When Jake reached the top, he found himself looking straight into dark brown fabric. Craning his neck to look up, he saw one of the creatures as it dove straight at him. Before he could dodge the thing, it slammed into him and drove him onto his back in the cold stream. Ignoring the pain inflicted on his lower back by sharp rocks on the streambed, he struggled in water almost a foot deep, the thing straddling his stomach. He had to sit up to prevent his head from going underwater, which brought him closer to the thing. The monster seized Jake’s throat in both hands, its slimy flesh causing him to shudder, and he felt a sucking sensation on his skin.
He did not want to reveal his location to the other creatures by firing his gun, but he knew the thing intended to shoot him full of venom. He swung his Glock at the creature’s head, throwing it off balance, then shifted the gun into his left hand and grabbed a rock, which he slammed into one side of the monster’s head with a soggy impact. The thing shrieked and leaned forward, as if preparing to lash out with its tongue. Jake traded the rock for a piece of driftwood, which he drove into the thing’s face with all of his strength. The creature fell back, groping for the wood protruding from beneath its cowl with both hands.
With his wet clothing clinging to him, Jake managed to get up on his knees. When the creature pulled the wood free of its head with a wet sound, he leapt onto its torso and forced its head beneath the water, careful to turn it sideways so it could not sting him with its tongue. The feelers writhed beneath the surface like water moccasins, and the creature kicked its feet, bubbles rising as Jake attempted to drown it. After a good thirty seconds’ worth of effort, he realized he couldn’t drown the damn thing because it was amphibious. Clutching the driftwood again, he raised it high over his head like a stake and plunged it straight down through the water into the thing’s head, causing his attacker’s body to spasm. Then he placed both hands on the end of the wood and leaned on it with all of his weight until he felt it crush the creature’s skull. All at once, the thing stopped struggling.
Gasping for breath, with his heart thudding in his chest, Jake staggered out of the stream and scrambled back up the embankment and onto the lawn. Swallowing the night air, he rolled to one side and stood, his clothes dripping, and ran for the stone wall. The dogs no longer lay on the ground.
Great. Just what he needed. He heard shrieks all around him as the things communicated with each other. His feet pounded the ground, and when he reached the wall, he scaled it as fast as he could. He had one foot planted atop the wall when he felt claws seizing his other leg. Before he knew it, two of the things had yanked him to the ground. The robed figures hunched over him, their shrieks projecting distinct anger, and he inhaled breath that reeked like sewage. Lying on his back, he wondered which of the monsters would shoot its tongue at him first or if they would launch a simultaneous attack.
Screw this!
Gripping the Glock in both hands, he fired at one creature, then the other, then returned to the first figure. The gunfire echoed in the night, the muzzle flashes leaving spots flickering in his eye. He fired a total of four times before the monsters sprawled out on the grass. As he climbed the wall, he heard more of the things heading in his direction.
No wonder the dogs beat it.
Dropping to the ground on the other side of the wall, Jake heard shrieks behind him. The police SUV pulled right up to the security gate, and the driver honked the horn. Jake sprinted across the street and into the woods, where he took out his binoculars and used the night vision function to search for his car. Spotting it, he scampered between trees. He slammed his left shoulder against one trunk, twisted his right ankle, and just missed smashing his face into bark. Why the hell couldn’t there be a full moon tonight?
He used his remote control to unlock the Maxima’s doors and prayed none of the things prowled the woods opposite Reichard’s estate. Jerking the car door open, he jumped inside, hit the locks, and started the ignition. With only his fog lights providing illumination, he turned around and drove into the main road. A glance at the rearview mirror revealed the SUV still waiting at the security gate. He increased his speed, leaving the Reichard estate in his dust, then switched on his headlights and pulled the ski mask from his head.
“Shit!” He pounded the dashboard. How the hell is this happening to me again?
CHAPTER
5
As he sped back to Manhattan, Jake kept checking his rearview mirror for signs of a tail. He assumed the other members of Madigan’s security detail had checked into a hotel in Scarsdale, but for all he knew they were staked out waiting for anyone fleeing Reichard’s mansion.
I’m just being paranoid.
He swallowed.
Like Marla was paranoid?
Karlin Reichard and his gang inspired such paranoia.
Monsters in Scarsdale!
Picturing the creatures, he thought he had seen them before. He would know the answer soon enough.
Parking in the Twenty-third Street garage one block away from his office, Jake felt great relief and comfort when he breathed the Manhattan air. Nothing put his mind at ease like the city’s stench of garbage and pollution.
Too hurried to change his clothes again, he had merely pulled his soaked outfit and carried his backpack in one hand. Passing Laurel Doniger’s storefront, its neon Spiritual Advisor sign dark, he gave the Tower his customary glance and entered the foyer of his building and keyed in his alarm code. Unwilling to wait for the lone elevator, he ran up four flights of stairs, passing darkened corridors and closed offices, and hurried to his suite. He inserted separate keys into the three locks, entered his waiting room, flicked on the lights, and keyed in another alarm code. After relocking the front door, he hung his duster on a coat rack and peeled off his jacket.
In his main office, Edgar cawed when Jake switched on the lights.
Shedding the rest of his wet clothes, Jake said, “Edgar, don’t ask me how I did it, but I’m waist deep in craziness again.”
Edgar croaked and Jake sniffed his arm. “I know. I stink like rotten fish.”
In the narrow bathroom off the kitchen, he stood at the sink and gazed at the mirror. “What the hell?”
Red circles the diameter of a nickel covered his throat, so many that they almost resembled one large bruise. He counted thirty of the burns. Remembering that each finger of the creature he had killed in front of Reichard’s crew had three suckers, he did the math. When the second creature had seized his throat in the stream, it had either burned or sucked away a layer of his flesh. Grabbing a tube of disinfectant from the medicine cabinet, he rubbed the ointment into the wounds and let out a pained hiss. Now his skin really burned.
“Son of a bitch.” Jake walked naked into the shower stall in his bedroom. He ran hot water, stepped into the spray, and scrubbed his body with soap and more disinfectant. His throat itched like mad.
Once dressed, he returned to his office and opened the iron safe in the far corner. Each of the three combination locks on the safe door had its own combination, and he threw the lever and opened the heavy door. Reaching inside the safe with both hands, he took out the laptop he kept there, next to two case folders: one for Old Nick and the other for Katrina. A third file might join them soon, if he lived long enough to document his current predicament.
Powering up the laptop at his desk, he booted the program contained on the DVD in its tray. The laptop was dedicated to this sole function, and Jake kept it disconnected from the Internet to prevent anyone from hacking into the invaluable program. Old Nick had spent millions of dollars funding the research that resulted in Afterlife, and Ramera Evans—Katrina—had almost destroyed the city in her quest to get her hands on it.
Edgar hopped onto the desk as Jake accessed the program. He located the word biogenetics in the menu and jumped to that section. He had first viewed the images of Tower’s genetically engineered monsters when he had broken into the apartment unit of Kira Thorn, Tower’s second in command, and sneaked onto her comp
uter.
Since then, he had reviewed the footage and had secretly even provided copies of it to the ACCL: Anti-Cloning Creationist League. The videos, stills, and schematics had appeared on YouTube and other websites, but the government had taken no direct action against Tower International. The phrases “Tower makes monsters” and “Tower brings bad things to life” had become Old Nick’s legacy, even if the world at large considered the footage leaked by Jake a hoax. The new urban legend had become as associated with Nicholas Tower as the catchphrase, “Where’s Old Nick?”
Monstrous images filled the screen: drawings, photographs, X-rays, and videos of genetically engineered monsters—bipeds, quadrupeds, slimy things with tentacles; hateful eyes, protruding fangs, spiked skulls; variations of snakes, lizards, and spiders. Creatures that should not exist, which had not existed until Old Nick directed his scientists to create them. Flesh-and-blood weapons of war—the new frontier.
Jake clicked on one dossier after another, searching for a match for the things he had encountered on Reichard’s estate. He found none.
Closing the program, he stood at the window and gazed at the Tower across the street.
There’s a connection. I feel it in my bones.
Jake lay awake in bed, replaying the night’s events in his mind. He had viewed the digital footage of Madigan murdering the drugged woman. He had not captured footage of the scaly creatures that had come after him, but he did not need to see them again to picture their ghastly feelers and venom-spewing tongues or to imagine their scaly fingers and suckers upon his skin. He would never forget them.
What did Reichard need them for? As far as Jake had seen, they served no purpose that could not have been filled just as well by a human security force or the dogs. There had to be more to their presence than met his eye.
Early the next morning, Jake rapped on the front door to Laurel Doniger’s parlor. With the curtains drawn, he could not see inside the storefront. When Laurel didn’t answer, he knocked again louder.
A minute later, she opened the door. She appeared wide awake but had not put on her makeup yet, though Jake found her attractive in the morning light. She wore a lilac-colored dress belted at the waist, and her gaze dropped to Edgar, who occupied the birdcage Jake held. Without saying anything, she stepped away from the door, allowing Jake to enter.
As he closed the door behind him and locked it, he watched her sit at the round table in the middle of the sunken floor, folding one creamy leg over the other. Laurel didn’t see much sunlight, and Jake averted his eye from her flesh.
“I take it you’re in trouble, or you wouldn’t have brought Edgar,” she said.
Jake set the cage on the table, and Edgar cawed at Laurel. “You could say that.”
She stared at him as he sat opposite her. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
Leaning forward, Jake clasped his hands on the table. “Marla Madigan.”
“The mayor’s wife?”
Jake nodded. “Did you send her to me?”
“No. Why?” She seemed concerned, a trait Jake appreciated.
“Because she hired me to spy on her husband, and that’s what jammed me up.”
“What makes you think I sent her to you?”
“Because that’s what happened the last time I got mixed up in crazy shit like this.” Laurel had sent Carmen Rodriguez to Jake, and Carmen and her grandson Victor had been dismembered by her other grandson, Louis, who had become one of Katrina’s undead soldiers.
Laurel offered him a cautious smile. “You need to realize something. You’ve been exposed to powerful forces during the last year and a half, spiritual and supernatural alike. You know they exist— and now they know you exist. You’re marked. I sense it in you very clearly. Others may sense it intuitively, without knowing why. I’ve never known anyone with your experiences, but you give off a certain vibration that draws people in need of a certain kind of help to you, almost like a beacon. You’re drawn to similar vibrations.”
“I’m beginning to think it’s a curse.”
Sliding her hand forward, Laurel turned it palm up. “Care to share?”
Jake looked at her hand, then back into her eyes. “The last time you got information from me you used a different method.” In fact, Laurel measured the energy of her clients through sense of touch. She had given Jake a healing massage that had climaxed with him climaxing.
Now she studied Jake like a poker player trying to read an opponent. “Is that what you want me to do now?”
“No, let’s keep this strictly professional.”
“I’ll send you a bill for services rendered.”
Jake reached out and grasped her hand.
Laurel glanced down at his hand. She raised her eyebrows and shaped her face into an expression of fear, then recoiled as if she’d been struck. Jake saw terror in her eyes, and he knew what her mind detected.
“The bastard killed her in cold blood, and all of those twisted fucks just watched and clapped,” he said.
Laurel flinched again, this time trying to jerk her hand away from Jake’s in a defensive motion.
“Easy . . .”
Laurel’s breath came in sharp gasps. Her lips quivered, as if ready to scream. At last she snatched her hand back and covered her eyes, shielding them. When she removed her hand, water filled her eyes.
“Hey, I’m the one who lived through that.”
Laurel fanned herself with one hand. Her chest rose and fell, fighting for breath. “You don’t know . . . When someone’s memories are recent, I really experience them. I’m there, watching, and I can’t get away. What the hell were those things?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
She gave him an uncertain look. “I’m not some expert on monsters, whatever you think.”
“You sure knew a lot about those zonbies I went up against last year.”
“That was different. There’s research on vodou. Documented cases. I’ve never seen anything like these things. And neither has your Afterlife file.”
“I really wish you’d stop doing that.”
“Let me see those wounds on your neck.”
Jake frowned. “I told you to stop.” Tugging on his turtleneck, he revealed the suction wounds to Laurel, who rose and stepped before him. She slid her hands over the wounds, grimacing as she massaged his flesh. The soreness evaporated from Jake’s body, and he knew she was working her magic on him. When she stopped touching him, she ran from the room with one hand over her mouth.
A moment later, Jake heard her vomiting in the bathroom, and he experienced a twinge of guilt. He had not asked her to go through that for him.
“What will you do about the mayor?” Laurel said when she returned.
Jake blew air out of his cheeks. “Good question. As a PI, I’m required to report any crimes I uncover . . .”
“But?”
“Karlin Reichard is a heavyweight, and I have to assume his peers are, too. Hell, Madigan is no cream puff.”
“But you recorded that woman’s murder.”
“Yeah, there’s that. And Marla hired me to get her footage she can use against Madigan. But these guys can pull massive strings to make sure that footage never sees the light of day.”
“They don’t know who you are. You can give Marla the footage and tell her to say it’s from an anonymous source.”
“If Marla takes possession of that footage, it will put her life at risk.”
“Then send the footage to the authorities anonymously.”
Jake considered this. “I tried something similar with the footage of Tower’s Biogens, and it got me nowhere. And he was dead, for Christ’s sake. I’m telling you, these rich bastards have long arms. Madigan alone has a lot of contacts in the police department and DA’s office. Reichard’s reach goes even higher. I have to tread very carefully.”
Laurel cocked one eyebrow. “Fear doesn’t suit you, Jake.”
“Are you kidding me? It’s one of my finer qualities. I
seem to handle myself okay against ghosts and goblins, but throw a white-haired, rich old fart my way, and I know to duck and cover.”
“You have the advantage. You have the evidence, and you know who they are.”
“I know who two of them are.”
“And none of them knows who you are.”
Jake looked around the parlor for something to focus on besides Laurel’s probing gaze. “I knew the second I took this case it was going to be trouble. I just didn’t know it would involve creatures from the black lagoon. I was so sure those things were some of Old Nick’s Biogens. Whatever they are, they’re the key to this.”
“Our mayor committed murder. Reichard and his partners are accomplices.”
“Madigan committed a human sacrifice. It was the price of admission to their great explorers’ club. I bet each one of them did the same thing.”
Laurel’s features remained firm. “They have to pay for what they’ve done, and they have to be stopped from whatever else it is they’re doing.”
Jake snorted. “You make a pretty convincing argument for me to risk my life considering you never leave this place.”
“I do what I can from here. Do you do everything you can to help people?”
He weighed her words. “I try.”
“I think you need to take a trip.”
Cosmic Forces: Book Three in The Jake Helman Files Series Page 6
