The Girl Who Would Be King(96)
“I’m your right-hand man?” Liz asks with an expression I can’t quite read.
“Yup. And maybe my BFF too, we’ll see. All we need are some good minions and I figure we’ll be pretty much on our way. Once we have some minions, we figure out – by which I mean you figure out – how to find Bonnie and then I’ll kill her. With her out of the way we’ll really be able to get started.”
“And by ‘get started’ you mean?”
“Well, I haven’t decided for sure yet, but I think ‘Lola – King of Los Angeles’ has a sweet ring to it.” I stand there, waiting for her to be impressed, but she’s looking at me like I’ve lost it. I decide to let it slide. “What do you want for dinner? I’m thinking Chinese,” I say, walking out of the room.
After gorging ourselves on Chinese food, I cuff Liz to the headboard in one of the bedrooms so she’ll quit whining about aches and pains and her wrinkled linen skirt. As right-hand men go, she’s a bit of a prima donna. I go into another bedroom and change into my cat suit and then walk into Liz’s room to show it off to her. She’s seen it before, when I was kidnapping her, but I don’t really think she was paying sufficient attention.
“What is that?” she half-sneers with her nose practically in the air.
“My old cat suit,” I say, feeling the history of the fabric.
“You actually wear that thing out of the house? On a day that isn’t Halloween?”
“What would you suggest I wear, Liz? I’m a freaking super-villain. Jeans and a t-shirt just doesn’t have quite the same impact.”
“Don’t you have like hundreds of thousands of dollars Lola, you couldn’t at least upgrade? What is that even made of, nylon, or,” she sniffs again. “Acrylic?”
“I don’t know what it’s made of Liz,” I groan. “It’s got, you know, personal significance to me,” I say, walking out of the room.
“Nothing personal is that important,” she says under her breath as I leave the room.
“I CAN HEEEEAARR YOU,” I shout back at her from the bedroom. I hear her sniff again defiantly.
With Liz safely put away for the night, I go out to the patio with my new toy. There is no doubt I feel more powerful with it in my possession, but I want to know the specifics. So far, I’m only sure that the stone is somehow connected to me and makes me a bit stronger and faster – but does it have limitations?
I hold the stone in my left hand and swing my right first at the south stone wall, which practically explodes on impact. I look at my clenched fist and a smile spreads wide across my face. “Nice.” I place the stone on a deck chair nearby and immediately I feel the power ebb slightly away from me. I can still feel the power radiating from it, but it doesn’t hum inside me in the same way. I take aim at an intact part of the wall with the same abandon as before. I pull my arm from the two-foot hole in the wall. Still impressive, but notably less than with the stone. I pick it up again. “So it’s got to be on me,” I say to myself, clutching it tightly. “What else can you do?” I whisper to my stone. I sit on the patio, legs crossed, and grip it tightly with my hand, closing my eyes and concentrating. After a few minutes it’s almost like the stone is vibrating in my hand. I dig deeper, and as I push I feel the stone actually pulling power out of me. I feel unsure and almost break the connection, not loving the feeling of losing power, but something compels me on. A moment later a sharp snap sounds and it’s as if some kind of internal radar turns on inside my head and a blinking light starts beating, like a bright heartbeat. I push harder and the light comes closer, or I draw closer to it, I can’t tell which. The light beats, beats, beats, hypnotically and almost in synch with my own heart. I’m practically on top of the light when I look around and see I’m standing in a huge park. But just under the surface of the park I can see my patio and pool, like the park is only a filmy photograph projected on a wall. Like seeing a dream while awake. I see a sign that says Fifth Avenue and as I turn a jogger runs straight through me. Everything looks wavy but I see a green sign that says CENTRAL PARK nearer to the street. “New York,” I say to myself, looking around. I pull back a little and it’s almost like I’m floating above the city now, and I can see the edges of river beyond the island, and there’s the bright heartbeat again – lighting up the lower half of Central Park and moving very slowly down and to the left. “Omigod,” I say out loud, yanking myself out of it all and back to my patio. “It’s her. I can freaking find Bonnie with this.” A huge grin nearly breaks my face in half. I’m exhausted but elated and I lie on the cool patio slowly recovering the energy that the stone drew from me to locate her.