by H. G. Nadel
“Bounced back his soul? I don’t know.”
“Wait, I’m not finished. Let me show you something.” Julia walked into the next room, grabbed a heavy book off her coffee table, and brought it back into the kitchen, where she set it on the table with a thunk.
Austin spun the book so the title was facing him and read, “The Devil Takes a Body: When Science Can’t Explain Superhuman Behavior, by Doctor Caleb Bertel.” He looked up at her. “Exactly. This is where I got my theory. How did such a logical girl end up working with such a nut?”
“All geniuses can be a little nutty,” she said. “Anyway, a scientist has to keep a mind open to all possibilities. And so does a detective, don’t you think?”
“Fair enough.”
“So, keeping an open mind …” She flipped the book open to a bookmarked page covered with underlines and highlighter, with scribbles in the margins. “Read this.”
Austin silently read the whole page, a wrinkle of concentration on his forehead. Julia waited, unconsciously bobbing in her chair in rhythm with the ticking of the kitchen clock. When he finished reading, he looked up at her, his face unreadable. He looked back at the book, ran his finger through the text until he found what he was looking for, and read aloud.
“Although modern psychiatry has debunked most cases of demonic possession as mental illness, there have always remained those few cases that cannot be categorized. We may presume that modern diagnostics simply has yet to identify some mental and emotional syndromes or their causes. However, medical practitioners, therapists, and scientists cannot ignore the fact that 2.3% of patients who experience a sudden onset of nonspecific psychosis have exhibited no previous symptoms of mental illness, do not come from families with any history of mental illness or notable dysfunction, and have been unable to identify any precipitating trauma.
“Meanwhile, some of the symptoms endured by these uncategorized patients seem to operate independently of the patients’ brain functions. These symptoms include nonsubjective physical changes in such things as eye color or vocal patterns, extreme feats of strength, sudden ability to speak foreign languages never before exposed to, and recollection of verifiable events and facts about which they have no previous knowledge. Most frightening are the few reports of inanimate objects exhibiting changes, either in the vicinity of these patients or in the vicinity of those with whom they come in contact. These include objects flying through the air, objects appearing and disappearing, writings appearing and disappearing, and, occasionally, disembodied voices speaking or shouting. Unlike cases of schizophrenia, these changes have been observed by outside parties, such as psychiatrists and mainstream scientific researchers, not just the patients or those with close ties to them.
“Add to all this the coincidental rise in cases of nonspecific mental illness among those who come in contact with these patients, and a pattern begins to emerge—a pattern that suggests external forces may be at work. Mental illness, while it can be inherited, is not typically contagious. An as-yet unverified virus is one possibility; but until such a virus is identified, we cannot discount the possibility of some sort of possession, perhaps by a free-floating energy source—what some people call ‘the soul.’“
When Austin stopped, he looked up at Julia, eyes narrowed. “So you think Bertel …”
“… isn’t Bertel anymore,” she whispered, as if someone might be listening.
“Julz, I believe in God, but demonic possession, I don’t know. That’s so medieval.”
Medieval. “One more thing. See here what it says about other people being affected by the madness? Well, I’ve been having these weird dreams about living in medieval times, and they feel more real than any dreams I’ve ever had. It’s like I’m dreaming about some past life.” She refrained from telling him that he appeared in those dreams.
“Interesting. But isn’t it possible that this is the power of suggestion?”
“Maybe.” His words brought another thought to mind. She dared herself to think what she had pushed to a corner of her mind since Bertel’s electrocution. Her shoulders slumped. “If Bertel’s gone, if someone else has taken over his body, it may be all my fault.”
“What do you mean?”
“The power of suggestion. When we talked about using an electrical charge as part of our process, I also said that the electrical shock could kill someone just as easily as it could revive him. You’ve been considering the possibility he was so depressed he tried to electrocute himself on purpose. Maybe he got the idea from me.”
“Julia, you can’t blame yourself for that. There must have been a hundred different ways he could have killed himself with all the supplies you have in that lab.”
Julia shook her head, trying to dislodge the self-accusations that continually pressed upon her soul. “You’re right. Sorry. I’m throwing a pity party, aren’t I?” She raised her head from her downcast position and looked at him with a rueful smile.
“Hey now, no worries. Okay? You’ve been through a lot.” Austin’s face broke into a grin, relieving the tension of the past hour. He stood up, replaced the kitchen chair that he had been sitting on to its former position, and pulled on Julia’s hands, raising her to a standing position. “Let’s go sit down for a minute.”
Julia’s heart started to pound as he put one arm over her shoulder and led her to the loveseat in the next room. They sat down together, and he pulled her legs on top of his, so she was reclining across the length of the couch.
“So,” Austin said, “What makes Julia Jones tick? Apart from immersing herself in weird science with a crazy doctor, that is.”
Julia laughed in spite of herself. “Okay, Austin, shoot. Ask me anything.”
“Favorite food.” Austin’s face became even more boyishly handsome as he relaxed. Julia could barely concentrate on the words forming in her mouth. She felt jolts of electricity as he gently massaged the tops of her bare legs with his strong, calloused hands.
“Crepes,” Julia answered immediately. “My mom taught me to make the most amazing chicken pineapple crepes. I make them whenever I can drum up the time.”
“Which probably isn’t often, I’m guessing,” Austin laughed. “Knowing your drive.” Julia didn’t remember telling him anything about her work habits, but he seemed to understand her immediately.
“True, but isn’t that the pot calling the kettle ‘black.’“
“Can’t argue with that,” Austin laughed. “I’ve been that way ever since I was a kid. The summer after kindergarten, I made my mom sign me up for karate, cooking, and Japanese lessons. I drove her crazy.” He paused, then said, “She would have loved to meet you.” So, Austin lost his mother too. No wonder he took a special interest in this case. Julia felt a wave of sympathy as he quickly changed the subject.
“Favorite ice cream.”
“Gotta be double chocolate fudge. I love anything chocolate. You?”
“Neapolitan,” he answered. “I don’t want to have to commit to just one flavor.”
“Oh, I see how it is,” she teased. “Are you that way with girls too?”
Austin eyes grew suddenly serious. “No,” was his simple reply. She didn’t think her heart could take much more of this pounding. The energy between them was so thick, it was nearly tangible. It frightened her how she could fall for a perfect, yet somehow familiar, stranger so quickly. She pulled herself out of her trance.
“Okay,” she leaned her head back on the couch pillow, covering her eyes with her forearm. “Do you think I’m just out of my flipping mind, or do you think there might be something to my theory?”
Austin considered her question for a moment, then spoke slowly. “I don’t know. But as someone who does believe in God, I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t concede the possibility. I’m not sure about possession. I know sometimes people overdose on PCP and go into cardiac arrest. But here’s the thing: some of them are revived with a defibrillator, and we don’t hear about a bunch of drug addicts running around p
ossessed by demons.”
“What if they’re not really demons? What if they’re just—the wrong souls? Maybe Bertel just had the bad luck to attract an evil one.”
“All right. So if a bad guy seized the good doctor’s body, who would it be?”
“I don’t know, yet. But if he’s after our research, we have another problem.”
“What’s that?”
“He talked about a legion. What if he wants to bring his friends?”
FOURTEEN
Austin and Julia stared at each other across the length of the couch. Austin interlaced his fingers and placed them behind his head, allowing his head to rest for a moment. Julia resisted the urge to reach out and stroke his hair, to feel the thick, silky curls between her fingers.
“Tired?” she asked.
“A little,” he said. “I haven’t been sleeping very well.”
“Worried about this case?”
“Sort of. I keep having these vivid nightmares.” He looked at her. “You were in a couple of them.”
“I was in your nightmares? I’m flattered.” She hoped teasing him would make her appear nonchalant. In reality, she was hanging on every word.
“No, no, you weren’t the scary part. Something was hunting us.”
“I’m starting to feel that way when I’m awake. It’s funny you mention dreams, though. You’ve been in mine too.”
“Oh rea-lly?” he said, chuckling. “Glad I made an impression.”
She felt the heat rise to her face. “Um … well … never mind. I just thought it was a weird coincidence.”
“It is. But in my case, I think it was my subconscious letting me know that you’re in danger. Julz, I’d like to assign an officer to protect you. Between your controversial research, the attack in the graveyard, Bertel’s sudden violence, and this death threat, it’s a more than reasonable precaution. And there’s another thing I want to ask you to do … “ He paused.
Julia noticed that she was nervously chewing on a fingernail. She stopped and folded her hands in her lap like a schoolgirl waiting for instructions. Was Austin going to ask her on a date? Right, moron, that’s what all cops do after they assign police protection to witnesses: ask them on a date. But their current sitting position indicated that he had at least a personal interest in her welfare. Whatever he wanted, she’d probably do it. She had trusted him from the first moment they’d met. “What do you want me to do?”
“Do you have a gun?”
“A gun?! Are you kidding?”
“I’ll take that as a no. So, here’s what I wanted to ask: I’d like you to come with me to the shooting range. I can’t go with you in an official capacity, as a cop. But if you decided to go on your own, there’s no reason I couldn’t go along and give you a few pointers, as a friend.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Austin. Do you know what my friend Nadia calls me? ‘The Reaper.’ In fact, during senior year, a lot of people at school started calling me that.”
“Because of your experiment at the science fair?”
“You know about that?” She squeaked a reply.
“I’m a detective, remember? And YouTube isn’t exactly hard to crack.”
“Oh no, you saw the video too?!” Now he’d never ask her out.
He laughed. “It wasn’t that bad. In fact, I thought the whole inhaler idea was kind of genius. All scientists make mistakes.”
“Point is I nearly killed two people.”
“Nah, that wasn’t nearly enough venom to kill them. Besides, I’m sure you’ll be more careful next time.”
“There’s not going to be a next time. And a gun? That’s an even bigger risk. One mistaken pull of the trigger and I could really kill someone. Or what if someone takes the gun away and kills me? She was embarrassed to reveal her cowardice to Austin, who probably lived by the “No Fear” motto, but the whole situation already had her terrified—and the idea of firing a weapon made it all too real. “Anyway, I’ve taken a self-defense class.”
“So you know how to defend yourself against guns, knives, lead pipes?”
“Um …” the answer was obvious. Julia was totally unable to protect herself. Austin, realizing he had the upper hand, continued.
“You said Dr. Bertel is not himself. Who’s to say he won’t come back with a weapon? What if he brings reinforcements, that legion you mentioned? What if the attacker in the graveyard reappears? What if they go after Nadia, or your father? What if something happens that you could have prevented just by having the right tool?”
“You mean weapon.”
“A weapon is just another tool. If you learn how to use it, it can be a safe tool.”
He had a point. She was in the middle of a dangerous situation, and it had escalated beyond her ability to predict what would happen. If she were facing some sort of soul so evil it would take over an innocent man’s body and threaten her life, who knew what kind of weapon it might use against her? Guns might be the least of her worries.
She nodded. “Okay. But isn’t there something in the police manual that says you’re not supposed to fraternize with witnesses or something?”
“You mean, like we did today?” He winked. “I put public safety before politics. And I have a weird feeling that this may save your life. Besides,” he added with a familiar grin, “I can imagine the look on the guys’ faces when I walk in with you. Reason enough to bend the rules a little.”
She smiled back. “When?”
“Why not now?”
“Isn’t it too late?”
He walked over to the window. “I know it seems like it, because we’ve been talking so long, but look.” He lifted the kitchen curtain, and Julia squinted at the sting of afternoon sunlight.
“Okay. Let me change into something more comfortable.” When she saw him blush, she added, “I mean some jeans and a T-shirt.”
She changed in the bathroom, slipping into her form-fitting green tee with the angel wings on the back, running a brush through her hair, and dabbing on lip-gloss. She wondered how her mother would feel about her firing a gun.
Whenever people talked about shootings on the news, her mom would snap, “Morton, change it! You know I can’t stand violence.”
“Death is part of life, Michele. I’m against violence too, but I like to be informed.”
“Crazy, stupid people shot and killed each other this year, and more people will shoot and kill each other next year. Does hearing the gory details make you feel better informed?”
Julia knew that her dad hated seeing the violence on the news too; he just didn’t want to admit he only watched for the weather report. He was a radio news kind of guy. The stations he listened to hardly ever reported shootings, unless they were part of a war.
War. Bertel had talked about commanding an army. In that case, maybe it was best to be armed. Still, she wasn’t about to tell her father that she was going to learn to fire a gun. If her mom were still alive, he would have dragged her into it, saying, “Your mother will worry.” But Julia knew that ever since mom had died, he was the one who worried, terrified of losing all that remained of his family.
As for what her mother would think, strangely enough Julia thought she’d be okay with it. At that moment she could swear she felt the pressure of lips on her cheek—her mom’s old seal of approval. She lifted her hand to touch that cheek. Then she opened the bathroom door.
As she walked into the living room, Austin said, feigning nonchalance, “I just realized I’m starved. Maybe we should grab something to eat while we’re at it.”
So he was asking her out. Or was he? She tried not to sound too excited. “Sure. I could eat.”
He reached out as if to caress her cheek, but instead rubbed at her skin with two fingers. “Looks like you missed with the lipstick there. With that kind of aim, maybe I shouldn’t take you shooting.”
She grabbed his fingers and looked at the color. Rich Ruby, her mother’s favorite.
“Gee, if you wanted t
o hold my hand, why didn’t you just say so?” he said, grinning.
She looked up at him, her eyes wide with embarrassment. But it was several minutes before she let go of his hand. He didn’t seem to mind.
The shooting range smelled of mold and metal with a hint of testosterone. Julia opened the door to the sound of mostly male voices filling the store with a low murmur; but as faces turned toward her, the volume cranked to that of a raucous party. She heard a cacophony of whistles and cat calls, but when she whipped her head around, half a dozen men pretended to look elsewhere. There were also a couple of women in the store. She figured most of these people were in law enforcement, though only one of the women wore a uniform: highway patrol.
A clutch of men gathered around a skinny young man who stood behind the counter, towering over the rest of the group. He was a collection of dark shadows from head to toe: black desert boots, black jeans, black Chinese shirt embroidered with a black dragon, black goatee, a tidy mop of black curls, and the darkest eyes Julia had ever seen. If the eyes were the windows to the soul, then there was another universe in there somewhere. He even held a black assault rifle. He was in the middle of explaining the weapon’s specs to the men around him in a cultured British accent. His delivery reminded her of a professor at Oxford in love with his subject.
“When California lawmakers decided the 82A1 posed a terrorist threat, Barrett went to work on this magnificent creature. It’s a .416 caliber version that gets in under the legal wire, but it’s almost as powerful as the .50 cal version your SWAT team uses, Steve. The disadvantage is the bullet-button magazine release. But with practice, you can change it more quickly than you’d think.” He pressed a bullet against a button on the side, popped off the magazine, and replaced it, his hands gliding over the surfaces in one smooth move. “With that, you are back in business.”
“Hey Larry,” Austin said, “Can you stop showing off for a few minutes and give someone a little service around here?”
