Snow White and Rose Red: Part 4 - Bear Necessities

Last night had proven to be a complete and utter bust. Aside from the taking down of a very personal demon of his, things did not at all go well for Bear. His problem, he decided was women. They were always so damned unpredictable. Snow had gone into full on war rage in that penthouse last night, which was completely unnecessary. Their assignment wasn’t to go on a killing spree; it was to get the troll to run. Snow had decided otherwise. 

Queen of the Deep - Warrior's Welcome

The trek up the mountain was an arduous one. This Queen climbed ever upwards as if she were on a calming stroll. Ikinya, not one to be outmatched by a woman, even a hadithi woman, struggled to keep, but struggled even more to look as if he were equally not bothered by the climb.

“You waste too much of your energy on appearances boy. It would serve you better to focus on the terrain than on your composure.” Teleza commented as she strode ahead. Ikinya was annoyed. Was there nothing he could best this beastly woman at?

Queen of the Deep - Belly of the Beast

“Get up you fool!” a harsh male voice whispered. Ikinya pulled open his heavy eyes. It was dark, and only slivers of light pooled down beneath the canopy of trees. He was in one of the mountain forests. He could not for his life recall how he had gotten there. His body was badly scraped and bruised. He could feel that without having to see it in the light. Ikinya’s eyes finally adjusted to the shaded darkness. The man hovering above him was Mbogo, one of his men. Mbogo was a reliable man, and a skilled fighter. He had taken more than one arrow and survived. Being a man his size, it was hard not to become the target of every archer in the east. Ikinya could not imagine why this man now looked so frightened.

“What is it Mbogo? Where are we?” Ikinya asked. Mbogo looked down on the man confused.

“Do you not remember? Have you been resting here on the forest floor since the day we first came to these cursed lands?” Ikinya stood, stretching his achy muscles. “It must be so and likely why you are still alive. She hunts us like animals for a great feast.”

Queen of the Deep - Ikinya's Folly

“Is this her? Is this the woman that my men have so feared to bring to me?” He said in an amused roar. His men were seasoned, trained, battle proven soldiers who were taught from childhood to not fear death. War had been their mother’s milk, their bedtime stories, and their very life blood, yet suddenly his troops were stricken with fear and of a woman no less!

“This is she Great Ikinya. We beg of you, tread lightly with this woman!” A soldier said approaching with the woman in tow. The soldier, towering over the woman, escorted her forth with such fear and trembling one would think she, and not he, had dealt death to many.

Ikinya watched closely as the woman approached. She was pleasurable to watch, to be certain. Her long skirt, dyed purple, rustled the grass at her bare feet. The blue wrap slung over her right shoulder covered her full breasts, but left the rest of her athletic torso open to view. A long, thick and ornately patterned braid traveled far down her sculpted shoulders and poised back.

Snow White and Rose Red: Part 3 - Snow in Heat

She stood in front of the full length mirror, as she always did at times like these. Her riding boots had been kicked off at the door. Slowly, she pealed her leather pants from her shapely legs. Her trademark leather jacket fell next with a soft thwump on the carpeted bedroom floor. Next the badly torn red blouse was removed and dropped in a pile with the rest. Finally, her black bra fell to the ground freeing her pert, full breasts resembling ripe melons dipped in chocolate and tipped in Hershey’s kisses.

   

Snow surveyed her cuts and bruises across her torso and arms with disdain. There were more on her back that she could feel but not see.  She hadn’t earned these. These markings were only the result of an explosion she did not sense would happen soon enough. The others would call her careless, possibly even sloppy, but she didn’t care. The others hadn’t been trapped here in this place. The others hadn’t been chained to a reality for time untold.

Snow White and Rose Red: Part 2- A Rose by Any Other Name

The girl was alarmed. The last thing she remembered, she was being tossed into a supply closet by a giant of man He’d tied her hands together, taped her mouth shut and left her there in the dark. When she opened her eyes again, everything had changed. This was no supply closet.

“Have you finally woken up?” a genteel woman’s voice fills the dimly lit room. The only light came from a roaring fireplace directly across from where she lay.

The girl could not make out from where the voice came. She allowed her eyes to adjust to the darkness and scanned for someone, anyone at all. She was draped across a large bed, covered in silk and satin colored in the deepest blue she’d ever seen. It was mesmerizing. It seemed to flicker as well as the flames of the fire.

“You have no need to be afraid. You are quite safe now.” The woman belonging to the voice said as each click of her high heels brought her closer. Suddenly, the red head knew fear. Her freckled face burned with it.

Rose Red stepped forward and into the light. She’d long removed her white business suit and replaced it with a long, silky night gown that clung to her small curves as if it were painted there. It was the same deep, royal blue of the bed linens. It made her bleach blonde hair seem to glow in the light of the fire.

Snow White and Rose Red - Part 1

The day had been a long one, she thought as she slid onto a well-worn bar stool. She’d had enough of the glamour of Hollywood and the strait-laced motif of the business district downtown. As soon as time permitted, she’d crept into the seediest establishment she knew of, where there was no chance of running into a celebutant or business mogul wanna-be.  Los Angeles was full of that type, every type really. The city housed everything from crackpots to celebrity housewives and every possible facet in between, above and far, far below. The far below is how she made her living, but for the time being, the relatively low would suffice to drown away all the fallacy of the big city and its blind followers.

Al’s place was her favorite place in the world, even better than her own home. Here no one pretended to be something they weren’t. There was no need for pretenses when you knew nobody was watching you. This was the kind of place you came to disappear. The lights were low, the music was loud, and the air was filled with a thick cloud of smoke, despite California’s laws against smoking indoors. The rules didn’t matter at Al’s place.  You came in, had a drink and kept your mouth shut. Al’s was a little piece of paradise.

“Looking good pretty lady” a familiar voice crooned from just behind the woman. She turned the corner of her berry stained lips up into a half smile. She shoved her auburn tinted locks into a ponytail in a huff, revealing the tattoo of an apple on the chocolate toned skin of her swanlike neck. The apple looked real enough to bite.

“I’m off the clock.” Her voice was dripping with venom, as her affronter suspected it might.  She didn’t want to be bothered with work, not even for her closest friend, if he could be called that.

“You know there is no such thing as off the clock for us.” The man joined her in the nearest bar stool.

“The usual please Al” she called out to the bartender.

“Sure thing Snow,” a petite blonde covered in a mural of tattoos answered with a wink.  In moments, two ice cold beers were slid in her direction across the bar.

Snow heaved a weary sigh before turning in her seat to address the large, burly man, built like a linebacker. The man, code name Bear, was a site to behold. Bear was easily 6’8, and near 280 pounds. His five O’clock shadow stayed on his face around the clock, and he was easily large enough to frighten people by mere appearance alone.

 “What is it now?” She crossed her lengthy legs covered in black leather.  Her deep-v cut red top left little of her ample curves to the imagination beneath her fitting leather bomber jacket. Not much other attire was fitting for someone who primarily got around by Harley.

“We’ve got a bad guy dealing powder that needs attending to, and it has to be tonight. There are a slew of armed guards between us and the target. This job has your name written all over it sugar. Snow White to the rescue.”

She rolled her eyes at the moniker she’d been given. The people she worked for and with, The Unit, had no real names, only the one’s assigned to them. She’d been deemed Snow White. She found it very ironic considering she was a black woman, by all accounts. She was private paranormal special intelligence whose only job was to make drug dealers disappear permanently once they became too much for the locals to handle with the usual methods of law enforcement. A very secret and small branch of law enforcement had been created to dispatch of such problems when they became more than just people hurting people.

 Everyone had a specialty. Hers was releasing the spirits of darkness often attached to manmade drugs to make them more addicting and more lethal. If people only realized that they were inhaling, sniffing and shooting up real, living, darkness, the world would be a far cleaner place. The fact was, they didn’t know, so people like her with very special skills and temperaments were brought in to at very least, slow down the threat. For her initial trial, she’d released a swarm of darkness from a single key of cocaine. It went up like a powdered explosive. Everything in the training room was coated in white powder, including her. That was how she garnered her moniker: Snow White.

 She was a bounty hunter of sorts, the kind that no one knew or wanted to know really existed.

“Fine” she sighed “Let’s lock, load, and blow some shit up.”

Bear grunted at her response. “Not so fast Snow, we’re going to need your sister on this one. She’s been assigned this case too.”

 “Great, all I need to better my mood is Red.” Snow mutter s curse beneath her breath.

Bear offers her a wide smile, plastered across his perfectly tanned skin, his blues eyes sparkled beneath tufts of shiny blonde hair. “Then get ready to get happy. Your sister’s outside.”

“Damn it” she exclaimed, pounding her leather glove clad fist into the bar. She was in no way happy to see her sister. She never was.

Begrudgingly, snow sucked down her beer and stomped out the bar in her riding boots. Idling next to her Harley was a pristine white Mercedes with windows tinted black. Red always had to be so demure. Snow rolled her eyes, yanked the door open and flopped onto the leather seat. Bear made haste to climb into the passenger seat, opposite the chauffer before the vehicle took off. He didn’t want to be within clawing distance of the two women.

 “Snow” an ice-cold voice cooed addressing her.

“Rose” she replied equally as cold. Had they have addressed each other any cooler, the windows would have frosted over.

Rose barely turned her eyes in Snow’s direction. She’d already known the woman would be dressed like a biker. Her long, kinky auburn hair probably smelled of liquor and cigarettes, and somewhere her smooth brown skin was likely diminished by yet another tattoo. They were never obvious to the plain eye; that would be no good for undercover work. Still Snow always found a way to get a new marking.

 Snow was a rebel. She and Rose couldn’t be more opposite. Red had long blonde hair; blunt cut at the ends with equally blunt cut bangs that hung like wisps just above her dark brown eyes. She was Japanese. Snow had learned that by coincidence and observation, not by friendly conversation. They never had friendly conversation. Red often swore at Snow in Japanese. The look on Rose’s face is one Snow still cherishes, remembering the day she finally decided to return the favor. Rose hardly expected the black girl whom she assumed was native to LA to speak perfect Kantõ Japanese. That was as close to sharing personal history as they got.

 Rose Red was adorned neatly in a stark white business suit. Rose Red dealt in death, thus the moniker given her. Anywhere she was assigned would soon run red with blood. Rose Red was an assassin’s assassin. She’d trained in everything from poisons to explosives. It was as if the woman lived for death. No one in the business did it better than Rose. Finding the perfect means of murdering someone was her specialty. It was like artwork, even Snow had to admit, just not out loud.  Snow had once seen Rose Red kill a man with a medieval bow and arrow. The thing looked as if Red had personally borrowed it from Robin Hood. The weapon had to be ages old, Snow wasn’t certain, but she thought that Red might be ages old herself. In her business, one could never tell.

Snow was the bruiser. She kicked ass, knocked heads back, dispelled the shadows, and blew shit up. She was particularly skilled at coaxing the very uncooperative in to singing like stool pigeons.  She and Snow had been deemed sisters because wherever drugs were present, death was close behind. The two went hand in hand, like sisters.

Snow eyed the large white guitar case sitting between them. Even it looks haughty and pretentious to Snow, much like its owner.

 “You have a recital tonight?” Snow asked sarcastically.

“As a matter of fact, I do. I’ve gotten you front row seats.” Rose smiled ruefully at her would be sister. “I imagine even you can enjoy a good piece of music.”

“Here’s the story ladies,” Bear began after a short moment of silence, indicating that their verbal sparring had ended.  “We’ve got a very rich old man who has made a lot of money off filling the streets with poison. We’ve got human sacrifices and all types of mischief tied to this guy. His place is like a fortress. He’s been off radar for a while, but he became priority number one today when a  very high ranking government official who was in his purse strings discovered his niece had become a ritual sacrifice in exchange for his business.”

 “Another troll, huh?” Snow remarked.

To desk jockeys and those who simply did not need to know in this business, troll was simply slang for rich old men gaining their fortune in very bad ways. Rose frowned. She hated trolls as much as Snow did. It’s one of the few things they had in common. More often than not, the perpetrator was a real-life troll, and those were hard to kill. They looked human enough to the untrained eye, often like bent over old men. They were tricky to kill because they had a knack for running and hiding. Red however, had a knack for killing things, anything really, and there was nothing she enjoyed more than prey that ran. It made the kill that much more satisfying. Trolls, however, were particularly vile to her. They were so crude and beneath her to be so much work.

“Not just any troll girls,” Bear says in a reserved voice, “my troll”.

Both women looked up at the man with an equal amount of concern in their stark opposite faces. Bear tried not to look affected by the softening of their usually hard expressions. He was just another henchman who was left for dead by this guy once upon a time. Worse yet, Bear had been addicted to his high-end poison and had completely lost control of his life. He’d screwed off his family, friends, and everything he’d ever cared about to stay connected to the source of his addiction.

Bear’s life was in complete turmoil when the sisters approached him. He’d become a mere shell of the man he once was. He’d lost his dignity, his pride and his soul to the troll. He’d tried to remain loyal to him for the sake of his addiction, even after discovering the horrifying truth about beings other than men really existing and running the organization. He’d tried to overdose the night he’d accidentally saw the trolls in their true form, feasting on the roasted flesh of a sacrifice… a human one. When the drugs didn’t kill him, he prayed for help. God, or someone in charge, sent him Snow and Rose.

The sisters offered to pay Bear very well to be their informant on his troll and that was his ticket out of the nightmare. He’d refused the money. Bear only asked that they help him get cleaned out for good. There was more to those drugs than he wanted swimming around inside of him, he knew that now. Some things were scarier than the thought of withdrawals. 

The girls took care of him, got him the help he needed and even landed him a job with their agency. They missed catching his troll while he was in rehab, but it didn’t matter. Rose was vigilant that Snow release the darkness from him gently, a little a time, to keep him alive. It was painful, but it was the only way to ensure Bear’s troll wouldn’t sense the disconnection and snuff his life out in the process. Troll’s could be very vindictive that way. It required an amount of tenderness from Snow that she had not showed in lifetimes. Since then, there was nothing either sister could ask that he’d refuse them. They’d saved his life and treated him like family, even though he looked very well like the enemy.

“You can handle this Bear?” Rose Red asked gently, far more gently than was her way.

“I got your back ladies, as always” Snow nodded her assurance. His word was all she needed.

“Good,” Rose said in a quickly detached tone.

“Once you two cause a commotion in the building, our troll will be moved out quickly. The most likely escape route is to his helipad.” She flipped her touch screen pad to show them both the schematics of the building. “You two will go in through the employee only elevator to the penthouse up top. Do what it is you two do to make people run screaming. That’s where I come in.”

Snow nodded in understanding. She flushed out the bad guy, Red took him out.  Snow was one of the few skilled enough to go in against a hoard and come out without a scratch. She could smell a drug stash from miles away and could release a legion of darkness on her own, but Bear would be her back up. His job, as it always had been, was to keep Snow focused and not allow her to get into a full battle rage. That could be dangerous for everyone.

“Snow,” Rose said as calmly as she could manage. “Stay off the ceiling. I don’t care if you think you’ve got a bead on the guy. Stay out of my way.”

Snow sneered at her would be sister, “yeah, sure.”

The Benz pulled into the downtown Los Angeles district, nowhere near where the troll would be. Distance was not an issue for Red. She grasped her guitar case and stepped into the street silently. She offered Snow White a small nod before slipping on her sunglasses in the light of the moon and walking towards the Walt Disney Concert Hall.  The vehicle took back off and didn’t stop again until it is in front of a skyscraper in the center of downtown.

The building loomed high into the evening sky of Los Angeles. As expected, there were suitcases in the trunk with all the supplies they’d need, including detailed instructions.  If nothing else, Red was organized and efficient.

 Bear and snow stood out in the pristine office building. They were the only two not wearing pinstripes or some variation of business suit.  Before they could get three feet into the building a pretty red head girl with a face full of freckles sitting at reception greeted them nervously.

 “Can I help you with something?” Snow glared at the girl. She was human, but she obviously worked for the troll because any normal business would be closed at this hour with no need for a pretty receptionist. The girl had clearly been marked as the next sacrifice; Snow could see it in her aura. Another neat trick she had that helped in her line of work.  

“No” she states flatly, daring the girl to speak again. She didn’t.  “Put your hands on the desk.” Snow ordered without so much as drawing a weapon, and the girl complied. “Bear, frisk her, take her keys and her phone and lock her in a supply closet.”

“I’m on it Snow” The girl didn’t put up a fight or lodge a complaint. She knew that hostile takeovers were a career risk when you work for a drug dealer. If they let her live, she was getting off pretty lucky and she knew it, especially since she’d given herself to darkness in order to succeed.

 Once the girl was secured, Snow and Bear waited patiently at the employee only elevator for its arrival. Once inside, both suitcases provided by Red were opened and six handguns each were sprawled out on the floor. Bear smiled.

“Your sister packed you your Ingram’s.” Snow couldn’t help but smile as well. Rose Red knew that her weapons of choice were dual Ingram’s. She loved the way the bullets exploded from the barrel once charged with her energy. 

By the time the elevator paused at the top floor the two and heavily armed and ready to roll.

“Are we going slow and easy or hard and heavy?” Bear asked before the doors slid open.

“Let’s take the subtle approach this time”. Snow suggested in tone too cool to be truthful. Her trademark sarcasm never failed, not even on a mission.

The moment the doors slid into the open position, Snow pulled her Ingram’s and blew twin holes through the head of the first guard waiting at the door clad in an Armani suit. His blood splattered across her skin and left a trail on the thick carpeting where his remains landed. There was the faint sizzling sound as his blood burned slowly off of her soft brown skin. She could feel the shock run through the room. Some of these guys were human. This was going to get messy.

“So much for subtle.” Bear remarked.

Snow shrugged, “We’re hunting Trolls. No time for subtlety. Besides, I got new guns.”

In mere seconds the room erupted with gunfire. There were at least ten armed men waiting in the room, obviously preparing to escort the troll to his vehicle downstairs, and ten more who were God knew what other types of creatures, ready for just such an occasion. Eyes glowing blue, orange, red and occasionally yellow tipped them off that many of the guards were not at all human. Snow and Bear took quick cover behind an antique shelving of some kind. The massive metal case shuttered as it took several rounds of bullets.

“You think that was enough to get him running? ” Bear asked over the exploding gunfire. It never took much to get a troll on the run. They were only there for the money. They never stuck around for the dirty work.

“Of course, but let’s get a couple more, just for sport.” Snow smiled like a schoolgirl on Christmas day.

Before Bear could object, Snow was leaping over furniture and shooting dead aim into drug henchmen in Armani suits. She was only this happy in the midst of complete and utter chaos. Blood and goo spattered the room as she and Bear made a massacre of the troll’s security detail.  They didn’t know if this was the type of distraction Red was looking for, but she was going to need a hell of a cleanup crew when they were done.  Snow put a bullet between the eyes of the last henchmen standing before taking off towards the ceiling exit.

“Wait!” Bear called out, physically stopping her in her path. “Red said stay off the roof, remember? And we you have a stash to go cleanse! ” The two could feel the slight vibrations and hear the whirring or propellers above them. There was a dull glowing behind Snow’s eyes. Bear recognized that as a very bad thing.

“So what? They haven’t taken off yet Bear. We can get this guy ourselves. Come on! We earned the take down!” Bear didn’t move an inch, though he realized that he was no match for Snow White. She swore and pushed passed the giant of a man, who was obviously not buying her reasoning. She just wanted to piss off Red; more than that, she wanted something else to smite.

Just as she began to open the door to the ceiling exit, she heard a familiar humming sound. For a moment Snow’s face contorted in disbelief. Red wouldn’t do that, would she? Not over downtown Los Angeles. The humming sound got closer and her suspicions were confirmed.

“Hit the deck!” Snow screamed as she slammed the door shut, leapt from the steps and plowed bear to the ground just in time to hear and feel the explosion rock the building. Glass windows shattered everywhere. She shielded the man from the glass shrapnel as best she could, taking the majority of the cuts and burns. The two looked out through the penthouse where windows used to be and watched as a ball of fire that was once a helicopter plummeted towards the ground in colorful flames. It would dissipate before it ever hit the ground. The Unit would make sure of that.

 “She used a rocket launcher?” Bear asked in disbelief. When Rose Red wanted somebody or something dead, they definitely died one way or another. Most beings could be killed by fire. Snow white could only shake her head in utter amazement and slight envy. Killing trolls by handheld rocket launcher was very cool. Snow could just imagine her sitting with the smoking pipe over her shoulder, smiling wickedly at the destruction.

Snow felt a vibration in her back pocket and yanked out her cell from her place on the blood covered floor. It was a text from Rose on her department issued cell.

 “I promised you front row seats. I hope you enjoyed the show.”

Part 2: A Rose by Any Other Name

Read on!