by Rain, J. R.
Did everyone feel this about water? Or was it just me? I didn’t know, but what I did know was that I had a job to do. I reluctantly tore my gaze from what photographers hiked through the deep woods to snap, and young lovers idealized as one of the perfect local places to get next to each other.
I began my minute inspection of the area. Step by step, I looked up, down, and around, seeking anything that looked out of place in this verdant, clean forest. It took me 10 minutes of searching, but I finally found the remains of the yellow police “caution” tape. It was still tied to the branch of a bush. It fluttered there in the breeze like a dead butterfly’s wing. My eye caught the movement and somehow, I stepped from my profound admiration of this ethereal place and landed right into the reality of the crime scene.
I stood back and took in the scene, knowing that here, in this lovely place, two people had been killed. The fluttering yellow police tape marked the spot.
By whom or what they had been killed remained to be seen.
Dear Bloody Diary,
Bonnie isn’t being much help. Turns out she took some minor exception to me “stealing” the grimoire. I call it “borrowing,” but whatever. Then again, why should she—or anyone—help me locate the Four Elements? A vampire with no known weakness is a terrible thing. Then again, terrible is in the eye of the beholder. Checks and balances, she had said. Nature would not allow one supernatural entity to be too powerful. Oh, yeah?
We’ll see.
I am not looking for power. I am looking to break the curse of my existence.
To forever live and not worry about vervain? To forever live and not worry about someone plunging a stake through my heart? To forever live and not worry about the sun, with or without this damn ring?
To forever live and not drink blood.
The implications are far-reaching. I could break the curse and live a normal life.
And retain all my power.
Or so the theory goes. We’ll see.
First, I must find the Four Elements of the prophecy.
One problem: No one knows where to find the Four Elements or, really, what they even look like. I can guess. The four elements: earth, wind, fire, and water.
But how to find these? And where?
The prophecy was clear: On the night of the second comet, the Four Elements would appear.
Well, I’m still waiting for them to appear.
Whatever the hell they are.
D. Salvatore
CHAPTER FIVE
* * *
I had never worked a murder scene.
Then again, I didn’t know if this was a murder. For all I knew, it could have been a suicide pact.
“No,” I said to myself, my words swallowed up by a sudden gust of wind, “her sister had seen someone out there. Someone who was watching them.”
Not a suicide pact. Not a wild animal. A man, no doubt.
“Or a woman,” I whispered, taking in a lot of air. “Must not be sexist in profiling criminals.”
The crime scene was a clearing where I might have camped, years ago. The site offered a majestic view of the falls and plenty of shelter from the elements. No doubt, many hundreds of people had camped on this very spot.
So, why had they been attacked? Who was the man watching them?
And … how had they been killed?
Gracie had mentioned that she’d heard her sister die. I had questioned her further about that on the phone, hard as that had been to ask her. Had Gracie heard a gunshot? No. A struggle? Possibly. Anything else?
“Yes,” she had told me over the phone just hours earlier, before my trek into the woods. “She had heard what sounded like something drinking.”
“Drinking?” I had asked.
“Yes. Like gulping and swallowing.”
“Jesus.” I still wasn’t sure what to make of it, although I would not be the first Mystic Faller to hear the rumors, the whisperings of “vampires.” There be vampires. I shook my head and almost smiled grimly. Almost.
I moved around the clearing, noting the many footprints and indentations in the dirt. Some looked fresh, others not so much. At a crime scene, police and investigators, along with medical examiners and God knew who else, would have been swarming around the area. Undoubtedly, they had tried not to contaminate the crime scene—and all of those details would be in the police report, something the sheriff was withholding from me. Granted, it wasn’t common for the police to share this information with private eyes. Still, she could have thrown me a bone. Anything to help the investigation. After all, I was on their side. I was one of the good guys.
Of course, to them, I was just a pesky private dick with no real experience, other than following cheating spouses and serving court papers.
Maybe. But I did know how to investigate a case.
Any private eyes worth their salt apprenticed with established investigators, learning the ropes. I had done that, along with my required state training. But my real education came when I had worked side-by-side with an old pro named Edward Jones. He’d taught me all he knew. While it was true that I hadn’t gotten much use out of the skills he’d passed on to me, that didn’t mean I didn’t know what I was doing.
So, then, the question was simple: What would Jones do?
I thought about that as I surveyed the scene. I turned in a small circle, knowing that my old mentor would tell me to look deeper, beyond what was obvious to the not-so-obvious.
So, I turned in a small circle, taking in the clearing, the surrounding trees and brush. The waterfall cascaded through an opening in the trees. I stopped turning and hung my head. Damn, nothing. I had no clue what to look for, other than the obvious. And so, I did the obvious, scouring the campsite, squatting on my heels and examining anything of interest. There wasn’t much of interest. The police and their own thorough crime scene investigators would have been through here carefully.
Nothing stood out, and nothing was coming to me. I didn’t know where the bodies were found, how they were found, what positions they were in, or even how they died. I had nothing.
I pulled out my cell phone and checked my reception. Amazingly, I had a bar.
She answered on the second ring.
“Hi, sexy,” I said.
“You can’t talk like that to me anymore, Max.”
“I’m sorry. Old habits die hard.”
“It’s been seven years, Max.”
“Okay, really old habits.”
She laughed lightly. Her laughter always had a musical quality that I could never quite put my finger on.
“What’s up, Max?”
“I miss you.”
“Max… .”
“Sorry, sorry, I was just thinking that I could have used your dad’s help on this one.”
“A case you’re working on?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the matter, did you lose the cheating husband in a busy shopping mall?” She laughed some more. The sound of angels laughing.
“No, this one is a little more serious than that.”
“How serious?”
“As serious as murder.”
“Tell me about it.”
And so I did, catching her up to speed with everything I knew, including my conversation with Sheriff Forbes and Tonya Lockwood’s last words to her sister.
“I just got the chills,” said Ronie.
“Tell me about it,” I said.
“You’re at the crime scene now? In the woods?”
“It’s what your dad would have done.”
“Except my dad knew what he was doing.”
“Ouch,” I said.
“Look,” said Ronie, “just because you apprenticed with my dad, doesn’t mean you are my dad. There’s something out there in those woods, Max. I mean, my God, this is Mystic Falls. They should friggin’ tear down that whole town. It’s why I got out of there. I never felt safe. Ever.”
I recalled another reason for Ronie’s leaving—that reason being me—but I
decided not to go there. Instead, I said, “Well, be that as it may, I still live and work here, and I have a job to do and… .”
“And what?”
“I think I’m in over my head.”
She paused, and I could hear the sounds of the office going on behind her. Ronie didn’t go into the family business—private investigating—but she hadn’t gone far. She was the fraud manager to a major insurance company.
“Quit looking at the big picture, Max,” she said. “The big picture is too big, too stressful. Focus on the small elements of the case, those elements you can control.”
I needed to hear that. I exhaled, “You’re right.”
“What if Sheriff Forbes won’t cooperate? The clues are there for you just as much as they are there for her.”
“They gathered all the clues,” I said.
“Then why is the case still open?” she asked.
I thought about that. “Because they missed something.”
“And that something might just be under your nose, Max. Think outside of the box—”
“Look deeper,” I said, chiming in with her.
She laughed a little and we shared yet another special moment. “Yes, Max. Deeper.” She said the last word with a little double entendre that reminded me of the old us.
“I miss you, Ronie.”
“I’m very married, Max.”
I almost told her I loved her. I almost told her I dreamed about her two or three times a week. And that every time I do, I wake up sad and my heart breaks all over again. Over and over. I almost told her that I don’t think I will ever, ever get over her. But I didn’t tell her any of that. Just hearing her voice was enough, despite knowing she would go home to another man. That she loved another man. That she slept with another man.
“Thank you, Ronie.”
“I have to get back to work, Max. Good luck and stay safe.”
She clicked off as I continued to hold the phone to my ear. Longing was such a bitch.
CHAPTER SIX
* * *
I took in a lot of air, held it in my lungs, and exhaled.
As I did so, a powerful gust swept through the forest and rattled the trees around me. Yes, I loved the water—water of all types, really: oceans and rivers, streams and the rain. I loved the rain most of all. Hell, I even loved the sound of kitschy zen-type desk fountains.
But the wind held a special place in my heart, too. I’d always loved the sound of it whistling through branches overhead, or thundering over my ears. Others ran from windstorms, but I never did. I enjoyed walking my dog in them, feeling its raw power, observing its dominion over everything. The strongest trees bowed before the gusts that sometimes blew through town. I once had someone tell me he believed the wind stole his soul. I believe he couldn’t have been more wrong. The wind gave life. Hell, the wind was life.
The breath of God.
Then again, I always had been a little weird.
As I stood there in the clearing, where two campers met their fate by an unknown assailant, I listened to this sudden gust of wind that seemed to be blowing everywhere at once, swaying the massive treetops, rustling the leaves of the forest. I closed my eyes and felt the wind move over me, through my hair, thundering over my clothing. Hell, I was in heaven. The waterfall was thundering by my side, and the gusting wind blasted everywhere else.
No wonder I had enjoyed camping here. The perfect spot.
And, for one murderer, it had been the perfect spot to kill, too.
I kept my eyes closed and felt the raw power of the wind, its thundering howl merging with that of the churning waterfall nearby. Nature was at its clamorous best. With my eyes closed, the wind seemed to pick up strength. I reveled in the sensation, briefly forgetting why I was here. I took in some air, and as I let it out the wind seemed to increase. It was up to gale force now, easily 40 or 50 miles an hour. Dirt and debris pelted me, but I ignored it.
I lowered my hands and the wind died. I could almost believe that I was the forest’s maestro, controlling the symphony orchestra of nature. I almost believed. I wasn’t delusional. Just someone who appreciated nature, perhaps a little too much.
As I stood there with my hands at my side, I was all too aware that the wind had completely died down.
And because I was weird—and because I had spent far too much time alone with my imagination as I waited for cheating spouses to emerge from seedy hotels, or perhaps read far too many Harry Potter novels, I raised my hands slowly.
Just a little.
I wasn’t delusional. Obviously, it was a coincidence that the wind had died down when I lowered my hands. The wind was like that. A fickle friend. And, like the rain, I was always sad to see it go.
Except … something happened as I continued to raise my hands.
The wind picked up.
Coincidence? I was just being silly. I was like a kid running around the neighborhood with his arms outstretched, thinking that at any moment now, he was going to lift off and fly like Superman.
I lowered my hands and, coincidentally again, the wind stopped.
Weird, I thought, and went back to surveying the crime scene.
Except something had come over me.
A sense of excitement.
I couldn’t focus on the crime scene. In fact, I nearly forgot why was here.
Two people had been killed. Right here in this spot. No, there were no witnesses, but that was not true, was it?
No, I think. Not true at all.
Nature was here. The trees were here. The animals were here. The Earth itself was here. The waterfall was here. They say when someone dies, that the tragic event is forever imprinted at that very spot on the land, to replay itself over and over for those sensitive enough to “see” it.
I, of course, wasn’t sensitive enough to read the clues. I had never seen a ghost—and I never wanted to.
But the thought that nature was here, that something beyond the human experience had seen something, took hold and I couldn’t quite shake it.
“How’s that for looking beyond the obvious?”
Of course, my old mentor would have been disappointed. He did not believe in the supernatural. He believed in facts that could hold up in a court of law.
Except when one lived in Mystic Falls and almost had to believe in curses. There were just too many strange occurrences here. Too many dead. Too many disappearances. Too many whispering of things that went bump in the night. Hell, for that matter, they went bump in the day.
My hands were down by my sides. The air was still. I could smell moist soil, the aromatic cedars, and the sweet grass. Other than the cascading waterfall, I could hear nothing. The wind that had been blowing so powerfully just seconds earlier was now just a memory. Perhaps I had imagined it.
Perhaps.
I slowly raised my hands and a cold chill swept through, and almost immediately the wind in the forest picked up. Almost immediately, it began howling around me, over me, and hell, it went through me.
“What the hell?”
I raised my hands higher and higher, and the wind picked up faster and faster. As I stretched my arms out high over my head, the treetops were virtually bending sideways and branches cracked and crashed throughout the forest.
“Oh my God,” I said, except, of course, the sound of my voice was swallowed up in the howling wind.
I lowered my hands slowly and the wind died down.
“I’m dreaming,” I said when my hands were by my side and the wind had completely ceased. “I’m dreaming.”
I would have chalked it up to a dreamy imagination except for one thing.
Resting on the ground in front of me was something very tangible … a tree branch dripping in blood.
Dear Bloody Diary,
There is something different in the air. Literally. Stefan seemed to notice it as well. I caught him on the balcony, drinking, looking out across our grounds. I asked him what he was thinking. Actually, I asked what he was moping about th
is time, but he ignored my jibe and looked at me oddly. He cocked his head and pointed to the sky.
“Do you hear it?”
“Hear what?” I moved over next to him, drinking my own nice bourbon. Nice or not, the booze kept the cravings at bay. For a while. If not for the copious amounts of alcohol Stefan and I consumed, there would be a lot more dead bodies in this world. A lot more.
Stefan cocked his head a little and said, “Listen.”
I leaned my forearms on the railing and humored my younger brother. Then again, when both brothers are nearly 150 years old, “older” and “younger” become irrelevant.
I was expecting to hear maybe the approach of a car. Or the sound of someone moving in the distant woods. Perhaps even two people going at it like rabbits in a car parked not too far away. Yes, our hearing is that good.
“I don’t hear it… .”
“Keep listening.”
“Are you drunk, Stefan—”
And then I caught something. I cocked my head a little. As I did so, Stefan nodded. “You hear it.”
I raised my fingers to my lips and shushed him.
A small wind swept over us, and as it did so, I heard the sound again. A whispering. Many whisperings, in fact. As if a dozen people were whispering quietly at the back of a church. But the sound, I was certain, was on the wind itself. A whispered word that I could distinctly make out. A word repeated over and over.
“What is it?” asked Stefan.
“I don’t know… .”
My younger brother studied my face closely. He has a way of looking deeper into me than anyone. I shrugged. I smiled and said, “Or could just be our imaginations.”
“No, it’s not. You heard it, too.”
“I’m not sure what I heard,” I said.
“It said ‘brother,’” said Stefan, his brows raised, confusion etched into his face.
