Two hours into his interrogation they received his service record and the tone in the room started to change. Especially once Detective Jessica Serrone, an attractive Hispanic woman in her late twenties, arrived. At least with her, steely professionalism and hostile suspicion gave way to pity and empathy. He saw that he’d gone from potential murderer to grief-stricken victim, but this only drove home his loss.
The ordeal ended when Detective Serrone told him he was free to go. Before he stepped out of the interrogation room she returned his belongings, including the small box containing Michelle’s engagement ring. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said with heartfelt emotion.
Talon turned away from the detective, a man of stone. He walked into the bustling police precinct and found Erik waiting for him. His old buddy had cleaned up as best he could and the mints almost managed to mask the alcohol on his breath.
Seeing him stirred dark feelings of anger inside Talon. If Erik hadn’t been so weak, so needy, none of this would’ve happened. He would have been with Michelle when the intruders broke into her apartment. He would have kept her safe.
The two soldiers left the precinct without exchanging any words. Erik must’ve known what was going through Talon’s churning mind and remained quiet as they headed for his Mustang.
Rain swept the forlorn streets, a response to the previous day’s humidity. Heavy drops pelted the windshield and the wipers were furiously battling the downpour. While Erik navigated the dark, wet roads in uncomfortable silence, Talon’s thoughts focused on Michelle. He tried to picture her smiling face but her final, agonizing moments kept intruding on the memory.
“I’m so sorry.” Erik’s timing on this apology couldn’t have been worse. Talon’s seething rage bubbled to the surface.
“Stop the car.”
“Where are you going to go?” Erik asked.
“None of your goddamn business. Now let me out. I’m not going to ask again.”
Erik pulled up to the nearest sidewalk. He was tempted to add something but Talon’s glare suggested that he’d better keep his mouth shut.
Talon kicked the door open and disappeared into the wet night. He walked in the rain until he was soaked. Perhaps he hoped the elements could wash away the darkness inside him and extinguish the fire in his heart.
He tried to recreate in his mind the scene at Michelle’s apartment, homing in on details he might have missed at first. One image dominated his thinking — the inverted, five-pointed star scrawled on the floor.
The pentagram.
Did Michelle become the victim of a satanic cult? The notion seemed fantastic, part of a bad B-horror picture from the seventies.
Around six a.m. the first hint of milky sunlight struggled to break through the dense cloud cover and Michelle suddenly seemed to haunt every corner of the city.
When he drifted through Chinatown, it made him think of the hole in the wall restaurant they’d stumbled into one drunken night, only to discover the best dumplings on the planet. Passing Ghirardelli Square, he remembered that Michelle’s favorite flavor of chocolate was Dark Cabernet. Who wanted their chocolate to taste like wine? Michelle did.
As he trudged down California Street, he glanced up at the Intercontinental. They had celebrated their first anniversary as a couple in the Top of the Mark rooftop lounge. Overpriced fare, but the view was amazing and Michelle had loved it.
So many memories.
God, he was barely keeping it together.
His long walk led him to Dolores Park. Less than twelve hours earlier he’d proposed to Michelle right in this spot, all thoughts of death far away. He choked back a scream of rage. His hands shook and balled into fists.
Rain fell, as if the city was weeping for the loss of a favorite citizen. The downpour washed away the tears that coursed down Talon’s face, but it didn’t calm his heaving frame. He couldn’t believe that she was gone. That everything they had shared could so easily be lost.
After what seemed like hours, he turned away from the waterfront and continued his silent pilgrimage through San Francisco’s rain-soaked urban canyons.
Talon’s aimless wanderings drew him back to Michelle’s apartment. The structure loomed like a mausoleum, now transformed in Talon’s mind into a place of horror. Looking up at the townhome he realized he wasn’t ready to set foot in the place again. At least not yet.
He shuffled away from the building and his gaze landed on Michelle’s car, still parked on the other side of the street. A parking ticket danced in the wind, held in place by the windshield wiper.
Talon went over to the vehicle and slid behind the wheel. For a brief moment the car offered refuge from the incessant downpour. As soon as he closed the door, he knew he made a mistake. Michelle’s scent still lingered here. For a moment he could imagine her sitting beside him again, flashing that beautiful, playful smile.
His eyes fell on the small photograph mounted on the dash. Taken in Afghanistan, it showed him and Michelle grinning like school children. Their smiles were genuine, their happiness palpable.
Looking at the picture pushed him over the edge. Talon knew he needed to numb himself.
Needed to forget.
With a renewed sense of purpose, he headed to the nearest bar and started knocking back shots. The place was a rundown dive and deserted at this mid-afternoon hour. The few lost souls leaning into the well-worn counter were all committed alcoholics and Talon intended to join their ranks.
The whiskey burned as it went down his throat and immediately made him crave another one. Despite his growing buzz, the alcohol wasn’t helping Talon forget or calming him down. On the contrary, the booze was adding fuel to the fire. Each shot only stoked the flames inside him.
For the next few days Talon spent his waking hours hitting any watering hole that would take his money. At night he slept off the alcohol at the rundown motel where he’d sought refuge. He didn’t shower, didn’t eat, didn’t give a damn. Terrible thoughts swirled through his mind. His fury was coming to a boil, metastasizing into a murderous rage.
On the third day he ended up in a run-down goth-punk bar. He didn’t share anything in common with its patrons except for a hunger to forget.
As the night wore on, he began to notice a crew of black-clad Goths. The tall, pale leader of the group — a young, cantankerous asshole — would have scored well in a Marilyn Manson lookalike contest. One of the Goth chicks mistook his attention for interest and flashed him a black-lipstick smile. Her wandering eye didn’t go over well with her beau. He gave Talon the finger before pulling his girl off the barstool and dragging her toward the exit. His friends filed out after him without paying for their drinks. The bartender hailed expletives after them.
Talon didn’t pay attention to the bartender’s shouts. All he could think about was the tattoo he’d spotted on the Goth’s hand when he flipped him off.
It was an inverted pentagram.
***
Talon followed the brazen gang of Goths for a couple of blocks. A heavy fog shrouded the streets, turning the world into a dreamlike landscape of bleeding shadows.
Talon kept his distance but stayed close enough, never losing sight of his quarry. It soon became apparent where the punks were headed. They were walking toward the Mission Dolores Church and its adjoining cemetery.
The Goths paid little heed to the lone figure trailing them. Even if they spotted him, Talon would offer little cause for alarm. They were four, he was one and in his currently abysmal state, he bore a stronger resemblance to a homeless man than a highly trained killer.
Talon passed through the wrought-iron main gate and began to close the gap once they entered the maze of tombstones.
The fog grew heavier and erased the black-clad punks from view. Focusing on his other senses, Talon tracked the sound of their voices. Their laughter gave way to the hiss of spray canisters. Like a predator drone that had locked on its target, he homed in on the Goths.
The mist cleared and the ring of pun
ks stood revealed. Streaks of graffiti slithered down a vandalized tombstone. The Goths were in the process of painting inverted pentagrams on the headstones. They stopped for a beat, admiring their handiwork, and suddenly became aware of Talon’s presence.
For a silent moment the vandals traded glances. Then their leader glared at Talon. “What the fuck you looking at?”
The Goth never finished his sentence as Talon’s hand lashed out at him. Now beyond mercy and reason, the Delta Force operator had allowed the alcohol roaring through his system to unleash his killer instinct. His fist connected and sent the raven-haired man crashing into the nearest grave-mound. The crack of bone snapping against the tombstone echoed over the cemetery.
The other Goths stared with big eyes, feet rooted. No one was smiling any longer. Another Goth challenged Talon, fists up. His foolish bravery was rewarded with a vicious series of combination punches that hurled him into a memorial’s flowerbed. Before the youth could get up, Talon was upon him, applying a chokehold designed to snap his neck when…
The pitiful cry of one of the Goth chicks pierced Talon’s drunken haze of insanity. “Please, don’t hurt him, we’re sorry...”
Talon stared at the young woman as if waking from a terrible nightmare. Mascara ran down her face in dark streaks. The fear in her eyes was all too real.
Catching his breath, Talon regarded the nearly unconscious kid whose neck he’d almost broken. He studied the punk’s pentagram tattoo and realized these weren’t hardened killers but a bunch of teenagers playing dress-up.
Talon eyed his hands; they were bloodied from the fight. “Get the hell out of here,” he hissed.
The girl blinked at him, almost as if she couldn’t quite believe this turn of events. As Talon sank to his knees, the Goths wisely fled the cemetery.
Talon let out a heaving sob and wept. The pouring rain hammered down on his haunted visage, washing away the tears but not the pain.
Not the rage.
The flames of anger burning within him could only be extinguished in one way…
Vengeance.
CHAPTER FIVE
EARLY MORNING SUNLIGHT raked Erik’s house. While the incessant downpour had tapered off, Talon’s clothes were still wet and streaked with mud and dried blood. Dark rings circled his sunken eyes.
A decision had been made. He wouldn’t continue to wallow in self-pity or lash out at the world. Michelle wouldn’t want him torn apart by grief. Direct action was required. Her killers still walked the Earth, but their days were numbered. This certainty calmed Talon and filled him with a new sense of purpose.
A new mission.
He knocked on the door, not expecting Erik to show. To his surprise his old friend did emerge. For a moment the two soldiers regarded each other in the gray dawn. For Erik uncertainty mixed with shame.
“I’m sorry about last night,” Talon said. He meant what he said. It had been wrong to use Erik as a scapegoat for his own grief and guilt.
Erik’s face relaxed. “What are you going to do?”
“What do you think?”
Erik’s brows furrowed with concern. “This isn’t Afghanistan, Talon. You start going after these fuckers, the cops will hunt you down.”
“They can try.”
“Let me help you, at least.”
“I could use a place to stay, a base of operations.”
Erik’s eyes flickered at that and the old light edged into them, transforming him into the warrior Talon met on the battlefield all those years ago.
Erik waved him inside. “Mi casa es su casa, compadre.”
***
Before Talon could hunt down Michelle’s murderers, he needed to get a better feel for his newest enemy. The first order of business was checking the Chronicle’s website. Within seconds he found a story on Michelle’s murder. The article stated that she’d been stabbed multiple times and also mentioned the fact that her boyfriend discovered the body.
The piece felt like a beat-by-beat replay of the reporting that was dominating local TV news. It touched on the pentagram and theorized about an occult angle, but these salient details didn’t seem to elicit much outrage from the public. In a world where terrorists were tweeting decapitation photos of Americans, pentagrams and black candles weren’t all that scary anymore. So the world is a madhouse — what else is new?
Talon combed the Internet for other occult crimes committed in the Bay Area over the last few months. His search produced a number of hits. Michelle’s murder appeared to be the fifth crime in an escalating series of cases. The one that jumped out the most for Talon was the brutal killing of an Uber driver. Two other murders had occurred at the same time, followed by three suicides. Witness accounts placed some of the suicides near the crime scenes. This prompted speculation about a murder-suicide pact and the possibility that the perpetrators belonged to a cult.
A cult.
This wasn’t ISIS, Al Qaeda or one of their many offshoots. This was different. Now he faced a homegrown organization with no discernible political agenda.
What am I up against?
As Talon internalized the articles, he spotted Michelle’s byline on a series of them. Finally there was something connecting her to the cult murders. Had her stories turned her into a target?
Talon had seen enough dead reporters to know how dangerous the job could be. Many times he’d wished Michelle did something else for a living. But just as Michelle would never ask him to turn his back on his military career, he couldn’t expect her to stop chasing a good story. They were born risk-takers, defined by their willingness to put it all on the line.
Rereading the news items provided little in terms of explanation for why Michelle was singled out by the cult. Her reporting was in-depth and sensitive toward the victims, but it didn’t differ substantially from the stories generated by competing news outlets.
Talon decided to head to the paper’s offices and talk to Michelle’s editor-in-chief, Richard Powell. He might be able to shed some light on the events leading up to her murder.
This time around, stepping into the newspaper offices gutted Talon. Reminders of Michelle were everywhere. Framed awards and articles that bore her name, photographs of her with friends and colleagues whom she’d pointed out to him. He’d entered Michelle’s world, and these mementos of her impact on it made her absence even more pronounced.
The receptionist uttered a meek hello and fought back tears. Everyone who saw and recognized him averted their gaze or offered awkward condolences. He appreciated the gesture even though he drew little comfort from their words.
Unnerved by the attention his presence was drawing from the staff, Talon clenched his jaw and picked up his pace. Heading straight into Richard Powell’s office, he found the Chronicle’s editor-in-chief busy fielding calls.
When Richard noticed Talon, his eyes flashed with surprise. He got off the phone and rushed over, shaking Talon’s hand. “I’m so sorry about what happened,“ Richard said. “Everyone at the paper is in shock. How are you holding up?”
Talon opted not to answer that question. Before the silence could become uncomfortable, Richard continued. “I spoke with Detective Serrone earlier this morning. She is spearheading the investigation into the cult killings and doing everything in her power to catch these psychos.”
For a moment Talon’s mind turned back to the Hispanic detective who had offered her condolences to him. “Does the SFPD have any leads?”
“Not to my knowledge, but they’re playing it close to the chest on this one, “ Richard said.
“I know Michelle did some reporting on these cult crimes. Could that be why this happened?”
“The cops have been asking me the same question, and I’m going to give you the same answer. I don’t know. Michelle could be quite secretive when it came to the stories she was working on.”
Talon’s mood darkened. This wasn’t what he’d hoped to hear. “Do you mind if I take a look at her files?”
“I’m afraid t
hat won’t be possible. Michelle kept all her work on her laptop. According to the police, her computer and smartphone are missing. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.”
Talon nodded and got up. He was almost out the door when Powell addressed him again. “Wait — there’s one thing. Michelle believed that the cult had ties to Silicon Valley.”
“What do you mean?”
“The three suicides were all tech workers: coders and engineers. It’s a competitive industry. Not every upstart turns into the next Facebook or Apple. For every giant success that makes the news, there are hundreds of failures. The Valley can breed addiction, dysfunction and a sense of entitlement. Maybe even a crackpot cult. It was an angle Michelle was looking into — make of that what you will.”
Talon filed this latest detail away for future analysis. He thanked Powell for his time and left the Chronicle. His next stop was a local occult bookstore he had Googled earlier.
Talon entered the small shop and shook his head at his macabre surroundings. Esoteric paraphernalia crammed the shelves, ranging from spell kits and ritual supplies to bulk herbs and books on Wicca, Santeria, Norse mythology and every conceivable occult tradition imaginable.
Talon didn’t put much stock in any of this superstitious mumbo jumbo. In the battle between science and superstition, science had won a long time ago. It amazed him that so many people still clung to these archaic notions about the world. It was proof that while man was pretty clever, he was still ruled by his hopes and fears.
As he explored the shop, Talon paid little attention to the Tarot cards and Ouija boards. He ignored the vast assortment of crystals and candles. Instead, he bee-lined straight for the section dealing with satanic rituals.
Talon felt uncomfortable in the otherworldly store; it seemed to have been designed to eschew all forms of natural light. The owners were selling the idea of a transcendent experience. Combined with the New Age soundtrack being piped through the loudspeaker system, the décor achieved the desired effect.
Occult Assassin: Damnation Code (Book 1) Page 4
