-->“I’ll let the Fates decide what happens to you, how’s that?”
Minerva walked around behind the naked, frozen figure perched on the very edge of the pool. Somewhere in the woods surrounding them an owl hooted in the darkness.
“My stare will wear off in about four hours or so. By then your muscle will be sore, fatigued, cramped. Maybe you’ll keep from falling in the pool. Maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll fall in,” she added in her crisp British accent, “Maybe you’ll actually be able to swim. Maybe. Maybe not. Either way,” the shorter Minerva stood on her tippy toes and whispered in the frozen man’s ear, “we’ll let the Fates decide.”
Lyn had hoped that Minerva would not only be home but still be up. She was right on both counts. As she staggered out of the car and towards the front door she didn’t even get a chance to ring the doorbell before the door was thrown open and a thin strong arm wrapped around her to guide her inside.
“Oh my gods Lyn! What happened?”
Minerva gently but firmly led her friend over to the couch and helped her sit. Lyn was marginally taller than her petite helper but then again, pretty much anyone and everyone was taller when they stood next to Minerva. For all her wiry strength, she was tiny. A hair over five feet at the most in height and forever on the skinny side.
“I didn’t listen. I didn’t. Listen. I should’ve listened.” Lyn kept mumbling over and over again but Minerva was pretty sure she understood it all. Once she had Lyn sat down and situated she was off to get some water from the kitchen, leaving Lyn still mumbling and shaking.
The house was old and small but cozy and colorful. The walls had many prints by Cezanne, Degas, Monet, Guillaumin, Renoir, Bazille and Cassatt, especially Cassatt, and Guillaumin. Minerva was a sucker for Impressionism. She loved the colors. She loved how the paintings were ‘real’ but yet, ‘not’. The rooms of the home were orderly, neat, comfortable. Lyn sat on the couch and melted into it and the throw pillows, the yellow and green and orange that Minerva had arranged there. Even though it was a summer night and not at all cold, a small fire crackled in the fireplace. Lyn felt it’s warmth and became hypnotized by the flickers of light. She was starting to nod off when her friend returned with her water.
Minerva sat down next to her friend and took her right hand. Lyn’s left eye was swollen nearly sout there was a nasty bruise forming on the right side of her jaw. She was still mumbling now as she shook.
“Francis,” she repeated, over and over.
Minerva wasn’t sure if she had any female instincts, the way normal humans did. She’s always heard of them but she wasn’t sure if they carried over to her kind or not. Still, she’d seen this coming, in her gut, if that’s where one saw the things instinct was supposed to show them. With all the talk she’d heard about instinct, she was still undecided on the matter. She did know enough, from all that Lyn had ever told her, that Francis Ambercrombie III was bad news.
They sat a while, there on the couch, Minerva holding her. Lyn sipped some from the water but didn’t drink much. It was clear that she was exhausted so Minerva helped her to her own room and put her to bed, the guest room being too cluttered to be of any use.
Minerva knew all about the Ambercrombies. The house, mansion really, out in the East Mountains. All the cars, all the parties, the helipad, the android housekeeping staff. Lyn told her all about his charm, his power. He was a man who wanted what he wanted and got it whether it was given or not. He threw money around and sought to destroy anyone and anything that got in the way of his personal happiness.
There was the maitre’d at the Artichoke Cafe that he belittled, screamed at and ultimately got fired for not seating him and his party at the table he wanted, right away. There was the pharmacy chain he got to pay for his prescription when the android pharmacist refused to refill it because it was a few days past due. The parking attendant he beat on and then got fired for scratching his car, the stripper he beat on and threw out of the VIP room for resisting his advances. What Francis Ambercrombie wanted, he simply got. End of story.
Minerva opened the garage and got her retro Mini fired up. She programmed the general specifics in the GPS and let the car do the rest. As she pulled away she talked into her phone, ordering the house to lock itself up, put the fireplace fire out, lower the temperature to a more comfortable ‘normal’ human setting and dim all the lights. it was a nice night, she decided, for a ride out to the mountains.
The butler that answered was an android, which Minerva expected. She could smell the plastics, the wiring. He looked younger than she thought a butler should look like.
“I’m here for Francis.”
He looked at her down his nose in appropriate butler-like fashion. “Mr. Ambercrombie is not avail....”
He didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence. Minerva looked him the eyes and gave him her stare. For a brief moment her eyes flashed brightly with a bluish-white light. The butler’s circuits overloaded. Minerva could smell but not quite see the smoke coming out of his ears. Stepping around him, Minerva walked into the foyer.
It was huge, ornate glass domed skylight above. Marble and granite everywhere. She recognized the tiled artwork as Prometheus, chained to his rock, having his liver eaten by a vulture, punishment from the gods for his stealing fire from the heavens and giving it to man. It was an ambitious work Minerva thought, but shoddily done. While it tried to look classical, she felt all it managed to do was look campy.
Minerva headed left, through some open doors into a billiard room, another set of open doors ahead led her a small parlor which, in turn, led her to set of doors leading into a kitchen area. One by one she worked her way through various rooms until she found herself going through a door leading to the outside, a huge Olympic-sized pool awaited. The back patio had pillars and steps and levels. There was a hot tub off in the distance. Marble covered the deck around the pool shady spots were strategically located here and there, covered more slabs of marble supported by more pillars. Tiki torches were lit all around the perimeter. A man and two women cavorted at the far end of the pool, in the shallow end. Minerva headed in the direction. A large Rottweiler with a sparked collar growled and started towards her from where he’d been lying off to her right. She stopped, gave it a look and hissed at it loudly. The Rott stopped in its tracks, sniffed the air, turned and went running off down into the bushes off to the side of the patio.
“Hey! Hey you! What the fuck did you do to my dog?”
The man at the far end of the pool was shouting. The loud giggling and splashing that had been going on suddenly came to a stop. Minerva walked towards them, the man and his naked female friends.
“I’m not here for you ladies. Leave. Leave now.”
Minerva tried to say it in the most no-nonsense way she could. She was in no hurry, taking her time, admiring the statuary work along the fringes of the pool’s deck. They weren’t great but they weren’t bad. They were solid attempts to emulate classical works. More Greco-Roman themes. The work may not have been great but at least it was trying to be classical.
The man was out of the pool and had pulled on his trunks. Both of the women were coming out now too, getting their suits and putting them on. Francis Ambercrombie III wasn’t as tall as Minerva expected but he was cut, he looked definitely in shape. He walked towards her matching her no-nonsense attitude stride for stride.
Lyn had told her about his blue eyes, his charming smile, the way the young Ambercrombie could turn on a personal warmth and make you feel like you were the most special person in the world. Hearing about it had made Minerva wonder if he was a Paranormal but watching him walk towards her now, she realized he was just a man, nothing special.
“What the fuck did you do to my dog? You hear me lady? I’m talking to you!”
His charm wasn’t on right now, that much was certain.
“Get out of here ladies. I mean it. I’m not here for you.” Minerva decided to hiss again, making it as loud and formidable as she could. Francis stopped suddenly. One of his girlfriends screamed. They grabbed what was left of their stuff and started to run along the edge of the pool going the long way around, away from Minerva.
“What the fuck are you?”
Francis was still pissed, Minerva could tell, but he was quieter now. He wasn’t sure what he was dealing with and that was tempering his anger somewhat.
“Hello Francis. What I am is instant karma, come to get you. Lyndsay Martinez says ‘Hi.’”
Minerva met his blue eyes and locked them. Her eyes flashed bluish-white and Francis was suddenly as still as one of the statues surrounding the pool’s deck. Everything about him was still, everything about him was completely paralyzed.
He could breathe, barely. His heart would continue to beat and his senses would continue to register his surroundings but aside from his bare breathing and heart function, the rest of his muscle groups were completely frozen. Minerva walked up to him and looked him over up close.
“Hmm, you are quite the specimen aren’t you Francis.” She ran a finger along his pecs. “Nice. Very nice.”
“You do know who Lyn Martinez is right? You remember her? A little taller than me? Fuller figured? Pretty? The one you beat up, punched in the eye, punched in the jaw? You know the one I’m talking about, don’t you?”
Minerva grabbed him by the arm and leaned him back, she rocked him side to side and moved him over to the very edge of the pool.
On the drive back to town Minerva told the car to play some jazz, Billie Holiday started singing. She told the car to open the sunroof and looked up at the stars above. It was a clear night and she could see more of the universe here, out in the mountains, away from the city lights. Billy Holiday sang about love gone wrong and Minerva thought about this as the car drove itself, she thought about love gone wrong, love gone right, love in all its many shapes and forms. She liked watching the stars twinkle and the sky move as the car moved. She wondered what the coming day would have in store for her, for Lyn, even for Francis Ambercrombie, the third of that name. The Fates will decide she thought as she smiled to herself.
Copyright M.R. McCaffery, 2012. All rights reserved.
