New Beginnings

7. Carmilla

Her instinct, as always, was to move in front of Laura to face the brunt of whatever danger of the hour was confronting them. But this time as she did so Laura pushed forward as well, staying beside Carmilla instead of behind her, an angry pointing finger shaking at Okoye and her gun.

"What, do you just creepily appear in places? How did you get here? How did you find us? Also, hey lying traitorous liar woman who totally has been lying to us this whole time! What the hell? I thought you were supposed to be some kind of good guy spy. You know, like a bald black lady James Bond. Instead you're a lying traitor douche nozzle, Alec Trevelyan type."

Okoye simply raised her eyebrows at this tirade levelled at her.

"Yes quite the verbal attack,how could I ever recover from such a storm of righteousness peppered with pop cultural references. Though I should probably release you from this misapprehension you seem to be under. What I said was, 'there are many people who know about you including many in the intelligence sector'. I never said I worked for one."

"You did say you were working for people trying to make the world a better place." Carmilla said.

"And we are. We just have different ideas on what constitutes better than perhaps the mainstream does. For us, better is whatever our primary shareholders and the board says it is."

"You're a corpor- Corvae!" Laura yelled out the final word as she came to her conclusion.

"Got it in one Ms Hollis well done very sharp, well perhaps not, it would have been better for you to have worked it out earlier I suppose. We're not the bad guys here really, as a corporation well acquainted with magical artifacts the Sarratum would be safest in our hands. Besides, Inanna was with us for such a long time. Why not pass on her former earthly possessions to those she worked so closely with for centuries?"

"One might argue her possessions should belong to her surviving family." Carmilla said.

"Sure, one could. If you get out of this alive perhaps you should take the issue up with the courts. Good luck with that though, we have good lawyers."

God she really hated this woman, smooth to the point of smugness. Wiping that smile of her face would feel real good right now. Carmilla wondered how much Laura would object to her killing Okoye at this very moment. Hopefully not too much, maybe she could turn her back and look the other way?

But for now Okoye had them pretty well covered with her pistol. The alleyway gave them no room to move sideways and there was nothing that could give them cover between her and them, only discarded newspapers and other trash. Behind Okoye the alleyway split off to the left and a yellow bricked dead end lay straight ahead. She must have come around the corner to the left while they were talking.

"The Uffizi Gallery is a large place to search for one mask, especially as we are trying to keep this reasonably discreet, despite certain mistakes on the parts of others." She spat the last word out in anger, but it seemed to Carmilla that it wasn't anger towards them. "I am sure Pisano told you more. Play nice and share won't you? Corvae is not too pleased with the pair of you but the Sarratum is our priority."

"Not too pleased with us? Are you serious?" Laura had gone into full indignation mode. "You do remember from those videos you intruded on that we saved the world from your 'colleague' Inanna right? She was playing all of you the whole time. She didn't care about your dumb corporation. If it wasn't for us you would all be dead, because Inanna was going to destroy the world. That includes Corvae because, you know, it's the World!"

"Well thanks for that, but what have you done for us lately?"

Yep, sooner or later she was going to kill this snarky bitch.