Belladonna Dreams

by Hadena James

  “You want to know a secret?” I asked. “That is also rhetorical, because I am going to tell you regardless. I know why you do not lust after me. Helena told me how much you hate women. I am sure it stems from your mother abandoning you. These things usually do. But that is more Lucas’s department than mine. My guess is that like most women-haters, you cannot perform without some violence and control, which puts me way out of your league because I like the violence and would never relinquish control.”

  Thirty-One

  That was the button and I had just slammed my fist onto it. The rage that had been bubbling now overflowed. He yanked upwards, pulling the table with him. It buckled and bent in different places as the bolts struggled to keep it attached to the floor. I gave him a look of disgust, which just made him angrier. He snarled at me, leaning forward, straining against the restraints.

  “You stupid bitch, you are alive only because of the men in your life. You want to know why I killed all those women? It’s because they were like you. Their only purpose in life was to ruin good men like Tyler and Gavin. Send them spiraling out of control, making them do things they didn’t want to do, taking away their pride and dignity. You are a selfish, spoiled cunt who doesn’t deserve to live. You are nothing like me. You are nothing to me. You claim to be a sociopath, but all I see is a cowardly woman who hides behind a fake diagnosis to keep from having to be a contributing member of society. Sociopath, my ass, if you’re a real sociopath, I’m fucking Santa Claus, you whore.”

  “Thanks, that’s what I needed.” I stood up and leaned towards him. The calm had descended upon me the moment he jumped from the chair. I let him look at my face, only inches away from his. I lowered my voice. “You are lucky you are cuffed to that table or I would have an excuse to rip your heart out and feed it to you. You can call me names all you want, but you know the truth. You have seen it in my face before, the darkness that claims me. It bothers you that I fought you off, even under the influence of your drug cocktail. That is why you tossed me into a window. You could not kill me that night or any other time you tried. Do you know why? It is because I am smarter than you, just as strong, and just as determined. You, Alejandro, met your match with me and you lost. How does it make you feel to hate women that much, but know that a woman managed to outsmart and out monster you?”

  “You did nothing like that.”

  “I got you to confess and you do not scare me,” I whispered. “However, if it was not for that little genetic anomaly, I would terrify you. However, because you do not feel fear, you cannot understand how to react to me, so you panic. You did it the night you broke down my hotel room door in Chicago, you did it the night I confronted you on the streets of Sioux Falls, and you just did it again. That is the reason you did such a stupid ass thing like pick up an arsenic covered rat. You have no one to blame but yourself.”

  He lashed out, attempting to head-butt me, but I moved back, anticipating the move. He growled, low and guttural. The door opened and Lucas stepped inside.

  “If you got it, we are done.” I walked past the two men. We finally had a confession and a reason for the killings, at least some of them. We still had questions about the others.

  “Well done,” Xavier said as I came into the hallway. He stepped back from me. “I get that psychopaths don’t feel fear, but they should when you’re around and looking like that. I feel like you are looking for a good place to slip a knife.”

  “How’d you find out about Eric?” Gabriel asked.

  “Nyleena called a while ago,” I answered.

  “You alright with it?”

  “Eric is a big boy and a psychopath. I can do little about his behavior. He is already in prison serving a life sentence. Why concern myself over him killing one more mass murderer?” I answered. Lucas had shut the door, coming into the hallway with us. From behind the door, we could hear Alejandro having a tantrum of epic proportions.

  “Should we talk about the Eric thing?” Lucas looked at me.

  “My brother is a killer. He kills people that hurt his family. This is sort of his thing. I do not see anything to discuss,” I pointed out.

  “Well…” A loud crashing noise interrupted Lucas. The door rattling followed it. Alejandro had broken free of the table or he had broken the table free of the floor. I checked my Taser. It was as high as it would go. Lucas stood at the door. He mouthed the countdown and pulled open the door.

  Alejandro was disoriented for a moment. A group of Marshals stood with us, staring at him. He held a table leg like a club. I took that moment to hit him with the Taser. His body tensed up and he fell flat on his face. The room filled with the smell of urine. Unfortunately, this Taser still worked only in bursts. He wasn’t moving, so I pulled the trigger again, hitting him with a second dose of electricity. He groaned as the burst stopped. Lucas nudged Alejandro over using his shoe. He was alive, but he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. I hit him with a third burst just to be on the safe side. Dealing with psychopaths was sort of like dealing with zombies, a person really wanted to make sure they weren’t going to get back up and eat their brains.

  Xavier moved in with needle ready and jabbed Alejandro in the neck. After a few moments, Alejandro was drooling and snoring. It must have been a good sedative.

  “What were you saying about my brother?” I asked Lucas as several people began working to lift the snoring giant.

  “It’s just that he killed someone that attacked you. If he goes after everyone that has attacked you that resides within the Fortress, he’s going to spend a lot of time in solitary confinement,” Lucas went back to what he was saying.

  “But he does not have that kind of list. He does not care about physical damage, he cares about emotional damage. Nick the Bomber caused me emotional damage because I thought Xavier was dead.” I glanced at Alejandro. “I would imagine Alejandro is going to move to the top of Eric’s hit list for attempting to kill Malachi.”

  “Malachi got what he deserved,” Alejandro whispered. Arms wrapped around my body, pinning me so I couldn’t go after the injured and sedated man. Although, he couldn’t have been too sedated since he could talk now. I turned to glare at Xavier.

  “It’s a learning process. That should have taken down an elephant,” Xavier answered. “It appears the dosage needs to be stronger than that for a psychopath. I’ll work on it.”

  “Come on, Ace, we still need to figure out who killed Violet Braun and maybe the others,” Gabriel said to me. I sighed and watched as they took Alejandro away. I would see him again, of that, I was sure, and when I did, I was going to break every bone in his body. And I was really going to enjoy it. I might even get Malachi to help.

  Once the man was out of sight, Lucas released me. He put a hand on my shoulder, guiding me to follow the rest of the group.

  “You should not do that,” I said to him.

  “I know,” Lucas answered. “If you really wanted him bad enough, you’d rip my arms off to get to him. But I think you’d feel bad about it later.”

  “I do not feel guilt or empathy, remember?”

  “I think, as a hybrid, you do, and just don’t realize it because there have been very few times in your life when you felt you did something wrong. Watching you stare at Xavier’s sling for a couple of days makes me think you do feel guilt.” Lucas stopped walking. “Or at least, you are capable of feeling guilt, because you definitely felt bad about stabbing Xavier.”

  Thirty-Two

  People can think themselves into having a headache. I knew, because I did it from time to time and now was one of those times. I had stared at the autopsy pictures for so long that I was starting to point out specks of dust that might be leads.

  “Go smoke, and then maybe you’ll have an epiphany,” Lucas finally growled at me. I went outside. Fiona followed me.

  “May I have one?” She asked.

  “Are you going to eat it?” I replied.

  “The reason it’s hard for me to be around you when you are s
moking is because I’m a former smoker,” she said.

  “Then you will resent me if I give you one because I will be enabling you.”

  “Give me the damn cigarette, Aislinn.”

  I smiled at her swearing and using my full first name as I opened my pack to her. She took one out and lit it like a professional. I lit my own.

  “This is why I quit the NSA,” she said after a moment.

  “Because of the smokers?” I was suddenly confused.

  “No, because it made me want to smoke. I stared at computer code all day and worked on cyphers in my down time.”

  “Maybe you should spend more time at the gun range or breaking down doors. Beating up assholes helps relieve my frustration.”

  “In theory, that sounds like a good plan. Reality rarely turns out like the theory though.”

  “I know. It seems impossible that the deaths are a coincidence, but with every hour, I am leaning more and more in that direction.”

  “I hope that isn’t your epiphany,” Fiona smiled at me. “Why would Helena dream about a fire if she didn’t start it?”

  “Guilt that she did not stop Gavin sooner and she believed Alejandro was responsible for the other deaths, so she took on that guilt as well.”

  “I don’t buy that and I don’t think you do either.”

  “I do not,” I admitted. “But I do not see a way that this works out where Helena is not the killer and that would be difficult since her movements were accounted for on the day of the fire by the asylum.”

  “So, she didn’t start it, but she knew about it. Maybe she’s psychic.”

  “No offense, but I do not believe in psychics.”

  “None taken, but you should. I didn’t believe violent people attracted violent people until I met you. You just radiate it sometimes. It’s like you are struggling with some kind of demon to keep from hurting someone. I saw it tonight with Alejandro, when you two were face to face with only the table between you. He might have wanted you dead, but you wanted to hurt him a lot more than he wanted you dead. It’s not just him either. Sometimes, you just start putting out those vibes and we all feel them and know that violence is coming. I think psychics are just more in tune to emotions, so when the rest of us aren’t feeling that vibe, a psychic would still be feeling it.”

  “Xavier has a theory that psychopaths excrete pheromones. It is why we attract one another. However, science does not support the idea that humans of any sort excrete pheromones.”

  “Science doesn’t support the idea that sociopaths and psychopaths have emotions either. You and I know they are wrong. You have some strong emotions, just fewer of them.”

  “I still cannot tie that into why Helena dreams of a fire she did not start and could not have seen.”

  “But she only dreams of the fire,” Fiona said. “That’s traumatic, don’t get me wrong, but the stabbing was far worse. So why doesn’t she dream of it if she believes her brother is responsible?”

  “Someone told her about the fire,” I looked at Fiona. “No, someone told her about a fire and she connected it either correctly or incorrectly with a series of possible murders and attributed it to her brother. That still doesn’t explain why she doesn’t dream of the stabbing that she would have attributed to her brother as well.”

  “Oh shit,” I said. “There is a timeline problem.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maria said Alejandro had Helena committed six years ago. Her records show she was admitted right after Gavin was killed, and that was almost twenty years ago. Why would they lie about that?” I asked.

  “They?” Fiona countered.

  “Alejandro and Maria. Why would they lie about when she was committed?”

  “They didn’t,” Fiona answered. “Her commitment was voluntary. When Alejandro had her committed, it was still voluntary, but at the request of a federal agent.”

  “Which changes the definition of voluntary,” I said.

  “However, even as a voluntary commitment, her movements were still tracked.” Fiona pointed out.

  “That is true, but I do not think Helena did the killings. I think Alejandro had her voluntary status redefined so that we would think she did them.”

  “But he couldn’t have done them.”

  “He did not need to do them,” I answered. “He had someone else do them.”

  “Who?” Fiona asked.

  “Another sibling, one that I am not sure Maria and Helena know about.” I tossed my cigarette on the ground and raced back into the building. Fiona followed at my heels. Her height made her stride longer and she easily kept up with me.

  “Whoa!” Lucas said as I burst into the conference room.

  “When Alejandro got arsenic poisoning and it looked like he was going to go into full renal failure, you started checking into siblings, right?” I asked Xavier.

  “Yeah, there were four of them.”

  “Gavin, Helena, Maria and who?” I asked.

  “Another boy,” Xavier said. “But he was dead.”

  “Did you see his death certificate?”

  “No, but Maria told me about him. He died six years ago.”

  “Where? How?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Xavier answered. “Why?”

  “Gigantism runs on both sides of Alejandro’s family. A large man held down one of the victims and stabbed her repeatedly. ASPD also runs in Alejandro’s family. If you are right about it being carried on the X chromosome, then he also had ASPD. What if he was or is our witness killer?”

  “I’m on it,” Fiona said, moving to her keyboard. Her fingers were loud in the quiet room as we all waited. “There’s no record of another sibling.”

  “How can we catch killers when no one fruckin’ exists in these godforsaken databases?” I hit the tabletop with my fist and was rewarded when papers flew off it.

  “Let me rephrase that, there’s no record of him, but I think that’s because he’s been scrubbed from the databases. Any good hacker could do it.” Fiona said.

  “Who would do that for Alejandro? And why?” Xavier asked.

  “I do not know, but he is not going to be baited by me again, not as effectively. He will be watching for it.” I sighed. We needed a good psychopath. Unfortunately, they were all in the hospital being put back together.

  “What about Hunter?” Fiona asked.

  “He is a borderline,” I answered. “There is a hierarchy within the deranged community and borderlines are low; think of it as a born of blood vampire versus a bitten and changed vampire. Those of us with ASPD have physical differences from the rest of the population. Borderlines do not have them, so they are inferior. It is kind of snobbish, I know, but that is how it works. Alejandro will recognize him as a borderline and feel superior.”

  “Really? That’s the snobbish comment and not the vampire reference you just threw out as a metaphor to a pagan?” Fiona looked at me.

  “Believe it or not, it is a good metaphor and I have used it before. It has nothing to do with you being a pagan. I would have used it if you had thought you were a werewolf,” I told her.

  “Oh hell,” Lucas jumped from his seat. “Alejandro has had a problem with Malachi for a long time, longer than your existence with the Marshals. When Malachi joined the FBI, VCU was new. One of their first cases was in Nebraska. Some guy lost his mind and started killing women. Malachi never figured out why, because Malachi killed him. His name was Roberto Johnson. Considering Alejandro’s parents liked to give their children Spanish first names and very Americanized last names, it would fit the pattern.”

  “Why did comments about werewolves and vampires make you think of that?” I asked Lucas.

  “Because at the time, I was also working for the FBI and Malachi asked me if I could think of any reason to punch a hole in the base of someone’s skull. The best I could come up with was to drain the fluid around the brain and from the spine,” Lucas answered.

  “Is there a reason someone would want to do
that?” I asked.

  “Not that I can think of, but it’s efficient. The victim can’t fight back with having the fluid around the brain drained. The synapses can’t fire without the fluid to act as a conductor,” Xavier answered. “You put LSD in there, directly into the fluid around the brain and I can’t even imagine the effects. Death would be the least of a person’s worries.”

  “Uh, well,” Fiona frowned, “Malachi doesn’t have a case file on a Roberto Johnson.”

  “That’s impossible,” Lucas walked over to the computer. “Are you sure you have checked all of them?”

  “Yes,” Fiona huffed at him. “There’s no such person in his files. However, I did find an article in a Nebraska newspaper about the FBI gunning down a serial killer that was preying on women. No mention of names, but he killed seven before the FBI shot him.”

  “Who does one hire to make someone disappear from the history books?” I asked.

  “Why?” Gabriel countered.

  “I would like to remove some things about myself,” I answered.

  Helena

  Helena relaxed on the hotel room bed. The plan was working nicely. Alejandro had been captured, the SCTU was on a wild goose chase, and Maria, Tyler, and herself would soon have new names and new homes. As a bonus, Maria and Tyler would soon be dead. Yes, it was all working nicely.