Onyx, Midnight and Shade leaned in. Even Gloom turned an inquisitive head.
“I’m afraid of…”
“Yes, Fraidy?” I pressed.
“I mean, what really gives me the willies…”
“Do tell,” Onyx encouraged.
“I don't want to give you all nightmares too!” Fraidy slapped two muted, fuzzy paws over his eyes.
“Oh, for cryin’ out loud, brother! Spit it out!” Shade demanded.
“STRAWBERRIES!!!”
I waited for more.
There wasn’t any.
“BWAHAHAHAHA!!!” The raucous explosion of laughter erupted from Shade. The convulsing kitty rolled on the carpet of lush grass. “Strawberries? You’re afraid of strawberries? What a maroon!"
“I am not maroon,” Fraidy defended. Draped like a terry-toweled ghost, he pulled himself up to his full nine-point-two inch height. “I am black.”
There are no words.
“It’s just a strawberry, sweetie. Just a simple red berry,” I tried to assuage Fraidy’s unfounded fears by tickling the backs of his ears through the thick cloth.
Fraidy shrugged off the illusory protection of Egyptian cotton to champion his argument. “It's seeds are on the outside! Like a thousand little insect eyes, staring at you wherever you go!" His fur was standing on end as the threat of the berry jangled in his fraught mind. "It's a mutant fruit, and it's not natural!"
Oh, forget this! I'm here to relax, not discuss the horrors of staring berries.
I stood up and walked toward the edge of the bluffs. The view was incredible. The Crystal Sea in front, and, slightly inland, Whispering Bay. As I watched the tireless falls tumble through Cathedral's deep green valleys, they churned the azure waters below into a foaming froth of dancing meringue. The cascade sounded like a chorus of whispering voices. Closing my eyes, trying to be meditative and uber-zen, I ventured to connect with my inner spirit and catch what secrets nature was trying to reveal to me.
But, another odd sound filtered through the roaring whispers, effectively ruining my contemplation attempt. I cocked my head, ear bent to the wind, trying to determine if it was just my imagination.
No, it was definitely there. A peculiar, glassy shush with punctuating clicking. Like two ceramic blades sliding together, then snapping menacingly shut.
“What is that?” I asked cautiously.
“What?” Fraidy gave a vertical leap.
I turned toward the tropical forest of palms and bamboo behind us. “That sound. What is that?”
“Um, it’s water? Falling?” Gloom muttered as she absent-mindedly pawed a dandelion back and forth. “Probably why they call it a waterfall. Duh.”
She gave a roll of her yellow eyes in heartfelt feline disdain.
“I hear it, too, Hattie,” Shade suggested. “I think it’s coming from down this trail.”
“You mean that dark, shadowy path where a cat wouldn’t be able to see his own paw in front of his face?” Fraidy shivered.
“Exactly!” Shade grinned a mouthful of gleaming white chompers. I could see why all the lady cats found him so appealing. His smile was disarming.
I had to admit, though. I was tempted to side with Fraidy on this one. The path was congested with leafy, low hanging vines. Scrabbling shrubbery choked the walkway. A few insistent rays of sunshine tried to poke their way through the dense canopy but were categorically denied. You couldn’t see more than a few feet past the trailhead. Nature had definitively put down a fat, green foot.
I peered into the dusky gloom.
Shush. Shush. Click, click, click.
I put one foot in the cool shade. Fraidy groaned. I know. I know. I’m supposed to be on vacation.
I forged ahead into the darkness, my cats in tow.
A machete would have come in incredibly handy as nature repeatedly gave me a reprimanding slap in the face for plowing through her foliage like a bull in China shop. I waved my hands wildly in self-defense.
The trail must have been hugging the coast. I could still hear the whispering falls as the trail wound up and around, leading me through tunnels of towering bamboo. But now I could also hear the thundering crash of the waves of the Crystal Sea.
The trail was leading down to the beach.
A hand-carved sign was tacked to a macadamia nut tree.
“BEWARE! STRONG UNDERTOW! DO NOT GO NEAR WATER! DANGER OF DEATH.”
I grimaced. I was supposed to be on vacation. As far as I was concerned, death, or anything to do with it, wasn't in my plans. Blood beaded on my ankle as the needle-prick of sharp claws found purchase in my skin. “Fraidy! Ow!”
Fraidy cowered at my feet. “Sorry, Hattie. I’m nervous. I just don’t have a very good feeling about this.”
The salty tang of the ocean and a subtle note of something cooking flooded my nostrils as we finally came to a break in the trees and the jungle opened on a passage to a sprawling vista of the Crystal Sea and its pristine white sand beach. You could see, out there in the waves, the point where the Sea of Mages met the Crystal, by way of thunderous walls of water colliding. It was an awe-inspiring sight.
“Oh!” Fraidy let loose a little gasp. Except, for once, this was one of wonder and amazement instead of his characteristic fear. The reprieve was momentary, however, as it was quickly replaced by a shuddering “Ohhh.”
A dark shape lay sprawled on the beach. My brain racked through the possibilities. Maybe it was just a sea turtle that had lunged its way up onto shore. The massive amphibians often hoisted their cumbersome forms up onto the sands to lay their eggs. I grabbed hold of a fraying twine anchored to a rotting palm and began the tentative descent down the rocky path to the beach. The cats and I moved down the rough-hewn black lava steps, closer to the shapeless form. Tendrils of smoke rose up from whatever was lying there, motionless, on the shimmering sand.
I recalled another favorite Bruce Willis movie of mine. “Come out to the coast. We’ll have a few laughs.”
However, there was nothing funny about the dead, blackened form of Millicent Pond lying in a divot in the sand, roasted like an imu.
“Guess you could say she ‘died hard,'” Midnight furthered the pun. It earned him a gentle slap on the back of the head from Gloom.
A furry paw tap drew my attention from the horrific sight. Fraidy shivered uncontrollably as he turned his black, furry face up toward mine.
“What, Fraidy?” I very nearly whispered.
“I see dead people.”
That’s it. I’m sticking to Mel Gibson movies. At least I get to see his butt.
Chapter Two
“I don’t remember seeing anything about dead bodies in the brochure,” Chief Trew quipped as he stepped gingerly down the lava slope that lead to the beach. As he walked out onto the pearlescent sand, he looked down at his hands and started picking splinters of twine from under his skin. He looked up at me from behind his round glasses, the lenses only boosting the profound depths of his iced baby-blues. I had lost myself in his gaze on more than one occasion, forgetting my surroundings, my name, everything. If it weren't for the searing sun and Millicent's lifeless form, I'd say the sweaty heat that engulfed my body was due to the male eye-candy in front of me.
I had to admit, my mental images of David, with me, on a beach, had never included crime scene investigators, the medical examiner's zombie assistant, and the corpse of Millicent Pond.
I pictured the scene. David, poised and God-like in his bathing suit, me with my sunscreen, getting ready to rub it all over his --.
Just stop.
As I took in the lines of David's tailored jacket, which did a bang-up job of accentuating his trim, athletic build, it occurred to me that my long-time friend and I kept finding ourselves doing this macabre little dance. First, Nebula Dreddock was murdered, followed by the bitter witch, Spithilda Roach, and then the despotic denizen of the Keziah Mason Memorial Library, Druida Stone met her grisly end. All this death on our idyllic Isle of Glessie! I guess I shoul
d have been somewhat comforted that Cathedral Isle was, at this moment, the landmass currently hosting a dead body. A very crispy one, at that.
“You ever notice how it’s other women that keep bringing us together, Hat?” David commented as he squatted next to the body of the expired eco-activist. My eyes widened in surprise. It was almost as if the Inspector had read my mind. I wondered if Onyx had been giving him lessons. I swallowed nervously.
That could be embarrassing.
I mentally re-dressed the Inspector before he suspected anything. I side-stepped Hector Muerte, the Assistant Coroner, as he slowly made preparations for the transportation of Millicent’s body back to Maude Dulgrey’s morgue back in Gless Inlet. If anyone thought the employment of the undead for the coroner’s staff was an unusual call -- what with their penchant for brains and all that -- Maude was quick to point out that Hector was not your typical zombie. He was a vegetarian. Not surprisingly, his vegetable of choice was the cauliflower. I assumed it was because the flowering annual closely resembled a human brain.
The nauseating smell of fried chicken hung in the air.
If Hector didn’t get Millicent’s body out of here soon, I was going to give some serious consideration to becoming a vegetarian myself.
Millicent’s shamrock green hair was frazzled, sticking out in bristly, brittle patches resembling dyed and singed steel wool. She looked like the leprechaun from Lucky Charms.
More like un-Lucky Charms.
Millicent's pale, bare neck, as crepey as a tomatillo skin, seemed relatively free of any burns or scorches, but the rim of the collar of the hemp shift she was wearing had not fared quite so well. The tips of her ears were crisped, black and crusty. Like burnt toast. I shuddered at the sight of her eyes; white orbs that had rolled back into her head, cooked on the edges like overdone eggs.
I was certainly driving the food analogies home. I figured the crash-diet I’d been adhering to in order to squeeze into my revealing two-piece swimsuit was to blame. Well, I might be hungry, but at least I looked good. Ish. I sucked in my belly for good measure, and placed, what I hoped was a casual hand, on my hip.
Chief Trew was too focused on the victim to notice my practiced pose.
I blew out a loud, dramatic exhale in his direction. Well, Millicent was dead. And it was David’s job to unravel the cause. I couldn’t really fault him for that. That she had been famous, in life, for her very public campaigns promoting all sorts of eco-activism only added to her commanding presence right now.
“Poor Millicent,” I whispered respectfully. “How awful.”
“Awful is right! The least she could have done is get a pedicure if she was going to wear Birkenstocks!” Gloom quipped in apparent disgust. I looked down at Millicent’s thick, yellow toenails poking out from the dark brown sandals. Well, yellow where they weren’t seared black. The tips of her fingers were in similar shape. I tried to recall my first aid. Electricity left the human body via the extremities I seemed to remember. Hmm, interesting.
Well, that would certainly account for the location of the charring on Millicent’s head, hands, and feet.
The only problem was, I thought as I looked around the beach, and at the thirty-foot high black lava rock walls surrounding this nook of Cathedral coastline, I didn’t see an electrical outlet for miles around.
Sure, there was a storm rolling in, but it hadn't yet touched ground here on the Isle.
Hopefully, Maude would be able to come up with a rational explanation for Millicent’s demise.
A blinding flash imprinted blue 'floaters' in front of my eyes, but it wasn’t from the arcing lightning rolling in from the sea toward Whispering Bay. Rather, it was Mortimer Shade, from the GIPPD Crime Scene Investigation Unit, snapping pictures of the scene for further investigation. How he was able to get his bulbous eyes to the viewfinder with that incredibly beaky nose of his, one could only marvel at.
“Better get a move, on, Mortimer,” David suggested. He pointed a warning finger toward the gathering thunderheads; charcoal gray pillows crouching low over the emerald green landscape. The frequent rains, along with the rich, volcanic soil, made Cathedral the greenest of the Coven Isles.
“Our crime scene’s on the verge of being washed away,” David concluded.
“I second that,” I warned, gesturing, not to the foreboding clouds galloping across the sky, but, instead, to the rising tide.
The gangly little policeman shifted gears and hastily snapped Millicent's remains from every angle possible, taking in all of the incriminating evidence. The burn marks. The ground around her.
The walls of rising lava in the background.
Cathedral had erupted, like so many volcanic islands, from the depths of the ocean floor. In this case, from the Crystal Sea, a small saltwater basin; the lesser brother to the Sea of Mages which surged from the Northeast of the Isle. Besides the sea spewing out a veritable Eden, flourishing with all manner of flora and fauna, (some species could only be found here on this verdant landmass,) Cathedral boasted a prominent mountain range that jutted up and out of the emerald green landscape. The Glimmer mountains. Awe inspiring, like mighty Gods in silent meditation. In places where the volcanic lava had heaved up violently and explosively from fissures in the earth’s surface, one could see the sponge-like formation of pumice. Elsewhere, glittering outcroppings of shiny black rock pierced their jagged gems through the earth. It was this shimmering black stone that visitors were always drawn to. Like crows after shiny baubles.
Kinda funny that a group of crows is known as a “murder.”
A sizable portion of Cathedral’s tourist trade came from helicopter tours above the remarkable terrain. The black diamonds, as they were called, jutting proudly from the heart of the lava outcroppings, caught the sun's rays and refracted the full spectrum of rainbow light in such a way that the island seemed ablaze with multicolored fire. It was a wondrous sight to behold. The spectacle was at its pinnacle just as the burning sun dipped over the outer edge of the island's horizon. Before the dark horizon of The Crystal Sea put it out for the night. The phenomenon was particularly spectacular near the central crest of the mountain range, where the majestic outline of Burning Peak stood; Cathedral's highest point.
The visual illusion of Dante’s Sixth Level of Hell, the specter of flaming tombs, had prompted the early-Cathedralites to erect the Black Diamond Cathedral at the base of the peak. Inside, they implored silent gods to keep their island home from melting into the sea.
The lengths men will go to secure their future and preserve their lives never ceased to amaze. My heart went out to these superstitious pioneers. The human story hadn't changed. We all wanted the same things; love, security, stability. Still, the evident passion of the early Cathedralite's was truly magnificent. Black Diamond Cathedral was a glittering bulk of finely carved geology. Glinting and refracting light waves in a dazzling dance of color.
Something darted at the brink of my vision. A quick and nervous movement in one of the recesses of the cliff face. A face. A pinched, squinty, sharply angular face.
It blinked.
So did I. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, it vanished.
I grabbed David’s arm. “David! David! There’s somebody up there.”
I pointed anxiously toward the sheer cliff face. David quickly stood. His keen blue eyes scanned the surface of the rock. “You feeling okay, Hattie?” I rubbed my eyes and peered toward where the motion had happened. Total stillness.
Maybe I really did bake my brain in the sun today; I thought, remembering Fraidy’s earlier warnings about sun exposure. I adjusted the wide-brimmed hat over my auburn curls.
“Yeah. No. I mean, I’m fine,” I replied.
“What?” David asked, his voice rising over the sudden thundering noise from above. We both turned our faces up to the deafening sky.
WHUMP – WHUMP – WHUMP!!!
“I said I’m fine!” I yelled as the sleek, black helicopter came to rest a mere hundred feet from
the crime scene.
As the wind from the rotating blades stirred up gritty dervishes of sand, Mortimer was no longer just competing with Mother Nature to record the crime scene. David ran toward the landing bird, waving his hands wildly.
“You can’t land that here! Are you crazy?! Go on! Get out of here!” David strained his voice against the whine of the whirlybird's engine.
The pilot tapped his earphones and shrugged, indicating that the Chief's shouting was useless. CPI Trew had may as well been yelling from the moon. David made a less-than-friendly dismissive gesture and stomped toward one of the uniformed officers on the scene.
“Whoever is in that chopper, I want them arrested as soon as their feet touch the sand. Do you understand me?”
The pale rookie nodded in the affirmative, and the chief stomped back in my general direction.
“Morons! They’ve compromised the entire scene!" He shook his head in frustration. "What was Millicent doing here, anyway?” He snapped as he stepped aside to allow free passage for Hector and his assistant to shuttle the body away on a gurney. He seemed uncharacteristically angry. David could get irritated pretty readily, but to see him flare up like this was actually quite unusual.
“Haven’t you been watching the news? Millicent and her new group, E.R.G., have been lobbying against the mining here on Cathedral. She’s been camped on the steps of The Black Diamond Cathedral for weeks, talking to anyone who will listen!”
A narrow channel tweaked between David’s dark brows. “E.R.G.?”
“Equality for Rock Grumlins,” I offered by way of explanation. Something pinged in the back of my head.
Shush. Shush. Click, click, click.
“Rock Grumlins?” Shade suddenly piped up behind me. I jumped. I’d practically forgotten the cats were here. Then again, when David was around, I tended to forget about anything that wasn’t a touch over six feet tall with a striking lock of white shocked through jet black hair.
Wait. Shock of white?
“David?” I gasped. “What happened to your hair?”
“Huh?” He put a subconscious hand to his temple. “What? This? It’s nothing. Really. You know Violet.”
The Black Diamond Curse (Hattie Jenkins & The Infiniti Chronicles Book 4) Page 2
