Brethren

by Shawn Ryan

  "You made another mistake, Morven," Glendon growled. "You killed the wrong one. You want a witch? A real one? I'll show you. But not now. Not yet. But soon. I want you to know it's coming. I want you to fear it. I want you to look over your shoulder at every footstep. I want you to suffer. And believe me, you will, both in the anticipation and when the actual time comes. Suffering as you've never known. Suffering worse than anything you've ever inflicted. Debts are due, Morven, and they will be collected in your blood."

  Glendon stood, cradling his wife's limp body in his arms.

  "Now leave," he said. "I must bury my wife."

  His face gray, his hands trembling as he clutched the reins, Morven wheeled his horse about and, without a word to his soldiers, fled toward the east. After a moment the soldiers followed.

  Cameron's crying and the chunk of a spade in earth were the only sounds Glendon heard for the next several hours. Cameron eventually fell asleep on the ground, overcome by his sorrow; Glendon dug until the grave was finished. He took his wife and washed the blood from her hair and face, then wrapped her in their best blanket Just before he pulled the blanket across her face, he bent over and kissed her on the forehead, a single tear falling from his eye and landing on her lips.

  "I love you, Adeleen," he said, covering her face.

  Sadness and fury waged a fierce battle in his heart. As he lowered his wife into the ground and threw the first spadeful of dirt in, the fury won. By the time the burial was finished, Glendon's mind was set in stone. He knew there was no turning back. There never had been.

  He understood he couldn't inflict the kind of justice Morven deserved. He would need help. Strong help. Stronger than anything this world could provide. Goose bumps broke out along his sweaty arms when he realized what he was thinking. He had never attempted to raise such an… an… avenger. Yes, that was a nice, clean way to describe what he was seeking. An avenger.

  About dusk, Cameron woke up long enough to cry some more and to take a little broth, but he went back to sleep quickly. Glendon realized the pain was too much for his son. Better that he sleep than be awake and hurting.

  Looking at his boy sleeping, Glendon was racked by sadness and despair. Tears rolled down his cheeks and left glittering diamond beads in his beard.

  How will I raise the boy alone? How will I go on without Adeleen? What will happen after tonight?

  Questions, questions, but no answers. Probably there are no answers, he thought. The answers come each day, slowly and surely. After tonight, chances were life would not be slow and sure for him and Cameron. They would have to leave this land, move to some place where they were strangers. It might be that they would have to leave many lands before the running was finished.

  He kissed his son, made sure the fire in the hearth was burning low but steadily, then walked to the blacksmithing shed behind the house.

  A maelstrom of red-hot coals burned in the fieldstone forge. Their heat swirled and eddied in the air at the center of the shed. Glendon never let them go out.

  An iron handle stuck out of the coals, the handle to an M-shaped brand Glendon had made for Cameron several weeks before. Glendon smiled slightly at the memory of the boy running around for hours the day he received it, searing M's into everything in sight.

  Tonight the forge's glow painted the inside of the shed a bloody orange. The blacksmithing tools—hammers, iron prods, tongs, the anvil—seemed to burn with an unholy fire, as if they were alive and knew what was coming, even anticipated it.

  For a moment, Glendon thought about praying for guidance, then decided it would probably just insult the Lord, considering what he was about to try.

  Better to do it and get it over with.

  He decided his best plan was to follow the same pattern he used when helping his crops grow but take it several steps further. That was easy enough. All he did was clear his mind of distractions, think about what he wanted, picture it in his head and concentrate.

  He lowered himself to the dirt floor and sat cross-legged. Running a shaky hand through his hair, he took a deep breath, placed his palms on his knees, and straightened his back. Dropping his chin to his chest, he proceeded to empty his mind, cleansing it of any thoughts except those of the task at hand. As he did, he felt the familiar stirring in his muscles, an almost sexual feeling of power.

  In his mind, he started formulating a picture of the avenger.

  Inside the shed, a cold wind began to swirl. The coals in the forge glowed brightly, like the flares of hell.

  Chapter 1

  « ^ »

  "Sonuvabitch! Sonuvabitch! Sonuvabitch!"

  Jason Medlocke squirmed madly in the driver's seat as the hot coffee bore down on the tender skin of his crotch. Holding the steering wheel with his left hand, he jerked the ceramic cup from between his legs with his right. In the process, he sloshed some of the steaming coffee on the web of flesh between his thumb and forefinger.

  "Goddammit! Goddammit! Goddammit!" he howled as he blew on his scalded hand. Testing his luck on a morning that already sucked, Jason took his eyes off the road to check his skin for blisters.

  As he looked at his hand, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Looking up, Jason saw a pickup truck, not more than fifty feet in front of him, pulling across his lane as it made a leisurely left-hand turn from a side road. The truck was barely moving. Jason slammed his brakes, yanking the wheel to the right, throwing his car onto the shoulder. As he passed the pickup, he could see the driver's face speared like a deer by the oncoming headlights. And the driver was smiling.

  The force of the swerve jerked the coffee cup out of Jason's hand, and it sailed into the windshield with a thud, creating a starburst in the glass and spraying droplets of coffee all over the interior.

  Jason veered back onto the road, a cloud of dust from the shoulder rising between him and the truck. "That sonuvabitch, that drunken jackass," he said out loud. "If I wasn't in such a hurry, I'd arrest the fucker."

  Another drunk bastard. Just like Sarah and Claire. Eighteen months ago.

  Blood rushed up Jason's neck and into his face. A familiar tingling made his muscles jump and twitch, live wires racing through his limbs. From the time he was a child, the tingling rose when he was getting too angry, getting ready to lose control. He had seen the effects of his temper, and now the tingling was a signal he always heeded.

  His expression swiftly changed, as though a cool breeze blew across his hot cheeks. His jaw unclenched and his mouth relaxed from its granite line. He took a deep breath and settled back into his seat, running his hand through his night-black hair.

  Control, he thought. That was the key. One day at a time; one moment at a time.

  The tingling subsided.

  "Jesus Christ, where's my gun?" he said. "I'm just gonna blow my head off and get it over with."

  It was a shitty way to start a week.

  It had begun an hour before, when his alarm had gone off at five-thirty as usual. He lay in bed, stretching, rubbing his eyes, running his hand over his face and hearing the automatic coffee maker coming to life in the kitchen. In a couple of minutes, he smelled the appetizing aroma of freshly brewed coffee. He lay in bed, thinking about the upcoming day at the Gwinnett County Police Department. There wasn't a lot going on in the WASP-ish suburban county of Atlanta, at least not for the department's two homicide detectives, he and his partner Peter "Badger" Franklin.

  But there was the missing girl, Amanda Benton. Jason had a bad feeling about it.

  He had been at headquarters the night before, tidying up some paperwork, bored with being alone at home, when Lurleen, the dispatcher, called him on the intercom.

  "Jazz, honey, there's some man on the line. He's worked up real bad. Wants to talk to someone. Can you talk at him?"

  "Sure," Jason said.

  The man identified himself as Joseph Benton. He was panicked. His little girl, Amanda, had gone to the skating rink and should have been home hours before. He wanted police to st
art searching for her now, but Jason regurgitated the standard spiel about a person not being legally missing until twenty-four hours passed. Please call back in the morning, he told Mr. Benton.

  I should've been more helpful, Jason thought as he lay in bed. At least let him know I'd keep an eye out.

  But he wouldn't keep an eye out. Truth is, he hated dealing with missing kids. They always reminded Mm of Claire. And that always ted to thoughts of Sarah. Some said eighteen months was a long time to mourn, but Jason didn't feel as if he'd ever get completely over it.

  He was trying hard to shake these thoughts from his mind and decided a cup of coffee and a shower would help, when his bedside phone rang. The buzzing made him jump and he almost knocked the phone off the nightstand lunging for it.

  "Medlocke."

  "Jason, it's Badger."

  Must be bad news. Badger always called him Jazz otherwise.

  "Uh-huh?"

  "We've found a little girl's body. She's been murdered."

  "Please don't tell me her name is Amanda Benton."

  "Yeah, it is. How'd you know?"

  After getting directions from Badger, Jason dressed quickly in a pair of jeans, an oxford-cloth shirt, and his prized Levi's jacket. It took him about fifteen minutes to reach the crime scene.

  The body was found behind the Kroger grocery at Gwinnett Station shopping center on Pleasant Hill Road. A stock clerk, emptying trash into the compactor out back, thought his eyes might be playing tricks, but when he looked again he was sure he saw something large sitting against the wall about thirty feet away. He decided to investigate.

  He fainted when he got close enough to see what it was.

  Jason parked at the eastern end of the shopping center behind the other police cars already on the scene. Their cherry tops were spraying the buildings with revolving shades of blue and red.

  The Kroger back door was around the corner of the building, out of Jason's direct line of sight, but he could see the white forensic trucks parked near the crime scene. Spotlights illuminated the area. Jason sat in his car for a moment, running his hand through his longer-than-department-standards black hair, preparing himself. He looked at himself in the rearview mirror, his cobalt-blue eyes staring back with undisguised apprehension. He quickly glazed them over with the dispassionate stare of a battle-weary detective and climbed from the car.

  The entire freight area of the center was sealed off with strips of yellow tape that read Police Crime Scene—Do Not Cross. Jason ducked under the tape and walked quickly toward the lights fifty yards away. When he rounded the corner, he saw Badger's ever-present Atlanta Braves cap poking above the heads of the others.

  As he moved closer to the crowd, he noticed County Coroner Buzz Saunders and his assistant kneeling off to the left a few yards. Since they were near the wall opposite the Kroger back door, Jason figured they were huddled around the body. His assumption proved correct when the officers turned around with blood-drained faces.

  Saunders and his assistant were examining the body. While the main examination would occur at the morgue, they wanted to get some preliminary findings. But they were careful not to disturb too much. Hairs and other fibers clinging to the fabric of the little girl's clothes might be knocked off if she was touched often. The more she was touched, the more likely evidence would be damaged.

  All around the freight area, forensic technicians scoured the ground for clues, making a grid-search of the area. The technicians were clothed in solid white from the shoe guards covering their feet to the white scrub pants and shirts; Jason mused they looked like a team of Men from Glad. Along with the surgical masks on their faces, the technicians wore surgical gloves. Clear plastic evidence bags were pulled from pockets each time a potential clue was found, but Jason saw there weren't many plastic bags being used, mostly just a lot of face-near-the-ground searching. Norman Bibb, head of forensics, was directing the operation, on his hands and knees, getting dirty just like everyone else.

  The freight area stretched the length of the shopping center, a good three hundred yards, twisting and turning its way behind the stores. The trash that seems to naturally accumulate behind retail buildings made looking for clues more difficult. Jason knew the search would go well into the day. Every piece of debris would be checked, every corner scoured, every dumpster crawled into. The storm drains would be opened and checked. Employees of all the stores in the area would be questioned.

  "So what's the word?" Jason asked, tapping Badger on the back of his left shoulder. Badger turned around, his face washed in the unmerciful light of the spots. Underneath the baseball cap, sweat ran off his forehead and his eyes were glassy. His big, moon-shaped face, normally a face destined to be a magnet for cheek-pinching old ladies, was the shade of fireplace ashes. The lights only highlighted his pallor.

  "Jesus, Jason, you won't believe it," Badger said, his voice wobbly. He pulled his cap off and rubbed his meaty hand across his short, red hair, through the blond streak that ran off-center from the top of his forehead to the back of his neck. It was the streak—a birthmark that ran in the Franklin family—that earned him his nickname. Some uncle once said little Pete looked just like a badger and was about as mean.

  Badger tried to speak, but the words wouldn't come.

  "Ease up," Jason said. "Talk slow."

  Badger took a deep breath.

  "I just got here a couple of minutes ago," he said. "It's… it's awful."

  "You're sure it's Amanda?" Jason asked.

  "Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. Go on, see for yourself. But be ready to be sick. I was."

  As he walked over to the body, Jason steeled himself. It must be pretty bad to make Badger throw up.

  When he first saw Amanda's body, Jason thought it sat propped up against the concrete-block wall, facing outward. Bile rose to his throat when he realized he was wrong.

  The little girl sat about two feet from the wall in a small chair, one with the legs cut off so it would rest firmly on the ground. She was dressed in a peach-colored cotton shirt and a pair of shorts. Her legs stretched straight out in front of her, away from the wall, and her arms rested in her lap, almost peacefully.

  That's where the peacefulness ended.

  Amanda's head was on backward. A silver choker of duct tape encircled her tiny neck dozens of times. Jason figured the killer must have used most of a roll because the tape extended from just under the chin to the point where the neck met the shoulders. It was wrapped thickly, the killer obviously wanting to make sure her head didn't tumble off before the police arrived. He was making a point and wanted to be sure it was understood.

  The girl's eyes were gouged out, the sockets staring sightlessly. On the wall in front of the direction her face pointed, were the words North and Heaven. They were spray-painted in bright red, and bloodlike rivulets of paint ran down the wall. Turning to look at the wall of the grocery store, the direction Amanda's feet faced, Jason saw the words South and Hell painted in the same color.

  Not subtle, but effective.

  Buzz Saunders finished his examination and grunted as he stood, his knees snapping in protest. He saw Jason and smiled grimly.

  "If I had known how badly football would screw up my knees, I'd have spent more time in the library," he said, pulling off his surgical gloves, which were coated with red "Dragon's Blood" fingerprint dust left by the forensics team.

  Saunder's voice held a note of humor, but Jason could see the man's eyes, tucked behind his thick, tortoiseshell glasses, were as cold and hard as diamonds. The coroner looked over Jason's shoulder and motioned to two technicians standing next to the Crime Scene Investigation truck.

  The pair came toward the body, one carrying a large black plastic bag.

  "What have we got, Buzz?" Jason asked as the technicians unzipped the bag, unrolled it on the ground and, donning surgical gloves, picked up the body and laid it inside. They took special care with the head, making sure it didn't tumble off.

  "Well, she's dead," Saun
ders said. "That takes care of the first part of my job, as if any person off the street couldn't tell you that. As to what killed her, I'm not sure, but I'll bet when I take off that tape I'll find some kind of rope burns or fingerprints. My guess right now is that she was strangled. If she'd been killed by having her head cut off, there'd be blood everywhere. The heart would keep pumping until the very last second. I figure she was choked to death then brought here, where someone would find her pretty soon."

  "Forensics make ESDA before you moved into the area?" Jason asked, referring to the Electrostatic Detection Apparatus, a device that lifts footprints, even invisible ones, off any surface.

  "Yeah," Saunders said. "They were made in a ten-foot radius around the body. Found some stuff, too, I think."

  "Was she raped?" Jason asked.

  "Yeah, I'm pretty sure she was, but I can't be sure until forensics finishes checking her clothes for fibers and prints. But there's a good-sized bloodstain in the crotch of her shorts. A ten-year-old girl just isn't equipped to handle a full-size penis."

  "When are you going to do the autopsy?"

  "Just as soon as I can get back to the morgue with the body."

  "I want the report as soon as you finish."

  "Sure."

  Jason was walking back to Badger when Saunders spoke again.

  "This is a nasty one, Jason. I don't think it'll stop here."

  As Jason turned to face him, Saunders pulled a pack of Marlboros from his shirt pocket and drew one out. Using matches tucked into the pack's cellophane wrapper, he lit the cigarette and took a long, deep drag. He rubbed his hand across his rapidly balding head as he exhaled with a lingering whoosh.

  "Stuff like this is why I got out of Atlanta and came up here," he said, a cloud of smoke flowing from his mouth and nostrils. "You see this mean-spirited shit in the big city, so you get away from it hoping it doesn't follow. It always does sooner or later. Like cancer."

  "I know," Jason said. "I'm from Boston, remember?"

  "Yeah, so I'm probably preaching to the converted, right? But I've got an opinion if you want to hear it."