Night: Kendra and the Gunslinger Girl (Now)_Days of Blood and Roses: A Magical Girl Thriller

> Yea, by thy hand the Love-god rends apart

> All gathering clouds of Night’s ambiguous art;

> Flings them far down, and sets thine eyes above;

> And simply, as some gage of flower or glove,

> Stakes with a smile the world against thy heart.

> —Dante Gabriel Rossetti,

> The House of Life: A Sonnet-Sequence,

> Sonnet XXVII: “Heart's Compass”

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Since Nico’s narration was a rambling mess, Kendra added her own observations to straighten out the details. With their combined efforts, this was the gist of their adventure:

Nico and Kendra remained several yards from Katherine’s dream mansion, staying behind the hedgerows to keep out of sight of the procession of masqueraders heading up the steps to the patio entrance and into the double doors like a parade of ghosts. Even from yards away, they kept their footfalls light over the turf, with Nico peaking through the foliage at the masqueraders, and Kendra leading the way through the garden path in the adjacent grounds facing a separate patio area of the mansion, where the spice of woodbines and acacias and the musk of larkspurs and jessamines and violets and red and white roses wafted in abundance and stung at their eyes.

Yet through it all, Nico kept feeling the presence of her sister Mara tugging at her heart beats, wondering if she had been here before without knowing why she felt that way. She had no way of knowing that it was Katherine’s doppelgänger, Cooley, who led both sisters through the woods and into this English garden to Cooley’s version of Katherine’s dream mansion. And she had no way of knowing that Katherine’s heart would shudder on the breaking of her mirrors just after midnight, like the rose doomed to shed its petals on the snow of a looming snowstorm,

> And the soul of the rose went into my blood,

> As the music clash'd in the hall;

> And long by the garden lake I stood,

> For I heard your rivulet fall

> From the lake to the meadow and on to the wood,

> Our wood, that is dearer than all;

She had no way of anticipating things, either. She had no way of anticipating a God’s-eye-view of Madison Hearn’s location at a three-way intersection of two hallways. She had no way of anticipating a mysterious ‘bambina’ girl firing her guns at Madison, nor anticipating Celia Hearn zipping in and rescuing Madison just before the bullets tore into her. For all Nico knew, she had no way of knowing or anticipating any of these things, yet the visions kept crowding through her mind, showing her the true state of things and her position therein.

So Nico fainted and collapsed to the ground, while in her mind she fell through the dark infinitude of slow-wave sleep and found herself in a cavernous place that shimmered from the light of an underground pond, wherein Mara and Nico used to explore its depths in their more innocent childhood dreams. In those dreams, Nico was always the brave one, leading Mara by the hand, feeling the warmth of her palm against hers, and wading into the watery depths. In Waking life, Mara was more active and assertive and Nico more passive, but in their dreams, their roles were reversed.

So when Nico stirred and opened her eyes, she found Mara in slow-wave sleep beside her, her hand clasped in Mara’s.

Nico got up and loomed over Mara, who was breathing through her mouth and crying from closed eyelids. Nico’s stomach churned at the sight, wondering what she was thinking and fearing what she was feeling, so she wiped the tears from Mara’s face, leaned over and planted a kiss on her lips.

At that moment, Mara woke up screaming Nico's name, her name echoing and reverberating along the underground, while Nico wrapped her arms around her sister’s waist, but her arms passed through.

“I’m here, Mara,” Nico said, grasping onto her shoulders, but her hands passed through. “Please stop crying, I’m begging you!”

Yet even her words fell on deaf ears, Mara unable to hear her.

Mara cried and sniffled, but when she got up to go, her foot bumped the kodachi. Mara bent down to get it, then collapsed to her knees in front of her sister, her face scrunched in an agony of grief and guilt, as more tears trailed down her cheeks.

And Nico knew that she cried over the death of her beloved sister and that innocent girl who tried to help her, so she said, “Mara, please. I’m here!”

Yet 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 into the dark night of her soul.

Nico got up to follow, but the shimmering light flashed through the cavern, emanating from the pond beside her feet. Nico turned to look and found her mother there in the pond.

“Mom!” Nico said, and waded into the pool to meet her there, but her mother turned to go, and Nico followed. “Mom, wait!”

Yet Nico couldn’t reach her mother the deeper Nico waded through the pond, taking a breath and diving into the pond, reaching out for her mother’s light edging into the depths, edging out of sight like a fading dream, till her lungs burned and her mouth erupted in a flurry of bubbles.

Amid the stir of bubbles, she thought she felt Mara’s arms grasping onto her waist, comforting her the way she had tried to comfort Mara, becoming one with her sister in body and mind. And at the subtle imprint of her sister onto herself, Nico felt the crying wreck of her sister’s self clogging up her nose and running down her clammy face. For in that emotional connection, Mara’s face was Nico’s, and Mara’s tears were Nico’s, yet Mara’s voice was someone else’s, someone different, someone calling out to Nico to—

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“Wake up! Come on, come on, wake up!” Kendra said, grasping Nico’s bloodstained shirt in tight fists and letting tears trail her cheeks and fall over Nico’s face, glimpsing the residual image of a dead Colbie flitting through her thoughts when she closed her eyes. “Come on, come on, come on! Wake up, damn you!”

When Nico opened her eyes, she said, “Are you crying?”

“I’m not!” And Kendra looked away and wiped the tears from her eyes, dissipating the image of Colbie from her mind.

Yet a look of recognition flitted across Nico’s face, so she reached out to wipe away Kendra’s tears.

But Kendra grasped her hand and stood up, then pulled Nico to her feet and said, “It’s fine, okay? I’m fine.” She then wiped away the remaining tears and said, “Come on, let’s go,” and she stalked off towards the side patio of Katherine’s dream mansion.

Yet Nico said, “I found Mara.”

Kendra halted and turned, then doubled back. “You what?”

“I found her,” Nico said, and Nico led Kendra through the garden in the opposite direction of the side patio, where the dining room and kitchen rumbled with the clatter of prepared dishes and the bustle of footfalls and voices for an upcoming celebration somewhere in the building.

“Where?” Kendra said.

Nico stayed silent.

“Where?”

Nico said, “I’m not sure.”

“But you said you found her!”

“I haven’t been to this place before, geez,” Nico said, “but I think I have a way to get to her. I hope.”

“What do you mean by that?” Kendra said, wondering if Nico had any idea where her sister was, after everything Amelia did for them. “Are you telling me . . . Hey, where are you going?” And she followed on Nico’s heels, running into the woods where . . .

> From the meadow your walks have left so sweet

> That whenever a March-wind sighs

> He sets the jewel-print of your feet

> In violets blue as your eyes,

> To the woody hollows in which we meet

> And the valleys of Paradise.

Nico ran through the labyrinth of woods with the speed of the dead, and Kendra struggled to keep up, keeping her just within her sights several paces ahead of her. “Nico, wait up! . . . Nico, come on . . . Give me a break here!”

She kept running and running till her legs burned, slowing down and losing sight of her. Just when she thought she had lost her, Nico yelled, “Over here!”

So Kendra paced the rest of the way, following the source of Nico’s voice back to the lake where Amelia had led them to minutes before, slowing down until she found Nico at the water’s edge.

“Jesus, you run fast,” Kendra said, huffing and puffing, doubling over and grasping her knees to catch her breath. She added, approaching her, “Why are we back here?”

“I have an idea,” Nico said, then turned to face Kendra, grabbing her arms and kissing her.

Kendra pulled away. “You keep kissing me—what the hell?”

“That is my cue,” Nico said.

“Cue for what?”

“For you to do anything you see fit,” she said, “but only after I’ve found my sister. Till then, lay low and sneak into the mansion, if you can. Find out as much as you can.”

Her words put a smile on Kendra’s face. “Really, a black bag job? I never thought you’d be into that.”

“Whatever you wanna call it,” she said, “just keep doing it until my cue, okay?”

“What are you gonna do?”

“Just watch me, and you’ll see,” Nico said, then put her finger to Kendra’s lips and smiled.

Kendra pinked a bit, but nodded her head.

So Nico descended down the embankment of the lake and walked on the water several paces from the water margin, then turned around and waved at Kendra. Then a seal of red roses inscribed her on the water, manifesting psychic waves from the epicenter that was Nico. An enormous red rose materialized on the water below Nico’s feet, opening its luxuriant petals like a platform before closing over her and sinking through the surface into God knows where.

For a time, Kendra lingered by the water’s edge.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said under her breath, and headed back through the woods and into the garden, where acacias and larkspurs and violet and roses wafted their scents in thick layers.

Kendra noticed the various aromas, wondering if these flowers were trying to tell her something, as though the garden itself were reaching out to her, wherein . . .

> The slender acacia would not shake

> One long milk-bloom on the tree;

> The white lake-blossom fell into the lake,

> As the pimpernel dozed on the lea;

> But the rose was awake all night for your sake,

> Knowing your promise to me;

> The lilies and roses were all awake,

> They sigh'd for the dawn and thee.

Then Kendra covered her eyes, blinking back tears as the pungent waft of many flowers stung her eyes, wiping her tears away. She opened her eyes. Of all the flowers in the garden, the lilies and roses seemed to glow beneath the moonlight overhead, dotting a patchwork path in the garden hedgerows ahead. She blinked and opened her eyes, then followed along the hedgerows wherever she saw lilies and roses, thinking of roses and lilies.

For she remembered the funeral of her father, her real father who had died on the line of duty when she was fourteen years old. She remembered following the procession of officers marching down Helgon Rail Avenue from the Larking Metropolitan Police Department through Woodley downtown towards Arcadia Park and into Arcadia Cemetery, where Officer Roy Dolan eulogized his fallen partner and comrade in arms.

She remembered her own eulogy for her father, saying words she could no longer remember, crying tears she could no longer cry if she could help it, and ending her words with a stanza of Alfred Tennyson’s Maud. In it, she combined the memory of her father with the memory of her mother, who had died when she was but a toddler.

She had no memory of her mother, yet her father’s ghost still swam before her eyes, leading her down the garden path towards a clearing in the hedgerows.

In that clearing stood a man in a white suit, leaning against a cane planted by his side.

“Who are you?” Kendra said.

“A fellow sufferer, like yourself,” he said, “and a great admirer of all things beautiful and transient in this world.

> “‘Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls,

> Come hither, the dances are done,

> In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls,

> Queen lily and rose in one;

> Shine out, little head, sunning over with curls,

> To the flowers, and be their sun.’”

Kendra manifested a semiautomatic pistol in her hand and aimed it at her visitor and said, “Who are you, really?”

“A scion of a noble bloodline,” the man said, raising both hands and showing his palms, leaving his cane standing up from the ground. “I didn’t come here for a fight, I assure you.”

But Kendra wasn’t buying it. “I’ll say it again,” she said, pulling back the slide and aiming with both hands, her finger on the trigger. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Assume nothing, darling,” he said, “for everyone is under opposition control,” and he snapped his fingers.

A psychic force flooded through Kendra’s body, taking control of her arms and hands, edging the barrel of the gun away from the man and pushing it closer to Kendra’s face. She gritted her teeth and strained her arms, struggling to keep her wrists and arms straight, yet the force was too strong for her. Her arms folded, the gun edging closer to her face, till the barrel was pointed bare inches from her chin, and she was grimacing and squeezing her eyes shut against the inevitable, and her mind was racing through countless images of her friends and her father and her mother and Roy Dolan and Randal Larking—

When the image of Nico flashed through her mind, Kendra felt her presence flowing through her body and lingering on her lips. Kendra’s strength renewed, and she managed to push the tip of the barrel away from her chin, away from her face.

“What’s this?” the man said.

With Nico’s help, Kendra regained control of herself and wrestled her gun from Rancaster’s control, holding it low to the ground and repositioning her grip in both hands, winded but undeterred. When she regained her breath, she trained her eyes on her foe and said under her breath, “Nico, is that you?”

Yeah, Nico said in Kendra’s mind. Geez, that was close! Try not to get yourself killed, okay? I have my hands full as it is.

“Easy for you to say,” Kendra said, backing away from her foe, but still keeping her eyes on him. “Who the fuck is this guy?”

Aaron Rancaster, Nico said. He did the same thing to me and Mara, the bastard. I know I’m asking a lot from you, but kick his ass for me, okay?

“I’ll try,” Kendra said.

“Who are you talking to?” Rancaster said, and approached Kendra as she backed away into the garden.

“That’s none of your business.”

“Let me guess. Was it Nico Cairns?” Rancaster said, stretching his hand before himself and manifesting his cane, grasping the handle and holding his stance before Kendra. “Am I right? Am I right? Am I fucking right?”

Kendra cursed and kept backing up along the garden lawn, but halted when she noticed his stance mirroring her own. He was waiting for her to make the first move.

“Any day now, darling,” he said.

Kendra cursed again and tried to steady her nerves and breathing, planting her stance on the balls of her feet, and praying that her footwork wasn’t too rusty. She took a deep breath and breathed out, counting towards the third breath.

One . . . Two . . .

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Too many visions flooded through Nico’s mind for her to keep up. She had not anticipated being in this very hallway of mirrors, standing where Madison had been moments before in her vision. And whatever she was expecting next, she had not anticipated Rancaster being in two places at once: in the garden with Kendra outside, and in the hallway accompanying this ‘bambina’ girl when he rounded the corner and spotted Nico and grinned.

“Ah, you again,” he said. “Ready for another round, darling?”

“Fuck you,” Nico said, and ran into the intersecting hallway and into an invisible barrier, knocking herself on her butt. She picked herself up and wiped the blood from her nose, then raised her hand to the glass barrier. “God, damn it, not again.”

Then she felt her feet levitating from the ground, and an invisible force yanked her back down the hallway and around the corner and down to where Rancaster and the ‘bambina’ girl were standing. She was still struggling and cursing at Rancaster, so she got slammed against the wall, and her head smacked against it, knocking her out. She stayed there for a time and thought she saw Mara Cairns asleep on a four-poster bed in some doorless boudoir, furnished with a chair, a cabinet, a writing desk, and a vanity table with a special body-length mirror.

At first, she wanted to speak her name, but no words came out of her mouth. She tried a few more times to speak her name, but got the same result. So she approached her bedside, instead, carrying a black rose in her hand, and noticed her sister holding a red rose over her chest. She leaned over her bedside and loomed over her face, tears welling up in her eyes at the sight of her and falling on her cheek and lips. So in lieu of words, she expressed her presence through her actions by planting a kiss on her sister’s lips, a sister to a sister, a rose to a rose, two lips to two lips whereon . . .

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> There has fallen a splendid tear

> From the passion-flower at the gate.

> She is coming, my dove, my dear;

> She is coming, my life, my fate; . . .

It was a kiss that would stir Nico’s sister out of the slow-wave sleep of unconsciousness and awaken her in a little time when Celia and her sisters and Nico’s double would gather their wits in the boudoir, but Nico was unaware of that at the moment. All she wanted to do was place her black rose next in her sister’s hand, yet before she did that, a snap of fingers brought her back down the unconscious tunnel of slow-wave sleep and back into the hallway with Rancaster and that ‘bambina’ girl.

“Ah, you’re awake,” Rancaster said. “You know, as annoying as you’ve been since last night, I must thank you for giving me and my bambina here a good showing,” and he indicated a replay of her actions in the boudoir with her sleeping sister. He then turned to the ‘bambina’ and added, “You should learn from your peers, bambina, for they can show you things you cannot glean from reading books.”

At which, the ‘bambina’ averted her gaze and gritted her teeth and said, “What’s the meaning of this, Father?”

“It means,” he said, “that I’ll find her for you.”

“You can’t!” Nico yelled.

“Oh, but I can, darling. And I will, and when I do,” he added, turning back to the ‘bambina,’ “you will have your chance to shine in your debut. I promise you that! But before that happens,” and here he snapped his fingers, and a table thudded onto the carpet, and two semiautomatic pistols plopped onto the table, “let’s continue where we left off, shall we?”

Nico looked at the table and saw the same guns that the ‘bambina’ had used in the square at the old Rancaster district, and it was déjà vu all over again for her.

“Don’t fret, darling,” Rancaster said. “It won’t be as one-sided as last time. I’m a fair man, and a small alteration will prove it. These guns hold eleven rounds, ten in the magazine and one in the barrel, eleven bullets in each.”

The invisible hold let go of Nico, and she stumbled back to her feet, doubled over with hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath.

When she regained herself, Rancaster beckoned Nico to the table, which she did, and said, “While I’m away finding Mara Cairns, you two will play a little game of cat and mouse. Pick up your guns, both of you.”

The ‘bambina’ picked hers up, but Nico wavered.

“Come on, darling,” he said, “pick it up.”

Nico hesitated, then picked it up and felt the heft of it in her hand and said, “How do I use it?”

“Oh, it’s not rocket science, darling. It’s double-action, so it reloads automatically every time it fires a round. All you have to do is aim and pull the trigger,” he said. “But you only have eleven rounds, so I wouldn’t go willy-nilly with it if I were you. Now,” he added, checking his watch, “the rules of cat and mouse are simple. The cat’s ‘bambina,’ and the mouse is you, darling. As such, you have a thirty-second head start, starting . . . now.”

But Nico just stood there, incredulous.

“I mean, now, darling,” he said. “Time’s a-ticking!”

Nico cursed and bolted down the hallway, rounded the corner and bolted down another hallway, passing an array of mirrors and doors on both sides, running and running, thinking of Rancaster being in two places at once, thinking of the ‘bambina’ girl’s complicity, thinking of Mara in the bedroom, and thinking of Kendra . . .

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In the garden, Kendra didn’t so much as breathe when the image of her friend flashed through her mind again, making her say under her breath, “Nico!”

And before she knew it, before she had time to blink, Rancaster rushed at her in a blur, drawing his blade and catching her gun in mid-draw, then followed through on his arc and sent Kendra crashing into the side of a hedgerow, snapping branches in a flutter of leaves.

For a moment, Kendra tried to focus the blurry shapes around her into something resembling eyesight, then looked at her opponent standing there in the middle of the lawn, his sword fully drawn and gripped in an expert grip. She wasn’t even able to pull the trigger, and that’s when she realized it.

“You hesitated, darling,” Rancaster said, “just like your father.”

Kendra cursed and gritted her teeth and glared at the bastard and picked herself from the tangle of twigs and leaves, revealing a tear along a seam on her back that showed part of her bra strap. She cursed yet again and said, “How do you know about him?”

“I was there at his funeral,” he said, commanding the center of the garden like a knight of the field, “and I heard your eulogy for him. It was an interesting selection you chose, the lover’s soliloquy from Tennyson’s Maud. How romantic!

> “The red rose cries, ‘She is near, she is near;’

> And the white rose weeps, ‘She is late;’

> The larkspur listens, ‘I hear, I hear;’

> And the lily whispers, ‘I wait.’”

And on that last word, Kendra lost her hesitation, raising her gun and firing off three rounds, yet the bullets passed through Rancaster as if he were a ghost. “What the fuck?”

“Having fun, darling?” he said, grinning a shit-eating grin. “You’re more trigger-happy than your father.”

“Don’t mention him, fuck face,” she yelled, and fired off more rounds till she emptied her magazine clip, but none of the bullets had any effect on him beyond the mere shimmering of his form under the moonlit sky.

So he repeated the same attack, rushing at her and catching her gun on his blade in mid-strike and parrying it from Kendra’s grasp, then brogue-kicked her through the hedgerow and into another part of the garden, where she curled up on her side and spat up blood and gritted her teeth against the pain in her chest. She took the brunt of it against her ribcage like the shock of a defibrillator or the blockage of a heart attack stopping up her coronary artery, and she grimaced against the spasm, riding it out in a squint of tears till she could breathe again.

Yet the respite was short-lived.

For Rancaster was once again shadowing her, and when Kendra looked up at her assailant, she noticed the blade of his sword-cane on her neck, denting the skin on its edge.

“You never got a chance to see your father’s face when they buried him, did you?” he said. “There’s a reason why his funeral was a closed-casket one. Look upon me and know the face of your father’s judge and executioner, for I took his head clean off the moment he hesitated to take his first shot.”

And at his words, a trance of something like recognition or epiphany misted over her face, as though she were seeing something invisible to waking eyes, someone she recognized but just couldn’t hold her image in detail in another part of the garden. Then a cut seared at the base of her neck, and she winced and lost the vision and saw the face of her father’s murderer looming over her.

She raised her hand to her neck and saw blood on her fingers.

“That cut is your only warning,” Rancaster said, then backed away and sheathed his blade. “All you have to do is get out of here, and I’ll forget this ever happened, and you’ll have nothing to fear from me.”

“Are you sure?” Kendra said, picking herself up in a grimace of pain and keeping her eyes on her father’s killer. “How do I know you won’t kill me when I turn my back?”

“I’m a man of my word, darling,” he said. “I say what I mean, and I mean what I say. Now hop to it—before I change my mind.”

She squeezed her hand into a fist, but she had no choice in the matter. Her chest ached from the impact of his foot against her ribs, leaving her winded and wheezing, and she wouldn’t be surprised if she woke up with bruised ribs in the morning, but she promised herself that this was not a surrender—it was only a tactical retreat.

So she swallowed her pride and retreated back through the garden pathway she took with Nico, when she felt the tingle of human touch over her hand (“What the . . . ?”). Ere Kendra pulled away or said anything else, she was pulled along into the wooded labyrinth and forced to keep up with the phantom speed of an invisible apparition, till she found a clearing up ahead and slowed down toward the water’s edge.

It was the same lake where Nico had taken her to.

“Nico, is that you?” Kendra said.

Indeed, once Kendra regained full control of herself, she got a closer look. This apparition had Nico’s face and her bloody clothes, but Kendra noticed a stern aspect in her eyes that differed from Nico’s.

“No,” she said. “I’m Mara Cairns.”

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“Wait,” Mara said, “I don’t remember that.”

“Really, are you sure?” Kendra said, looking at her eyes. “What do you remember, then?”

“I remember . . .” She paused for a spell, wracking her mind for any details beyond her encounter with Rancaster on the stage, the death of her sister and her parents, her second encounter with him in the old square at the old Rancaster district, her awakening in the underground cavern and her subsequent encounter with Colbie and Celia and Kendra back in the square during the day, and came up with nothing between that and her awakening in Katherine’s private boudoir. She avoided Nico’s gaze, as well, and shook her head, saying, “I’m sorry. I just don’t remember.”

Nico and Kendra traded glances.

“What did she do?” Colbie said.

“She saved our asses,” Kendra said, then turned back to Mara: “And I’m not trying to blow smoke up your ass, either. If it wasn’t for you, Nico and I wouldn’t be here.”

“Really?” Mara said, almost incredulous at Kendra’s words. “How did I do that?”

“I’m not sure how you did it,” Nico said, “but you really pulled through for us.”

“Even if I don’t remember?”

Again Nico and Kendra traded looks, and both girls remained silent for a spell. Nico thought of her sister’s question and said, “How about we do this: Kendra and I will tell everything we know between us, and hopefully you’ll remember something, because we’re both puzzled at the moment.”

“About what?” Nico said. “About Rancaster?”

“No,” Nico said. “It’s something else. This whole time, I’ve been having all of these visions out of nowhere, as if I were getting them from a different source—as if I were at two places at once . . . as if I were . . . in someone else’s thoughts.”

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By the time Nico leaned against the wall, just around the corner of some disparate hallway in a labyrinth of hallways, she was winded and her legs were burning from the mad sprint. She had no idea where she was in this maddening labyrinth, for she had turned this way and that way, trying to lose her pursuer and getting lost herself. Now here she was, a proverbial sitting duck in a pond, peering into the reflection of one of the mirrors overlooking the adjacent hall beyond the corner, praying that the ‘bambina’ girl won’t find her anytime soon.

She took a look at her gun, clueless of its make and model, though she remembered Rancaster saying that there were ten rounds in the magazine and one already chambered in the barrel.

The heft of it felt awkward in her hands, and she dared not touch the trigger for fear of setting it off somehow and revealing her location to her pursuer, that gun-toting ‘bambina’ girl, the so-called ‘cat’ in this sick game of hide and seek (and kill). Her parents were hardcore pacifists, and despite their differences, they never allowed either of their daughters to even touch a gun, much less owned one. Hence, Nico had no experience at target practice, no clue how to hold it or shoot it without injuring herself, and no clue how she was going to overcome her handicap against someone who knew how to use it.

Then a shot rang out and shattered the mirror she’d been looking through, and the game was afoot.

Nico cursed and sprinted down the hallway, ignoring the burning in her legs and the aching in her bare feet, and turned the corner just as a round grazed off a chunk of wall close to her head. She flew down the hall past several mirrors and doors, running and running and running, but the ‘bambina’ girl rounded the corner just in time, aimed and fired three shots. One of them grazed Nico’s waist whereon she felt the bullet taking off skin, and now she was gritting her teeth and grimacing against the burn of it raising a welt and staining her shirt with new blood.

By now, the burning in her legs slowed her down as she rounded the corner into another hallway, so she headed halfway between one corner and the next where another hallway intersected. She then wheeled on her feet and raised her gun and aimed it at the corner, waiting for her pursuer to come around.

But the ‘bambina’ girl never came.

Nico still waited and waited, breathing raspy breaths, expecting her pursuer to come down with her gun blazing, but the ‘bambina’ girl was a no-show. She lowered her gun and tried to steady her breathing, leaning her back against the wall and letting the muscles in her legs rest. She noticed the blood stain on her shirt and put her hand to her side, feeling the burn of it—

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That made Kendra grimace at the same time, doubling her over and squinting against the pain, pressing her hand against her side and noticing the blood spreading on her side and what felt like a welt growing there.

“What’s going on?” Mara said.

But Kendra said nothing as she struggled to stay on her feet, breathing hard and feeling the burn in her legs, then noticed a gun manifesting in her hand without her willing it, as a vision of Nico flashed her mind.

“Nico’s in trouble,” Kendra said, wincing in pain and catching another glimpse of Nico.

“Where?”

“I . . .,” she said, trying to make sense of the sensory input invading her body and her mind’s eye, “I’m not sure.”

“Just try, okay?” Mara said. “Take a guess.”

“She’s in a hallway, but I’m not sure where.”

Mara grabbed Kendra’s hand and pulled Kendra towards the water’s edge (“Hey, where are we going?”) and said to Kendra, “To where my sister’s at.”

“But we’re heading to the lake, not—”

“Don’t worry. You’ll see soon enough,” Mara said, leading Kendra down the embankment towards the water’s edge and stepping onto the rippling mirror sheen of the lake, but Kendra pulled back. Mara turned and said, “It’s okay, trust me. Nico and I used to do this a lot when we were little.”

“Really?” Kendra said.

“Yeah,” Mara said, and with her first tenuous steps onto the watery surface, she walked with Mara several paces from the water margin, when both girls stopped in their tracks on spotting Rancaster standing on the water several yards from them. “Christ, you can’t be serious!”

“Oh, but I am, darling,” Rancaster said.

Both girls retreated the way they came, but they ran head-long into a glass barrier just before reaching the embankment, knocking themselves onto their butts and raising wakes to flow and ebb against the barrier.

“And you found Mara Cairns for me, no less,” Rancaster added. “I owe you, darling. I really do!”

“You don’t owe me squat, fuck face,” Kendra said, getting up to her feet, and raised her gun and fired three shot, but none of the bullets had any effect on him beyond the mere shimmering of his form under the moonlit sky. “Damn it! Why can’t I shoot this guy?”

“It’s the moon,” Mara said, getting up herself and keeping her eyes on the man before her and edging her way along Rancaster’s glass barrier, bidding Kendra to follow her lead. Yet when Kendra looked up, she said, “Not in the sky. Look at it in the water.”

And Kendra did, and saw a blood moon reflecting its twin in the sky, and a queasy feeling lurched in her stomach. Sure, Kendra’s heard of the blood moon as a harbinger of the apocalypse, but to see one reflected on the watery sheen in some twisted dream felt too close to home, too close to her father. So she raised her gun and fired off three more shots, but again they had no effect on the man.

“Don’t waste your bullets!” Mara said, and she stretched out her hand and manifested her Kodachi there, while a swirl of psychic waves collected at her feet and churned the water into ripples. “Look at the reflection!”

Kendra looked, but saw no connection and said, “What am I looking for? I don’t see any—”

She stopped. At that moment, the thought of Dracula from Bram Stoker’s novel flashed through Kendra’s mind, and the skin of her neck where Rancaster had cut her began to burn and itch.

“Now do you see?” Mara said.

In response, Kendra aimed her gun at the blood moon on the mirror sheen of the water. If she couldn’t kill Rancaster’s reflection, she’d do the next best thing, and so she fired and emptied the semiautomatic of bullets, forming cracks on the image of the blood moon and cracks on Rancaster’s form as he rushed at both girls in a blur, drawing his blade like a reaper’s scythe. His blade broke in mid-swing, sending three sizable chunks of it scattering against the glass barrier surrounding the lake and sinking below the surface.

Mara charged Rancaster’s double and rammed the blade of her kodachi through his chest, staining the jacket of his white suit in his blood, and said, “Any day now?”

So Kendra manifested a twelve gauge shotgun in her hands, aimed and fired again, sending a blast of water through the air in a spray of mist.

More blood began pouring from the wound in his chest, but he never screamed in agony, but only laughed and said, “The living kill the living, but you cannot kill the dead!”

That’s when Mara’s stance began to falter, and she lost her grip on her kodachi. She then looked down on herself and saw Rancaster’s blade—what was left of it—embedded in her own chest, dripping blood and dissolving in the water.

“Mara!” Kendra screamed.

Mara’s eyes clouded over, and she fell, motionless, into the water and sank below the surface towards the depths of slow-wave sleep, towards the embrace of her dead mother, where she would linger for a time before waking up in Katherine’s boudoir with the Hearn sisters . . .

“You bastard!” Kendra screamed, firing round after round after round at the blood moon on the reflection, sending more watery sprays into the air, till a psychic force flooded her body and kept her from pulling the trigger. “Fuck you!”

“Nah-ah-ah,” Rancaster’s reflection said. “Bad manners for a woman like you.”

But Kendra fought on, gritting her teeth and grimacing against the strength of the man’s psychic control, digging deep for some hidden reserves beyond those of her declining strength.

“The spirit is willing,” he said, “but the flesh is weak,” and he re-sheathed his blade and took up the same stance he held when Kendra encountered him in the garden. “I gave you my word, darling, and you heeded it not just like your father. Like father, like daughter: one blade, and two severed heads. Honestly, I pity your mother for what I’m about to do.”

As Rancaster drew out his blade with a metallic swoosh, like that of a chef’s knife swiped across a wet stone, ready to cleave Kendra’s head from her shoulders, Kendra fought through Rancaster’s psychic grip and struggled to pull the trigger, to lodge one more round though the bull’s eye of the blood moon reflected in the water, thinking of her mother and father, thinking of Colbie and Celia, thinking of Mara and—

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Nico’s rest was short-lived, for the ‘bambina’ girl had doubled back and stalked the long way around from hallway to hallway and appeared around the next corner before Nico could see her, aimed her gun and fired off three shots.

And each shot passed through the back of Nico’s thigh just above her knee, and she collapsed to the ground as a massive wave of pain burned through her leg like a forest fire, and she bled out a pool of it on the carpet.

Nico caught her pursuer in the corner of her eye, grimacing against the pain, and raised her gun (“Fuck you, you bitch!”) and fired, but nothing happened. She pulled the trigger again, but still nothing happened. “God, damn it, it’s not working!”

At this, the ‘bambina’ girl lowered her aim and strolled up to her and kicked the gun out of Nico’s hand, then picked it up and checked it. “You forgot to switch the thumb safety off,” she said and demonstrated the action in front of Nico, disengaging the lever with her thumb. She then re-engaged the safety and pulled back the hammer and pushed back the slide against her palm and gripped the trigger to reset it with a click. “You don’t know how to use a gun, do you?”

Nico looked away from her but said nothing, pushing herself up against the wall and leaning against it, putting her hand to her bleeding leg and feeling the residual burn of it against her palm, wincing and squinting back tears.

“Have you ever held a gun before?” she said.

Nico shook her head, but then looked at her and said, “Why are you doing this?”

“I’m just waiting for my debut,” the ‘bambina’ said.

“Why are you doing this?” Nico said.

The ‘bambina’ paused for a moment, then said, “I never meant for you to get involved in this. What happened to you and your family was Rancaster’s idea, not mine,” and she aimed her gun at Nico at point-blank range. “Any last words.”

But Nico never broke eye contact and said, “My name is Nico Cairns. What’s your name?”

The ‘bambina’ paused, seeming to linger on her question in a hesitating stretch of continuous moments, and said, “My name is Auna Wenger. Goodbye, Nico Cairns.”

Yet even as she pulled the trigger, a shotgun blast exploded from the mirror above Nico’s head in a showering shards, peppering the opposite wall with buckshot and rattling nearby mirrors until they (too) exploded in their casings and scattered more shards on the floor, causing a chain-reaction of exploding mirrors in all the hallways. For almost a full minute, the floorboards and the wall panels rattled, and the doors shook in their door jambs, as though the entire mansion were shaking to its foundations, when a strong waft of propellant and gunpowder fluttered into the hall.

And situated in the gray haze stood none other than Kendra, who caught sight of Auna Wenger and said, “Wait, who are you?”

Kendra’s appearance had taken Auna by surprise, who cursed at the sight of the shotgun and fled back down the hallway before she had a chance to use it on her.

“Hey, get back here!” Kendra said, and was about to run.

When Nico said, “Let her go, Kendra.”

Kendra turned back and saw the mess that was Nico nursing her leg. “Oh my God, what happened?” And she crouched down and assessed the bleeding on her leg, then tore off several strips from the hem of her Mandarin dress, dwindling it down to the top of her thighs, and wrapped them around the wounds in Nico’s leg, who grimaced against the burning pressure. “Did that chick do this to you?”

Nico nodded. “Her name’s Auna Wenger.”

Kendra looked at her. “She told you her name?”

“Just before she was about to kill me.”

“Wait,” Kendra said. “Aren’t you already dead?”

“It still hurts, damn it!”

Kendra acknowledged her outburst with a grimace, then grabbed Nico’s hand and placed her arm over her shoulder, so Nico could walk without putting any pressure on her wounded leg. All the while, Kendra kept her eyes trained for any sign of Auna Wenger or Rancaster around every corner they turned and every hallway and door they passed. For a time, they walked on like this, their footfalls crackling over scattered shards of mirror, but it was slow going, and Nico was getting slower and slower by the minute.

“Hey,” Kendra said, “you want me to carry you?”

When Nico said yes, Kendra eased her to the ground and told her to lie down. She then held up Nico’s uninjured leg and did a ranger roll, hooking Nico’s leg over Kendra’s shoulder and lifting her into a fireman’s carry and grasping Nico’s hand to make sure she won’t fall from her shoulders.

She then took off at a brisk pace and said, “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. I’ll watch my twelve o’clock and nine o’clock, and you’ll watch my six o’clock and three o’clock.”

Nico deadpanned, wondering if Kendra was a military brat, and said, “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

So Kendra said, slower this time, “I’ll look out ahead of us and to my left side, while you watch out behind me and to my right side. Is that clear enough?”

“Yeah,” she said, then: “Kendra, are you a military buff?”

“Not really,” she said, “but both of my fathers were cops, so maybe a little.”

“I see.”

“Why do you ask?” Kendra said.

“I don’t know,” Nico said, and was about to say more but let it slide after thinking about it.

“You think it’s strange, don’t you?” Kendra said.

“No,” Nico said, and paused another moment, then: “I mean, maybe, but that’s just because I’ve never met anyone who knew how to use guns. It’s kind of scary, but also kind of . . . appealing.”

“What?” Kendra stopped in her tracks and looked at Nico over her shoulder. “Are you into girls or something?”

“Um,” Nico said, blushing but also knowing that it was okay, because it was Kendra. “Maybe a little.”

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“Wait a minute,” Mara said, and looked from Kendra to Nico, then from Nico to Kendra. “It’s coming back to me, but I’m . . . I’m not one-hundred percent sure, but I think I know why everything’s so weird with your visions.”

At this, Kendra and Nico traded looks.

“I mean,” Mara continued, “I might have an idea what happened.”

“Did you see something?” Colbie said.

“Yeah,” Mara said.

“What did you see?” Kendra said.

“It’s kind of hard to explain,” she said.

“Just tell us what you can,” Nico said, “and we’ll try to figure it out.”

Mara gazed at her sister, Nico, wondering how she'd react to the information she was about to divulge. So she took a deep breath and exhaled, then said, “Okay, I know this is weird, so bear with me, okay? It’s a little hazy, but when I woke up in Katherine’s private bedroom, I . . .”

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つづく

Night: Kendra and the Gunslinger Girl (Now)

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