Chapter sixty nine

I carefully took out all the knives that had been stabbed into Brenda's body before healing her. I found the keys to the manacles in the old bastard's pocket and freed her hands from the chains descending from the ceiling while holding her so that she wouldn't fall to the ground then I released the ones holding her feet . After I made sure she was alright I carried her up to a room which I assumed was hers because of the books piled in the corner that had titles pertaining to psychology. I put her in the bed and covered her with a blanket before going back downstairs.

Back in the basement I approached the dead body of the old bastard. I didn't really care what happened to it, I'm sure that Brenda will take care of it in the morning and even if she didn't he can rot away here for all I care, I doubt anybody would come looking for him. No, I didn't come for his body, I came for his jewelry.

I examined each piece of jewelry as I stripped them from the old bastard's body. All of them had different designs and different colored jewels but each of them had one similarity, they were all engraved with the same symbol, a weird twisting symbol that gave the impression that it was three dimensional even though it was drawn on a two dimensional surface. I took every ring, every necklace, every bracelet and even the earrings that were still on his ears that were on his decapitated head. They were all still glowing with power that the old bastard had stolen from Brenda and I wanted to see what I could do with them.

I didn't exactly have pockets so I wore the jewelry. I walked out of the Serafino estate naked , completely bald , covered in soot, and wearing tons of jewelry. A man passing by in his range rover saw me and slowed down as he stared at me, I couldn't help but mess with him a little, I struck an exaggerated pose and winked at him. The man nearly crashed into a tree before turning beet red and driving away. I myself jumped into my Ford focus and drove back home where Delilah found my new hairless and blinged out look quite fascinating and decided to get in the shower with me to help me 'scrub my back', we both had fun trying to get the soot off my body without removing any of the jewelry.

* * *

Two weeks passed by without any incident, I spent my time keeping the Atelli under surveillance and going to the community center for the battered women meetings. Brenda had mellowed out since the old bastard had died but she still disliked men even though she didn't seem to hate them as much. As for the rest of the women, they were no longer passive listeners but participated as she spoke. Most of them had a complete and clear pentagram on their souls now but instead of having a ball of power like Brenda , the pentagrams funneled the energy their souls produced into bonds that had appeared between the women. As the bonds grew and became more saturated with energy Brenda started to steer the subjects of the meetings towards the occult and especially liked to talk about the ancient Greek goddess Hestia.

I was outside of the Fairweather temporary office just observing what was happening like usual when all of the Atelli that I had seen coming in and out suddenly all came out at once. They all piled into a van and drove off, I of course followed them. Their destination was the underground parking lot at the community center. They started to haul metal containers that are used to contain pressurized gasses out of the van. I took a closer look using binoculars and I saw the label on the containers, N2O, nitrous oxide , a gas commonly used as anesthesia.

The Atelli were about to make their move on Brenda's group but that also gave me the perfect opportunity to make my move on them, all the Atelli in the city were gathered in one place next to highly pressurized containers, how could I resist?

I put on a black wig and my old raven mask before getting out of my car holding a sawed off shot gun. Because the shotgun used pellets not slugs I only needed one shot to get the job done, the pellets that would have been randomly scattered were positioned perfectly thanks to my power. They not only took off the gas valves on the nitrous oxide containers but they also perforated the gas tank and ignited it.

What most people don't know is that nitrous oxide is actually inflammable but it is also a powerful oxidizer so what happened was a mixture of highly pressurized gasses suddenly escaping and the rapid combustion of gasoline under the effect of a super oxidizer... or in layman's terms KABOOOOOOOM!

Almost all of the Atelli were instantly killed, only one survived and it was the one with three heads. I dropped the shotgun and took out two pistols. I quickly shot off the smaller black and white heads, leaving the center faceless head for last but when I tried shooting that one a shield made out of light and darkness stopped the bullets. The Atelli's whole body was suddenly covered in bright light and pitch darkness that seemed to feed on each other , growing with every passing moment until it got so massive that it burst through the roof of the underground parking lot causing it to partially cave in, thanks to my powers I was not hit by falling debris.

I got back into my car and sped out the parking lot, I exited the underground parking lot just as it completely collapsed. As i sped away in my cat I looked in my rear view mirror just in time to see a vaguely humanoid monster made out of a chaotic mixture of bright lights and pitch darkness tear itself free of what was left of the community center.

I saw the monster turn and destroy the five story building next to the community center like it was made from paper mache.

I had a feeling that this day was going to suck.