Ladies and Gents, stars just cracked the top 100, its also #2 on the Thriller list and #3 on the Paranormal list. Whooo! Hooo! Thank you so much for reading and with that, he's another chapter :) Rock on, dot com!
J*A*D*E*S
“Nina…,” moans Bev from across the room, turning to her side, struggling to get up. Coughing, grabbing at her side, feeling like someone has kicked her a million times and that every rib is broken. Shaun looks at Bev, then back to Nina, not saying anything.
Jo moves towards the kitchen without anyone spotting her, instantly wanting to find a way out of the café. Flames lap at the back outer wall of the kitchen, the wait staff seems to have gotten out before the fire had started. The back wall has fallen from the structural damage. Jo coughs, grabbing her stomach, spitting up a large amount of blood. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she looks up and sees her reflection in a broken mirror, her eyes bright blue, “What the fuck?” asks Jo to herself her whole body shivering as she crashes to the floor on her knees. A few days earlier, Jo had made a decision and part of that had meant she needed to be human for a while. She’d used the same blade of Artemis that rendered her human when she’d given birth to Spencer. Now, she was human. No vampire Jo. She kneels there and waits for the wave of nausea to pass.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” says Alysse from besides Bev, on her knees, assessing the damage. Bev stands, putting an arm around a shaken Alysse, hugging her quickly, seeing Joss standing up, and looks around with intent eyes.
“Jo!” yells Emma, who had been thrown towards the side door that is now blocked. No answer, “Jo, gods damn it, where the…”
“Where is she?” asks Bev, seeing Helen and Harley getting up. Harley’s face is covered in blood, a huge gash over her eye is open and spurting blood. Putting her hand to it, Harley winces, Helen tears a piece of her shirt off and presses it to the wound.
“Sami?” says Izzy, her eyes creeping open, making a face, her whole body ached. Sitting up and looks around, having seen things like this before, but never having been a part of it. Taking a mental inventory of herself and finding that she just hurt, but nothing is hurt.
“Head count,” shouted Sam Vance, taking command easily, Shaun takes her hand, and Sam grins. “Alysse, Lara, Camilla, Shaun, me, Bev, Nina, Helen, Harley, Joss…”
“Where is Jo?” asks Emma again, stripping off her jacket, the dust clinging to the black fabric. Jo is fragile right now, and who knows what sort of shape she is in.
“Better yet, what the fuck is that?” asks Camilla, pointing to what used to be, the front of cafe.
A hulking portion of what had once been an aircraft has taken out the front half of cafe, blocking off the exit to the front street. Emma turns, looks at the kitchen exit, seeing soft flames licking up the door, “Everyone, move away from the kitchen….”
“That’s our way out,” says Lara loudly.
“No, no it isn’t….,” says Shaun. “Fire.”
“Come on,” says Sam to Izzy, hoisting her up to her feet.
“This is insane, there is a PLANE that crashed into the building!” bellows Izzy. “I mean, we have ferry boats that crash in Seattle, but this? Seriously?”
“Ferry boats, I thought they were safe?” says Camilla in a conversational tone. Everyone snaps their heads in Camilla’s direction, the Latina shrugs, “Do you smell that?” asks Camilla.
“Jet fuel,” says Jo, pushing open the door of the kitchen, Bev rushes into her arms. Jo is holding a fire ax, “We can’t get out that way,” says the FBI agent. Releasing Bev, her tone cold and dark, Bev sees that her eyes were free of the contact lenses, and that Jo seems on edge, blood covers her shirt, but she had no obvious wounds. Jo had been hiding in the burning kitchen, but why? Walking with purpose, Jo tosses the ax to Emma, turning and grabbing the fire extinguisher from its resting place and moves back to the kitchen. “I’d say I’d be back, but that’s just to Hollyweird for even me.”
“Is it me, or is she pissed?” asks Alysse as they all move next to one another, huddling, as if there is safety in numbers.
Bev says nothing, Nina still lying prone on the floor, moving to her, Shaun still trying to wake her. “Nina, Nina, can you hear us?” asks Bev, tossing looks at the kitchen again, but Jo is no where to be seen.
Sam looks at the kitchen door for a moment, hearing Jo putting out the flames, she and Izzy moves over to Nina. “Non responsive,” says Izzy, feeling her pulse. “Thready, Sam, help me roll her over?”
Sam nods. Pulling the prone figure towards her, Izzy pulls up Nina’s shirt, a faint moan from the fallen woman. “She’s clean Sam, she’s not impaled on anything, she just took a blow,” says Izzy.
“She’s been taking a lot of those as of late,” whispers Bev just as Jo came back into the room, throwing the empty extinguisher aside, her whole body stiff. Bev moves away from Nina, looks guilty but Jo ignores it for the moment, there would be time for that later.
“How are we…,” begins Helen.
“Are we trapped?” asks Alysse.
“What the hell is happening?” says Lara.
“This is insane, a plane doesn’t just…,” begins Bev.
“Would someone kindly use a cell phone?” asks Jo grabbing the ax from Emma, who grabs Jo’s arm. “I’m ok,” whispers Jo.
“You are not, what happened?” asks Emma in a soft voice as everyone in the room begins pulling out cell phones and tying to call someone, anyone.
“Whatever it is, made a plane fall from the sky, there are people in there,” says Jo, pointing to what looked like the top of the plane. “And there is fuel leaking into the room, we don’t get the fuck out of here, we are all going to die.”
“Jo…,” whispers Emma. “How did you?”
“Amy… she must be close,” says Jo softly hoping that Bev doesn’t hear. “I don’t know, I reached out, and… you know how that works. I found her, tapped in, protected us, but I can’t do it again, I’m… I’m powerless…”
“I do know how it works,” says Emma ruefully, seeing Bev staring at them, Jo licks her lips, showing off her fangs. “You’re…”
“…yeah, powerless? I think the blade might have killed more than I thought, Emma, I think I’m human again…”
J*A*D*E*S
Amy Astin takes stock of her body without opening her blazing green eyes, feeling like a limp rag doll, blood trickles down her neck, and it isn’t a welcoming feeling. Opening her eyes now, hot blood stings them. She reaches up with a shaky hand and rubs her eyes, “Jesus Christ, this sucks.” The former Senator is on the right side of the plane, and the plane she’d been on is lying on its left side.
The sound of panic surrounds her, but Amy, with years of insanity under her belt, is calm. Assessing the situation, knowing she can’t just unbuckle the seatbelt, reaches for the seat in front of her, grabbing hold of it with her left hand, and unlatching the belt with the right. Grasping the seat with her right hand also, gingerly finding foot holds to clamber down to something that is like solid ground.
A woman who is a few seats away from her, “We’re all going to die,” she says to Amy.
“Highly unlikely,” mutters Amy thinking death would be much easier to deal with than life. Clambering over seats and dead bodies, Amy tries to make her way to the front of the plane, but her way is blocked by rubble. “Son of a bitch,” growls the blonde. Reaching up to her ear, which is where the blood is trickling from finding her ear tattled and torn. “Perfect, just perfect…”
Her hand is up against what is the roof of the plane, when something comes flying through it, the tip of an ax glimmers there for a minute, just two inches from where her hand is resting, and then is pulls away. “Mother fucker, what the hell is going on?”
J*A*D*E*S
“Give me that,” growls Harley grabbing the ax from Emma, who is trying her cell phone again, a section of the ceiling has just collapsed, and the now awakened Nina had just barely been able to move away from the falling section of cafe.
“What are you doing?” asks Helen a protective arm around Nina, who is still rather shaky.
“We can’t go out that way,” says Harley, pointing to the kitchen area, the crash had weakened the walls, and one of them had given way and is blocking a path out. “Then we can’t go out by the club, the fucking nose of the plane looks like it’s over there, and I say the only way out is through there,” finishes Harley. Taking aim at a section of plane and is about to swing.
Jo catches the ax, “Sparks might not be a good idea, the fuel?”
“Look, we have to get the fuck out of here,” says Alysse, shaking hard, the situation has settled with all of them.
“I agree, but…,” begins Jo. Emma nods, telling Jo that it is safe for Harley to be slamming metal against metal. “Fine, swing away... just remember, there were people in that plane…”
“Oh fuck, I hadn’t thought of that,” says Camilla who is huddled with everyone else. Lara rubs her back, and Camilla puts her head on Lara’s shoulder.
“I’m not dying here,” says Harley swinging the ax with as much force as humanly possible, after a few swings, she realizes it is going to take her an eternity to cut just one hole, but she keeps swinging anyway.
J*A*D*E*S
Amy closes her eyes, her back against a seat, left hand extends in front of her, slowly working one of the wedged seats away from the emergency hatch on the left side of the plane. The plane had been severely contorted, twisted from the explosion. Amy can only assume it had been an explosion, all she knows is that something had hit or exploded on the left side of the plane.
Her instinct had been to wrap herself up in a protective bubble, then her conscious had taken over, and she’d forced her telekinetic powers to envelope the whole plane. Moments before they’d crashed to the earth, something, or someone, had tapped into her power, cutting her strength in half, impairing her ability to help set the plane down must more lightly. She’d done that once before when Darci had been in a plane. It had taxed her power, but she’d done it. She really wants to know who had tapped into her.
The instant they’d made contact with the earth, a carryon bag had clocked Amy, and the moment she’d fallen unconscious, the shield she’d been using to protect the plane, had dissipated.
Now, using those same powers, Amy is slowly moving debris, trying not to attract attention to her, or to what she is doing. Seeing a small hole coming from closer to the cockpit of the plane, someone from that side is hacking their way in from the outside.
Then, as she is about to move something else, a very familiar tickle in the back of her mind makes her gasp aloud.
J*A*D*E*S
Jo feels her whole body revolting, and Bev pulls her towards the still standing back wall, “Are you ok?” asks Bev with concern in her voice.
“Hurts, but I’ll be okay,” says Jo her eyes shifting everywhere, unable to stay still.
“Come on over here, just relax for a minute,” says Bev holding Jo close, shielding her from everyone else. Shaun is watching them intently; Izzy is next to her, using part of her shirt to stop the blood from a gash in the back of Shaun’s arm.
Before anyone can say or do anything else, a huge hole explodes out from the far back of the airplane, the size of a small door, scattering backwards, shielding their faces from the shrapnel, when the dust settles, out steps a stunning blonde. Shaking off some shards of glass that clings to her, moving in slow measured steps, exiting what could have been her tomb.
“Son of a bitch,” whispers Emma walking through the carnage to greet Amy Astin. Grabbing her friend into a hug, and Amy holds her close. “I should have known you were this close when Jo says she tapped into your powers. You were in the plane?” asks Emma looks over the unhurt Amy Astin.
“I was, and we need to get the fuck out of here, that jet fuel is going to go any minute now, come on,” orders Amy. A gaggle of women are in the room, and Amy realizes, with a start, that these are all the people that Jo now calls friend.
“Ordering your way around again, sweet, and how do you think you are going to get us out of here, Senator Astin?” asks Jo in a cold thick voice.
Amy stops short, “You, you were the one….”
“We’ve got company, ladies,” chides Emma in a reprimanding voice of a school teacher. Emma is always the one to bring them back to reality.
“Yeah, what is this all about?” asks Joss her hands on her hips, knowing when she saw chemistry in a room, and there is an abundance here. Then, comprehending that this is the J, the A and the E in J*A*D*E*S. Interesting indeed, she makes mental notes to talk to Jo about how to cast a potential TV series about her books.
“We are going out the back way, or I could just blow the fuck out of the…,” begins Amy but Emma puts a hand over her mouth.
“You lick the inside of my hand, Amy Astin and I’ll kick your ass,” says Emma. “As much as I’d like to just… blow our way out….”
“We can’t,” says Jo as Bev touches her pale neck. “We just sit back and wait to be rescued.”
“Bull shit, where is the old Jo? Huh? The one that jumped onto a falling bridge? Or the one that…,” says Amy taking a step towards Jo, but the hot look of protection that Bev gives her makes Amy think twice.
“Dead and gone, Astin,” snaps Jo. The room watches them intently, and Joss leans over to Camilla whispering something into her ear. Camilla nods and Bev sees them whispering, knowing they are talking about Jo and Amy.
“LISTEN UP!” yells Emma and everyone falls silent, content when everyone finally shut up. “Now, we, that is me, Amy and Jo are going to go into the kitchen. The rest of you are going to stay here, Bev, guard the door… ”
“We’ll be out of here in a jiffy,” says Jo.
“Jiffy? You never says jiffy…,” begins Amy making a face.
“Oh shut the fuck up,” says Jo mildly pushing Amy into the kitchen, rolling her eyes at Bev and everyone laughs.
“Chemistry…,” sings Joss. Bev shot her a look, “Sorry, just saying…”
“They used to date,” says Bev softly as Lara put a comforting arm around Bev.