresh peaches in the air before she saw the last of the tea splatter against the door leading into the basement.  Relieved that the concoction Brian wanted to force feed Casey was completely gone, Sylvie didn’t wait for the small triumph before escaping the kitchen through the hole Casey had made.

“Sylvie?”  Casey looked just in time to get pushed into the hole in the floor where Sylvie had burst through to help fight Brian. “No…wait!  We can’t leave….”  Casey screamed as she disappeared in the tunnel.

Sylvie jumped to the ceiling and held on with her talons watching both Brian and the fire monster. “Just a little more…”  Fire engulfed the kitchen for a brief second before the heavy woman shaped mass entered the room.

Tossing the batch of explosives to Brian, Sylvie watched as the bundle went tumbling out like a yo-yo unraveling mines from the wire she held the end to.  She scrambled over to the small chandelier still burning brightly with four lightbulbs.

When the claymores landed on the struggling mage, Sylvie jammed the exposed wires in her hand into the live light bulb socket and threw herself with all her might into the hole behind Casey.

-Kaboom!-

Eight loud explosions flared behind Sylvie, forcing the two women to tumble to the edge of the tunnel.  Sylvie reached out and gripped Casey’s ankle with an unnaturally iron grip to stop her from going over the edge. “Gotcha!”

Casey looked over the edge and into the dark abyss where the first of Brian’s earth shattering had occurred. “Ohmygod..ohmygod..ohmygod..pull me back…back…”  Casey frantically screamed.

“You aren’t going anywhere.”  Sylvie huffed quick enough to blow her singed hair from her face. She gently pulled the young ward back into her tunnel and started to go back. “I didn’t know what it meant at first.”

Casey flopped onto her back breathing heavily and clutched her chest. “Didn’t know what…what?”  

“The kite string.”  Sylvie half laughed and crawled  out of the hole to peek her head out. “Oh my.”

Casey didn’t want to move after the ordeal, “Is…he…” She inquired and forced herself to move against her better judgment.

“It even had a key on it…ewww.”  Sylvie muttered and pulled herself out of the ground. “You might…wait.  Let me…”

Confused and in pain, Casey made her way to the junction of the hole and looked up in time to see a set of bright white moon eyes. “Key?”  Casey heard a snap of metal then heard the sound of a fire extinguisher going off.  “Is he..?”

Sylvie sprayed the CO2 canister all around, dousing the flames and solidifying the left over molten rock. “Yeah, it isn’t pretty either.”  She looked back down and saw Casey’s bloodshot liquid brown eyes. “Sorry, I didn’t know what else to do.”

“I’m a big girl, I can handle it.”  Casey thrust her hand out where Sylvie gripped it and easily hauled her up.  Instinctively Casey turned to look where she’d pinned Brian to the floor and saw the big man’s remains.  Dropping to her knees out of both relief and sorrow, Casey turned away from the shattered corpse before she grabbed Sylvie and started crying softly. “How did…how did this…”  She sniffled, “How did this…h-happen?”

Setting the big canister down, Sylvie knelt down and wrapped Casey in her arms. “I don’t quite know, Casey.  I have only seen this.”  Sylvie pulled back and wiped Casey’s eyes free of tears. “I’ll listen if you want to discuss it.”  Running her thin undead fingers through Casey’s wavy auburn locks, Sylvie used her free hand and tilted Casey up by her chin, “I just know that from what I saw here…”  She snorted, “...He wasn’t going to listen or stop until you did what he wanted, or killed you both.”

Something inside Casey knew and felt that Sylvie was telling the truth.  Casey pulled back from Sylvie’s soft embrace and finally had the courage to stand and look at the destroyed house. “Thank you, Sylvie.”  Closing her eyes and drawing in a hesitant breath, Casey finally turned to face the area where she’d last seen the man she once loved.  “There really isn’t much left is there..”  Casey asked and didn’t really expect an answer.  What remained of Brian’s body after the series of explosions wasn’t much. Half of his head lay on the stair, one arm had become part of the door, his once huge chest was completely gone.  Casey looked around and noticed muscle and chunks all over the hearth and walls.  Finally, she saw the iron poker still had his runed hand still pinned in the floor.  Casey covered her face with her hands and began crying once more. “So surreal…”  She sobbed.

Sylvie picked up the extinguisher and sprayed the retardant over more of the hot spots she noticed, and chose to start talking more about the key and string. “You asked about a key.”  Sylvie kicked some of the solid lava rock from around her feet. “I will give you a quick run down on things that I kinda see.”  Satisfied that the house wasn’t going to catch fire or the rock was going to reform into the monster lava woman, Sylvie tossed the mostly empty cylinder into the kitchen. “Sometimes they are straightforward like with Vivienne and Faye.”  She laughed. “That was severe sexual repression that would NOT get out of my sight, so I fixed it.”

Casey half laughed and wiped away the tears streaming down her face. “What a fix.” She hoarsely whispered.

“You try having the two of them naked in your head for days.” Sylvie walked beside Casey and furled her eyebrows. “Um…Look at..oh wow.”

Casey suddenly saw what stopped the vampire from telling her story.  All of the color in the room seemed to get replaced by foaming white bubbles.  Much like a cleanser running down the porcelain of a tub or a sink, everywhere the foam touched bleached the area white or closed the cracks in the ground. “I think we need to get out of here, can the story wait?”

When Brian’s remains lost all of their flesh and left bleached bone behind, Sylvie glanced at the tiny set of dog tags around her hand. “Indeed.”  Sylvie winked, “Maybe it’s time to check on Vivienne anyway.”

“Fuck!”  Casey suddenly recalled her mistress. “I can’t believe….”

Sylvie pointed at the creeping white floor. “We best be moving.”