by Lee Driver
“Generation?” Sara unfolded her legs and felt a shudder reverberate through her body. “What do you mean?”
Sherlock passed additional reports to Dagger, saying, “The killer’s name is Paul Addison. Every male in the Addison family born on a Friday the thirteenth has had this shifting ability. There has been one every generation. They seem to have a pecking order. When one dies, the next in line seems to immediately take on this ability.”
Dagger stared at the Addison family tree Sherlock had drawn:
Paul, November 13, 1970
Trent, February 14, 1930
Cleveland, October 13, 1905
Seymour, May 13, 1881
Henry, June 13, 1851
Nathan, February 13, 1835
Sherlock explained, “You will notice Paul’s father, Trent, wasn’t born on a Friday the thirteenth. It was Trent’s father, Cleveland, who raped Paul’s mother. Cleveland was Paul’s father.”
Dagger digested that information, the professor’s credibility was fading the more information he dispelled. “Nathan was only sixteen when he fathered a son?”
Sherlock replied, “Yes.”
“Why them?” Dagger asked. “Why the Addison family and no one else?”
With a heavy sigh and a rake of fingers through his streaked hair, Sherlock admitted, “I’m not sure at this point. But according to some old newspaper accounts and town rumors, Nathan Addison was a witch. Not the traditional wiccan of today which certainly doesn’t call for casting spells and conjuring up the devil. He delved into the unknown, robbed gravesites, conducted human sacrifices. He was a strange kid and claimed he was rewarded for coming to the dark side, whatever the hell that means.”
Sara stretched out on the window seat in her room staring at the sky. In the early hours of Friday morning the moon would be full. What if everything their visitors said were true? Was there really someone else out there like her? If her grandmother were still alive, she would have the answers…maybe.
A shadow filled her doorway and she heard a knock on the door frame. “Are you okay?” Dagger crossed the room and sat across from her.
Sara gathered her robe around her to ward off the chill penetrating her bones. Dagger placed his hands on her ankles. His skin was warm, almost hot to the touch. She stared at him in her darkened room, light from the moon slicing a pattern across his face. His eyes were intense as he tightened his grip. There was something reassuring in his gaze, in his touch. She trusted him completely, with her life, with her safety.
“Do you believe them, Dagger?”
He released his grip and leaned back, eyes staring at the large ball of light in the sky, which bathed the acres in a soft glow.
She followed his gaze and said with resignation, “There might be someone out there just like me.”
“No.” He shook his head and the shadows made his eyes appear more feral. “The way this guy kills, you can’t possibly make the comparison.”
“The wolf can be just as deadly, kill just as ferociously.” She looked away from him, back to the sky. According to Indian mythology, there can be no witnesses to a shifting. Sara’s wolf form would kill any witnesses and it was something she couldn’t control. So her grandparents had moved her around the country to get Sara as far away as possible so the wolf wouldn’t be tempted.
“You heard the professor, Sara. This is different. He only shifts during a full moon on a Friday the thirteenth. You know, werewolves and…” Dagger shook his head and chuckled. “God, listen to me. I’m talking like I believe them.” He pressed his head against the wall and sighed. His eyes revealed the fatigue settling over his body. “My gut tells me the killer is a very sick, perverted serial killer. Someone who knows how to yank someone’s chain. He’s cunning, sinister, and enjoys watching the authorities chase around like Keystone Cops. But he’s human, Sara.”
“Still…” They were silent for a while, each studying the clear sky and the moon looming over the treetops. Slowly, Sara shifted her gaze back to Dagger’s face, the handsome, angular features, the scar above his left eyebrow, the result of a recent case they had worked on. “I have to find out for sure, Dagger.” She whispered it as though the air might carry her words through the opened patio door to whatever lie in waiting outside.
Sara rose from the window seat and walked toward the patio door, slid open the screen. Returning, she tossed her robe on the bed. With one last gaze at Dagger, she shifted into the gray wolf. The change was swift, one fluid motion. And she was becoming more comfortable each time shifting in front of him.
He never saw even a hint of bare skin. It always amazed him. For some reason Beam me up Scotty always ran through his head when he watched. One second Sara was standing there in all her innocent beauty, and then her five-foot-six-inch frame seemed to diminish, her features combine briefly with the wolf, and then the wolf materialized. The only feature that didn’t change were those mesmerizing eyes. Even the nightgown seemed to drift from her body and now lay pooled at the wolf’s paws.
Each time he told himself to watch carefully but there was too much to focus on in trying to watch the face, skin, legs, hoping to witness the entire process. He never succeeded. The change was just too quick.
The wolf kept its distance, as fearful of him as Sara had once been. But it would never harm him. Dagger was Sara’s protector. He had saved the wolf once, and Sara’s grandmother had given him the black cord necklace with the silver wolf head pendant which had turquoise stones embedded for eyes.
The wolf took two timid steps backward, turned, bounded out onto the balcony and just as quickly, shifted to the gray hawk as it landed on the railing.
Be careful, Sara.
CHAPTER 11
October 10, 12:20 a.m.
Tex secretly smiled as he turned off Route 12 onto Camden Parkway. His baby was two days old and now he would be able to see what she could do. His baby was his new Harley motorcycle, the Fat Boy®. Tex had saved for five years to outfit his baby to his dream bike. Twenty-one thousand dollars it cost and he had never in his life felt such power between his legs. Six hundred and ninety-five pounds of sheer energy.
The eight-inch headlamp revealed an open stretch of road ahead, the perfect place to let her out, see what she could do. Tex turned the volume up so the whole world could hear LeAnn Rimes’ sweet voice on his premium sound system. Tex had his own band, Tex’s Rangers. They played mostly red-neck bars and county fairs. And he was always amused at the surprise on the faces in the audience when he pulled his two-hundred-and-forty-pound body onto the stage carrying a delicate fiddle. People expected him to be carrying some monstrous ass instrument or to be pounding on a drum. But his granddaddy had taught him how to play the fiddle and somehow his fat stubby fingers were able to make those strings sing.
Tex watched the speedometer register seventy-five, eighty, ninety, as the wind played through his hair and the forest swallowed him up. This was a stretch of road seldom used, except for the occasional high school hot rodders. Insects ricocheted off the windshield and he was thankful he had remembered to bring his protective glasses.
He opened her up and the Fat Boy® took the curve with ease, a throaty roar of the engine echoing through the night air. Something darted across the road ahead and Tex switched on the high beam. Last thing he needed was to impale a deer on the front of his new toy.
Brightly colored leaves drifted across the road. The high beam cast shadows in the thick underbrush beyond the grassy shoulders lining Camden Parkway. Thick limbs reached far enough across the road to touch its neighbors.
The road dipped and an eerie mist curled around the trees and snaked across his path. There was a damp chill to the air, which penetrated Tex’s leather jacket. It felt as though the temperature had just dropped twenty degrees.
Tex didn’t have a care in the world. His dream had come true. Let the rich cats have their Cadillacs and Lincolns. He had his Fat Boy®, although his wife would argue he could have bought a car with the price he pa
id for his dream.
He was in the middle of these happy thoughts when the pain hit him. The burning spread across his neck and down his chest and he vaguely remembered a face looming in front of him, coming from nowhere. It had the strangest eyes, yellow and slitted, like some wild cat. Was he suffering from the road hypnosis people feel after staring at the center line too long? He hadn’t had anything to drink and definitely didn’t smoke a joint before climbing on his baby.
He marveled at the chrome pipes on his Fat Boy® and how the two-tone sinister blue and diamond ice color shone under the moonlight. How absolutely beautiful his baby looked as it sailed off the road and onto the shoulder, along with the rest of his body.
He basked in the moonlight, stretched out on a thick limb of an ancient oak tree. The energy permeated every pore and he drank it in, felt himself changing. Just as much outside as inside. The lust of the kill, the hunger to destroy. So many victims, so little time. He laughed, an hysterical laugh that echoed through the forest preserve, carried on the cool winds. Wildlife scurried at the sound. Weak. All other life forms, including man, were so weak.
Nighttime rejuvenated him. He hated to sleep and understood why some writer once called sleep “little slices of death.” All of his senses were enhanced. When he had first heard the droning of the motorcycle, it had sounded like a throng of bees gathering over the ridge. But there was something else. Beating…ba bump, ba bump. He could hear the sound of someone’s heart. The thrill of the hunt was seductive. Ba bump, ba bump, ba bump.
His agility amazed even him. The tree limb he was reclining on was ten feet above the ground. It was barely a slight jump for him, his body propelled by some boundless energy and power. Power. He so loved that word. Power over everything and everyone. A normal full moon gave him some power and energy. Sometimes he acted on it, sometimes he didn’t. And the killings read like any homicide—strangulation, blunt trauma, stabbing. All added to the list of unsolved cases over the years. And for those cases authorities claimed were solved, only he knew they had arrested the wrong man.
But it was only when the full moon occurred on a Friday the thirteenth that the insatiable craving to destroy dominated every cell of his being. The power was so intoxicating that he could think of nothing else. Soon. He could barely contain himself.
Raising one hand, he admired the subtle changes already occurring—the long nails, hard and dark blue as if death itself had already claimed him; the tufts of hair on his hands; the slitted pupils which glowed as yellow as the moon. All these changes disappeared with the breaking of the sun on the horizon but would reappear again once nighttime fell.
Flames engulfed the motorcycle one hundred feet down the road. He stood like a trapeze artist, balancing on the broad limb, dancing in the moonlight as he held his prize aloft.
Dagger stared at the face on the computer screen. He had scanned in Paul Addison’s face and Emailed it to Skizzy to have him check gun and voter registrations in the computer. Sergeant Flynn had already checked the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to see what fictitious name Addison might be using now. But it still listed his old address in Indianapolis and he hadn’t renewed his license.
It was a handsome face that stared back at him, sandy-colored hair, fair complexion. He looked much younger than his thirty years and probably was still carded in bars. Stats said Addison was five-foot-ten-inches tall and weighed one-hundred-and-fifty pounds. Didn’t sound like a bruiser. How could anyone believe this frail-looking guy could haul a woman’s body up a tree? Especially a woman Lisa’s size?
Dagger sent Skizzy an Email to tell him he would be stopping by at seven o’clock in the morning and to be up and ready. They had work to do.
Dagger rubbed his hands across his face, stood and stretched. Checking the clock, he wondered where Sara was. He turned off the light. The glow from the computer was temporary. Although he leaves his computer on all night, the screen saver would turn the monitor off in fifteen minutes.
Walking past the aviary, Dagger stopped. There were bars in front of the windows to keep Einstein from accidentally flying into them, and there was also a perch in case he wanted to peer out. It was past midnight. Einstein should be asleep on one of the tree branches. Instead, the macaw was perched in front of the window.
Dagger slid the doors open and stepped inside the darkened room. He could tell by the way Einstein’s head slowly moved back and forth that the macaw was still awake.
“Hey, bud. Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?” He stared up at the perch. Einstein kept peering out. Dagger held his arm up and whistled softly. “Einstein.”
The macaw turned his gaze to Dagger and after several seconds flew off the perch and clamped his claws onto Dagger’s arm. Dagger carried the macaw into the kitchen where the lighting was better.
“Can’t sleep?” He handed Einstein a Brazil nut. Einstein eyed it briefly, then turned his head, looked toward the kitchen windows. “Not feeling well?” Dagger checked the macaw’s wings for molt and black spots. Next he checked its nostrils, listened to its breathing, checked its eyes for conjunctivitis. Einstein’s body shuddered and Dagger heard something splatter on the floor.
Einstein was usually very clean and had been taught to go in a specific area of the aviary. Now the bird had diarrhea, a sure sign that something was wrong. Dagger carried him back to the aviary and set him by the perch just inside the doorway.
Dagger offered him a cheese curl, one of the macaw’s favorite treats. Einstein looked away. “That’s definitely not a good sign.” He stroked Einstein’s back. “I’m going to leave you here just for a few minutes while I clean up the mess you made.”
Einstein immediately flew back to the perch in front of the window.
Sara? Einstein is sick.
What’s wrong with him?
Dagger explained the symptoms.
I’m on my way.
The killer jerked his head up. Why was he hearing voices again? He had heard them last night but dismissed it as part of his enhanced sense of hearing, that maybe the voices were coming from people nearby. And it was the same name—Sara. The sounds were all around him, giving no indication how close or how far the people were. How could that be? Could someone know of his existence? But they weren’t speaking to him. It felt more like he was eavesdropping on their conversation.
He scurried through the trees searching for human forms, vehicles, a source for the voices. But there weren’t any. What had been said last night? Of course. The weapons. Who was it Sara had been speaking to? He remained silent, hoping to catch more words, more names. But they were silent. What does it mean? Was someone psychic? But that didn’t work on him. He had tested it out before, found a supposed psychic and tried speaking to her during one of his spells. How funny he would use that term. His mother used to use that term to describe his grandfather. But the psychic was of no use. Another phony. She paid for her deception. He would have to check around town. But which town? How close was this Sara? How powerful was she? A sudden shot practically jolted him off the limb. What if she were like him?
Sara ran down the stairs barefoot and dressed in warm ups. She usually showered after being out but wanted to see Einstein. “Where is he?”
Dagger pointed to the aviary. “He just keeps staring out the windows.”
“Would you make him some camomile tea?” Sara clapped her hands softly. “Einstein, I’ve got something for you.”
Einstein flew down to the perch closest to her.
“Come on out here.” She stepped over to Dagger’s desk. Einstein followed and clamped his claws onto the perch near the desk. “Let me see.” She went through the same examination Dagger had—checking the nostrils, feathers, beak. She scratched between the base of the upper beak and ear opening. This caused a yawning reflex. “Say ahhhh.” Sara laughed as Einstein yawned.
Dagger came in with a bowl of camomile tea. “How does he look to you?”
Einstein grabbed a beak full of Sara’s hair. “No, no,” she sco
lded, pulling her long hair back and twisting it to keep it out of the way. “How were the droppings? Any blood?”
“No, just messy.”
“Has he been out lately? Eaten anything strange?” Dagger shook his head no to each question. Sara glanced quickly at him. “Sheila hasn’t visited, has she?”
“No.” A slight smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. Sheila didn’t like Einstein and she liked Sara even less, but he doubted even she would be so calloused as to poison the bird. Dagger stood back, arms crossed. Einstein reached one claw out to him. Dagger’s brows furrowed. He held the bowl of tea up to him. “What about that vitamin deficiency disease?”
“Avitaminosis? I don’t think so. We don’t freeze his food and he gets a pretty good variety of foods. Have you ever seen him act this way before?” Sara ran a hand down the bright scarlet feathers, lifted the blue tips of the wings. The feathers were silky to the touch. As a test, she turned him away from the windows. Slowly, Einstein turned back, his head craning to see the panel of windows in the front and then up to the skylights. She felt a shudder run through his body. Slowly, Sara followed Einstein’s gaze.
“There was something strange going on when I was out tonight,” she said.
Dagger let the macaw climb on his arm and nuzzle under his chin. “How’s that?”
“It was silent. I didn’t hear or see any wildlife, as if every creature were in hiding.”
“Doesn’t that usually happen just before a storm?”
“But it isn’t raining yet. And the forest should be filled with deer.” She watched the tenderness Dagger showed toward Einstein, the gentle way he rubbed the macaw’s crown, the genuine concern that caused the tiny crease between Dagger’s eyebrows. She caught his gaze and whispered, as if not wanting Einstein to hear. “There’s something out there, Dagger. And Einstein knows it.”
