Day: Mara and the Dreamers' Club (Black Rose *)_Days of Blood and Roses: A Magical Girl Thriller

> Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal . . .

> —H. P. Lovecraft,

> "The Tomb"

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When the telephone started ringing downstairs, their father got to his feet and told Mara and Nico that it might be their mother, or at least he hoped it was their mother. With any luck, he told them, he might be able to convince their mother to come back to the house and talk things over. Then their father went downstairs, and when they heard him picking up the landline phone in the kitchen and talking to their mother, both girls sprinted into their room. Nico and Mara came to their phone on the nightstand beside their bed, and Nico picked up the receiver, holding it between herself and Mara, so they could listen in on their parents' conversation.

". . . down, okay? Calm down!" their father said. "Just tell me what's going on."

Her voice came on the phone, huffing and puffing through the static and saying, "I'm in a weird place, but I . . ." The connection cut itself out, then came back on with more huffing and puffing as she went on, saying, ". . . and someone's after me! I can . . ." The connection cut itself out, then came back on again.

"Did you call the police?" he said, raising his voice. "Fuck's going on here? Hey, hey, are you there?"

"I did, but . . ." The connection cut itself out, then came back on again.

"Where are you?" he said. "I can barely hear what you're saying! There's too much noise! Where are you?"

". . . don't know where I am right now! I just . . ." The connection cut itself out for a few moments, long enough for their father to curse over the line, then came back on again. Now their mother was sobbing through the static and saying to their father, "Paul, I need you to get out of here! I just wanna get out of here . . ."

The connection cut itself out again, with only their father yelling at the other end of the phone, saying, "Lucy? Lucy? LUCYYYYY?" Yet no answer came back, and no static ran through the line, and only the dial tone came through. "Fuck!" Paul said, slamming the receiver onto the cradle of the phone downstairs and killing the connection. Then their father yelled from downstairs, saying, "Girls, call the cops! Something's happened to your mother!"

Nico slammed the receiver on the cradle, then picked it up and dialed 9-1-1, holding the receiver with shaky hands and saying, "Something’s happened to my mom! . . . Her name's Lucy Cairns, and this is her daughter, Nico Cairns! . . ."

Footsteps came running up the stairs and into the upper hallway, and he barged through their door and said, "I'm gonna go get one of the neighbors to watch over the house. Stay on the line, till I get back, okay?"

Mara said, "But Dad, we—"

"No ‘buts,’ just watch over the house," their father said. "I'll be back with the neighbor!" And he ran back down the hall and down the stairs and opened the front door.

All the while, Nico kept talking to the dispatcher at the other end of the line, saying, "I don't know where she is! All she said was that she was in a weird place, but I don't know where! . . . She called the house, and my dad answered, and my sister and I listened while they were talking, and we heard our mom say someone's after her! . . . I don't know!"

While her sister was talking over the landline, Mara rushed to their bedroom window and opened the shutters, looking over the front entrance, where she saw her father rushing out and running down the street to the next-door neighbor's house—

Before disappearing into a dark haze.

Mara sucked in breath and said, "What the hell? Where did he go? I can't see Dad anywhere!"

Nico took the receiver from her ear, saying, "WHAT?"

"I saw Dad disappear!” Mara said. “I can't see him anywhere!"

Nico rushed to the window, dropping the phone with the voice at the other end of the landline that was screaming for what was going on, before the connection cut out completely.

Nico pressed her face to the window beside Mara, and both sisters looked outside.

Nico said, "Where is he?"

"I don't know! He just flat-out disappeared!"

Both sisters were about to start an argument when they witnessed a man that wasn't their father appearing out of the haze, almost out of nowhere like a ghost. On getting a closer look at him, they saw him wearing a white suit over a black undershirt and possibly wearing black gloves. He seemed strange enough but still human, till he raised his gaze to their window with a pair of red glowing eyes.

They slammed the shutters from the sight.

But then Mara remembered that the front door had not clicked itself shut ("Ah, shit!"), so she sprinted out of the room, saying, "Dad forgot to close the door!"

Nico cursed, following her sister through the upper hallway and down the staircase, both siblings now racing through the living room towards the foyer and the door before the stranger could get inside the house.

And as one both sisters slammed the door closed and locked the knob, then backed away from the foyer towards the foot of the stairs, listening for footsteps coming down the walkway entrance, but heard nothing sound there at all. Then they looked at their surroundings inside their house, and both sisters in the living room noticed some of the shutters were still open during their parents’ fight.

"Close the shutters!" Nico said, running towards the windows in the first floor of the house and slamming all the shutters in the family room and kitchen and dining room and living room, while Mara ran up the stairs and into the upstairs bedrooms and home offices and slammed all the shutters there.

Mara then raced back down the stairs and met her sister dialing 9-1-1 from the family desk phone in the kitchen, holding the receiver up to her ear. Nico held it out between herself and Mara to listen, but both sisters only heard the monotone sound of the dial tone.

"Fuck!" Nico said, slamming the receiver on the cradle. "Mara, check the phone upstairs! I forgot to hang it up!"

Mara cursed, then sprinted back up the stairs and through the upper hallway and into their bedroom, where she saw the receiver lying on the floor where Nico had dropped it. She ran to the receiver, swooping it up and slamming it back onto its cradle on the nightstand, then ran back into the upper hallway and yelled from upstairs as she was descending, saying, "It's back on! You should be able to call the police now!"

Mara hastened down the stairs and ran through the living room into the kitchen as her sister was dialing 9-1-1 again, and she and Nico listened as Nico held the receiver between them, but instead of the police dispatcher from before, a different voice came on the line.

The voice said, "Ah, it took you long enough!"

Nico said, "Who is this?"

"Oh, just a visitor from the Phantom Realms," the voice said. "I've heard you had a family emergency, so I came to your house to see if you were doing okay, and it seems you are!"

"You're the creep outside our house!"

The voice on the other end chuckled. "Creep? Creep? That word doesn't describe me at all! Don't just label a man when you haven't walked a mile in his shoes, till you know what it's like to lose the very people you hold dear, and you haven't lost a FUCKING THING since you were born!"

Mara grabbed the receiver in Nico’s hands closer to her and said, "Hey, don't fucking talk to her that way! You're not getting in, so what do you want?"

"Oooooh, a different voice, and a feisty one, too," the voice continued, chucking over the line. "Now that I've heard of both of you in person, let me guess your names. Hmmmmmm . . . How about this? Mara Cairns and Nico Cairns! Am I right? Am I right? Am I right? Am I fucking RIGHT?"

Both girls slammed the receiver back onto the cradle, cursing as they spoke.

"Who the fuck was that guy?" Nico said.

"How should I know?" Mara said, sprinting out of the kitchen and into the living room and back up the stairs and into the upper hallway towards their bedroom, with Nico following in tow. "He's probably got all the landlines tapped!"

Both girls ran into their bedroom and slammed the door shut behind them.

"Get the smartphones!" Nico ordered, while she got a chair from the desk and propped it under the door knob.

Mara grabbed both of their smartphones from the nightstands and threw one of them for Nico to catch, then turned hers on and waited for it to boot up, then dialed for 9-1-1 and prayed that for the police dispatcher—

"Hello, hello, hello," the same voice said.

"Fuck you!" Mara said, then threw her smartphone against the wall, shattering it to pieces.

Nico, however, didn't call for 9-1-1: she called for her mother's phone number and was now waiting for her mother to pick it up on the other end.

Mara came over to her sister, saying, "Any luck?"

"I'm trying to call Mom," she said, and she held it out between herself and Mara, so that they could listen together, both sisters hoping against sanity that this would work, hoping to hear their mother's voice on the other end of the connection, hoping for an end to this crazy nightmare.

"Who is this? Who are you?" their mother said over the line.

"MOM!" both girls yelled.

"Mara, Nico, is that you?" Lucy said.

"Oh my God, where are you, Mom? Are you okay?" Mara said.

“I’m still here, honey,” their mother said.

"And where's Dad?" Nico added.

"He’s here with me right now," their mother said and started sobbing and sniffling. "Oh my God, I’m so sorry, girls! I shouldn’t have gone out like I did. I was just— . . . Hey! HEY, GIVE IT BACK, BASTARD!"

And another voice, the same voice that had been dogging the girls in their own house, said over the connection, "Why didn't you tell me you wanted to see your parents?"

"WHERE DID YOU TAKE OUR PARENTS?" Nico screamed.

"No need to shout!" the voice said. "Tell you what I’ll do, darling: I'll personally take you both to your parents, and it'll become a family reunion!"

And no sooner had he said those words when a darkness more than night flooded into their bedroom, blacking everything out into a nameless and formless void, where all things are one and the same, where the first meets the last, where everything meets nothing, where the past meets the future, and where eternity meets the now. Here, there was no happiness, no hope, no love, no life, and even no soul. Here, there was nothing to raise the spirit or set it free from the dark night of the soul that was about to face its judgment from the hands of an evil man in a white suit. Here there was only the sleep of eternity—

Only the sleep of death.

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During their interval of sleep, another girl with bobbed dark hair and teal eyes, dressed in a Shad-Row Academy uniform and an oversized hand-me-down jacket, rushed down through the backstage area and spotted Rancaster smoothing out the creases on the sleeves of his white jacket just before he entrance onstage. She caught up to him, saying, “Rancaster!”

The man turned and greeted her with a smile, saying, “Ah, I’m glad you could make it, bambina,” and he patted the back of her head as she was bent over trying to catch her breath. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t show up, but you know what they say: better late than—”

“Enough already,” she said, regaining her breath, then walked up to him and looked him in the eyes. “Why are you doing this?”

“I’m doing this for you,” he said.

“I don’t want this!” she said. “Let them go!”

“Oh, come, come, bambina,” he said and led her up the backstairs towards the far side of the stage close to the pulleys and ropes operating the stage curtains, where he pointed out Paul and Lucy Cairns in a pair of chairs beneath the track lights, both parents calling out to their daughters sleeping in another pair of chairs on the other side of the stage. “Those girls over there, do you know them?”

She shook her head but added, “Don’t do this.”

“You don’t know them, bambina,” he said, “just as they don’t know you. You’ve never walked in their shoes before, nor have they walked in yours. You’re complete strangers.”

“But that doesn’t mean—”

“What about those two before us?” Rancaster added, pointing to the frantic parents of these sleeping girls yelling for them to wake up. “Do you know either of them?”

She said, “No, I don’t, but—”

“That’s right, bambina,” he said. “You don’t know them, but I do. I’ve watched those two tyrants wage endless arguments over petty matters between themselves, putting their daughters through an endless succession of sleepless nights. You’ve never witnessed the torments those two girls have had to suffer, just as they have never witnessed the hell you’ve suffered at the hands of your own father. Your experiences and theirs are mutually exclusive, but misery loves company.”

“Don’t do this, please,” she said and grabbed a hold of Rancaster’s sleeve before he went onstage.

Yet he grabbed her hand, freezing her in place under his psychic restraint, and said, “Whatever you may be thinking right now, I’m doing this for you, bambina. Remember that. Just wait here like a good little girl, and once those girls over there wake up, just enjoy the show.”

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When Mara and Nico finally woke up, they found themselves lying on the stage, blinded by the limelight from the back wall, in front of a theater filled with spectators, who applauded their awakening into the show that was tonight's entertainment in the labyrinthine thoroughfares of the Phantom Realms.

Both girls looked at their surroundings and then saw their parents sitting on chairs on the other side of the stage. Both girls got up to their feet, calling out to their mom and dad as they bolted towards them, then slamming against an invisible barrier in the middle of the stage and knocking themselves out on impact and falling backwards with two heavy thuds onto the stage like wrestlers performing a bump.

Laughter broke out amongst the crowd, followed by a grand applause, while their parents squirmed and struggled against Rancaster’s psychic restraints keeping them fixed to their chairs, their mouths also kept shut with another of his psychic restraints.

More laughter broke out over their parents' antics, nudging their chairs as they struggled to get free and merely making incoherent noises.

Then the host of the show walked onto the stage, spotlighted in the limelight, whistling Scott Joplin’s ragtime tune, “Weeping Willow,” as if he was out on a morning stroll through town in mid-May. He wore a white suit over a black shirt and black gloves like before, and he was swinging a cane around in circles in one hand, while his other hand remained inside his pants pocket.

Then he stopped where the girls lay unconscious on the floor, then looked up at the audience, then looked back down on the girls and said, "Now that's gotta leave a mark."

Another burst of laughter rose from the audience at his slapstick observation.

He then removed his hand from his pants pocket and raised it in the air and snapped his fingers, and a table and two chairs plopped onto the stage. He snapped his fingers again, and two revolvers plopped onto the table. Then he snapped his fingers a third time, and the two sisters disappeared from the floor of the stage and reappeared in both chairs, seated at the table with the revolvers.

When the parents saw this, they panicked and struggled against their restraints, till they tired themselves out and slouched forward in their chairs. Their antics only made the audience laugh at the futility of their actions.

But ever the showman, the man stood before his audience and said, "Before we begin tonight's main event, let me tell you something about this family," and he gestured at the girls slumped over in their chairs and their parents still struggling against the restraints in their own chairs.

"This family is a broken family, one of a myriad of broken families in this godless world of ours. They were once a happy family, but like all broken families, their happiness could not last, because the very pillars that should have held them together crumbled. You see, although they say they loved their children, they couldn't see the pain their constant bickering was causing them, until it was too late. Their children loved them unconditionally and saw past the very faults that they themselves could not reconcile within each other; hence, their appearance here tonight."

In the silence of the crowd, his words moved many to tears of sympathy, yet the tears the parents of Nico and Mara Cairns shed were those of shame. Nonetheless, they bowed their heads low in penitence, their faces scrunched up in agony as tears trailed down their faces and unthinkable thoughts flooded their minds and unshakable feelings flooded their hearts.

But the host wasn't moved at all by their tears. He just glared at these two sufferers, saying, "You cry now like you cried then in that shattered house of yours: only at the very end, when it was too late to reconcile, and only later (as now) do you realize your mistake. You two make me sick! In the course of your married lives, you've forgotten what it was like to be children, to sympathize with their needs and their wants! Instead, you two were consumed in your own needs and your own wants to the point where you were blinded by your own selfish selves, and your children paid the price! I’ve seen their bedroom antics, how they’ve defiled themselves, while you two were sound asleep. They looked for love in each other’s bodies, because they could not find it in YOU!"

He then turned to the audience and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, let the show begin!"

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After witnessing the straining effects her blood spell put her through, Colbie and Kendra wanted Celia to rest for a while, but Celia wouldn't have it. She put on her sweater and overcoat and said, "There's no way I'm letting you two go out there alone. You need my help, and you know it!"

"But that spell took a lot out of you," Kendra said. "You need to stay here and rest!"

Colbie added, "I'll teleport us there myself!"

"Colbie, you can't teleport that distance!"

"I can try, damn it!"

"I won't let you," Celia said. "The greater the distance, the worse your accuracy!"

Colbie took her last remark like a low blow, curling her hands into fists and saying, “Don’t be an asshole about it, geez!”

“I’m just telling the truth,” she said.

"Celia, be reasonable," Kendra said. "You heard what Connie said. There's something out there that has the whole police department on edge. You'll become a liability if we can't protect you and Mara while we're there! It's not only our lives on the line: it's Mara's, too!"

Celia paused, giving it thought, then said, "I'll teleport us to Mara's location, and then I'll teleport Mara to the hospital. After that, I'm going back there with you, and you can chew me out all you want. I don't care! But I'm not letting you out of my sight, got that? And if you've got a problem with that, you can shove it up your asses, 'cause I'm not taking 'No' for an answer!"

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Colbie and Kendra just stood there, silent, because they rarely ever saw Celia get this angry.

So Kendra said, "Fine, have it your way."

With that, Celia released her spell, and a magic circle of pink roses appeared on the ground encompassing herself and her friends before blinking them out of her dorm.

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Mara and Nico woke up to another riotous applause from the audience and found themselves seated around a table and facing each other but unable to move from their chairs. Both sisters squinted under the harsh light of the limelight spotlighting them and their table under its glaring heat. Then both sisters saw the revolvers on the table, and both recognized the peril they were now in.

They looked around the stage and saw the man in the white suit standing between their parents on the other side of the stage, the man that had dogged them in their parents' house now wearing a sardonic smile that crept hideously into his eyes. And from those eyes blazed the fires of Judgement and Hell like those of an otherworldly judge.

He was standing between their parents, still seated at their chairs on the stage, still restrained under psychic restraints invisible to human eyes, still psychically gagged and unable to speak but still able to struggle helplessly in their seats. And both sisters saw the panic in their parents’ eyes and the slick sheen of tears on their cheeks, their expressions contorted into hideous portraits of unimaginable guilt and fear.

“Oh, my God, no!” Mara said.

So Nico screamed through her own sobbing, saying, "Why are you doing this to us?"

"Why do you have to be so cruel?" Mara screamed, now starting to sob. "We never did anything to you!"

"If you survive this game, I'll tell you," the man said, then added, "but I'm not as heartless as you think. To most, I am the Raven Man, but as a gift to you brave girls, you'll know the real name of your judge. I am Lord Aaron Rancaster, 6th Baronet Rancaster, the last of the Rancaster Baronetcy."

At those words, collective gasps resounded through the audience, for there on the stage in their midst stood a living legend, long thought to be dead after decades of rumor and hushed whispers.

Then a silence fell upon the theater.

But ever the showman, Lord Rancaster announced, "The rules are simple. You'll only have one shot, one chance."

Both sisters started cursing at the man, both hot with vengeance and fear, then started begging him to stop with tears streaming down their faces, while their parents renewed their struggles on their chairs but to no avail.

He continued, saying, "You have two six-shot revolvers before you, both loaded with six rounds each. I will give you until the count of ten to grab your guns and aim them at your heads and fire. Should both of you or one of you survive, I'll set you free to go. And should you wish for it, I'll even let you say your final farewells to your parents before you go out into the world as new women liberated from the tyranny of your parents. But," he stressed, "should both of you die in the attempt, I'll kill both of your parents immediately. Whether you go to Heaven or Hell, it matters not to me. In the end, I'm only a mortal judge. I'll let God judge for Himself."

He then raised his hand in the air and snapped his fingers, and now the game began.

A psychic force flooded through the sisters' bodies, taking control of their bodily movements and moving them in sync with each other, despite their struggles to resist.

"One!" Lord Rancaster said.

They struggled and struggled against their movements, contorting their faces in agony, trying to restrain themselves, but both reached for the guns.

"Two!"

They struggled and struggled, renewing their efforts to take control of their arms and hands, straining against their chairs, while their parents looked on in agony, but both girls picked up the guns from the table.

"Three!"

They continued their helpless struggles against their movements, doubling their efforts as they now began sweating and squinting and contorting their expressions into uglier portraits of terror, struggling against Rancaster’s psychic hold raising their guns to their heads.

"Four!"

But then a miracle happened. With all their strength of will, both girls managed to stop the advance and halt the guns from pointing directly at their heads, eliciting gasps of shock and awe from the audience.

"Five!"

Both girls continued their struggles, neither one making much progress, both straining against the psychic force that threatened the end of their lives.

"Six!"

But during their mutual struggles, Mara Cairns awakened her latent psychokinesis, and waves of psychic energy flooded the stage and swept through the crowds, rousing them into an uproar when they witnessed her pulling the gun away from her head with her own bodily strength.

"Seven!"

But her sister Nico lacked the strength to endure any longer, and little by little, inch by agonizing inch, the barrel of her revolver lowered and lowered and lowered as tears now trailed down Nico’s squinting eyes.

"Eight!"

Now in a panic of tears welling up in her eyes, Mara screamed, "Nico, please, please, you have to keep trying!"

"I am, but I can't! It's too much!"

"Nine!"

"You have to keep trying," Mara screamed, her tears streaming down her face now. "I'm begging you, sis, I'm begging you, keep trying!"

But neither words nor strength of will could reach her sister in time as the gun now leveled itself out and pointed directly at her sister's head. A defeated Nico was now sobbing and saying, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, sis, I can't do it anymore! I'M SORRYYYYYY!"

"Ten!"

And just before both shots rang out across the stage and through the theater, Mara screamed, "NICOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

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A magic circle of pink roses appeared on the abandoned grounds of the Rancaster district, encompassing the trio of Celia and Colbie and Kendra, where they sighted the old drugstore through a thick and misty haze at a corner of the square. For about half an hour, they looked all around the square, looking into various storefronts and old boutiques on each side of the square, but they found no sign of Mara anywhere.

"Where the hell could she be?" Celia said, taking another round of looking through the storefronts of the square with Colbie and Kendra. "We should've found her by now!"

"Maybe she's somewhere else," Colbie said. "We haven't looked anywhere beyond this square yet."

"There's no way she could be anywhere else, I just know it!” Celia said. “My blood magic is always spot-on!"

"Well, maybe she woke up and moved somewhere else a little warmer," Colbie said, fluffing up her jacket to keep out the winter breeze. "I know I would in this cold."

"Maybe, but I'm not sure."

"Hey, guys, over here!" Kendra yelled up ahead of them. "I found something."

Colbie and Celia ran towards their friend crouching down next to the entrance of a nearby storefront they hadn't searched yet, just outside the square on the opposite side of the drugstore. Both girls came up to her, breathing out hot clouds misting in the chilly air.

"What did you find?" both girls said, looking over Kendra's shoulder, and then both girls sucked in breath when they saw a wide dark spread of it on the ground.

"Blood," Kendra said. "Do you think it’s Mara's?"

Celia crouched down and put two fingers on the stain, still sticky and fresh, then placed the residue on her tongue, making Colbie and Kendra look away.

Colbie made a face, saying, "Ugh! God, why do you keep doing that?"

"I'm not doing it, because I want to."

"Ugh!" Kendra said, shaking her head. "Why do you witches have to be so freaking weird all the time?"

"Trust me. You don't know what 'weird' is, until you've spent a day with my sisters. I'm tame compared to them," Celia said, then looked into the storefront and walked in. "She's gotta be somewhere here," she added, but just as Colbie and Kendra passed the threshold, Celia spun around and said, "Don't touch anything in this place."

Both girls said, "Why?"

"This place looks like a specialty pawnshop, one of those old dealerships dealing in cursed items. Don't touch anything, all right?"

Both girls nodded and followed Celia into the backroom, where they heard their footfalls echoing hollow against the floor, so they all crouched and found a trap door leading into a hidden basement below their feet. All three girls tensed as the air around the entrance into the basement turned acrid, smelling of blood and something like soiled dog fur.

Then the sound of laborious breathing and sharp huffs resounded from somewhere deep in the basement, followed by a pregnant silence, before heavy steps came running from somewhere below their feet.

Colbie cursed, and Kendra manifested a pistol in both hands, aiming at the trapdoor entrance, and Celia released two spells in quick succession, throwing them at their feet. And the first seal of white roses appeared over the trapdoor entrance, covering it with thorny rose stems just in time—

When something huge collided against the seal, bending the stems but not completely breaking them.

A sharp cry bellowed from the basement steps, followed by howling and snarling that attracted more wolves into the vicinity. Other howls resounded from around the district, both far away and close by. Yet the monster below kept colliding against the seal over the trap door, bending more stems and breaking a few of them as the stench of soiled dog fur and blood poured out from the basement like an entrance into Hell.

The second seal appeared encompassing all the girls beneath their feet, blinking them out of sight just as a massive wolf smashed through the first seal amidst splintering rose stems and fluttering petals, huffing and snarling in pain and howling for more of its packmates to come hither.

But Celia’s second spell couldn't complete its circuit and only dropped them onto their original entry point in the middle of the square.

"Why are we here?" Colbie screamed.

Before Kendra said anything, Celia released another spell, encompassing them in another seal and blinking them all out of sight, but they kept reappearing at the center of the square a moment later.

That's when Kendra realized the terrifying reality of their predicament, so she said, "Holy shit, we're screwed! We are so fucking screwed!"

"And why’s that?" Colibe said.

But when it clicked in Celia's head, she said, "Please don't tell me—"

"This place is quarantined!" Kendra said. "They got spooked, remember? They just quarantined this whole place with magic; now we're stuck here with the wolves!"

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Mara woke up screaming Nico's name in a dark cavernous place, her name echoing and reverberating along the underground. She was a crying wreck of her former self with mucus clogging up her nose and tears running down her clammy face.

After a time, she sat up and felt at her wet clothes, noticing the stains of her sister's blood had been completely washed out. She looked at her hand and saw no bruising that she must’ve sustained during her struggle against the man's psychic control over her hand, managing to keep the barrel away from her head on the tenth count.

Yet the moment of her sister's death was recorded and soon after submerged into the depths of Mara's subconscious mind, blocking out the details of that particular memory: the terror in her sister's eyes as Mara tried to encourage her, the gun shaking in her hand as it was leveled against her head, and of course the inevitable shot that ended her sister's life, while her own shot popped off over her head. All these details disappeared from Mara's waking mind, but her emotions over that event clung to her like an invisible monster, ripping through her soul even now as tears trailed her face, digging up and replacing them with earlier memories of happier times.

Mara and Nico used to explore these endless tunnels in their more innocent childhood dreams, in which Nico was always the brave one leading Mara by one hand and carrying a lamp in the other. In those dreams, both sisters would eventually reach a lighted underground city filled with friendly ghosts who would show them all the haunts from the old days in the Old West before the Baronetcy War ravaged this place.

She now got up beside the glooming shimmer of an underground pond, shimmering from the depths of a nameless watery light. How she escaped that horrible moment on that stage and ended up here, she hadn't a clue.

She was about to go when her foot bumped the kodachi she had wielded against Colbie at the height of her raging. She bent down to get it, and a tingling sensation ran through her grip and up her arm, filling her with grief, for she had shed the blood of an innocent soul in her rage.

She collapsed to her knees, clutching the weapon in her hand, her face scrunched in an agony of grief and guilt, as more tears trailed down her cheeks over the death of her beloved sister and that innocent girl who tried to help her. And in her plight, she picked herself up and ran through the tunnels, running aimlessly from the shadow of her guilt and grief-stricken conscience, running and running and running, till she tripped and fell headlong through another dreamscape, landing in a field of many flowers amidst a flutter of petals—

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And into the arms of her sister's embrace and pressing her head onto her sister's bare breasts, shedding her tears onto her skin and wrapping her arms around her waist and tangling her hands in her hair and planting hungry kisses on her cheeks and lips, only to look into her eyes and see a different girl's face before her—

It was not the face of her sister Nico.

It was the face of Colbie Amame.

And in that moment of recognition, she unsheathed her kodachi and stabbed her bare stomach, bursting the image of Colbie into petals of daisies and roses and purple carnations—

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And appearing in the square before Colbie and Celia and Kendra amidst a flutter of petals, collapsing onto her hands and knees several feet outside of Celia's fifth and last circle of protective seals. And for a moment, all three girls forgot about the wolves and stared at Mara Cairns right in front of them now looking around without the square.

All the while, a pack of enormous wolves prowled the edges of the square, huffing and snarling and sniffing the air as they spotted Mara away from the trio of other girls. They growled and huffed and moved forward into the square towards Mara, eyeing her with their glaring eyes long enough for Mara to turn their way and freeze where she stood.

Seeing it all unfolding before her, Colbie shouted at her, saying, "Run for it, Mara!"

So Mara scrambled to her feet and ran, while a pair of wolves charged after her.

"Damn it!" Colbie said, ignoring her friends' protests as she sprinted towards the other girl, reaching out for Mara and grasping her forearm, then teleporting her back inside the protective circles of Celia's magic seals.

Right then, the wolves backed off and growled at Mara and Colbie, now pacing around Celia's outer-most protective seal and eyeing the four girls and sniffing at the air, while more wolves entered the square, and several others appeared at the tops of the buildings overlooking the girls' position.

"Shit," Kendra said, looking around at the wolves taking the high ground. "This place is a kill zone!"

Celia said, "Don't you have any silver bullets?"

"How was I supposed to know we were dealing with wolves?"

Celia cursed, then noticed the wolves eyeing her very closely as they circled around her seals, so she said, "Guys, I think they're singling me out. They know I'm in a weakened state right now."

Kendra and Colbie and Mara looked back at her.

Colbie said, "What do you mean?"

"They smell blood on me," Celia said.

"Damn it, that blood seal took a lot out of you earlier," Kendra said, getting pissed off now. "If you would've listened to us, we wouldn't be in this shit!"

"If I wasn't here putting up these seals," Celia said, "you two and Mara would be dead right now!"

"That's not gonna matter much, if you keep getting weaker while you’re keeping up those seals," Kendra yelled. "The only reason we risked our lives getting here was because you could teleport us out of here on short notice, but since we're quarantined, we're screwed!"

"Well, if you've got any bright ideas, I'd like to hear them," Celia said. "Otherwise, you can shove those words up your ass!"

"Guys!" Colbie said, grabbing a hold of Mara's hand. "Stop arguing: I've got an idea."

All three girls looked at her.

"Okay, then what is it?" Kendra said.

"Just stay close to me, and hold onto each other's hands," she ordered. "I don't want any of you to get blown away when I do this. Just stay close, and make sure to keep a firm grip. And Celia," she added, "keep your seals up as long as you can. It's gonna get rough, I'm telling you."

Celia nodded and said, "I'll do what I can."

With that, Colbie focused her mind and imagined being inside of a twister, and just then the air around Celia’s five seals swirled and blustered to life, backing the wolves away from the girls' position in the square, and began swirling into heavy gales and cutting crosswinds that formed around them. Then Colbie imagined a spiral set of stairs they could climb, and another blast of air lifted the girls from the ground. Taking Mara by her hand, Colbie had each of the others grab each other's hands to form a train, then led them up the spiral stairs made of air inside the tornado, till they reached the top platform ten stories up in the air and out of reach of the wolves scattering themselves before the winds.

When the gales finally dissipated, leaving a blast of air keeping them afloat on the platform above the ground, Colbie said, "All right, Celia, you can release your spell."

Celia did, and on releasing the seals, she fell to her knees in exhaustion, still holding onto Mara and Kendra with both of her hands and saying, "Thank God, now I can rest!"

Even Kendra fell to her knees without looking down at how far she was from the ground and said, "Girl, I'd kiss you right now, but I can't! I'm still scared of heights!"

"Just bear with it, okay?" Colbie said before adding under her breath, "Silly girl."

"Stop saying that!" Kendra said.

"Celia," Colbie said, "can you teleport us to the wall? We still have to get past that magic barrier."

"Not while I'm in midair," Celia said. "I can't teleport in the air like you can."

"Okay," Colbie said, smiling at her companions. "We'll do it my way then. Keep a firm grip on each other's hands," and she led them by the hand across continuous blasts from below their feet, blowing their hair into the sky as they walked on invisible steps.

All the while, Kendra tried everything she could to keep herself from getting woozy at staring below her feet, saying under her breath, "I swear, Colbie, when we get back on solid ground, I am so gonna punish you later.”

“Looking forward to it,” Colbie said, winking at her.

“Oh, just you wait, you sicko," Kendra said, keeping a tight hold on Celia as the last girl in the five-girl train. “I’ll make you regret it, I swear!”

“Ew!” Celia said.

“No more nude pics, okay?” Colbie said.

“And that goes doubly true for me,” Celia added.

“Geez, will you two stop harping on that?” Kendra said.

They talked and joked some more, but they hadn't walked very far when Colbie noticed Mara's hands shaking from the cold moving air around them.

Colbie stopped and turned around and saw that Mara wore no winter clothes but only had the same bloody clothes she had on her during last night’s dream dive. As such, while hovering over the roofs of the old shops in the abandoned district, she said, "Hey, Mara, are you cold?"

"Yeah."

"You want my jacket?" Colbie said, letting go of Mara’s hand and taking off her jacket and handing it to her. "You don't have to worry. I'm actually wearing two sweaters over my uniform. Here, take it."

"Thank you," Mara said, letting go of Celia’s hand behind her and taking it and running her arms through the sleeves, then blushed at the hint of Colbie’s perfume coming off of it. “Is that perfume I smell?”

"No problem, and yeah, it is," Colbie said and reached for her hand again.

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Mara obliged and took Colbie’s hand, then felt a familiar rush pulsing through her hand and arm. Something about this girl reminded Mara of her sister, Nico, but she couldn't really place it as she followed her guide’s steps across footless paths of wind. Her last vision of making love to Nico when it was really Colbie flashed across her mind, and something in her heart fluttered at the thought of sharing that kind of intimacy with another girl other than Nico. She even remembered something through the storm of her insanity just before she had stabbed Colbie in the stomach, something about Colbie wanting to be a surrogate sister. It was a foolhardy promise but a noble one in light of her sister's death, which she still couldn't accept in her heart. Nothing would ever replace Nico's affections, but Mara wanted to be Colbie's friend.

For the next several minutes, they followed Colbie's airborne path in single file, till they got to the perimeter of the guard walls surrounding the district. Colbie calmed the blasts in their descent to solid ground, till the girls were close enough to alight on the ground, before she dissipated the winds entirely. After all of that was done, Colbie said, "So what do we do about this barrier?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Kendra said, manifesting an enormous anti-tank rifle and setting it on the ground. "We'll just have to blast through it!"

"You're crazy!" Celia said. "If I can't teleport past it, how the hell do you expect to blast through it?"

"Celia, if you’ve got any bright ideas, tell me now," Kendra said. "Otherwise, I'm blasting us out of here! Any ideas?" So she waited, glaring back at her companions, but when they said nothing, she said, "No? Thought so. Now stand back," and she laid herself flat in the prone position behind the big rifle and took aim at the enchanted wall through the crosshairs of her gun scope and then fired off a blast.

A percussive shock shattered the silence surrounding the neighborhood on either side of the wall, and waves of heat sent up a cloud of dirt and debris overtaking the grounds, startling the pedestrians on the other side and causing them to flee for cover and stopping vehicle traffic and causing the occupants therein to come out and flee for cover. And for just a few moments, the enchantment shimmered in a rainbow of colors around the point of impact, but once the cloud dissipated, they were all disappointed.

The wall enchantment stood firm and unbroken.

Kendra got up on all fours and gaped, saying, "You have got to be shitting me! How can that wall withstand a shot like that at point-blank range?"

"Because it's designed to do that, you dummy!" Celia said, shaking the dust and other debris off her clothes. "You can't just go all super-soldier and expect things to work your way. It never works like that!"

"Well, why don't you do something?" Kendra shot back, her giant rifle disappearing as waves of heat began swirling around her. "If you're such a hot shot, then why don't you—"

"I already told you, and you even said it yourself," Celia yelled, clenching her hands into fists. "I can't teleport past that barrier, because they put this place in quarantine! You already saw what happened in the square!"

"Then shut your trap already, geez!" Kendra said, then added under her breath, "Who the hell does she think she is? The Blood Rose Witch? Fucking wannabe!"

Only her words caught the attention of all three girls, with Mara watching Celia glare at her friend and say through gritted teeth, "You better take that back! Take that back right fucking now, or you’ll fucking regret it!"

Kendra blew her off with a wave of her hand, saying, "Make me, bitch."

"Calm down, you two!" Colbie said.

But neither girl seemed to listen to her words, much less calm down, which set something off in Mara as the violence of their words took her back to her last night in the doomed household with Nico when their mother and father had their last fight. In fact, while Kendra manifested a handgun in both hands, each with the hammers pulled back, and while Celia threw up protection seals and was about to place a blood seal on Kendra before she could fire any shots her way, Mara felt the psychic storm of her fury building up like a balloon under pressure about to pop.

And an unwitting Colbie added to it, screaming, "I said, calm down!" And her outburst sent a gale blustering through them, toppling both girls off their feet amidst more flying debris and landing them on their butts.

"What the hell?" Kendra said, glaring at Colbie as she got to her feet. "Are you trying to kill me?"

"You could've said something before doing that," Celia said, picking herself off the ground and shaking more dust off her clothes.

"I did try to say something, but you two weren't listening!" Colbie said. "And if you haven't noticed already, we're still stuck in this place!"

"Then why don't you do something?" Kendra said.

"I am, but I can't even hear myself think when you're both fighting like that! So can you two just cool it for once?" Colbie said. "We still have to get out of here, you know," and she rifled through her pockets. “God, damn it!”

“What is it this time?” Kendra said.

“Did you bring your smartphone?” Colbie said.

“Fuck, I forgot to bring mine with me!” Kendra said.

“I didn’t bring mine either,” Colbie said, then: “Celia, what about you? Did you bring yours with you?”

Celia grimaced, saying, “I forgot.”

“Oh, my God, this sucks!” Kendra wailed.

“Complaining won’t fix it, you know,” Celia said.

"Then you two can fuck off!" Kendra said, walking in the opposite direction. "I'll find my own way out!"

Colbie said, "Kendra, come on! We need your help!"

Yet Kendra just kept walking without saying anything else.

"Forget her, Colbie," Celia said. "God, I've just about had it with her bullshit for one day."

Colbie just stared at Celia, but when she turned towards Mara, who had been standing there watching their bickering through the emotional turmoil of her parents' last fight surging through her mind, she said, “Mara, are you okay?”

Yet as Celia stormed after Kendra and pestered her over their present situation, Colbie went after Celia and Kendra telling them about Mara’s reaction, all of them talking over each other and none of them listening, which soon devolved into another shouting match amongst the three.

Looking back on them, Mara felt the ghost of their friendship dying on the lips of these three hypocrites as tears welled up in her eyes at the same petty bullshit that had warped the bonds of her family into broken shards of pain. The specter of her broken home shadowed her face and clouded her thoughts with awful glimpses of those horrific moments when both sisters had revolvers leveled against their temples under Rancaster’s psychic duress, and Mara raised her hand as if she were holding a gun and pointed it to her head amidst the unwitting arguers. And then Mara manifested the revolver that had threatened her life on Rancaster’s stage with its barrel aimed at her temple, till she had awakened her latent psychokinesis with waves of psychic energy flooding the stage and sweeping through the audience, rousing them into an uproar when they witnessed her pulling the gun away from her head. In the same way, psychic waves of energy flooded through the air around her and swept past the three girls in gusty torrents, kicking up dust and loose debris.

At once the trio of arguers stopped, and Colbie and Celia and Kendra turned around, facing the buffeting psychic currents blustering past them and flowing through them and facing the epicenter of rage that was Mara Cairns holding a revolver and pointing it at the barrier wall. Yet Mara wasn’t looking at the wall: she was looking at Rancaster on the stage and aiming the revolver at his head—

With a pull on the trigger.

And with a gigantic boom her shot cracked the magic barrier in a growing spider’s web of damage stretching for yards along the enchanted stretch of wall, but she wasn't done yet as she switched the gun over to her non-dominant hand and held it at the level of her waist. Then the gun morphed into a sheathed kodachi held at her side as Mara bent her legs and widened her stance like a samurai, grasping onto the handle. Then in one blinding flash-step towards the wall and a swinging follow through of her arm, she cut through the broken enchantment with a huge sonic boom blasting through it, sending concrete and twisted metal and clouds of debris flying through the air across the now-empty street and into the buildings on the other side, toppling the other girls off their feet.

When the dust settled and the smoke cleared, Mara was left standing in the rubble that had once been a whole block of wall along the street, barely holding her kodachi before falling to her knees and collapsing to the ground—

Right in front of Colbie and Celia and Kendra.

As all three girls came running to her side, Mara felt like she was falling down an endless rabbit hole of unconsciousness as her body gave out and her mind became submerged in an endless sleep like that of Sleeping Beauty.

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つづく

Day: Mara and the Dreamers' Club (Black Rose *)

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