The Wraith: Danger Close (Superhero by Night Book 4)

by Jeffery H. Haskell

  I raised an eyebrow at that. She’d never given me that kind of information before.

  “Thanks for the heads up,” I said as I move forward on the balls of my feet. I slammed the gate closed after I walked through it.

  Flashlights sprang to life as they looked for what caused the noise.

  “Ricardo, check it out,” the woman said.

  The girls began to murmur and huddle together, still trying to deny anything was wrong, hanging onto their mental safety as long as they could.

  Ricardo approached the transformer, passing right by the pillar I was hiding behind. I reached back and pulled my sword silently from its sheath. If I started shooting too soon, one of the innocents could get caught in the crossfire. I needed to keep the gunfire to a minimum for as long as I could.

  He shined the flashlight through the fence, while holding a pistol in the other hand, pointed low and away from what he looked at.

  “The breaker blew, that’s all. Let me—”

  I struck. The sword swished through the air, removing his hand at the wrist. The gun fell and clattered on the concrete, severed hand still gripping it. Another swish of the blade and his other hand came off. Just as he started to scream I hit him in the throat with the butt of the sword, crushing his windpipe and keeping him from breathing.

  Sheathing the sword, I ran past him to the next pillar, ducking behind it and watching. The flashlight rolled around on the ground. Poor Ricardo was in shock; unable to process the loss of his hands, choking, and with no hands to grab his throat, he just stumbled around, waving his stumps.

  It was almost funny.

  “Ricardo?” the woman said loudly from where she stood by the semi. One of her goons used his flashlight to find the man. The first girl who saw him screamed. All the men jerked out their guns and started backing up as Ricardo stumbled toward them, trying to speak and waving his arms for help.

  After a moment he fell to his knees, then landed on his face.

  One.

  I ducked around the other side and ran silently to the opposite side of the semi and slid underneath it. It was tall enough that I could crouch and shuffle. I moved to the side they were crowded at and found a pair of legs that belonged to one of the guards.

  I slowly reached out until my hands were on either side of his ankles then grabbed them both, jerking hard toward me. He fell, screaming, hitting the ground with a crack as his face smashed into the pavement. I dragged him under the truck, placed a hand on his chin and the back of his head and snapped his neck.

  I rolled backward instantly, trying to stay ahead of their reaction time as the flashlights all spun as one to the underside of the truck. A smear of blood marked the trail where I had dragged him, and their lights followed it until they saw his head practically turned backward.

  Another scream.

  “What the hell is going on here?” the woman said.

  I climbed up the side of the truck to the top of the trailer. Despite the darkness, I could see perfectly. The girls were huddling near the rear of the truck and the cartel members were falling back to circle their leader.

  I whipped out a throwing knife and sent it flying through the air with the accuracy of an arrow to hit her in the throat. She fell backward into the SUV and then bounced forward, her hands clasping at the blade to pull it out. She hit the ground on her knees, yanked out the blade and screamed as the severed artery unclogged. Blood sprayed in front of her and she was dead in seconds. Power rushed through me as the life for

  Three.

  The remaining seven were freaking out, spinning around trying to see in every direction at once, closing in a circle with their backs to each other.

  Another girl screamed when she saw the woman in charge bleeding out on the ground.

  “Shut up, puta,” one of the remaining men yelled.

  I drew the sword, took a step back, and let my power flare around me. My eyes glowed blue and I felt the darkness wrap around me like an old friend. Then I shadow stepped.

  I came out of the shadows in the exact center of the men, their little circle of flashlights creating the perfect place for me to appear. Blue light flared around me as I appeared, stabbing the first one in the back, up through the lungs and out his chest. I kicked him off the blade and whipped it around slicing the head off another.

  Then they reacted. Guns firing wildly, trying to hit me as they blasted away, falling back as they shot. Bullets ricocheted off the concrete and shattered the glass of the SUV they were standing next to. They tried really hard not to shoot eachother in their panic, they almost succeeded. One of them took a bullet to the leg and screamed for them to cease fire!

  I ducked and rolled, coming up and stabbing one in the leg then pulling the sword out at an angle, severing his femoral artery.

  Full auto fire shattered the night and pain lanced up my back as round after round hit me dead center. I ducked, rolled, and shadow stepped behind a pillar.

  I glanced around the corner and saw a man with both his arms up at the shoulder, holding them straight out like he had a gun in each hand, but his hands were empty. What I thought was full-auto fire was actually him firing ten pistols at once! They hovered around him like an arch of death. Magazines dropped from them and new ones rose up from a small backpack he wore, slamming home with a click as the slides all locked forward.

  Okay, that’s a new one. Some kind of gun telekineses?

  The man who’s artery I severed died and the rush of his life’s energy hit me like a cold splash of water.

  “Debt paid,” Spice said with a wicked grin. Energy flooded into me. The wounds instantly healed. I let the rush of power wash over me with a shiver as I felt the energy build inside of me. It was like drinking the worlds strongest energy drink and I felt like I could wrestle a rhino.

  “Time to go loud,” I said as I sheathed the sword and pulled out the 1911. I removed the silencer for maximum stopping power and released the safety catch. With a quick breath I leaped out into a roll, lining up with the front sights and firing three rounds in rapid succession. The man holding multiple pistols spun to fire at me even as I fired at him.

  The first two took him in the chest, the third in the forehead. He dropped along with all his guns.

  The last two decided that discretion was the better part of valor; they ran for the nearest SUV. I shot the first guy I saw in the back then put two more in his head as I ran by him to get a bead on the other. He jumped into the SUV, but then the door on the other side opened. I got to the opening and pointed my gun inside... nothing.

  She said two of them had powers...

  Something hard hit me in the face, breaking my nose and obscuring my vision for a second. I stumbled backward and it hit me again, on the shoulder. It felt like a heavy pipe or maybe a large wrench. The third blow knocked the gun out of my hand and the fourth hit me in the chin, sending me flying up and back.

  I shook my head, trying to clear my vision. Breaking my nose was clever—it was hard to see.

  But I didn’t need to see.

  I pulled out my Ka-bar Kukri blade and waited. The whisper of rushing air approached me and I reached out with my arm to take the blow. The heavy object hit my forearm, splintering the bone. I gritted my teeth through the pain, wrapped my hand around it, and pulled. His first instinct was to resist, which told me where he was. I stabbed out with the curved blade and caught flesh.

  He screamed like a girl and then he appeared. I’d hit him in the balls. He collapsed holding his bleeding man parts. I dragged myself up. Taking the baseball bat from him and winding up like Babe Ruth, I aimed squarely for his head.

  CHAPTER 6

  Detective Roy Hauser took a drink of his hot coffee as he followed the uniformed officer into the underground parking garage that was cordoned off with yellow tape. At the top of the ramp, a group of young women, an odd mix of well dressed and homeless, huddled together, wearing firefighters jackets and blankets for warmth.

  He was somewhat surpris
ed at the huge turnout. There were no less than seven fire trucks, four ambulances, and a dozen police cars.

  What worried him more was the silence. No one spoke. When he asked what was going on, the officer leading him had just said “You need to see this for yourself.”

  He held his coffee in one hand while he shrugged off his trench coat. It was unusually warm, despite the early hour. He hated the graveyard shift but someone had to do it.

  All the lights were on, illuminating the garage well enough for him to easily see across its length. The first thing he noticed was the semi and all the black SUVs. He glanced back at the girls and realized what this was. A sex trafficking ring. It was terrible, but hardly deserving the seriousness everyone was giving it.

  There were uniformed officers down here, too. Several were searching the basement and another was off to the side... puking.

  What is going on?

  Then they came around the back of the SUVs and he saw the first victim. A woman, maybe early thirties with black hair pulled back into a severe bun. She was face down in a pool of her own blood. The tape was around her and a small cone with a number seventeen was placed next to a shiny object on the ground. Roy leaned down to examine the throwing knife and whistled. It took some skill to kill a person with a tiny knife like that.

  “Is this what’s got everyone’s panties in a bunch?” he asked.

  “That’s pretty crass, Roy,” his partner, Sara March, said as she kneeled down next to him. She was five-six with an athletic body and curly brown hair. She was dressed for work; slacks, and a tight work out shirt under a loose-fitting blouse. Her shoes were the sensible kind officers wore after a few years on the force—when they weren’t trying to impress anyone.

  “Sorry, slipped out. Seriously, though, what’s with everyone?”

  She nodded toward the semi and pointed.

  He saw the streak of blood and then, eventually, the body with the broken neck. “Ouch. Okay, that’s weird.”

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet. Over here.”

  He followed her to the pile of bodies, one of which was headless. Another lay in a pool of blood from a slashed artery. Another was missing half his face from where a bullet had hit him at just the right angle.

  “Wow,” he muttered.

  “Two more,” Sara said.

  “There’s more?” he asked exasperated. It wasn’t that multiple homicides were that unusual... it was just the sheer level of violence in this one was surprising. Gunshots, yes, but throwing knives and slashed arteries?

  She led him around the last SUV. A broken wooden Louisville Slugger was next to a body with its head caved in. Not just hit once or twice; they were going to need a shovel. Not to mention his privates were a bloody mess.

  “Who the hell did this?” he asked out loud.

  “Wait till you see the last one, which we think was chronologically the first one.” She took him toward the power station behind the chain-link fence in the corner. Laying face down was another dead man. Roy opened his mouth to ask what was so special about it when he noticed the man’s hands were missing.

  “Okay, so this is... this doesn’t really fit anything I know about,” he said to his partner. “Uh, rival cartel maybe?”

  She shook her head. “They would have taken the cargo. Those girls didn’t even know what was going on yet. We showed them the shackles in the back of the semi and they got the picture real fast.”

  He nodded. It was a common tactic. Much easier to get women to volunteer to be enslaved when you tricked them as opposed to just straight-up kidnapping. At least, until it was too late for them to escape.

  “Did they see anything?”

  Sara shook her head. “They aren’t talking.”

  He nodded. “Okay, do what you can here, I’ll go talk to them.”

  “You silver-tongued devil, you,” she teased.

  “What can I say, I’m gifted,” he said with a grin. Sara turned to speak to an officer about the evidence while Roy made his way back up to the ramp. Fifteen years on the force and five in the Marines hadn’t prepared him for this. It wasn’t the blood or the bodies, but the level of violence committed upon them. It would have been easier to walk into a room with nine people shot to death. But this... This wasn’t a murder or a rival gang, this was someone sending a message.

  Be very afraid.

  He stopped to check with a uniform about the girls’ IDs; so far they were all legit. He studied them for a second until his eyes fell on the redhead with the swoop necked shirt. She had a firefighters jacket pulled tight around her. His instincts told him she would talk. She was strong. The way she stood, not leaning against the wall, the line of determination in her jaw, this was no victim. At least not yet.

  “Hi,” he said as he approached her. “Detective Hauser, PHXPD, violent crimes.”

  “Penelope Grace, uh, college student,” she said with a short laugh. She had dazzling blue eyes and freckles on her nose.

  “Penelope, walk with me,” he said pointing toward the farthest away fire truck. She shrugged and moved to follow him.

  “What happened here?”

  She shook her head.

  “Seriously. So far everyone has said the didn’t see anything, but that’s not possible. Which tells me you’re afraid of what you saw. But you don’t have to be, we can protect you.”

  He had said that line a million times as a cop, it rarely worked because everyone knew the truth; the police would only do so much.

  “It’s not that,” she said in a whisper. “She won’t hurt us...”

  “She?”

  Penelope turned to face him, biting her lip while she considered her options. “It’s... yes, a she. A woman, with a red face mask, the kind that covers here and down,” she said holding her hand over her nose and mouth. “Dressed in black leather, like in a movie... she came out of the shadows and... well at first, they didn’t know what was going on. Then they started dying, one by one.”

  “They?”

  “The agency— uh gang members I guess.” Her eyes went wide as tears formed. “Oh gawd, they were going to... to... sell us. Like cattle!” she said as her face flashed back and forth between fear and anger.

  “It’s okay, you’re safe now. You said they didn’t know who was doing it?”

  She shook her head. “No, and they never said anything. Yanez, the woman who recruited us for the agency… she just died. Then the gunfire started and I only caught a glimpse of the attacker. A black woman, dreadlocks, red mask, and leather jacket and pants. She used a sword on some of them, gun on the others. The last guy could turn invisible and he tried to get her but in the end, she found him and...” she pantomimed being stabbed in the privates. The detective winced. “After that, she seemed pissed and just beat his head until the bat broke on the concrete.”

  “Did she say anything? Make a phone call, tell you her name?”

  She shook her head no.

  “The gang members, some of them had superpowers, right?” she asked.

  “From what you’re saying, yeah.”

  She nodded. “So did the woman with the red scarf. She would walk into a shadow and reappear somewhere else, but her eyes, her eyes flared blue like... like those,” she said pointing at one of the burning road flares.

  “You’re very perceptive. How did you end up falling for this?” he asked.

  She looked down at the ground. “My dad was a cop. He died a few years ago and my mom and me don’t get along too well. I thought a modeling gig would get me out of the state, free my mind from what was going on at home... I knew something was wrong, I just didn’t want to believe it, I guess.”

  He reached into his pocket and handed her a card. “If you remember anything else, or if you need anything, call me. Also, seriously, you have some keen observational powers, think about applying to the police academy.”

  “Thanks, I might.”

  He walked her back to the group and left them to go see his partner. Something about th
e way the girl described the glowing blue eyes and red scarf tickled a memory.

  “Sara, you remember that story out of New Orleans last year?” he asked as he approached his partner. “Or was it Detroit?”

  “We’re on the same page,” she said holding up her phone. A blurry picture of a woman with dreadlocks and glowing blue eyes kneeling over a body was on the screen. “Her name was The Wraith,” she said.

  “Was?”

  “She’s currently locked up in the UltraMax for superpowered criminals.”

  He shook his head rubbing the back of his neck. This was going to be an all-nighter. Several of them.

  “We’re looking at a copycat then?” he asked.

  “Seems likely.”

  “Just what we need, a mass-murdering vigilante with powers,” he said with a sigh.

  “You want to call the Protectors, get their assistance on this one?” she asked.

  He hated dealing with superpowers. They changed everything and were highly unpredictable.

  “No. Let them deal with saving the world. We can handle a serial killer on our own,” he said.

  I hope.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Did you hear about this?” Kate said as she handed Amelia her phone showing the gruesome headline.

  Vigilante Murders Nine, Police Helpless.

  “Technically, it’s not murder, since they were kidnapping young women to sell across the border,” Amelia replied while she tapped away at her laptop. Amelia lived in her mountain lair, a base carved out of the inside of a Mesa in northern Arizona. Since she had left the Protectors she had taken to staying there 24/7.

  “Well, we have to stop her, and I don’t care what it technically is. She’s running around in our city killing people. What happens when she kills an innocent? Will you be so cavalier then?” Kate asked.

  “You’re right, but... have you researched her? Really researched her?”

  Kate nodded. “Yes. She’s wanted for murder from Detroit to Belize. And yet, somehow she’s also in the North Dakota UltraMax prison.”