....and now, back to PENGUIN$

********************

After the silent web-footed menace had strapped her into the chair, Anita
had sat very still, her head down, her hair a spill of curly black silk
covering her face.

She stayed that way for a long time.

Valeria stared at Pisces' miracle machine and sighed, her mouth drawn into a
thin line. She'd run out of ideas eons ago and didn't believe in fate. She
did, however, believe in the randomness of life and had decided to find some
comfort in the possibility that some totally unrelated event could swing
things in their favor. It wasn't much to go on, but the thought lightened
her spirits enough to try again to raise some kind of response from the one
person she thought had a an option or two left.

"Anita, please," she begged. "Just say something, anything, let me know
you're alive."

There was no response.

"If you watch her closely, you can see that she's breathing," Crowley said
from his chair beside her. "It's amazing that she's lived as long as she has
covered in that substance. She's taken quite a dose."

Valeria pretended to ignore him. "A little slime won't kill you, will it
Blake?" She cooed in Anita's direction. "Sigmund probably made sure of that.
You're made of strong stuff. Come on, give Auntie Valeria a little of what
you did in the fitness center. I know you can do it!"

In response, Anita's head moved in the barest of slow, miserable shakes.

"I'm no expert, but it doesn't look like she's agreeing with you," Crowley
said wryly.

Valeria ignored him and tried to stamp her foot, forgetting that it was
strapped to the chair.

"Dammit Blake," she spat. "Stop feeling sorry for yourself and put a little
effort into it! This is serious!"

Anita's chest rose and fell in a huge sigh, then she forced her head up and
opened her eyes.

"Orbus," she said without her usual spirit, "you are the only person I know
who doesn't need someone else around to do the good cop bad cop routine.
Give it up, it won't work."

"Sez you girlfriend." Valeria gave her a lopsided smile. "At least now
you're talking."

Anita shook her head and stared off into space. "My mouth has gotten me, and
the people I care about, into more trouble than anything else I can think
of. Maybe it's time I just shut up."

Valeria rolled her eyes and turned to Crowley. "Do you hear violins? I'm
hearing violins."

Crowley pursed his lips and turned his head away.

"We have no time for a pity-party here Blake," Valeria said. "The petty
humans among us have run out of options. We need a little preter-foo fast."

Anita shook her head and moaned. "I can't. It's gone. I lost it once when I
gave up the two men I loved and then again when I killed Sigmund. I can't
save anyone and it's all my fault." Her head fell forward to her chest
again.

"Bloody hell, she's foo-ed out. Just great," Crowley snorted.

"Nobody asked you Crowley," Valeria snapped. "You're not helping."

"Why bother?" He shrugged. "It's become quite clear to me now how the feared
and renowned Vampire Executioner of St.Louis got her reputation."

"Crowley, I'm warning you...," Valeria began menacingly.

"I'd always wondered how such a delicate, exquisitely doll-like young woman
could leave such a trail of destruction and dead monsters in her wake and
now I see that the truth is that she traded sexual favors for power that was
never hers to begin with." He leaned in Anita's direction. "I'd heard the
rumors that you were no more than a lowly animator before taking up with the
Vampire Master of St.Louis."

"She was more than that, you bastard," Valeria hissed. "She was a licensed
Vampire Executioner and she had more vampire kills than anyone around."

"But she had none of the power that her undead-lover would soon give her,"
Crowley hissed in return. "Without her guns she was nothing. With her guns,
and the police behind her, she was no more than a sanctioned killer. How
many of those newly minted undead US Citizens that you killed were innocent,
Ms. Blake? The forensic study of vampire related deaths is woefully lacking.
Did you really think that what you did had anything to do with justice?"

"Stop," Anita said weakly, panting, her voice thick with pain and
frustration. "Make him stop."

"That's enough Crowley! Everything you're saying it a lie!" Valeria shouted.

"...you got lucky, Anita," Crowley continued relentlessly, "and that's
what's been eating you up from the inside. Working for the police gave you
the chance to indulge self-righteously in your deep rooted prejudices,
insecurities and hatred of the undead. You pulled the trigger and repeatedly
blew away beings who have a consciousness and an awareness of their own
identity and existence, as if you were stepping on ants at a picnic. Did you
believe that killing them would make you a good person? Did that belief keep
you from going insane once you turned your back on humanity and crawled into
bed with the so-called monsters, resenting your weakness at what you'd
allowed them to seduce you into becoming?

"STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!" Anita shrieked, her
voice somehow managing to carry above the din, the words echoing where no
echo should have been possible.

All activity halted in the penthouse as the troops turned their beaks
towards the sound. Pisces, busy preening himself in front of a mirror held
up by two struggling penguin grunts, paused to stare in the direction of the
stage. Anita's voice now seemed to grow in intensity and volume, becoming a
thick, touchable thing that filled every available space in the penthouse.

Valeria cringed in her seat, preparing herself for the inevitable hell that
was about to break loose, but after a few moments the sound began to slowly
die and soon all that was left was the sounds of Pisces' Miracle Machine,
humming and hissing.

Nothing had happened.

Valeria shook her head. "Nice try, Crowley," she said softly.

"Close but obviously no cigar," Crowley replied and shrugged. "I was so sure
we were onto something there."

"Yeah," Valeria agreed.

Anita had collapsed forward in her chair, panting heavily. After a moment
she raised her head and looked at Valeria, her face dead white, her eyes
black dots, the pupils severely dilated.

"Blake?" Valeria asked, suddenly not so sure that something hadn't happened.

"Can you feel them?" Anita asked, her voice had become deep, resonant and
far from natural; a voice from beyond the grave.

"Feel what, Anita?" Valeria asked in a near whisper.

"The dead are here. One very near by, others all over the building. Can you
feel them, Valeria? I touched them. I didn't mean to, but I touched them and
they answered. Can you feel them? I gave them a piece of myself and in
return they are giving me power."

A deep cold was quickly descending on Valeria, carrying with it the specter
of death. For a moment she, with not a single preternatural bone in her
body, could hear the dead whispering in an ancient tongue that only Anita
seemed to be able to understand. Glancing over at Crowley and the other
hostages she could see that they had felt it too. The penguin troops
fidgeted where they stood, looking about wildly. Pisces had taken a few
steps in the direction of the stage but something had halted his progress.
Inside the glass case, Anita's penguins were quiet, a strange peace having
stilled them.

"Mr. Crowley," Anita said, in that strange voice, now grown as calm as her
penguins. She tilted her head to one side like a falcon studying it's prey.
"I think you were mistaken when you referred to me as no more than a lowly
animator."

Crowley cleared his throat in order to choke out. "I-is that so?"

"Oh yes," Anita replied condescendingly, smiling slightly and nodding with
mock sadness.

"Then, per-perhaps, you'd be so k-kind as to enlighten me," Crowley
stuttered.

"It would be my pleasure." Anita's manic smile widened and a pressure began
to build in the air. Arcs of blue lightening buzzed quietly across every
metal surface in the room. "...it's quite simple really," she added.

Valeria felt the small hairs on her body raise and her teeth begin to
chatter.

"But I guess I can forgive you," Anita continued, "...because I made that
mistake too. The dead reminded me that we need no one else's power except
our own. From now on, I will never again forget what I am."

Every sound in the room was sucked into the vacuum of Anita's power. All
there was left then, was the sound of her voice; female, and deadly calm
with repressed rage...

"I am a necromancer."

On cue every source of man made light in the room exploded in a shower of
sparks and glass, sending the penthouse into near darkness. One by one,
computers were destroyed, monitors imploded, circuitry and pieces of gray
plastic shot out at high speed.

Pandemonium broke out among the troops. Frenzied penguins, reduced to their
basic instincts, stampeded in all directions leaving the foo-ed humans
standing silently amidst the chaos. The glass case in which Anita's penguins
were imprisoned cracked, huge sheets of it falling away and shattering into
pieces on the ground.

Tables and chairs went sailing across the room. Massive pipes, fans and
other pieces of environmental machinery fell from the walls and ceiling,
exploding upon impact and killing penguins as they scurried for cover. The
huge screen beside the stage slid to the ground with a loud crashing sound,
a crack running through the middle of it. Ceiling tiles came loose and
whipped around the room, one taking the head right off an Emperor Penguin
just as he'd been reaching for his machine gun. The floor became slick with
penguin body parts and blue streaks of their blood. The humans though,
remained mostly unharmed.

Valeria looked down to see the black straps that held her to the metal chair
reduce themselves to shreds and fall away. The same was happening to the
other hostages, but shock kept them rooted to their seats.

Crowley, fully aware that his rant had set Anita off, tried to will his
shaky legs to support him long enough to find cover elsewhere. Just as he
had managed to push himself half way out of the chair he felt a presence and
looked up to find himself eye to eye with the necromancer who was wearing an
evil grin.

"Thought your number was up, huh?" She shouted and winked as proof of her
power raged around her. "Don't worry Crowley, when this is all over I'm
gonna give you such an ouchie. But for now, thank you."

"You're very welcome my dear," he replied with none of his usual sarcasm.

***********************

Somewhere in the middle of the chaos, Christi Morgret huddled behind a stack
of crates, her heart pounding and the white cotton sack clutched in her
hands. A strange sound had come from inside the bag just after the power
storm had broken loose, but she'd been too preoccupied with her frantic
search for shelter to investigate. Finally remembering to open the bag, she
shook her head in silent disbelief when she found herself staring at a red
digital timer that glowed up at her from the dark depths.

Forrester's Penguin Pacifier was a bomb.

Somehow, it had been triggered by the blast off Anita's power, and was now
ticking it's way down with less than thirty minutes to certain oblivion.
 

******************************

All over Cathedral Tower, the dead began to rise.

They weren't many in number, and they had not sprung their mortal coils any
great length of time ago, but each of them was a doorway to the place where
the power of death resides. Anita had opened those doors with a touch of her
soul and the power had rushed into her, into them and out into the living
world.

The dead were hers now, and they went to her like flowers turning towards
the sun.

Inside a small storage room on the penthouse level, the corpse of Gerrard
Horton stood silently in the pitch darkness. The power that animated it
caused nearly undetectable vibrations to ripple across its gray, swollen
skin. As the power reached the baser levels of its brain, the instructions
for forward propulsion were transmitted to its legs and it began the
surprisingly sophisticated task of placing one foot in front of the other,
taking itself out of the room that had been its tomb since the penguins had
dragged it away from the other hostages. With death had come the exodus of
its soul and the destruction of the part of its brain that allowed it self
will. The temple of a once living man had become a vessel for the power of
death and a possession of the necromancer who commanded it and mined it for
the memories and knowledge that had long ago formed tangible pathways and
connections in its mind.

Its progress down the hallway was slow. Instead of having received a
directly issued order, it was lumbering on instinct towards Anita,  the
source of the power that had raised it. It would continue to do so until
given a direct order by her to stop.

The zombie reached the base of the stairs at the end of the hallway and
paused, searching its decayed mind for the instructions to 'up'. A similar
process had to be repeated when it found the door at the top. Reaching out
to grasp the handle it pressed down on the lever to release the bolt and was
immediately thrown back down the stairs and partly down the hallway as the
door was blown open by the force of the fierce, highly charged storm of
power that was raging on the other side of it. Ceiling tiles, large shards
of glass, dead penguins and other debris blasted into the hallway, striking
the zombie and knocking it repeatedly to the ground every time it tried to
stand. It lay on its back, its body lacerated and torn, confused and trying
to remember the appropriate response.

"Ouch," it finally said, its voice a deep, dry croak.

It was becoming increasingly lifelike with every passing moment. The power
that animated it would slowly bring it back to being the man it once was,
but only for a short time. A dizzying confusion was building in its mind. It
suddenly remembered that its... his ...name was Gerrard. He was Gerrard
Horton and something was very wrong with him, but he could not put his
finger on it. Images of glistening penguins and the amused face of Sebastian
Crowley crowded into his mind and he howled in pain, curling his body slowly
into a fetal position.

His hands traveled to his chest and his stomach, gingerly pulling out pieces
of sharp glass and poking fingers into deep cuts that did not bleed. This
was all so very wrong. There was only one conclusion to come to and Horton,
having been in life a master of denial, was avoiding it pointedly now in
death.

After an effort of Olympic proportions, the corpse was able to struggle to
its feet. The beacon of power that had been pulling him forward was
beginning to fade in intensity, and a small part of him started to panic. He
could not return to his eternal rest without the assistance of the being
that had given his body false life.

Once again he shuffled towards the door, driving himself hard to reach it.
The wind was now reduced to a light breeze and the beacon was no more than a
faint, distant buzz of white noise. Finally Horton placed one foot over the
threshold of the door and brought the other foot after it, then stopped. He
stared at the scene in front of him with eyes that searched for one thing
only. For a brief moment, he could see a glowing figure in the distance
ahead of him, it's arms in the air and a halo of light around its head. He
searched his memory again and came up with the word 'angel' and another word
that curiously embodied everything the figure meant to him and what he was
at that moment.

Then the light died, and all there was left was a hollow, empty feeling
coming from the uncharted place inside him where his soul used to be.

The zombie's face crumpled and he opened his mouth, pulling air into his
dead lungs. Then he howled out his pain and frustration, yelling for the
figure to return; yelling the second word that had leapt so quickly to his
mind. It was a word that lived in the hearts and minds of children
everywhere.

The word was Mother.

Continued in  Issue 13  of PENGUIN$...

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