The stench seemed to grow exponentially with every step they took down the stairway.

Tasìa wondered what they should expect. She thought of the girl who escaped from the trunk of the Alfa Romeo HybrClydis. It also occurred to her that besides Don and Sal, they had seen no one else from the household.

"Do you think they took the rest of the Javierra family and their crew down here and slaughtered them?"

Tasìa glanced up at Annebél. Annebél flinched at this question. With her head tilted to assess her friend, Tasìa asked.

"What's wrong?"

"I know Frenzy ratfinked you big time, and you have every reason to want your pound of flesh out of his big fat sorry ass, but I still hope he is okay."

Tasìa had been too busy with more important matters to give Freddie's actions any thought. At some point, she would have to exact a punishment.

"You know as well as I do that it can't be allowed to stand."

"What do you plan to do?"

They reached the bottom of the steps.

"Haven't given it any thought. What does Ferenzi value?"

Annebél's neck jerked tense before she answered.

"He values the clout being the biggest fixer in the Quadra affords him above all else."

"With the fall of the House of Javierra that now means nada, so what else does he have to lose? It's gotta be big enough to persuade all the other bounty hunters to leave me the fuck alone."

Annebél shook her head.

"That sounds like quite a tall order. I don't know what else could fit the bill."

An idea occurred to her, but Annebél was not going to like it. Take the bad boy down, but alive. Then force him to live in a small enclosed space that he cannot escape from. Like a trailer home with all possible exits sealed and reinforced. Set up a portapotty and a year's worth of Ramen noodles. No variety packs, just plain soy to make his bitch tits grow and grow. Have a closed circuit camera feed that is beamed out to the world at large to record the bastard going slowly mad for all to see.

Bounty hunters would stay far away.

No, Annebél was not going to like it. Tasìa could barely keep a lid on her evil designs. Fortunately, the brawler wasn't currently dwelling on their conversation but scanning the enclosed space surrounding them instead.

"So. What are we looking at here," Annebél questioned.

They surveyed the basement. The brightness of the light around them was set to very low and originated from the spare use of LED strips along the ceiling rim.

Another light source came from an eighteen-foot-long fish tank. Highly detailed miniatures comprised a remake of an historical wreckage sat on the sandy bottom. An English privateer vessel and two Spanish galleons strewed in memoriam.

Several species of small fish floated through the current that stirred between the three vessels. Even larger fish, beautiful sharks striped in tiger-lilly motif floated near the top of the tank under a line of aquamarine florescents.

There was an epitaph inscribed on an embossed wooden board.

To dust the land lover goes, from the mud a sailor's legend arises.

Tasìa slapped Annebél on the back.

"Isn't that the motto of our national navy?"

They both had an uproarious laugh.

"Where the fuck does a Javierra get sailing experience from?"

Tasìa twitched her nose in wonder of how they should proceed. The dim lighting gave anyone or anything lying in wait an advantage against them.

"You got your PA," Tasìa asked her.

"I don't carry one."

Tasìa brought out Val's PA.

"Let's see if I can do a trace with this thing."

She flipped to a settings menu and found the device sync-up features. Tasìa skimmed through the instructions for the apps usage, and then she sat up a diagnostic run.

As if responding to her scry, a growl came low and mean from a compartmented area in the very back of the basement.

Annebél swung her rifle back in position, and nodded to Tasìa.

"Go ahead, keep doing what you are doing, I'll cover for you."

The basement light controls came up in the indexed header options menu first. No preventive measures were in place to keep her from taking control of the system. Any electronic security used by the Javierra's previously lay wide open to her now.

She cut all the lights on.

Two bullmastiffs began their charge. Annebél dropped to her knee, shouldered her gun, calmly aimed, and took the first dog down with one shot to the head. The last bullmastiff gathered speed in a momentous charge forward.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

It took two shots to the chest, and, even still, Annebél was forced to swing the rifle up out of the way so she had an opening to kick the beast in the side of the neck to drop it down with a hard bone breaking crunch.

The dog did not get back up.

As she eased her combat stance and she began to breathe easily, once more, Annebél shook her head.

"Damn. I really don't enjoy killing dogs. Makes me feel like a real asshole every time."

"Me neither. But without caretakers, those two bullmastiffs would have starved to death. At least, you were quick and merciful. Well, to the extent that a roundhouse kick to the esophagus could ever be considered merciful. Starvation is the absolute worst way to go."

Annebèl squeezed Tasìa on the shoulder.

"Hey, thanks for the pep talk. That's the right way to look at it."

The brawler suddenly jerked her head to their left. From an enclosed room, they both heard a reedy-sounding moan, and then a thud. The thud repeated.

Annebél fed the magazine of her carbine and stood to the side of the door.

Tasìa put a hand up to emphasize caution.

"Hold on, just a second. I don't want someone getting the drop on us. Cover me."

Tasìa gave the carbine Annebél carried a good glance. 'Johnni Bush' was engraved on the side. The words resembled a cattle brand.

"Where did you get that?"

"I used to help Raúl and Jún-Jún clear out the bush and vermin at El Hoya. They gave it to me for my birthday last year.

"Nice," Tasìa commented. A little slow in its action and underpowered for her taste in rifles, but it played steady and solid in Annebél's arms.

The reedy voice turned into a howl for several seconds.

"All right, let's figure out who or what is inside that room."

The diagnostic was complete. Underneath the indexed links for 'light controls' came 'security point access', 'cameras', 'utility controls', and last, 'special operations.'

Tasìa punched up the camera list and flipped through it. Something caught her curiosity.

She showed Annebél the screen and asked, "If the kennels are over here, what were the bullmastiffs doing in there?"

The desperate-sounding howl occurred once more.

All right. All right. One thing at a time.

She found the security camera for the interior of the room in front of them.

"What the ...," Tasìa squealed a curious gasp before sharing what she saw, "is that a mummy?"

"Shit," Annebél responded, her tone squeamish. "Looks like one of those corpses the glowing fungi reanimate in the Summer swamps."

Tasìa fiddled with the app setup. She found the list for portal access and the number that matched the camera for the room. She punched the number in and unlocked the door.

They rushed to the entranceway. Inside wasn't a corpse but a man as emaciated as the leathery body found in the Alps preserved in ice. He struggled to keep upright as he splashed in a bluish liquid that drained out in slow pour down on the floor.

With one hand he gripped the sliding door from an elongated glass and metal capsule; evidently, he had floated within it before the current emergency tasked him.

A tube fed into his mouth and two smaller ones covered his nose. All three were clipped onto a red plastic mask that covered all of his face below the eyes.

Another set of tubes with six needled catheters fastened in his skin. Two in his chest, two in his back, and two more in his abdominal glutes. Above the capsule, winding hoses joined into a clamped assembly extended into the ceiling above.

Annebél turned to Tasìa

"Was he in some sort of cocaine-fueled suspended animation that kept him alive? Well, that is just ... Bizarre."

The mummy stared at them with pleading eyes. Gurgling sounds spewed out of his mouth. The words he tried to form were unintelligible.

Annebél grunted menacingly before she spoke.

"It appears that we doomed the poor bastard by destroying that dragon heart. It was an abomination, and," she pointed at the living mummy with the butt of her rifle, "- so is he."

Annebél quivered and she gripped her carbine. At some point, Tasìa needed to ask her what that anger was all about.

There must have been something unholy she had seen or experienced in her past.

Tasìa spoke calmly to reason with her.

"Annebél, we are going to have to call Emergency Medical Services. We can't just leave him like this. It may take him a few hours of relentless suffering before he dies. It will be anything but merciful."

Annebél grimaced with her lips pulled in with sucked in cheeks. It was her version of an ugly face. The only one she had in her arsenal.

"You are right, mon petite démon. But I have a feeling. He is a Javierra, he is connected to that unholy altar upstairs, and to that dragon heart. Never is a dragon heart a good sign. We save him, we bring El Diablo himself back into this world. But that is just a feeling on my part. I can't justify executing a man based upon my gut feeling alone."

As Annebél spoke, they helped to get the man out of the capsule, free him of the catheters, and lay him onto the floor.

He began to shudder and shake violently. Tasìa held his head to prevent it from knocking against the floor.

After his shaking fit subsided, Tasìa found a small fire extinguisher to prop his head up. His breathing became steady.

Annebél released her grip on the man's chest before she stood back up with the carbine back in place.

"You make the call. I'm going to check out what is causing that stench before it makes me vomit."

Tasìa decided to fill out an automated service call form instead of speaking to someone on the emergency line. She filled in the GPS coordinates for the living mummy. The accuracy was down to the yard.

She plugged in an estimation for Sal's coordinate. The form asked her to submit a route for the house. Tasìa went back to the electronic systems control for the entire house, and she unlocked all the portals.

Using a map of the house that came with the diagnostic layout, she provided in the form a route to both injured parties.

She thought about the man she wounded who lay outside and the reluctant way he spoke when she asked about who was inside the house. He knew what was going on inside that room. Maybe, he even participated.

No. Fuck him.

If he wants to be rescued, let him make that call himself.

Tasìa completed the form and pressed send. Within the minute she was given an ETA of a quarter of an hour..

She was anxious to split but her curiosity wasn't satiated. Tasìa glanced at the man. One last thing to do, then. She steadied the camera attached to Val's device, took a pic, and entered a question mark in its text console.

An answer came back almost immediately. His name was Augustus Javierra, originally from the nation of Columbia. Naval Officer. Master Chief was his last rank. Honorable discharge.

Glancing at his age, Tasìa's eyes nearly bugged out of her head.

"Holy shit! That makes you one hundred and forty-seven years of age.

"Can you talk, Master Chief?"

His lips were steady and they no longer quivered.

"It hurts like hell to do so."

"Save your strength then."

"The medics are on their way. ETA of fifteen minutes. I don't know how you have survived in your present condition, but I think you'll make it."

"What's your name?"

It sounded odd coming out of her own mouth, but for some reason, Tasìa didn't try to use her pseudonym.

"My name is Tasìa del Alma-Gris."

"Well, Miss del Alma-Gris, I owe you everything."

She softly gripped the man on his shoulder.

"Save your strength."

Annebél's boots smacked the floor in a slow and deliberate cadence as she approached. There was a certain calmness to her face that bespoke mental clarity.

"I tried my damnedest to save that girl, and I have no idea how they found her. Tasìa, do not go back there, save yourself at least that much grief."

As Annebél walked towards the steps with a Karambit blade curved inside her thumb and palm, she continued to speak.

"One thing is for certain," she said. "When I face Sal Javierra, I am going to skin him alive."

A reedy intake came from Augustus' throat. His eyes were white with fear.

"Who is this Sal who bares my namesake?"

Tasìa was certain, as she studied the sincerity that shone in his eyes, this Javierra would mightily disdain many of his decadent progeny.