A few hours later her mother came over for dinner, and after dinner talk turned to the growing church, as it always did.
"Those people are dangerous." His mother-in-law helped herself to another glass of chocolate milk in lieu of her typical nightcap – Monica's parents still drank, but since her recovery they never did so in front of her, and never brought alcohol to the Rowley household.
Matt nodded, as much to fill space as in agreement.
"That Rees boy ain't done nothing to slow them down, neither." Momma Walters's unapologetic white trash twang clashed with her general intelligence and insight into human nature, and traces of it still infected her daughter's speech, more when agitated. She plopped down on the couch and stretched out her stockinged legs next to Adam, who pushed a fire truck in circles on the floor.
"I wouldn't say he's done 'nothing', Momma." Monica poured another cup of coffee, decaf, cupping it in her hands and blowing on it before taking a sip. "It's smaller than it was going to be, and shorter, too. That was his doing."
Momma shook her head. "A sacrilege no matter the size. That boy should know better, raised Catholic or no. His mother must be rolling in her grave."
A thousand replies raced down Matt's synapses, only to be strangled by his brain before they blurted from his mouth, not the least of which that Jason's mother still lived on the other side of town. Instead he took a sip of coffee and let Monica handle it.
"He's just misguided. He'll calm down one of these days and move on to another project, just you wait."
Momma snorted. "I'm too old to wait."
"You're fifty-one."
A lifelong smoker and hard drinker, Monica's mother looked closer to seventy everywhere but her eyes, sharp and bright green if a bit bloodshot.
"Old enough." She leaned down and mussed Adam's hair. "You get to be old when you're a grandma, no difference how many years you seen."
Adam reached up and grabbed her finger.
She grinned.
He grinned back. "You have a little time, Nana."
Monica stiffened. Her mother froze. Matt watched her extract her hand and wipe it on her shirt. Adam steadied himself against her legs, eyes wide, a bright smile on his lips.
"What do you mean by that, child?"
"You'll get older for a while." He held her gaze, still grinning, as her perplexed look turned to a frown.
"Well I should hope so."
He let go and plopped down. Grabbing his truck, he made siren noises as he pushed it toward the cold fireplace.
Monica and Matt exchanged a look as her mom wiped her hand on her pants, a flash of distaste adding another decade to her prematurely-aged visage. "From the mouth of babes…"
Matt's work phone buzzed, so he excused himself and walked into the hall leading to the rear deck. Ted looked up from the middle of the floor, tail thumping twice before settling back into a light snooze. He stepped over the dog and swiped his thumb over the fingerprint reader.
Unknown Name. Unknown Number.
His government-issued, CIA-grade antivirus and anti-spyware program nuked anything that even looked like a cyber-threat from orbit, so he opened the message.
WISH U WERE HERE
Three crosses burned, each with the crossbar set at a different height. The highest for Jehovah, the middle for Lucifer, and the lowest for Satan, his throat hitched at recognition of the idols of Ben Case's weird Process cult in flames. Illegitimate son of Manson devotee and lover Katie Krenwinkle, Case had founded his pacifist, ascetic, free-love religion as a spinoff of Manson's spinoff of Scientology, rejecting his mother's violence to live in weird, vegan peace on the shores of Lake Barnacle, Georgia. He'd run his family for decades without much incident, with only occasional harassment from law enforcement and a murderous visit from Conor Flynn as exceptions.
Whacked-out freaks who all took the name Ben or Katie, still it pained Matt to see their crosses on fire. The ancient wood had borne the Ul, the mysterious symbol that had come to identify Gerstner's influence through the ages, from ancient Mesopotamia to the murder cults of the Aztecs, and they had stood for as long as records went back.
He stepped out on the deck, holding the door as Ted dashed past him to bark at squirrels in the underbrush, and pulled up the number for the Lake Barnacle PD. A two-man operation happy to cooperate with federal agents on the once-in-a-blue-moon occasions they might call, he'd dealt with them only once before. It rang six times before a male voice picked up, heaving and out of breath.
"Sheriff. Sheriff's office. Sheriff speaking."
"Hi, Sheriff Jaus? This is Matt Rowley from the Special Threats Bureau. I came down last year—"
"I remember. Murder at the Compound. We dug them up, but didn't find enough evidence of a homicide."
Matt already knew, and hadn't been surprised when the results had come across his desk. With years to decompose, a raped and skinned body would have been nothing more than bones.
"Thanks, but that's not why I'm calling. Is there any evidence of a fire out there tonight?"
A pregnant pause, then, "Tonight? No sir. Sky was pretty bright out that way a few nights ago, lots of smoke and so forth, but nothing tonight, no."
He closed his eyes. "Did you… investigate?"
"No sir. If the Prophet wants an investigation, he'll invite us in. Otherwise they handle their affairs in-house and we leave them right alone. Figured they was having a bonfire is all."
"Do me a favor and make a run by, see if everything's normal. As normal as they get."
"Can do. Take maybe thirty minutes. Call back at this number?"
"I'd appreciate it."
The line clicked dead, and Matt opened his eyes. A splash of color in the infrared spectrum, Ted frolicked on the edge of the yard, rustling in the leaves, sniffing after rodents he'd never hope to catch even if he lost five pounds.
"Ted! Come!" He used to let the dog roam the property, but recent reports of cougar sightings made Matt wary of leaving him out at night too long. The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation claimed cougars no longer existed east of the Mississippi, but Kevin Bartell and Deputy Broadbent had both claimed sightings in the county, and he'd never known either man to be a liar.
Ted charged the stairs, tripped on his ears on the way up, and landed sprawled out on the deck, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.
"Good boy." Matt scratched him behind the ears and let him scramble inside, following the berserk tail around the corner into the living room.
Monica raised an eyebrow, her expression an exact copy of her mother's.
He shrugged. "Work."
"Of course," they said in unison.
Monica frowned. "You just got home."
He rubbed his temples, glad that his wife didn't know one of the hands rubbing hadn't been attached two days prior. "Don't I know it."
"They work you too hard, young man." Momma's voice cut like a knife through what little peace the rubbing had brought him.
"You're not the first to think so."
They put Adam to bed and finished dessert. Momma said her goodbyes before Sheriff Jaus called back fifty minutes later, his voice shaking over the line.
"Rowley? I think y'all want to come down here."
"Oh?" He snuffed any concern from his voice, lest Monica overhear while brushing her teeth.
"Yeah, they're dead. All of them."
"Roger that."
Silence carried for a moment, then, "You don't sound too surprised. Maybe you want to tell me why that is?"
"A bad feeling, I guess."
"So what prompted the call about the fire?"
"We'll debrief on-site. Tomorrow morning work for you?"
"All right. We'll be here all night. My best to your wife and son."
"Sure." Too many people knew too damned much about hi
s family, thanks to impossible events, ever-present video-recording devices, and an exuberant press. He hung up the phone and texted Blossom. "Helipad at 05:00."
Then he called Janet. "Hey, something happened at Lake Barnacle. A lot of people dead. You want to come down, or handle things from there?"
Janet lived in Maryland a short jaunt from DC, but the Special Threats Bureau owned three demilitarized attack helicopters for transport purposes and could commandeer whatever else they needed on Matt's authority.
"I'll meet you there. Tonight, or tomorrow?"
"I'm meeting Sakura at five hundred hours, to get there at dawn."
"You bastard."
"G'night."
Hands wrapped around his waist, gentle and freezing cold. "Leaving so soon?"
The whispers urged him to leap back, smash her to jelly against the stonework fireplace and feast on the twitching remains. A softer set of voices, cool white and full of love and compassion, intertwined with them. Jade and white, they filled him to bursting.
He leaned back into his wife's embrace, careful not to press her into the wall. With his augmented strength every movement had to be scripted, from petting the dog to making love to shaking hands. "Sorry, Mon. This shouldn't take too long."
She buried her head between his shoulder blades. "Days or weeks?"
"Hours, if I'm lucky."
"Just come back safe."
* * *
The helicopter touched down on the far side of the shoreline next to its twin, a jet black Zulu Cobra emblazoned with STB in plain letters, lacking only the weapons systems of its military-service counterparts. Janet wandered through the charred remains of tents and lean-tos, tiptoeing around severed limbs and chunks of bodies in a windbreaker and combat boots. Thousands of small yellow flags littered the ground, the droppings of a flock of forensics technicians, some of whom stood at the edge of the water with Sheriff Jaus and his deputy, a buff twentysomething whose name Matt had never learned. Their pale faces and haggard expressions betrayed a night of unrelenting horrors ground down to monotony by the sheer scale of their task, and their blazers bore the marks of six different counties.
Sakura beat him out the door and around the pond, flashing from scene to scene, a blur in human form not bothering to hide her abilities. The normals watched her with a mix of curiosity and awe – everyone 'knew' Augs were a thing of the past, as useless as Jade, with the sole exception of Matt Rowley.
Jaus put out his hand as Matt approached through a stinking miasma of shit, rot, and smoke. The sheriff squeezed too hard, and Matt returned it pound-for-pound.
"No press?"
Jaus spat. "We're keeping them outside the gate. Caught two sneaking through the woods around three. They know it's bad from the birds, just don't know how bad, yet." As the helicopters powered down, hundreds of crows and dozens of vultures closed in, circling above or diving down from the trees.
"How bad?"
"Sixty-seven casualties; men, women and children. No sign of Case, far as we can tell, though some are harder to identify than others. Most died of some combination of blunt trauma and dismemberment. Long with the birds, coyotes and foxes been working the mess a few days, which don't help the lab techs none, but bug analysis puts time of death at four days ago, same time as the fire."
DHS put the text message at an hour before he got it, from a pre-pay cell phone purchased at a Walmart in Columbia, South Carolina. Surveillance records showed a white man in a gray hoodie that couldn't manage to contain a giant light-brown afro. Ben Case. After the purchase he'd smiled straight at the camera and blown a kiss.
Matt told Jaus what he knew, and showed him the security footage.
Jaus grunted. "I've known Ben Case since he was your age, Rowley, and he ain't never smiled like that. Never."
"What do you mean?"
"Weird a bug as you're ever like to meet, but that boy didn't have a cruel bone in his body."
From their one meeting, Matt couldn't disagree with the assessment.
Matt pocketed his phone. "So what's your take?"
Jaus raised his eyebrows, eyes locked on Matt's. "You're the man's got an inside track with the almighty. Why don't you tell me?"
Feeling himself flush, Matt suppressed a snarl and instead shook his head. "You've got that wrong, Sheriff. My boy's just a boy, and as grateful as I am that she's safe and sound, my wife is the same woman she's always been, proud and stubborn and just a woman."
Jaus broke his gaze. "Not what I've heard."
"Then you've heard wrong."
"I guess I'll have to take your word for it." The Sheriff picked up a flat rock, hefted it, and spun it out over the lake. It skipped four times before disappearing into the water, and in that moment Matt remembered the alligators and took a step back.
"What you worried about?"
Matt nodded at the water. "Gators."
"Ain't no gators in Lake Barnacle."
"I saw one take a bird on my last visit."
Jaus spat. "You saw wrong."
Matt conjured the image, a perfect recollection from his eidetic enhancements. A sudden ripple, a flight of squawking birds, bloody white feathers on the water. Ben Case had seemed unperturbed by the disturbance, but had confirmed his suspicion of alligators. "Maybe I did, but Case thought so, too."
Jaus spat again. "Case thought lots of things. Ain't but two or three were true."
Janet peeled off blue latex gloves as she sauntered up, returning the sidelong looks from the techs and young deputy with just the right amount of totally inappropriate and out-of-place interest. She blew a purple bubble, sucked it back into her mouth, and chewed it a few times. "Morning, Rowley."
"Janet." He nodded. "How long have you been here?"
She shrugged. Jaus answered for her.
"Miss LaLonde arrived not three hours after your call last night. She's been here all night, helping the forensics crews tag and catalog."
Matt smiled a smile he didn't mean. If Janet had any forensics training, he hadn't been aware of it. "Good of you. What have we learned?"
"Dead people smell bad."
"Sure. Anything useful?"
Pointing at one of the techs, she blew another bubble, pierced it from the inside with her tongue, and let it deflate before chewing it back in. "Mac here figures the wounds were caused by bare human hands, and the only people we know of capable of doing that kind of damage are you and Sakura, and both of you have firm alibis."
Jaus grunted. "There's a dog loose in the wood."
Matt turned to him. "What?"
"Watership D— never mind. Book reference."
"Okay." He turned from the sheriff back to Janet. "Anything else?"
"Nope." She turned so that nobody else could see her, and winked. "Pretty fucked up."
"Yeah, okay."
They spent the next fourteen hours going over the scene, analyzing pictures, discussing theories, and dealing with the FBI, who'd shown up just after midday and tried to pull rank before Matt shut them down and relegated them to an advisory and assistance role. The evidence pointed to superhuman or supernatural threats, and that made the scene Matt's jurisdiction.
That night they sat down to dinner at the closest diner, fifteen miles away, the Alligator Moon Hotel long-since out of business despite having been the only place for lodging or food in Barnacle Township. Katie's Koffee Kup offered a simple menu of southern comfort food. Sakura ordered enough food for three people, and Matt enough for five, including three chicken-fried steaks and two baked potatoes.
Janet came back from the bathroom and slid in next to Matt, leaving the other side of the table for Sakura. Janet ordered a Coors Lite – the only beer on the menu – a chili dog, and collard greens with black beans. As soon as the waitress left she tapped the table with a fingernail. "Kanji, right?"
Sakura
nodded.
"What's it say?"
Matt looked from Sakura to Janet. "What's what say?"
A paper appeared on the table in front of Sakura, too fast for Matt to follow. "The bodies make a poem. It's not right, like a new student who translates a song. The Japanese is very bad."
"What's it say?"
"It says four lines, with one repeating between. It even sort of rhymes before translation, in a Western manner. 'The boy will join the parents in death; prepare, the master will arrive; the prostitute's brother will leave her in dishonor and shame; prepare, the master will arrive; power will not withstand true power; prepare, the master will arrive; the correct way is the correct way.'"
Janet snorted. "What the hell does that mean?"
The waitress arrived with their drinks: coffee, Coors, and hot water. Matt sipped his coffee, dark and robust and much better than he'd expected.
"You both remember Conor's tattoos." It wasn't a question. Conor Flynn's body had been covered with human-blood tattoos under his clothes, one for each victim, including his wife and son. In dozens of languages, each one had read, "Be ready, the master comes."
Sakura nodded. "Yes, the repeating line could interpret the same."
"Right is right," Janet murmured, Conor's favorite saying.
Matt grew cold. "Blossom, could the last line mean, 'Right is right?'"
She shook her head. "Only if the person is very bad at Japanese."
"Conor had some vague proficiency," Janet said. "Maybe he—"
"Conor's dead." Matt turned to glare at her. "I crushed his brains with my own hands, and I watched as they autopsied and then incinerated his body. He's very, very dead."
She sucked in a breath through her teeth. "I think we both know that's not as permanent as it used to be, bud."
Matt scowled. They ate in silence, aware of but ignoring the stares from the customers and employees, who seemed to think strangers a special form of entertainment. After dinner Janet excused herself to the restroom, and Sakura slammed her hand down on the table.
"She was there, many hours. Why?"
Jade Gods Page 5
