DURABLE (completed)

A Little Bit of Karma

I could feel the judgmental stares of everyone in the room pressing in on me like tangible weights. There was no hope and with Peter's hands trembling in mine I knew he felt the same.

One by one, testaments of our failure came to light. Men and women with whom we had worked for almost twenty years took perverse happiness in telling the council about our shortcomings.

I could hear the growing disbelief and anger in the voices of the people surrounding us each time a new witness took the stand. We had no chance of surviving this; there would be no redemption. I leaned my head to the side to try and catch a glimpse of the councils reaction without being obvious but the listless gaze they had began with had not changed. For a moment confusion bubbled but I quickly dismissed it, they had probably already made up their minds.

With that thought tears sprung to my eyes and fell as I waited for the sentence to be handed down. Closing my eyes tightly I held my breath. There was a rustling behind the Council, and the crowd began to murmur. Minute curiosity at the sudden murmuring caused me to peeked through my eyelids and to my surprise, and delight, Dr. Levi was whispering in the ear of one of the councilmen.

Hope surged through my body. Dr. Levi was always supportive of Peter and me. Maybe he would be the voice of reason that would stop this madness and save us. I heaved a sigh of relief when the Council nodded in agreement to whatever was said, and Dr. Levi turned towards us. He was captivating to watch, like a dancer performing to a song only he could hear. Every move he made was precise and elegant.

As I watched, his eyes seemed to brighten until they were almost shining. Suddenly I was standing in the middle of my favorite fantasy. I was in Bali, and the doctor was before me naked from the chest up. Up close, he was breathtaking - an Adonis come to life. Long-eyelashes closely cropped dark hair and delicate pink lips. Everything about him whispered of a sleepless night of ecstasy. " Sue-Ann. May I call you Sue-Ann? You can call me Titus if it makes you more comfortable." His voice had dropped an octave becoming deep and hypnotic.

*****

Sue-Ann never stood a chance. Seduction was Titus' specialty, and he had been perfecting his skill for almost two millennia. He listened to her heart rate rise and the scent of her arousal met his nose. He grinned in satisfaction and delved right in. He fired a volley of questions at her. He asked about every nook and cranny of her life. No topic was off limits.

With a goofy smile pasted on her lips, a sordid story of hate and abuse poured from Sue-Ann. As the crowd listened to her, even the staunchest among them blanched in horror. By the time she was finished, Titus' eyes were switching from red to green until it settled on red slits. Icy fury unfurled deep inside him and spread throughout the room.

In an instance, the room erupted in chaos as Dr. Levi' features began to change. His irises bled into his pupils turning blood red while his skin turned deathly pale and sharp canines dropped from his lips, turning his already alluring face into an inhuman beauty.

"YOU STUPID HUMAN! YOU DARED TO HURT MY CREATION!! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?! YOU PUNY TWIT. Do you have any idea how long I have waited for something like Nicolette how many of my kind and those stinking mutts I had to kill before I got the perfect that was my daughter?!"

A tangible need for death and destruction bled from his every pore filling the room with terror and trepidation. It had been a long time since Titus felt the need to vent his frustration and even as half his mind dipped into the well of madness that had been filling since his mate's betrayal a millennia ago. The other half calculated just how much damage he could inflict that would still leave his company running.

With a well thought out plan in place the being that the Winspere's knew as calm well-spoken professor became the very monster that they had dedicated their lives to killing.

They were all frozen forced to watch as he grabbed the nearest council man to him by the neck and twisted. A ghastly gasp circulated and no one moved. Some peed themselves others blacked out and still they remained standing their bodies were no longer their own but they did not know it.

Titus looked around and grinned around his incisors at the pitiful humans who had no idea that for the last fifty years everyone that worked for his company was helping him to advance his plan. He scuffed when he thought about how intent they were on destroying all things in human while he quietly injected them with his own blood every six months. They were less human than the monkey who they were thought to have evolved from. There bodies were his puppets to do with what he willed.

A manic laugh slithered through his lips and with another thought to stay still and standing he continued his massacre of the council for the fun of it.

He clawed, ripped, and drank from the bodies of the council until there was nothing left but lumps of flesh. It was a grotesque nightmarish scene that made even the most psychopathic of them sick.

Once the councilmen were dead, the doctor shifted back into his human form, stood up, smiled charmingly, and returned to the front of the room. Calling his trusted right hand mand a new set of councilmen where brought in and the abhorrent scene was cleaned up. There was a brief stillness, and then the moderator was handing down the sentence. Amazingly, the Winspere's had been spared, for now.

*****

Peter and Sue-ann would have to find Nicolette in order to redeem themselves in the eyes of the Council. P.O.A.H would also be sending someone else to look for their treasure. If the agent found her first, then everyone connected to them would be annihilated.

The Winspere's were palpably relieved even leaving quickly to make plans to find Nicolette before anyone else could. There was a certain terror that made the need to leave inexplicable.

By the time everyone at the meeting got home the memory of the days even was hazy at best but it was accompanied by the peculiar feeling of fear and dread. They would rather not think about it.