Blood High's Reunion

The first report from the 9mm zinged passed her head and evaporated the sweaty down-pillow in a flurry of smoky feathers, but Teri was already rolling off the bed, Desert Eagle palmed. She tumbled purposefully over the floor like she used to do in gymnastics, but this time when she landed in a crouching position it wasn’t audience approval she sought; it was the upper torso of the lead gunman. Her finger flexed over the trigger and a .44 Magnum followed the scarlet beam of her Laserlyte targeting device. Blood and sinew sprayed wetly across the louvered doors of her walk-in closet and then the first masked gunman bapped off the wall and fell face-first onto the carpet.

By now the other four black-clad men were shooting off their weapons and Teri leapt out through the shattered bay window and quickly rolled into a crouching stance outside the room, grass tickling her naked flesh. Bullets were singing throughout her quarters, a couple even buzzed out the window and chewed into a small tree, and hurried shouts of terrified men deafened her. There was a sizzling blast that silenced the CD player and "Never Gonna Let You Go"; someone was screaming with gurgling resonance before a meaty wetness slapped an interior wall. Teri was hugging the exterior wall of the barracks searching the bushes and small decorative trees for anymore of the dudes that came crashing through the door and window like bonafide ninjas on a Banzai mission, but all she saw was El Castillo rising high into the blood-black skies, a hot westerly breeze whipping about her sweaty golden locks. And now one of the guys was jumping through the broken window and then fearfully scampering along the ground on his heels and elbows like a guy who had just woken up to the face of the woman he picked up at a bar on the previous night, realizing that it was Quasimodo’s delightful sister, Quasicunt.

"Allah, forgive me! Merciful Allah! Forgive me, Allah!" he screamed with a strained Arabic soprano. Then he saw Teri standing against the barracks building near a row of spider plants with her Desert Eagle aimed at him, the little red laser dot centered on the bridge of his nose. "No! Allah! I have followed the wrong sunna!"

"Aye, that you have!" announced another Arabic voice.

Teri recoiled with military precision as the scimitar sliced through the recumbent man’s neck and then his head lopped off in a dash of streaking crimson that painted Teri’s quivering breasts and belly. And now a dark-skinned Muslim in black robes proffered a tenuous bow and a brief, "Allah, praise this unworthy servant. I serve thee, Honored One."

Teri was suddenly aware of her stark nudity and blood-splattered bosom and the Arab’s intense eyes shifting away in obedient honor as he removed his obsidian headdress and cloaked Teri’s naked parts and declared, "I am unworthy to look upon you."

There was a boom within Teri’s quarters and a shower of bone and blood belched from the window and plopped grossly onto the fresh-cut grass, followed by a smoking Star of David necklace. A bulbous dome of white luminosity lit up the shadowy room, and Teri hazarded a glance into her quarters.

Danny, magnificently naked, hovered several inches above the blood-drenched bed, his head almost touching the ceiling panels, his eyes aflame. The last of the United Churches Coalition assassins was pressed to the opposing wall with invisible force; he was chattering with incoherent terror.

Teri climbed tentatively back into the room, careful not to step into the gooey remains pooled at the base of the bay window; her Arab protector tagged along closely, but as soon as he entered the room he hurled himself to the carpeted floor and began praying loudly to Allah.

"Danny?" asked Teri, fretful; she brought her Desert Eagle up-range toward the assassin, though reasonably certain that he was no longer a threat.

Danny hardly acknowledged her as he floated, literally floated, down before the stuttering assassin.

"Mother Mary, Full of Grace, protect me from this Devil!" brayed the assassin.

"Mary can’t help you, Apostate," thundered Danny’s basso as he ripped off the assassin’s purple armband. "Thy transgressions against the People of God condemns thee to Eternal Damnation."