A Game of Horns: A Red Unicorn Anthology

by Gregory D. Little

  My eyes are still closed. I don’t dare look. I don’t want to take the chance that the illusion, or spell, or whatever it is, will shatter.

  “But how are you here?” I ask. “You can’t be here.”

  “I’m … I’m here for you,” she says, and I can hear something in her voice. It sounds thicker than it had and is tinged with sadness. Is she crying?

  “I miss you, Laura,” I say. “God, how I miss you.”

  We don’t speak the rest of the trip, we just hold hands. It takes everything I have, but I keep my eyes closed. If this is a spell, if this is magic, I’m not willing to do anything that might disturb it.

  When they open the ambulance doors and pull out the gurney, she says, “Give us a moment, will you?” She must be talking to the paramedics.

  “I have to go,” she says to me.

  I take a deep breath of her scent, trying to fill myself up with it. “I miss you already.”

  She sniffs, and I feel a single tear fall onto my cheek. “I forgive you. You know that, don’t you?”

  I nod. I haven’t cried much since Laura died, and I feel a tsunami of tears coming. “Yes. Thank you.”

  She squeezes my hand one last time. “I love you,” she says.

  “I love you too.”

  She leaves and I so miss the warmth of her hand. I hear her heels as they click-click on the pavement as she walks away.

  O O O

  I sit and stare at that garish old unicorn clock as it does its tick-tick thing on the dresser of our bedroom. No, of my bedroom. I have decided. It is time. But still I wait.

  It’s been three months since my breakdown in the deli, since the woman that smelled and sounded and acted like Laura said she forgave me. I’ve thought a lot about what happened that night and what happened afterwards. A few days in the hospital getting a psych evaluation, then into daily counseling for a while, now down to once a week.

  I’m doing better, much better. I still miss Laura, I still feel guilty about what happened, but it is no longer tearing me apart and defining my every moment.

  Tick-tick, the clock tells me. One step at a time is the way through this. One day at a time. One hour at a time. One tick at a time.

  I never went back to the deli, I just couldn’t return. I took some real time off and have tried to get my life together. I started back at the firm, staring at insurance claims all day.

  Tick-tick. I still wish I hadn’t let go of her hand, but I’m not perfect. I’m human. I make mistakes.

  It’s late, 11:00 p.m., and I should be sleeping, but I stare at the clock just a little longer.

  Maybe that woman was just a Good Samaritan somehow playing the part of Laura. Maybe the clock is magic and it was really Laura coming back from the dead to help me. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

  I carefully pick up the clock and carry it out to the living room and place it on the mantel over the little gas fireplace. The unicorn looks good there. It doesn’t seem so garish to me anymore.

  This is Laura’s magic clock, and I love it because of that, but I’m ready to sleep without that tick-tick in my ear.

  About the Author

  Robert J. McCarter lives in the mountains of Arizona with his beautiful wife and his ridiculously adorable dog, pounding away at the keyboard producing software (to make a living) and stories (to fill his soul and hopefully yours). He has written a series of first person ghost novels (starting with Shuffled Off: A Ghost’s Memoir) and a superhero / love story series (Neutrinoman and Lightningirl: A Love Story). Find out more at RobertJMcCarter.com.

  The Correlation Effect

  Nancy DiMauro

  Dozens of eyes turned as I entered the gym. A wash of colors, from the violet of disbelief to sun-kissed yellow amusement, swept over their auras and mingled with the smell of old sweat in the room. I understood the amusement. Psyonics didn’t train with the D.C. Metro Police, but my partner, Rick Muller, insisted.

  “Vonna,” Muller shouted from the other side of the gymnasium. Sure enough, his aura flashed buttercup in delight. “What’re you wearing?”

  I’d traded my leathers, a psy’s first layer of armor, for fabric that wouldn’t overheat or snag as I sparred. Animal-based materials like leather and silk protected my psionic senses from the stray emotions insens—humans without psychic abilities—unconsciously threw off. My navy blue silk workout clothes were a sharp contrast to Muller’s cotton T-shirt and sweats. His dark brown hair, cut military short, made his square jaw seem more angular. Lines of muscles delineated his arms, abs, and thighs. A faint white line etched a scar on his left cheek and drew attention to his hazel eyes.

  Cops moved out of my way.

  “Tell me why am I doing this, again?” I planted my hands on my hips.

  Muller’s glee tipped to a brighter shade. He had none of an insens’ fear of psyonics. Touching a psychic was the equivalent of offering your throat to a hungry vampire, yet Muller didn’t hesitate to put a hand on my arm or shoulder. Occasionally, he’d even pat me on the back. I never told him how much his small signs of affection meant to me, but they did.

  “Not every opponent’s psy,” he said.

  Muller knew my psychic abilities were non-offensive. My education had, therefore, involved extensive unarmed combat training.

  “Three minutes before you’re on your back,” I warned him.

  “Can’t wait, Spooky.”

  Bills passed between the officers who were presumably wagering on the outcome.

  Muller tugged on my shirtsleeve and exposed a thin line of skin between it and my silk glove. He leveled a flat stare at me.

  “Where’s your comm?”

  I was supposed to wear the tiny transmitter at all times.

  “In my jacket. What? I’m with you.”

  He pointed to the unit attached to the back of his hand. “Use the damn thing.”

  We stalked to opposite sides of the training mats. “I’m going to come at you.”

  Two minutes later, Muller stared at the ceiling. Money changed hands on the sidelines.

  “Guess Johnny Boy hasn’t completely botched your training.”

  “Johnny Boy” was Muller’s pejorative for Jonathan, the Director of the Psyonics Corporation and the most powerful man on the planet. My relationship with Jonathan was beyond complicated; he was my part-nemesis, part-mentor, part-something else. Growling at Muller’s nickname only encouraged him.

  He stood with a grunt. He wiped his hands on his smoke-gray sweats. His chest rose and fell in an easy rhythm. Our short bout hadn’t tired him.

  “Enough going easy on you,” he said.

  He took a ready position. Whispers rose. More money changed hands. My psychic abilities would announce his next move as soon as he knew it, and the extra milliseconds that gave me to react would allow me to put him on his back. Again. I smiled. The dusty opal of mischief enveloped him.

  A laugh rippled through me. “Should I give you five minutes before I take you down?”

  “Pride goeth.”

  His comm chirped.

  Groans rose from the spectators.

  The gray of December sleet obscured Muller’s features. His lips tightened. His grim determination manifested in his aura as the color of a dirty Band-Aid. There’d been another murder in this city of killers.

  “Be there in fifteen.” He closed his eyes. “Another Red Unicorn victim has been found.”

  My gut clenched. The media dubbed the serial killer’s murders “the Red Unicorn Killings” since he left a stuffed unicorn at crime scenes. What the press didn’t know was that the unicorns started white until the killer soaked them in his victims’ blood.

  “You’ve got five to shower,” Muller said as he took a wad of bills from Officer Williams. He riffled through them, grunted, then handed half to me. “Your cut.”

  “I don’t understand you.” I walked toward the showers.

  Muller kept pace. “I’m not complicated.”

  “I meant you—cops.”
<
br />   “Ah. They bet to blow off steam. They liked how you dropped me on my ass.” He shrugged. “We get a cut.”

  I yanked open the door to the women’s locker room. “The Band of Brothers thing?”

  Muller held the door, his hip against its side. “More like … tribe. Not the same blood but one, down to the marrow.” He leaned closer, his face inches from mine. The light spicy scent of aftershave tickled my nose. “Who’s got your back, Vonna?”

  My gaze flickered toward the gym, then away. “That should be obvious.”

  “Should it?” The plum of curiosity twined around him. He grunted as he released the door. “Four minutes.”

  O O O

  We rolled up on the scene, a warehouse off Martin Luther King Boulevard in South East, fifteen minutes later. Muller toggled the blue duty light in his unmarked cruiser.

  Officers have rituals. Muller’s was almost psychic. The colors in his aura marking the emotions that swirled around the insens dimmed to an almost nonexistence wash. He’d drained away his surface emotions.

  He opened the car door. The city’s sounds flooded in. The hush of tires on damp pavement underscored the muted voice of officers and the sharper trill of the reporters who listened to the police band. The recent rain’s scent muted the city’s stink. The door thunked closed.

  When the trunk also slammed shut I slid from the car. Muller stood at the rear of the vehicle. His eyes closed. His face tilted upward. Ten breaths later, his eyes snapped open. He rapped his knuckles three times on the trunk in his final ritual.

  Muller kept his silence both physical and psychic. He cop-walked—more than a brisk walk but less than a rushed stride—to the building. The grimy color of dirty Band-Aids covered the officers’ auras. A few newer recruits twinned ashes of roses showing revulsion. One, fresh enough to look like he’d just graduated from the Academy, radiated the cranberry of shock.

  “Can I do my job?” I asked.

  Muller’s eyes narrowed, then he gripped my arm and pulled me out of the flow of officers. After the first sexual homicide I’d handled for him, he’d grown reluctant to let me relive the victim’s memories.

  “Basic empathic readings—” His voice was a near growl.

  “Aren’t enough. Rick, the Red Unicorn’s escalating.”

  I dropped my voice so it didn’t carry on the spring breeze. “I’m no good to you unless you let me use my abilities.” His aura flashed his protest. “We’re not going to catch him before he kills again unless you let me see him.”

  He rubbed the nonexistent stubble on his jaw. “I don’t like how much it hurts you.”

  I waited.

  “It’s likely a sexual homicide,” he said.

  Silence stretched.

  He breathed my name out. “He’ll make a mistake.”

  “How many women will die first?”

  Flickers in his aura declared my arrow hit home. The pressure from a red-ball—a murder with lots of media attention—and a mounting body count weighed heavily against his protectiveness of me.

  He shook a finger in my face. “I won’t have you reliving their deaths when you fit his victim profile.”

  Silent, he stalked into the warehouse. The sticky sweet scent of decaying flesh and blood hit like a wall. The low hum of flies was audible over the hushed whispers of techs. I tasted the Red Unicorn’s fury. He hadn’t coldly dispatched this woman. This murder felt … personal.

  His previous kills hadn’t used enough energy for me to be certain the monster was psy. But now I knew. The sour tang of a large psychic energy burst filled the warehouse. Even the insens felt it. Officers rubbed their arms as if to ward off a sudden chill. Hairs stood on the back of necks in the ionized air.

  The Red Unicorn was psychic.

  Which was a problem.

  For me.

  Officers and technicians fell back. Muller met the victim alone. Theirs was a private moment of communion. Of promises given and received. I felt like a Peeping Tom as the dirty Band-Aid color of Muller’s aura deepened. A moment later, he nodded for me.

  A stuffed unicorn, the color of dried blood, perched in what was left of a rib cage. A small patch of white remained on its muzzle. He’d put the unicorn in the body cavity because the woman’s blood had been spread too thin over the room. Another deviation from the pattern. Another sign of psychic deterioration.

  Chunks of flesh scattered over dozens of feet made it look like something had crawled Alien-like out of her, tearing and rending. A real possibility with a psy attack. The other victims had been hacked with something our medical examiner Deva thought was a thin, spiraled blade. But they were looking for a nonexistent weapon. Raw power had mutilated his victims.

  “Impressions?” Muller asked, his tone gruff.

  “He knew her. Have we found enough of the brain to do a time of death? I think she might be the fourth, not fifth, victim.”

  Muller waved Deva forward. The small Indian woman in a medical coat stepped away from her colleagues. Her black hair ran like rain down her back and framed a dark brown face with liquid brown eyes. She wore a pair of faded blue jeans and a bright purple tank top. Her gold aura displayed a rainbow of emotion. Her disgust sharpened the closer she came to the torso.

  “Preliminary,” he snapped.

  Deva’s aura flashed, but she wasn’t insulted. Muller got brusque when he fact-collected.

  “Elita Girard, age twenty-four—”

  “Time of death?”

  She ran her hands over her face. “Not enough tissue for a TOD scan, but I’d estimate six days.”

  “Damn it.” Muller’s voice was soft.

  We had the Red Unicorn’s timeline wrong. Josefa, the women we’d assumed was his fourth victim, had died two days ago. We’d projected a nine-day cool down period where the Red Unicorn selected, and then stalked, his next kill. But someone would die tomorrow—the day after, at the latest.

  “All right, Vonna.” Resignation and defeat wreathed Muller. “You get what you wanted. We need a death reading.”

  My stomach clenched. I never wanted to ride those final moments to death.

  O O O

  Sunset beams of crimson slashed through the high warehouse windows as the last few officers departed. Deva wheeled Elita’s remains away from the point of death and lowered the stretcher. Experience had taught us the shorter distance I fell when the memories took me the better. I sat cross-legged on the floor next to the gurney.

  My eyes closed. I drew in long even breaths and formed a mental doppelganger to hold my emotions. I dumped my fear and revulsion into my doppelganger. Let it dither.

  I pulled off my glove, touched the remains.

  O O O

  I can’t move.

  Why are you doing this?

  A shadow moves across my vision. No features. The world has an oddly filtered feel as if I’m high.

  I don’t know what you want. Pure? I don’t understand. Wha—?

  Pain lances through me. Blue velvet light fills me. I’m coming apart. Oh God, it hurts.

  The world vanishes in a flash of white agony.

  O O O

  Muller pulled in front of the Psyonics Corporation. Before the psychics took over the world, the five-sided building stood as the United States’ military headquarters. We kept it when we gave the government back as a symbol of what we could do if we needed to.

  His gaze went to the Pentagon. “If you get anything from Elita’s memories, give me a call.”

  I couldn’t tell him the Red Unicorn was psychic. We had strict rules on rogues. Where Muller wanted the Red Unicorn caged, we wanted him dead. Our failure to stop the Red Unicorn before he killed, if known, would make governments reconsider the global power structure. Jonathan wouldn’t allow that.

  But how could I withhold the knowledge from my partner?

  How could I justify letting the police department look for a killer they’d never catch without psy intervention? How could I let the Red Unicorn select his next victim wh
ile I hindered the investigation?

  I scrubbed my hands over my face. “You headed in?”

  Muller nodded. “I’m missing something.”

  I opened the car door so Muller wouldn’t see my guilt. If he realized I was holding out he’d interrogate me until one of us broke. Right now, he had a better chance of surviving whole than I did.

  “Pick me up in six hours.”

  “That’s not enough recovery time.” He faced me as I slid out. “You need twice that.”

  “It’s enough. We’re on his timeline.”

  Cornflower blue pride shot through the rainbow that was Rick Muller.

  How could I lie to him? I bit my lower lip and dashed for the doors.

  The building engulfed me. Minutes later I stood in front of Jonathan’s private river-view quarters on the fifth floor. I sent a gentle mental touch. His door opened.

  Jonathan stood by the window. Raw silk emerald lounging pants encased his runner’s legs. His lightweight black silk top highlighted the paleness of his skin and his white-blond hair. Sharp cheekbones complimented his strong jaw line. Jonathan wore the role of most powerful being in the world with a grace I’d never match.

  “Problem?” he asked as I entered his sitting room.

  “The Red Unicorn.” I paused for his nod of recognition. I allowed my certainty to seep past my shields. “Is ours.”

  Emotions flared and were gone from his aura quicker than I could catalogue. Dealing with other psy was easier than with insens. Psy didn’t waste time with pointless questions.

  “Details.”

  I laid out what I’d learned. “He’s near the top of the strength spectrum. Burster or Tugger.”

  Jonathan was a strong Burster and affected people on a cellular level. A Tugger, or Brain in street-slang, could take control of a person. The designations explained how the Red Unicorn restrained Elita.

  “Or a mix of both,” Jonathan said. “I’ll track it from my end.” He paused. “Did you tell Muller?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  I wasn’t so sure.

  “You’re ready to drop. Unless you want to spend time in Silence you should rest.”

  “I will.”

  As I crossed the threshold, Jonathan said, “And Vonna? You’re confined until this beast is caught.”