“Hi there. I’m Doctor Pam, police psychologist. You must be GCP Officer Grey.”
I hesitated then shook her hand. “You’re one of those eternally optimistic people aren’t you?”
Her smile widened. “Why yes, thank you for noticing. And, I would bet you are one of those determined pessimistic people that absolutely hate optimistic people like me.”
“That easy to read huh?”
“Yes you are. I am sure you are here to save the day and enter the big bad scary apartment. Well good luck to you. Remember, I am here for you. When you need to talk I will listen, okay?!”
With another widening of her smile and a tilt of her head she was off as if to spread cheer and joy to the masses.
What the hell is her deal? Can I shoot her just for being annoyingly happy?
I started to tell Tanaka to join me in the “big bad scary apartment”, then I saw the way Ren was clinging to him.
Something had truly terrified her in there. Damn my good nature.
“Tanaka, stay here for now. Keep the locals in line. I’ll go check out the apartment.”
“Wear you glasses. I’ll monitor you and watch your back through them.”
“Okay. Cassie, let’s go.”
She was at my side, instantly all business, like someone flipped a switch inside the child. We passed a number of SWAT officers on our way to the door. They all looked scared out of their minds, white as a sheet.
“Here.”
“Excuse me?”
Two SWAT members held up a rope to me.
“Tie this around your waist. That way we can pull you out. When the rope gets to the white mark we will open the door for you. Otherwise we’ll leave you in there when you lose it. We will pull you out, but we’re not going back in there. No way you can make us go back in there. . .” his voice trailed off as his eyes glazed with memory.
Okay, the SWAT team is all nuts! That can’t be a good sign.
“Alright, tie me up,” I said lifting my arms. Once my waist was tied I leaned down to whisper to Cassie. “I want you to stay here. Someone may still be inside, and not one of these cops look like they could handle a jaywalker right now if it gets past me. Oh, and make sure they don’t pull me out before I’m ready. I plan on walking out on my own power.”
Cassie nodded and I went to the door. It seemed like every cop inhaled a breath of fear at the same time as I reached for the doorknob. I opened the door and looked into the apartment. The heat and the smell hit me instantly. I slipped off my coat, and then stepped inside the room, closing the door behind me.
All right, I am alone without my shields in a place that scared the piss outta trained SWAT officers. What all is wrong with this picture?
The only sound in the apartment was my own breathing. I walked in a few feet from the door. Then suddenly it appeared as if the floor started to move under my feet.
“Tanaka you getting this?”
“I’m with you. What’s up?” he answered through the earpieces on my glasses.
“This place smells weird. It’s like sulfur and wet ash, with blood and death, and something else I can’t place. I think there’s a hallucinogenic in the air in here. It looks like the floor is moving to me.”
“I can see everything your glasses see. The floor isn’t moving. Should we pull you out?”
“No. Let me look around a little.” I moved into the apartment further.
“BUUUURRRNNN!!!” An echoing deep voice growled making me jump.
“What was that?” Tanaka asked.
“I was about to ask you the same thing.”
I stood still a full two minutes, nothing happened. I stepped into the living room off the hallway.
“BUUURRRNNN!!!”
“Fuck! Who is it? Who’s there?! Show yourself!” I yelled into the emptiness, starting to feel fear taking over.
I drew my guns and began to sweep the room. Everything started to come alive and started spinning. It felt like I was on a bad acid trip while being stuck on a roller coaster for nine hours. I had to stop and close my eyes to focus again. Then I opened my eyes and yelped.
“What?!?!” Tanaka demanded.
I stood there staring at an old man on the other side of kitchen. He was wearing one of those old style English tuxedos, authentic clear down to his spats. His waxy-looking sunken skin was bluish-grey, it reminded me of pictures of a drowning victim. He had no hair at all, and his lips were sickly thin. The lips were pulled back so that he had a permanently demented skeleton grin on his face. His head tilted unnaturally from side to side like the vertebra weren’t connected at all, while the rest of him was completely still. It didn’t even look like he was breathing. He looked like a corpse. A smiling corps with a bobbing head.
“Are you okay? Why are you here? Are you injured?” I asked with my guns pointed at him.
“Kieran, who in the hell are you talking to?” Tanaka sounded worried.
“The old guy.”
“What old guy?”
“The one in the kitchen.”
“Look, I can see everything your glasses see. There is no one in the kitchen. Oh shit, I order you not to look at anything but the floor. Look at the floor NOW!”
“Why?” Everyone knows that if you tell someone not to look at something they will.
I glanced around the kitchen, really looking at it for the first time. Everything was coated in blood. Blood even dripped off the ceiling in tiny little bloody stalactites, and again off the kitchen table where a number of bloody medical instruments were laid out by size.
Did someone explode a balloon filled with blood or something? How in the hell did blood get sprayed around like that, even on the ceiling?
I glanced back. The old man was gone! One second he was there watching me, the next, nothing. I edged my way into the kitchen.
“Where the hell are you going? Turn around and get out of there until we can get a containment team on scene!”
“I have to find the old man. He may be hurt.”
“He may be your imagination!”
I stepped around the table and felt my feet stuck to the floor in the drying blood. The smell and heat were turning my stomach as the sweat poured off my face to drench my shirt. Man do I miss my shields! I kept moving until I was next to the oven.
“Tanaka, do you think anyone rigged the oven?”
“What, like a trap if you close the door? I doubt it.”
“Good enough for me.”
I kicked the door closed with the heel of my boot. Then made my way to the first bedroom. The door edged open with a noisy squeak when I pushed against it with my shoulder. My mind had a hard time registering what it was seeing.
“My lord! What in the fuck happened in there?” Tanaka whispered to himself.
Slowly I stepped into the room, feet squishing on the blood soaked carpet. Is there supposed to be that much blood? All over the bed, desk, and even plastered on the walls were body parts. Human body parts. An anatomy lesson gone horribly wrong.
There were three skulls on the floor by the bed. One was only half the size of the others. The skulls had been cleaned and polished to an ivory gleam. They sat there shining white in the sea of red. I surveyed the room as I walked in farther. Skin and hair stretched out on one wall, muscles, organs, and other things covered the other walls. Bones were polished and laid out on the bed according to size.
“Something dissected them?!” Tanaka’s voice made me jump a little.
“We need to go! We need to go NOW!!!” Cassie screamed with pure panic in her voice through the front door at me.
“Just a second. . . .”
I crouched down next to the skulls, being careful not to get into the blood soaked carpet. I glanced down at the skulls and around the room again. Arranged in a neat row on the edge of the desk across from the bed were six eyeballs, all staring into the room, at me. I felt the nausea starting to rise in my throat. Using the barrel of my gun, I lifted the small skull by its eye socket. Th
e skull was light, real light. Then it hit me.
Where’s the brain? For that matter, I can’t see any hearts either. Of all the parts strung around the room, I don’t see anything that resembles a brain or a heart. Where were they? Did the monster that did this take them as a trophy or something? Did it eat them?
“WE MUST GO NOW!!!” Cassie pleaded, tears in her screaming voice.
Why is she so scared all the sudden? Surely we’ve seen worse than this, haven’t we?
Suddenly I saw something move in my rearview in the glasses. Something small was flying towards me! I spun around pointing my guns. SPLAT! Something small and wet slammed into my chest. I jerked back by reflex, and ended up on my butt. Blood seeped through my jeans and underwear almost instantly. I started to gag. Then I saw the object.
It was a small hand sewn doll drenched in blood. The small skull belonged to a . . . CHILD!?! I wretched and screamed.
“PULL HER OUT NOW!!!” Tanaka barked the order.
The rope around my waist grew immediately taught. Then I was yanked forward. I landed face first on the blood soaked carpet. The thick liquid splattered all over my front, including my face and hair. My screams of disgust echoed in the room, as I was suddenly being drug out by the rope.
“BUUURRRRNNN!!!” the voice growled again.
As soon as I cleared the bedroom I saw the old man again. He hissed at me and lunged, jaws snapping. The rope jerked me out of his reach and across the kitchen. My blood soaked clothes helped me slide across the drenched tile. Another pull from the rope and I was slammed head first into the wall separating the kitchen and living room, knocking off my glasses. My head throbbed in pain and the world swam, as I was drug back down the hallway.
My stomach emptied as hands wrapped around my waist, pulling me out into the cop filled hall. I heard the door slam shut behind me. For a while I just lay on my side puking my guts out. Then my stomach settled and I rose to my knees. Movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. I lifted my head.
It’s the old man again! He’s dressed like a police officer now?!?!
I jumped to my feet and shoved my guns into his face.
“Whoa! Stand down!” the voice sounded like Tanaka, but when I turned to look, the old man stood there in his clothes as well.
My eyes flicked back and forth. Every person in the hall was another version of the creepy old guy that tried to bite a chunk out of me a minute ago.
“Damn! Look at her eyes! They’re glowing violet!” a voice said.
Everywhere I looked was the old guy. They all lifted arms up, reaching for me. I screamed wordless noise and backed against the wall. My guns waved back and forth as I tried to choose which one to shoot first.
“Take her!” Tanaka’s voice ordered.
A short version of the old man dressed like a little girl stepped forward and pointed a gun at me. I turned to fire. Brilliant blue-white plasma slammed into me, throwing me to the floor. Every muscle cramped up at once, then the world went black.
Chapter 9
“We have to get out of here now! HURRY!!!” Cassie was pleading again.
I stirred awake slowly, blinking my eyes open. Cassie was pulling against Tanaka’s arm forcing him down the hall. Tanaka and Ren looked down at me concerned.
“W–wh–what’s wrong?” I asked, throat sore.
“Lock the entire building down. Nothing in or out without authorization. And someone get that HAZMAT team here on the double!” Ren was barking orders. “Alright, downstairs, let’s go.”
Tanaka placed a nano-med cube in my mouth, the bitter yellow medicine dissolving away to help heal me. Then he swept me up into his arms, and allowed Cassie to lead him to the stairwell. The back of my head was throbbing; I could feel the bump growing.
“You were seeing things. Some form of mass hallucination. It got out of hand, and we were forced to take you down with a pulse gun. I gave you a nano-med cube, it should keep you from becoming infected with anything from the blood you got into,” Tanaka explained as we descended the stairs three at a time.
“How long. . . .”
“You were out for only ten minutes. Emmy’s people created a counter-agent to the pulse gun plasma. You’ll probably feel sick for a few hours though.”
As soon as we were outside, Ren pulled Cassie to the side as Tanaka set me down on the curb in the snow. My clothes were already becoming tacky and hard from the drying blood.
“Okay, we are outside. Now, what in the hell is up Cassie?” Ren asked kneeling down next to the shaken child.
“I’ve seen this before.”
“WHAT?!?!” we all screamed at once.
She had a glazed look in her eyes as she stared off into the snow while she talked, “In Italy, Master Yuric took me to meet some people. They never answered the door. We went inside. It was just like up there. The bodies had all been dissected. Master Yuric grabbed me and we ran for days. He said that if I ever saw anything like that again, to run far away. Run and never look back. He never said what did it, just to run away from it.”
“Glasses,” I groaned holding out my hand.
“Yours are still in the apartment back there. You lost them when you bumped your head.” Tanaka shrugged.
“Here, the spares you gave me.” Ren handed me her pair.
I put them on. “Master Program Kieran Grey,” I spoke aloud. The glasses shifted and refitted themselves to my face. I glanced at the command circle and Julie popped up instantly.
“Julie, get me Yuric,” I ordered the computerized assistant before she could greet me.
She nodded and the picture went black. A second later a voice I didn’t know came on the line.
“Officer Grey, I regret to inform you that Master Yuric is away on business until Monday.”
“Don’t give me that shit. Put him on.”
“Again, I am truly sorry, but he is not here. He left instructions to tell you that whatever your problem, he has the upmost confidence that you will be able to handle the situation until he returns, on Monday. I will leave a message that you called. Good day.”
The line went dead.
“Ungrateful little prick!” I cursed to myself for a few moments then turned to Tanaka. “Take me to Arkon.”
* * *
“I understand that you have many sources I don’t understand, but why did we have to stop at the store and spend over a hundred bucks on oversized chocolate bars?” Ren asked as the elevator came to a stop. “Not that it wasn’t fun watching people’s reaction to you walking around the store looking like a slasher movie victim. I thought the clerk was going to piss his pants when you walked up to the register.”
“It is civilized to bring a gift when you meet someone for the first time. Or at least Arkon thinks so.”
“Right, so this Arkon is some old smart guy then?”
“Yes, very old.”
We walked down the hall and stopped outside Arkon’s door. I tried to run my fingers through my hair, but until I got a shower to rinse out the blood I couldn’t.
“Arkon is neat. I like the color of his wings,” Cassie announced smiling again as she lugged the sacks with the chocolate in it.
At least she was smiling again. I hated seeing her afraid, or crying.
“W-w-wings? Arkon isn’t h-human?” Ren stuttered, slowly stepping back away from the door.
Tanaka placed his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back to the door. “How should we put it? Akron is . . . well he is kinda–”
“–Arkon’s a dragon. You know, knight in shining armor, damsel in distress, fire-breathing dragon.” I interrupted.
“Dragon? You’re kidding right?”
“Ren, do I look like I am in a kidding mood?”
Arkon’s voice boomed as the door opened, “No Kieran, indeed you look like you have been through hell, and you still haven’t found the exit.”
We stepped into the immense room. Arkon was curled up in the far corner watching us enter. Tanaka practically h
ad to drag Ren inside.
“Evening Arkon. We have a bit of a problem up in the city.”
“Yes, well, feel free to use my drinking basin to clean up then, since the showers don’t work up there.”
I ignored his joke. “Not that type of problem.”
“I didn’t think so. It must be serious for you to have lost your sense of humor. Serious indeed for you to bring Detective Michaels here. Do not fear Detective, I don’t eat humans, ANYMORE,” he teased with a snap of his jaws.
Ren almost fainted. Tanaka carried her over to the chairs in the corner.
“Arkon, tell me a story. A story about a monster that dissects people, and messes with the minds of the living.”
“I assume you have visited a place to witness such a monster.”
“Check the footage from my glasses about two hours ago.”
The dragon uncurled and stretched out a claw to activate his computer. Tapping a few oversized keys he then settled back. I was now forced to relive that mess in the apartment. Only this time on a fifty-foot screen. I was surprised not to see the creepy old guy in the kitchen on the recording.
Could it be that he doesn’t appear on camera? Or, was he really just my imagination?
Arkon watched in interest until he reached the point where I entered the bedroom.
“Oh heavens no! Not again!”
“What do you mean again, Arkon?”
He stopped the playback, and then sighed.
“Talk to me Arkon, tell me a story.”
“Soon after mankind first evolved, it split into three main races. What you now call Vampires, and lycanthropes, as well as humans. Other smaller groups also emerged, but they are not important to the story. For centuries, man was preyed upon by the vamps and shifters. Then man decided to rebel. Fourteen men beseeched a local dragon to take them to Chrono, the first and oldest dragon. Chrono was one of the first living creatures on earth. As the King of all the dragons he held infinite wisdom. The fourteen men went to Chrono to find out how they could fight against the monsters that hunted them.
Immortal Death (Kieran Grey Psionic Hunter Book 3) Page 8
