Kevin took the stairs two at a time, already regretting he’d only read about CPR and hadn’t taken any classes. He’d always assumed he’d get around to it in his spare time, but now Noelle was here and he had a gap in life-saving knowledge. Probably too many to count. He wondered fleetingly if somebody published a baby survival guide he could purchase and study until he’d memorized every page. What to do in any infant emergency, indexed from A to Z. Melissa and he could grill each other with flashcards until every tip, trick and procedure was etched indelibly into their gray matter.
As expected, Melissa had closed the door to the nursery to prevent any minor sounds from disturbing the baby’s seemingly infrequent sleep. Kevin had oiled the hinges to eliminate metallic creaking whenever they checked in on Noelle. On the chance she’d fallen asleep again, he turned the knob and opened the door slowly, intending to peek inside the room before entering. If she was awake but quiet, he didn’t want her to see him and cry for him to come get her. He’d carefully slip back out unobserved.
Leaning through a ten-inch gap in the doorway, he never could have been prepared for what he saw. Instead of Noelle lying peacefully in her crib under the cartoon animal mobile, he saw only the hunched form of a pale woman with straggly black hair bent over the crib. She completely blocked his view of Noelle, which was probably why he next noticed a weird, pulsing appendage snaking from the nape of the woman’s neck, over her shoulder and down out of view.
He threw the door open and charged into the room. As the woman shifted, half-turning to face him, he saw what he had feared. The glistening and pulsing appendage stretched into the crib and had clamped onto the back of his daughter’s neck. Noelle’s eyes were closed, her body limp and her lips slack.
“Get away from her, you freaky bitch!” he shouted.
“Kevin?” his wife called in alarm from below.
Fearing that his daughter was ill or had trouble breathing, he’d never thought to bring a weapon to the nursery. Not that he kept guns or hunting knives in the house, but he could have taken a knife from the kitchen or the old baseball bat from the downstairs closet. He hadn’t even brought a cell phone to call the police. But none of that stopped him from rushing the intruder whose strange body mutation was harming his daughter.
Tangles of dark hair fell like a fetid veil in front of the strange woman’s face so that he only glimpsed her feral eyes in their dark, sunken sockets. But as soon as he rushed toward her, the snake-like appendage released his daughter and retracted into the back of the woman’s neck, leaving only a slimy, puckered orifice as evidence of its existence.
Kevin grabbed the woman’s shoulders—covered in rank, tattered clothing—intending to pull her away from the crib, shove her into the hall, down the steps and out the front door, in one enraged motion if he could manage it. He’d worry about how she’d gotten into their house later. Right now, his priority was kicking her the hell out.
“Get out!” Kevin yelled at the woman as he pulled her away from the crib.
Her body had seemed frail, almost sickly, with a hunched posture and an enlarged abdomen, but the amount of force required to move her just a few inches surprised him. Before he could adjust his grip and try again, her hands, weirdly long—and clawed!—dug into his chest and shoved him backward, hurling him into the far wall.
He fell on all fours, stunned by the ferocity of her attack and the force of the impact. As he struggled to rise, the strange woman glided forward, an eerie inhuman movement whereby the minimal shifting of her legs belied how far and how fast she had come. With her left hand she grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, hoisted him off the floor and flung him into the corner. Another awkward spill, but this time blood flowed from gashes under his throat, where her claws had slashed his flesh.
Blood dripping down his shirt and staining the beige carpet, he scrambled to an upright position, unsteady on his feet.
She came for him a third time.
He sidestepped, stumbling away from her—but not fast enough—and grabbed the windowsill for support.
Once again, she clutched his throat in her left hand.
“Call the—!” he gasped. “Call the police!”
But this time, she didn’t toss him aside. She held him still as her right hand ripped into his abdomen, pushing through the momentary resistance of skin and muscle to bore deep into his gut. As her arm burrowed deeper, her claws ripping and pulling, her unkempt hair shifted across her face, exposing her dark, sunken eyes. And they reminded him of a shark’s eyes, black and merciless and almost alien.
A moment later she noticed him staring in horror at her face and eyes and she shrieked in rage, releasing the hand that had clutched his throat. But her grip had been the only thing supporting his weight. His legs felt numb and lifeless.
Her clawed left hand darted toward his face, toward his own eyes.
In a frozen moment, he saw Noelle, fully awake and staring in his direction, crying—how long had she been crying?—at the top of her lungs. And he realized his daughter was watching him die—watching his brutal murder. And after he was gone, the clawed woman with the snake-like mutation in her neck would return to his baby to finish whatever the hell she had started. Melissa couldn’t stop her. The police would never arrive in time.
Then that moment shattered and he got to his feet, grabbed the demonic woman’s arms and hurled himself and her—using her own force against her as she reached for his eyes—backward against the bedroom window. Their combined weight broke the glass and he continued to clutch the intruder against him in a literal death grip until gravity came to his rescue and they both tumbled from the second-story room toward the unforgiving sidewalk below.
Kevin had already begun to feel his hold on consciousness slipping before plunging out the window. The fading of the light had finally blunted the searing pain coursing through his midsection. All he’d needed was a last burst of adrenaline after seeing Noelle helpless in her crib to give him the strength to save her from imminent danger.
Grimacing as he plummeted to the ground, locked in a fatal embrace with the hideous woman, he strained to speak one final thought. He tried to say, Taking you with me, bitch! Instead, in a harsh whisper filled with pain, he managed to utter a single word before the back of his skull split open on the sidewalk. “…you…”
Once again he was too late. As he spoke, the woman vanished. And his hands clutched only air.
Lying on the sidewalk in a spreading pool of his own blood, he welcomed the numbing tide of darkness that lapped over him and pulled him under. As his heartbeat slowed, fading toward stillness, he sank deeper into its embrace. His last thoughts were gratitude that his sacrifice had saved his daughter’s life.
At least he hadn’t died for noth…
TWENTY-THREE
When Castiel heard Sam take the call from a worried Dr. Hartwell, his first thought was that Chloe Sikes was in danger. As the call progressed, with no mention of any particular patient in distress, least of all Chloe, Castiel couldn’t shake the sense that the young woman might need his help. At that first meeting, he’d been struck by the uncanny physical resemblance between Chloe and Claire as well as their similar fashion sense, although Chloe’s jeans were made with an elasticated waistline. Chloe lacked Claire’s left-side braids in her blond hair, but she wore it back with a hairclip, revealing a collection of ear piercings reminiscent of Claire’s.
Though the similarities went beyond height, build and eye color, Chloe’s demeanor was, understandably, less troubled than Claire’s, despite her teenaged pregnancy. Claire remained on her own, having lost her father, whose body Castiel inhabited alone now that Jimmy Novak’s soul had departed, and having lost touch with her troubled mother. Chloe, on the other hand, had a support system in place with both parents. She was not alone and adrift in the world, at the mercy of strangers. Nevertheless, she had lost the father of her unborn child, a young man who may have shared a life with her. She may not have come to terms with that lo
ss. Castiel doubted she could have. And the loss would only become more pronounced when her baby was born. In addition, Aidan’s murderer remained on the loose and extremely dangerous with an unknown agenda. Chloe hadn’t been a direct target yet; only men had been murdered so far. But that could change at any moment. They had no way of knowing where the killer would strike next.
Castiel drove to Lovering Maternity Center at a few miles above the posted speed limit in his gold Lincoln. Though he liked the car for what it was, sometimes his patience was tested by the need to cross every mile from one destination to the next. If he had his full Grace, he could have dropped in on Dr. Hartwell in seconds to satisfy his curiosity and allay his worry. For now and possibly until the end, he remained at the whim of stop signs and traffic lights and other drivers.
With a physical sense of relief, he parked the Lincoln in the LMC parking lot and hurried inside the lobby, assuring the seated receptionist Dr. Hartwell was expecting him and that he knew the way to her 321 North office. Compared to the stop-and-go drive to LMC, the wait for the elevator was a minor inconvenience.
On the ride up, he wondered about Claire again, knowing he would sense her if she needed him or, less likely, prayed to him. Okay, not likely at all. But he acknowledged the loopholes in that need for contact, desperate or surprise situations where she wouldn’t have time to reach out to him. And even if he did hear her call, he couldn’t simply pop in and help her. He had logistics to consider. He’d have to drive to her location or hop on a plane, depending on how far away she was at any given moment. Most likely she would be out of reach for hours, possibly an entire day or longer.
Now he seemed to have added Chloe to his list of concerns. She faced a more immediate threat and would not reach out to him personally, even if she were in danger. He wouldn’t know until after the fact. And by then it might be too late to save her.
He stepped off the elevator and strode purposely toward Dr. Hartwell’s office. His only recourse, until they figured out who or what was targeting the citizens of Braden Heights, was to stay as informed as possible about potential threats, whether signs, portents or gut feelings. Dr. Hartwell’s concerned call possibly fell into the last category. And yet, at this point in the investigation, any lead was potentially an important one.
A young couple stepped out of Dr. Hartwell’s suite, talking softly. The woman was about six months pregnant; her husband looked nine months anxious. Castiel wondered if fathers-to-be were so nervous because the process of carrying and delivering a baby was completely out of their control. They became helpless bystanders to one of the most important days in the couple’s life. The woman suffered all the discomfort and examinations and the pains of childbirth while the man got off relatively scot-free, relegated to the role of supportive coach. Instead of feeling relief, the man suffered guilt and worry in his secondary role. Or maybe there was more to it than that. Castiel would never know.
Slipping past the departing couple, he entered Dr. Hartwell’s suite and made a beeline to the reception desk, where the nurse-slash-receptionist transcribed scribbled patient updates from pages in a manila folder to a computer application.
“Special Agent Collins, here to see Dr. Hartwell.”
Startled, the woman looked up at him. “Oh—yes, Agent Collins! She’s expecting you.”
Dr. Hartwell peeked out of her office, saw him and approached, wearing a fresh white lab coat with “Hartwell” stitched in dark blue letters over the right breast pocket. “Thank you for coming, Agent Collins.”
“No problem,” Castiel replied. “You said—Agent Rutherford told me you had something to show us, possibly related to the Aidan Dufford case.” For some reason, Castiel didn’t want her to think he’d been eavesdropping on their phone conversation. Seemed better—more professional—to say he’d been briefed about the situation by Sam.
“Well, I’m not sure if it’s directly related to Aidan’s… death, but it certainly is weird, in a very troubling way.”
“Does it involve Cla—Chloe Sikes?”
“No, not directly,” Dr. Hartwell said. “Why do you ask?”
“Just curious,” Castiel said quickly. “We met her here after Aidan’s death.”
“Right.”
“How is she, Doctor?” Castiel asked. “I imagine this has been difficult for her.”
“You do realize I’m bound by doctor–patient confidentiality?”
“Of course, I just wondered if…” Castiel cleared his throat. “She reminds me of the daughter of a close friend.”
With an understanding smile, Dr. Hartwell placed a hand on his elbow and directed him away from the reception desk until they stood just inside the door to the suite. Lowering her voice, she said, “Physically, Chloe is fine. Mentally? Psychologically? I’m not qualified to give a conclusive diagnosis. But I’m sure it is an emotionally devastating time for her, especially considering how near she is to her due date. Fortunately, her parents have been supportive throughout the process.”
“Good,” Castiel said. “We don’t know if whoever killed Aidan and the other men will target the pregnant women left behind. I’m glad Chloe has people close who care about her.”
“You needn’t worry on that account.”
“About that phone call…?”
“Right,” Dr. Hartwell said. “It concerns another patient of mine. I believe you bumped into the couple on your way out, Denise and Gary Atherton. Denise had her baby, a boy, and all three of them were asleep in her birthing room when one of the night nurses, Maggie O’Brien, checked in on them.”
“What happened?” Castiel asked, concerned, wondering how the doctor remained so calm if Gary Atherton had been eviscerated in one of her patient rooms.
“Nurse O’Brien saw something so strange and frightening, she screamed,” Dr. Hartwell said. She held up her hands to forestall any questions. “Before you say anything, I must stress that Nurse O’Brien is the only one who saw this… person in the birthing room. Her scream woke the Athertons and when she turned on the light nobody else was in the room and there was no sign of an intruder. Except…”
“Yes?”
Dr. Hartwell seemed to fidget, almost as if she thought she’d said too much already. She shoved both hands into the pockets of her lab coat and heaved a sigh. “This is where it gets weird…”
* * *
Castiel strode from the lobby of Lovering Maternity Center, out from under the porte cochère emblazoned with its cursive LMC, to where he’d parked his Lincoln. He had another impatient drive ahead of him, but as he pulled out of the parking lot, he reached into his pocket. He could pass along the information he’d been given long before he physically arrived at the Holcomb house. He speed-dialed Dean’s phone number.
“Cass? What’ve you got?”
“Dean, where are you?”
“Back at the Holcombs,” Dean said. “Just walked in the door.”
“Is Sam there?”
“Both here.”
“Put me on speaker,” Castiel said. “You should both hear this.”
“Right,” Dean said. “Hold on.”
Castiel heard Dean tell Sam to follow him into the kitchen. Anticipating the nature of the information Castiel might have for them, Dean naturally didn’t want the Holcombs to hear what he had discovered, at least not without a filter. The angel had to admit Dean’s circumspection was, in this instance, a good call.
Castiel wouldn’t want anyone who lacked the background and experience of a hunter to hear what he’d learned.
TWENTY-FOUR
“All right, Cass,” Dean said. “Spill.”
Castiel told them about Maggie O’Brien, a night nurse at LMC who witnessed an intruder in the Atherton birthing room the previous night, standing over the bed where mother and baby slept. Though the room was dark, the nurse described the intruder as a woman based on general build and her long straggly hair. The fact that an intruder had snuck into the Atherton room was unsettling enough, but the nurse ha
d screamed in fright when she noticed the long appendage extending from the nape of the intruder’s neck to the back of the sleeping infant’s neck. “But after Nurse O’Brien screamed and turned on the lights, the intruder disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” Sam repeated.
“When first discovered, she retreated to the darkest corner of the room. Then, before the lights came on, she vanished, as if she’d never been there.”
“Anyone else see this intruder?” Dean wondered. He had to at least consider the possibility of an unreliable witness. But his years as a hunter left him more inclined to give anyone the benefit of the doubt when it came to unbelievable stories.
“Only the nurse,” Castiel said. “Other nurses heard her scream and checked the room. They found no trace of the intruder. Nurse O’Brien began to doubt what she’d seen.”
“Understandable,” Sam said. “But there’s more to this, right?”
“Dr. Hartwell talked to the nurse after the incident,” Castiel said. “She decided to examine the child. More specifically, the infant’s neck.”
“And?” Dean prodded.
“Dr. Hartwell discovered slight redness at the base of the infant’s neck and a tiny ring of puncture wounds. She intended to run tests on these wounds, but within a few hours they had vanished and the skin appeared normal.”
“Let me guess,” Dean said. “Doctor thinks she imagined the whole thing, right? Power of suggestion and so on?”
“She might have,” Castiel said. “If not for the picture she took with her cell phone.”
“She has a photo?” Sam asked, intrigued.
“Yes, she showed me,” Castiel said. “In the image, the wound looks like a rash, but some of the small punctures are clearly visible. I have a copy.”
A photo would be their first solid piece of evidence about who or what was involved in the murders. Assuming the hospital intruder was also responsible for the four murders. Dean wondered if someone else took out the babies’ fathers to leave the mother and infant vulnerable to the hospital intruder. “What about Gary Atherton?” Dean asked.
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