“It’s good to see you, Nat,” Nick said and meant it.
Natalie’s smile faded. “I wish it were under more pleasant circumstances.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Did you get to see anyone at the network, dear?” Sue asked her daughter.
Those thunderheads flared again and spit lightning. “Oh yeah, the guards in the lobby. The friggin’ Oracle Network bigwigs blew me off and refused to see me. One of the damned guards handed me a PR paper defending themselves from the media blitz from the news outlets and social media. They blamed the whole mess on a technical glitch. Can you believe that shit?”
“Natalie!” Aunt Sue exclaimed, pretending she had never heard that profane word before.
“Well, it is,” Natalie insisted. “The paper went on to say they spoke to Jack Brunnel last night, and his staff was working feverishly to get things back up and running. What a bunch of liars!”
Nick’s cell phone rang, and he answered it immediately. It was Crow, his close personal friend and business partner who built the world’s most powerful and sassy supercomputer, Geronimo. Crow conveyed the bad news that Geronimo was unable to decipher the encrypted video feed from Terror Island to Oracle’s network satellite. Nick hid his displeasure from his relatives and quickly summarized Natalie’s experience at Oracle.
“What a crock, white man! Take it from Geronimo, there has been absolutely no contact between the outside world and Terror Island after that video uplink died,” Crow stressed. “Geronimo would’ve picked up any communication in a heartbeat.”
Nick drummed his fingers on the recliner’s worn arm. “Does Geronimo even know where Terror Island is? There are thousands of islands in and around the Indonesian area,” Nick asked.
“Yeah, he pinpointed it from the video transmission,” Crow replied.
“Do you or Geronimo have any theories as to what might have happened out there?”
“We don’t have enough facts to even make an educated guess,” Crow responded.
“That’s what I thought,” he said soberly. “Do me a favor, will you?”
“Name it.”
“Keep digging into Oracle Network. I’ve got a feeling something’s not quite kosher there.”
“Your instinct is usually on target. Consider it done,” Crow promised. “Happy Trails, Custer.”
Just as Nick disconnected the call, one of the glass patio doors exploded and Natalie promptly buckled and hit the oak floor head first!
4
Nick drew his 9mm Glock and split his attention between his unconscious cousin and the patio door. The bullet grazed her right arm, so there was nothing to panic about, but why did she pass out? It was really just a scratch. Was the bullet coated with poison? He wouldn’t know until the paramedics arrived, but Natalie’s breathing and pulse were both steady, which pretty much ruled out his poison idea. The way he saw it, she would survive in good shape.
His freaked out aunt spoke with the 911 operator as Nick left Natalie and peered out through the patio door’s broken glass. He caught sight of a young Asian man vaulting the next door neighbor’s privacy fence and running hell bent for leather in the direction of the side street a block away.
His Aunt Sue blurted out her address and called to Nick, who bolted for the front door. “The paramedics are on their way!” she yelled.
“Great!” he shouted back as he sprinted for the rented Hummer parked at the curb. His fiancé, Gabriella Wolfe, was behind the wheel. He quickly described the Asian shooter and implored her to capture him. Nick planned to wait for the paramedics to arrive.
Nick wasn’t concerned about Gabriella’s safety.
She was a witch.
And a damned good one.
The shooter didn’t stand a chance of escaping.
The cops showed up minutes before the fire truck and ambulance. A pair of surly detectives pulled out their guns, marched around the back of the house, and entered the family room. By then, Nick knelt beside his still unconscious cousin. The paramedics rolled a gurney to the family room from the front entrance.
“She’s unconscious, even though the bullet merely grazed her,” Nick explained.
The stocky paramedic nodded. “Thank you, sir! We’ll take over from here.”
Nick flashed his FBI identification that FBI Director Rance Osborne had given him when dealing with local law enforcement officers. That official identification would give him access to crime scenes and the authority to direct personnel.
“FBI, huh? Big deal. This is an alleged attempted murder investigation, not a kidnappin’,” the graying La Jolla police detective, Matthew Loughton, blustered.
“This is a matter of national security,” Nick snapped back. Natalie suddenly stirred, and she didn’t appear troubled about her close call with death.
Once the paramedics lifted her onto the gurney, Natalie motioned Nick to her side. “Don’t worry about me, cuz,” she whispered. “Just go out there and find the bastard who shot me.”
“You know I’ll give it my best shot.” He was totally stumped by her hale and hearty appearance. She looked as healthy as a horse.
The paramedics lifted her onto the gurney.
Nick stood. “Where are you taking her?”
“Scripps Memorial Hospital.”
“I'll be there shortly,” Nick said, then spoke to the detectives. “Find anything?”
Loughton smirked. “Only the bullet in the wall behind you.”
The other detective, Kip Sanger, pointed at the oak paneling. “Unfortunately, there’s no bullet in it,” he said.
Their reply sounded like a patronizing cop routine, and Nick didn’t have the time for such nonsense.
“Oh yeah, my bad. There’s a bullet hole in the wall, Mister FBI.” Loughton laughed. “Looks like the bullet just disappeared after it hit the wall, unless…”
“Unless what?” Nick demanded irritably.
“Unless you or the lady of the house dug it out.”
“Get out of here right this second, you wiseasses!” Sue Wright fumed.
Sanger smirked at her. “No can do. This is a crime scene now, and we can come and go as we please.”
Sue stomped her foot angrily and looked for assistance from her nephew.
“Leave us alone for a few minutes,” Nick requested calmly.
She harrumphed and tramped into the kitchen.
Nick drew near the leering detectives. “You two heard Mrs. Wright. Beat it, and don’t come back,” he warned them.
Loughton thrust out his square chin. “Just who the fuck are you to order La Jolla’s finest around?”
“The FBI, that’s who.”
“Well, we ain’t leavin’, so fuck off.”
A sly grin split Nick’s lips. “Oh, you’re leaving, all right.” He wasn’t exactly a witch or warlock, but he did possess special supernatural powers. His mother had been human, and his father, Hollis Danforth, an outlaw Destroyer (evil sorcerer) from Earth’s parallel dimension, Kundze. Nick’s iniquitous sorcerer of a father had been the director of a top-secret government military genetics project in the 70s called Mortal Eclipse. His late-father’s prime directive had been to genetically design a super soldier with unearthly abilities to slaughter the enemy behind the battle lines. This was a top secret United States military project. Regrettably, frequent experimental failures produced a host of hideous mutants, several of which were still imprisoned inside the federal Wolf Mountain facility out west. The Mortal Eclipse project was eventually shut down and deemed a military failure, but nothing could have been further from the truth.
There had been two successful outcomes.
Before the project ended, Hollis Danforth impregnated his own human wife with his and certain alien DNA without her knowledge, and only six months later she gave birth to disparate twin boys: a seemingly human baby boy named Mark, and a violent, monstrous brute named Thomas, who slayed their mother during its delivery. Two years later, Hollis Danforth considered Mark an experim
ental failure because he looked human, so he decided to murder the young boy. However, a stranger, Joe Sandlin, intervened on Mark’s behalf and rescued the boy minutes before his father killed him.
This Good Samaritan spirited Mark out of Duneden, Ohio, and drove him all the way to California, where his sister, Joanne Bellamy, happily but illegally adopted Mark as her own. She and her husband renamed their new son Nick to prevent anyone from ever tracing Mark, and they paid handsomely for falsified papers that were used to enroll Nick in school when the time came.
Nick closed his eyes and imagined the two detectives wearing their summer garb, standing on a desolate green mountainside above Anchorage, Alaska. With a quick nod and wide grin, Nick zapped the detectives to that wild location. He opened his eyes. It would be a long hike back to La Jolla, California, from Alaska!
Nick raced after his aunt and caught up with her on the front sidewalk. He told her he had kicked the wiseass out the back door, and she appeared mollified.
Nick hustled back to the family room and inspected the bullet hole in the paneling. At least Loughton was right about one thing: the damned bullet simply vanished after it clipped Natalie. The tip of his little finger explored the small cavity for wetness in case the bullet had been made of ice, but the hole was completely dry. Nick pivoted from the mysterious hole and hoped Gabriella was having better luck with her assignment.
************************
The Hummer 2 squealed onto the side street a block away from Sue Wright’s home. Gabriella immediately spotted a likely candidate for the shooter’s car: a Camaro ZL1parked beneath a Norwalk Island pine. She guided the Hummer forward until it nudged the Camaro’s front bumper, and then ducked out of sight behind a neighbor’s overgrown flowering shrub.
Nick’s fiancée was flat out, knock-dead gorgeous and beguiling. The delicately carved features of her oval face were flawless pearl; the spring frost painted a rosy blush on her cheeks. However, Gabriella was far more than another pretty face. She was a potent sorceress as well.
A brisk ocean breeze ruffled her shoulder length white-blond hair as her translucent indigo eyes studied the tall wooden fence across the street. If she was accurate about the Camaro being the shooter’s car, he should be climbing over it any second now. She swallowed back her escalating fear. Nick usually tackled the dangerous criminals, but since he was obligated to help out his family, the task fell to her.
Gabriella hoped she was up to it. The twenty-something Asian gunman grinned arrogantly as he leaped the final obstacle to a clean getaway. Once he cleared the fence, he strode rapidly toward his Camaro. He was amazed no one had bothered to chase him. What a break! His spirits buoyed.
His smile was steamrolled when he spotted the Hummer touching his Camaro’s front bumper. What the hell?
The hit man withdrew a strange looking glass gun from his waistband and cautiously advanced toward the sports car. He detected a setup, but his overconfidence overruled his desire to flee and leave the love of his life behind. No, he would tough it out and drive away in his baby.
When he reached out to open the Camaro door, a cute blond popped up from behind a tall shrub.
“Good afternoon,” she said casually, attempting to mask the fluttering butterflies in her stomach.
The shooter raised his gun barrel until it was level with her chest. “Who are you, lady?” the man asked angrily. “Look what you did to my front bumper!”
Gabriella laughed. “If I were you, I’d be worried about what I was going to do to you.”
“Who are you, lady?”
She waggled her forefinger at him. “Oh no, I’ll do the questioning. This lady wants to know who hired you to kill Natalie Wright.”
The Asian was about to fire the glass weapon when he noticed her holding it. The hit man’s bravado sagged. “How … how did you take my gun?”
“Oh, it was nothing, really. Just a little parlor magic,” she replied, honey-coating her reply. She aimed the glass gun barrel at his face. “Now answer my question, or I’ll give you a taste of your own medicine.”
The shooter paled. “That’s not a toy, lady. Be careful where you point that thing. It’s dangerous.”
Gabriella’s finger found the ceramic trigger. “You mean this ole popgun?”
The disarmed Asian’s shoulders slumped, and his ego deflated like a flat tire, but he still mulishly declined to answer her question. Somewhere in the depths of his sick mind, a sliver of hope for escape burned.
Gabriella waved her hand, and an invisible force field violently shoved him against the car door and pinned him there. Ribs cracked and blood dribbled from both nostrils while Gabriella waited impatiently for an answer. She didn’t plan to ask the skinny runt again.
“As you can tell, we can do this the easy way, or the painful way. The choice is yours, but you will answer my question.”
The hit man shot her a hideous smirk. “Go fuck yourself, lady!”
That did it! Her patience bottomed out, and his lack of respect tripled her ire. Her curled finger applied more pressure to the trigger, but the glass gun blew up in her hand before she could fire a warning shot over his head.
She threw the trigger aside as a loud air gun hissed behind her. Gabriella instinctively teleported left a few feet, and the musket-ball sized missile that would have struck her hit the Asian shooter’s chest instead. The hit man’s eyes nearly exploded out of their shallow sockets, and he frantically plowed his fingertips into the bleeding wound and probed for the projectile. But he was too late. The pellet’s mysterious contents worked fast, and to Gabriella’s surprise, the shooter slid down the Camaro’s door in a dead heap.
Gabriella nearly hyperventilated at the sight of the corpse, but she retained enough sanity to cast a protective force field spell around her. Only then did she dare turn and look for the person who shot the air gun. But all she saw were a speeding white van’s taillights growing smaller in the distance. Angry, she thrust a spell at the van, and it quickly shrank to the size of a Matchstick Car. Blood erupted in all directions like an exploding crimson skyrocket on the Fourth of July. The driver and air gun shooter were trapped inside when her spell shrank the van, but not their bodies.
Gabriella shifted her distraught gaze to the Asian shooter. His yellow flesh melted quickly, like hot candle wax, leaving his bones exposed to the intense Southern California sun. Suddenly, his molten flesh streamed onto the asphalt, where its smoking acid puddles devoured the pavement and the Camaro’s front tire.
What kind of bullet did that to a person?
Gabriella’s stomach flopped as she watched his throat and chest collapse inward. How could a single bullet cause such a vile outcome? Although the sight revolted her, she couldn’t turn away. Her curiosity was fully engaged. After the poor man’s torso and legs finally liquefied, a thick amber gel oozed out the bottom of his dissolved right foot. What the hell was that stuff?
Gabriella slumped forward, grasped her knees, and tried to stop hyperventilating. What an awful ordeal! She couldn’t help but feel sorry for the Asian hit man, despite him shooting Natalie. It was only natural. Nobody deserved to go through that!
She retreated to the Hummer and started it. Although she didn’t capture the assassin alive, she had done her job. The man would never kill again. And neither would the two in the white van.
As she pulled away from the curb and made a U-turn to head back to the Wright home and pick up Nick, Gabriella mulled over the eccentric glass gun, the equally bizarre bullets, and the grotesque fluid. Were they all the results of another clandestine defense department venture, like the Mortal Eclipse project that created Nick?
If such a renegade needle existed in the Pentagon’s vast haystack, Crow’s supercomputer, Geronimo, could most likely locate it. And even if the damned fluid was manufactured by a private sector firm, Geronimo stood a better than even chance of hunting it down and identifying it.
Until the supercomputer traced the source of the unusual weapons, it appear
ed as if all their lives were in jeopardy.
5
Nick hung out by the curb as Gabriella and the Hummer approached. He jumped inside as soon as she stopped and listened to her strange description of her confrontation with Natalie’s shooter. When she finished, he wrinkled his brows in amazement.
“The blowgun projectile caused the shooter to melt?” he asked.
“I guess so. After the bullet struck him, the shooter tried to dig it out of his chest, but he was too late,” she explained with a shiver.
“He must’ve known what was coming and tried to stop it.”
“I’ll say.”
Nick nodded his understanding.
“Is Natalie going to be okay?” she asked.
“It appears so,” he replied softly, lost in thought. He told her about the strange bullet hole in the wall.
“No bullet, huh? What do you suppose happened to it?”
“You got me.”
“What if that bullet was similar to the blowgun projectile? Maybe the bullet meant for Natalie crawled out of the wall hole and hid.”
Nick snapped his fingers. “Your theory sounds incredible, but the more I think about the whole attempted murder thing, the more I think magic was somehow involved. Let’s go back and check out the family room.”
But after searching for a half hour, they came up with nothing.
Gabriella grasped his forearm and kissed him lightly. “Nice try, Nick.”
He shot her a cross between a smile and grimace. “Uh huh,” he said absently. “I was sure that you were onto something.”
“So did I, but…” Her hand flew to her lips. “Oh God.”
Final Scream Page 3
