The 2nd Cycle of the Darc Murders Omnibus (the acclaimed series from #1 Police Procedural and Hard Boiled authors Carolyn McCray and Ben Hopkin)

by Carolyn McCray

  But instead, Lula just winked. “How about you let me know where you want to go and I take you there?”

  Popeye, who was busy holding his full tummy, grumbled something about stranger danger. Janey just looked at him. Sometimes he could be so silly.

  It was a little late to be worried about Lula being a stranger. They’d already gone back into the back of her shop and eaten her food. It wasn’t like getting into a car with her was going to make her all of a sudden go nutso.

  Janey had to keep herself from laughing. The thought of Lula chasing after her with a knife was so funny that she almost couldn’t help it.

  Lula must have seen something in her face, though, because she reached out and pinched Janey’s cheek. Not hard, but enough so that Janey could feel the old woman’s scratchy skin against her smooth face.

  “You are just filled with mischief, aren’t you?”

  Somehow she made it sound like a good thing. Janey wasn’t always sure what people were going to think of her. Most of the things she liked to do were strange, and her sense of humor wasn’t like other kids.

  Darc didn’t always understand it. Trey loved it. And Mala… well, Mala put up with it most of the time.

  But Lula seemed to think that it made Janey special. And so, for the first time in a while, what made Janey laugh also made her feel like she was important to someone.

  There was sadness in Lula’s eyes. It was covered over by her pretending to be mean, and even her smile sometimes. But it was there.

  While Lula still had her hand on Janey’s cheek, Janey reached out and placed hers in the same place. For a long moment, they looked into each other’s eyes.

  Then Lula’s started to fill with tears and she broke away. “Oh! I don’t know what’s come over me. I’m such a silly ninny sometimes.” She shook her head and then reached over to pull a scrap of paper over.

  Tapping on the page, the old woman handed a pencil to Janey.

  “Go ahead. Draw it. Where we’re going.”

  Janey took the pencil, but just stared back at Lula. It wasn’t that she didn’t know where to go. It was just that it was still hard to believe that Lula was going to help her without knowing why.

  But Lula took the pause to mean something else. “Come now, you little faker. You can’t convince me you don’t know what you’re about.” She nodded at the page. “Write down the address. Or draw me a picture, if you’re not sure about the first one.”

  Janey spun the pencil around in her hand. For some reason, this was harder than it seemed like it should be.

  The she began outlining the building. This would be tough. Lula would need to recognize it right away. Then be willing to go there.

  To be honest, even Janey didn’t want to. And this was her idea.

  * * *

  The scream stuck in Mala’s throat.

  Throwing herself forward, she connected with Darc, taking him to the ground right before the scythe ripped through the air where his neck had been. The ancient harvesting tool was brandished by a nude man painted in what appeared to be blood.

  Every muscle on the man’s form stood out, as if he were carved from stone. But where his genitalia should have been, there was nothing but a smooth patch of scar tissue.

  Somehow, the absence struck her with more terror than a fully erect phallus would have in its place. The man swiveled his arms up, the blade of the scythe pointed down at Darc’s head.

  Mala moved up, placing herself between the blade and the love of her life. On some level, she knew that Darc could take care of himself, but the move arose out of her, instinctive and instantaneous. She closed her eyes against the impact.

  That never came.

  Glancing back up, she saw that the blade had halted inches away from her face. What the hell was going on here?

  There was no time to answer the question. Several more naked forms had appeared, swarming in from the shadows that draped themselves over the corners and edges of this bizarre room.

  At first, it appeared that the forms were all male. But then Mala took a closer look at one of the smaller figures.

  The differences were subtle, but there. A larger swell to the hips, a difference in the proportions of the limbs. A lack of scarring down below.

  But those small changes demonstrated the lack of other, more pronounced delineation between the sexes. The breasts were almost nonexistent, the outline there formed from the more masculine development of the pectoral muscles. Any feminine curves had been pounded out through what had to have been an extreme fitness regime, and possibly testosterone treatments.

  The thoughts flitted through Mala’s mind as Darc swept the legs out from under the once-man in front of them. The large figure collapsed to the ground with a grunt of exhaled breath and the clatter of his ancient weapon.

  Others swarmed in, and Trey almost received a crushing blow to his skull from what appeared to be a mace. Where were these weapons coming from?

  Trey stumbled back, feeling at his head… possibly to see if it was still there. At the same moment, Darc threw himself sideways to grab for the shaft of the scythe as he lashed out with a straight arm to catch the first man in the throat. The choked gurgle that resonated in Mala’s ears spoke of his success.

  “What’s with the crazy naked people?” Trey grunted as he leapt back to avoid another swipe from the mace. “Did somebody slip me some acid, or is this really happening?”

  He pulled his gun, readying himself to fire at his attacker, when one of the female forms lunged at his arm, knocking the weapon away. From the other side, another weapon, this one a strange combination of sword and sickle, swung at Trey’s neck.

  Mala cried out a warning to him, and Trey managed to duck just in time to keep his head attached to his body. The sickle-sword… the term “khopesh” flickered into Mala’s awareness from a class she had taken back in college… swung back, this time with the curved part of the blade acting as a hook. It grabbed Trey’s arm and yanked him toward his attacker.

  But Trey seemed to keep his head about him. As he was dragged back, he lifted a fist, using the momentum to strike the jaw of his attacker with enough force to cause the naked man to drop his weapon.

  Mala’s eyes searched along Trey’s arm, looking for bleeding, but it appeared that the khopesh was only sharpened along the outer edge, not the hooked side. The thought was driven out of her mind as a hand gripped her arm and swung her around.

  Face to face with her attacker, one of the women, Mala expected to see rage or some kind of savagery reflected in her eyes. Instead, it was like she was staring into an abyss. There was a glassy blankness there that was somehow even more frightening.

  A fist lashed out, catching Mala in the jaw. She managed to block the other arm as it descended, holding what looked like some kind of ancient dirk.

  Locked in stasis with the blade aiming at her eyes, Mala could feel the strength of the woman in front of her. The dirk began to descend, its point inching toward her.

  But just as it seemed inevitable that the blade would cut into her, once again the attack ceased. The long dagger stopped inches away from her face.

  Then she felt arms surrounding her from behind in a rough one-armed embrace. Before she could lash out with either an elbow or a heel to the instep, she heard Darc’s voice rasp in her ear.

  “Duck.”

  She slipped straight down through Darc’s arms, letting go of the woman’s arm completely as she did so. The blade now ripped down without reservation, only to clang against the shaft of the scythe Darc held in his other hand.

  Once Mala was clear, she watched as Darc grasped the farming instrument in both hands, flinging off the blade and decapitating the woman in one smooth motion. The action seemed to happen in slow motion, the head taking an eternity to strike the ground with a sick, wet thud.

  And then Darc was a whirling dervish, laying about himself with precision. The scythe carved a swath out of the attacking figures, pushing them back or cutting them down
with apparent ease.

  Mala pushed herself back to her feet, scooping up the dirk that had been dropped by her attacker. Finding herself in front of Trey, the two stared at each other for a moment before Trey gave her a shrug and then stepped in close so that they were standing back to back.

  While Mala protected Darc’s rear, Trey lashed out with some kind of long spear he must have procured from one of the other attackers, fending off those who were coming from the other direction. The numbers of the sexless nudes diminished, and for a moment, Mala could see the successful outcome ahead.

  As she struck at their enemy, Mala noticed that none of the killing strokes were directed at her. Trey dodged or blocked fatal blow after fatal blow, but in the moment that Mala’s guard was down, her attacker backed up instead of pushing in.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  A flash of movement caught her eye, and Mala swung her head back in the direction of the table covered in manuscripts. There, one of the nude forms stood holding what looked like a glass bottle over his head. Flame flickered from the neck of the container, and Mala saw the weapon for what it was.

  A Molotov cocktail.

  Her primal cry ripping from her throat, Mala left Trey’s back, rushing toward the figure. Even as she did so, she could see that she would be too late.

  The bottle descended, striking the table and engulfing it in flames. Precious documents, evidence and clues for where they might find Carly in their midst, combusted before her eyes. Mala stood in front of the blaze, helpless to stop it.

  Glancing to the side, she spotted a heavy rug that covered part of the concrete floor that lay underneath the collection of pillows and tapestries. Grasping it in both hands, she struggled to pull the fabric over to the growing bonfire.

  She had to put out that flame. It was the only chance of finding Janey’s sister.

  Her shoulders strained in their sockets from the weight of the rug, but Mala managed to pull the cloth to the table. Pushing herself beyond where she thought she could go, she yanked the rug over the flames, trying to smother them.

  Even as she could see that her efforts might be successful, she felt a blow land on her shoulder. Her arm went numb, pins and needles running down its length, as she turned to face the new danger.

  It was the arsonist, there to protect his work. He struck out with a fist, the blow landing on her jaw with enough force to whip her head around. Stars sprang into her sight, blinding her for a moment.

  When she came to herself, she discovered her foe dragging her from the fight toward the shadows at the edges of the room. A surge of adrenaline pumped through her veins, setting her body ablaze.

  She had been abducted once before. It would not happen again.

  Planting her feet, Mala reared back with her head. The man turned to face her, apparently trying to see where the resistance came from. As he squared off, Mala struck out with her forehead, hitting her opponent at the bridge of the nose. There was a satisfying crunch, and the man went down.

  Mala stood over him, panting. As she recovered, she noticed a growing illumination in the room, and her heart sank.

  Whipping around, she saw the rug that she had pulled over the flame had only partially covered it. Instead of putting the blaze out, the fire had caught and spread down the length of the fabric.

  The flickering light cast by the growing blaze showed her the moving forms of her two favorite detectives. They turned and twisted as one, seeking out their remaining foes and taking them down.

  She wondered if they were aware of their effortless symmetry between the two men as they danced around one another, weapons flashing. There existed a strange intimacy in such easy symbiosis that stirred something close to jealousy within her.

  But the flames mounted ever higher, enveloping every flammable surface within its darting tendrils of light. If Mala didn’t sound the alarm now, they could get trapped down here in this den of depravity.

  Trey was the most engaged, fighting off a figure holding two sharpened hooks that acted as extensions of his hand. The light glistened on his naked torso, ending in that awful scarring at his groin that caused Mala’s stomach to churn. If she were to distract him, even for a moment, Trey could fall to one of those wicked spikes.

  Darc, however…

  Not only did he seem more than capable of dispatching his opponent, but she knew from painful experience that he could compartmentalize better than anyone she’d ever met. Once, right after they’d been intimate, Darc had disclosed the solution to a current case… that he’d solved during their lovemaking session.

  An idea formed in Mala’s brain. The possibility of failure loomed, but if she did nothing, their death was assured. Even now, the flames surged to the side of their battle, creeping along the wall toward the only exit now available to them.

  Mala spoke in a normal tone of voice. Darc’s super hearing should pick up her statement, feeding them into the steel trap that was his mind.

  “Darc, the fire is about to trap us here. We need to get out. Now.”

  No outward sign of acknowledgement greeted her words, and Mala feared that she had to risk distracting the two fighters. But then Darc grabbed a hold of the back of Trey’s shirt, spinning him around.

  At the same moment, he swung his scythe, catching both of the hooks on the sweeping blade. Sparks flew as the weapons were wrenched out of the nude man’s hands.

  Mala gasped. Behind Darc, his opponent had seen the opening and was lunging forward with what appeared to be a long spear.

  But Darc anticipating the move, spinning himself and Trey out of the way just in time to have the spear pierce through the abdomen of the hook-wielding fighter. As the man with the spear froze in surprise at the unexpected figure on the end of his weapon, Darc took the moment to whip his scythe about, catching his opponent right at the waist.

  The blade sliced through the man’s stomach as if it had been rising bread dough. Intestines spilled out, and the man fell to his knees amidst his own viscera, his mouth open in a silent scream.

  In that instant, Mala saw that it was not just their genitalia that had been removed. The man’s mouth was an empty black hole, where the tongue appeared to have been forcibly cut out. He was incapable of intelligible speech, and from the silence Mala had observed in him and the others, she suspected his vocal cords had been severed as well.

  No risk had been taken that these warriors might be caught and questioned. There would be no information forthcoming from any of them.

  All these thoughts flowed through her mind in the space of an instant. Then she was running toward Darc and Trey, rushing at the exit that beckoned.

  No thoughts now of the disgusting smells and sights that might await them above. What lurked behind remained far worse.

  They had engaged with the forces of their enemy and had barely escaped with their lives. This did not bode well for the fight that lay ahead of them.

  In her mind’s eye, Mala could see Carly calling out to her, urging her to hurry, to work faster and harder. Desperation sang from the teenager’s eyes, begging for rescue.

  I’m coming for you, Carly, she called out in her mind.

  I’m coming.

  CHAPTER 8

  Even though the outcome had been predetermined, the Headminister raged inside.

  To pull the detectives more fully into the net, the trap had been baited. And, sure enough, the flies had come to the honey.

  The sexless were cannon fodder and always had been. For that they had been created. Their greatest desire and hope was to sacrifice themselves for the good of their fully sexed master.

  But where attachment was a path leading away from enlightenment, the Headminister knew those souls better than any with whom he had been intimate. They had been companions along this journey, committed and faithful.

  The hope that they would defeat the two men had been strong, but it did not change the final assessment. This encounter had been successful.

  Even the loss of
the priceless scrolls had been an essential part of the plan. Those writings were engraved in the Headminister’s mind. The need to keep the physical scrolls was minimal. They would only serve to give additional information to the enemy. Allow the detectives the opportunity to discover the plans that would come soon to fruition.

  While their deaths and the capture of the doctor would have been preferable, in a way this path was the more satisfying. They would be caught in a web of their own making. Dragging themselves more fully into the sticky strands until they were caught so securely no escape would be possible.

  And they would know the horror of realizing that their undoing had been perpetrated by none other than they, themselves. It was delicious.

  Delicious.

  It was time to eat.

  “I desire food,” the Headminister said to one of the women. She moaned in ecstasy at the words spoken. Even the sound of the Headminister’s voice had the power to create waves of pleasure in these disciples of the flesh.

  Stretching out before the Headminister, the girl traced her hands over her lithe body as a sampling of delicacies were placed on her belly, the tops of her thighs, between her breasts, atop her nipples. The eating of these foods would become a game in which only the lightest of touching would occur. An extended tease that would arouse and enflame the passions to a fever heat.

  This was a spectacle that needed to be observed to be fully appreciated.

  “Bring the girl.”

  They would not touch her, for now. That had to wait. For even the Headminister had one above that could deliver orders.

  The restriction chafed. The girl was so ripe.

  But the time would come. It would come soon.

  And until then, they could prepare her by demonstrating the delights that awaited her when that blessed day arrived. To show her the Path of Pleasure. Dionysus, Aphrodite, Pan, the satyrs, the nymphs… all the mythical gods, goddesses and creatures of lust, attending her along the way.

  The fear in her eyes was delightful. The Headminister nodded at her, and her eyes, glazed as they were from the cocktail of drugs they had forced into her system, radiated with rage.