Then she did it. With all her power, she brought down the rumble and rock around them on top of Bedros. But in doing so, Fabiana had almost trapped herself in there.
Suddenly the mountain was shaking violently. The ground was reverberating under her feet as she moved with incredible speed out of the cave and through the woods. Ash flew into the air and up into the sky and Fabiana almost lost her footing as she ran. The world was coming apart around her. It was glorious.
But now he was out. He had survived somehow and Fabiana now wished she had taken his life when she had had the chance. For she was in no shape to fight him now.
Chapter 13
10:30 a.m., May 6
We drove along Jackson Highway and took in the countryside. It definitely seemed haunted, even during the day, and there was a mile of silence between Kenny and me as my truck roared at 55 mph. A hawk circled overhead looking for one of the many field mice hiding in the long blades of wet grass in a rolling, neglected field. The wide, open plains of southern Washington glistened under the morning sun and the sky was a brilliant blue.
I realized that my first impression of Toledo and Lewis County had been misguided. It seemed like a wonderful place to get away from the bustle and rush of city life. A small but growing community of ranch houses looked back at me and I was amazed I hadn’t seen them the night before. Blocks of hidden luxury homes with white fences and horses galloping freely made up the landscape as we drove by. A group of people ran on the side of the road while two large dogs trotted unleashed next to them. I gave a little laugh at how wrong my initial impression had been. They didn’t seem all that different from people in my neighborhood, out for a morning run before a busy work day. Of course, there were stricter leash laws in Seattle, but other than that, the scene was the same.
“What?” Kenny asked me in response to my chuckle.
“I was just thinking about how much Zakk would love it out here. I should bring Merric and the dog here when this is all done with.”
Zakk would be ecstatic to run free in these fields. No leash, just chasing the wind. Merric loved that dog, almost as much as she loved her Uncle Kenny. He wasn’t really her uncle, but don’t try to tell her that! Because as far as Merric was concerned, Kenny was family and always would be.
“How is that mutt doing anyway? That hind leg still bothering him?”
“Yeah, I don’t know if he’s ever going to get over that,” I told him and I instantly felt guilty. When Kenny was a vampire, Zakk had attempted to save me from Kenny, and… well, Kenny kind of hurt him. I don’t think he’s ever going to get over the guilt of that.
Kenny fell quiet again and I felt sorry I had brought Zakk up at all.
After another pause, Kenny began to talk once more.
“I’m having… a strange feeling about these two cases, Tim. The bodies back in Seattle and the missing kids in Toledo.”
“What feeling?”
“Well, they both seem to point to vampires, and I think they might be one and the same. You know, two opposite ends leading to the same conclusion.”
“Alright then. Kenny, let’s assume that they are one and the same. So what’s our next move?” I asked as I slowed down around a turn, trying not to hit that horrid looking dog from the other night.
“Well, that state park is just up the road. Let’s go over to the ranger station and ask around. Maybe they might know something, but I would like to keep a low profile if we can. Can you handle that, Tim? Let’s not push too hard. I saw the way you looked at the good ol’ boy in town. I swear, man, you were getting ready to grab that man.”
“Alright, I’ll be cool,” I said with sincerity and gave him a nod.
I looked up in my mirror and I could no longer see the dog. It was gone from our lives just in time for me to pull off of the road into a small campground area where a log cabin sat looking very much like one of those old trading posts from a western movie like Lonesome Dove or Unforgiven. Rough planks of wood sat crudely nailed together on the derelict building.
As we walked inside, boards creaked underfoot and the heavy door hinges announced our presence to a tough looking man in a green ball cap that read Lewis County Rangers. He had a rough look about him with his jaw of stubble and hard-set eyes that seemed a bit untrusting. He seemed to be a fit man, but older. I caught sight of several grey hairs peeking out from his cap.
Black and white photos hung from rusty nails and sat silently on the grey walls. The history of the land looked back at us. My eyes were swimming around the room in awe of the nostalgia around me. This land had been settled about two hundred years before. After the port was established a lot of money flowed into this area, but now I struggled to see any of that as I stared at the old photographs looking back, telling me the tales of hardworking farmers and millers that made this area a place to settle down. A long, wooden table held old tools and the equipment of hikers and hunters long dead now. Deer skins and fish hung from the wall, displayed with great pride above a glass case in front of the ranger, who waited for us to address him. His eyes were studying every detail of us, knowing at once we were city boys and not from the area.
“Good morning, sir,” I took the lead.
“We’re detectives from Seattle PD. We understand that Tommy Collins was in here just before he disappeared?”
“Bullshit,” the ranger told us. “You’re friends with that Harvey girl, right?”
We hadn’t expected that response. It had been a long time since someone had doubted that we were actually police officers. But this was not Seattle, so I decided to roll with it. I gave Kenny a look he had seen many times and I knew he would follow my lead.
I thought about that for a moment before I spoke, then said, “Yes we are, Ranger… Wilkinson,” I read his name badge.
“You boys aren’t going down to the Cowlitz Water Ridge by any chance, are you?”
He appeared suspicious of us even more now. And he was eyeing us with distrust, doubting that we could handle ourselves in this rugged wilderness.
We kept our silence. It was a standoff.
“Well, I’ll tell you what I told her. Her brother filled out a fishing permit, saying he wouldn’t be back from the Cowlitz till the 24. So it’s not exactly a missing person situation, now is it? Tell that girl to quit worrying. I’m sure her brother’s just fine. He’ll turn up soon enough. She’ll see.”
“We will,” Kenny said. “Well, that girl’s quite a pistol, huh?” he added with a snort and I knew his game. Kenny was a master at getting information. Not that either one of us needed to question anyone these days, but we liked the investigative dance. I, for one, really missed it.
“That’s putting it mildly,” Ranger Wilkinson smirked, glad to see we were on his side.
“Actually, you know what would help…?” Kenny was getting his stride now. “If I could show her a copy of that permit… You know, just so she could see her brother’s return date.”
“Sure, I’ll just print you off a copy,” the ranger said and pulled open a file folder. And as simple as that, we had another clue to the puzzle.
As we were leaving, I felt energized and excited to be out here on a case with Kenny again. It had been so long since we had worked a real mystery together. But just when I was about to say that to Kenny, I noticed something odd about him. He was suddenly acting strangely.
Kenny’s frantic eyes were darting around the tall swaying trees that shaded the entrance of the park. He was looking over his shoulder—first right, then left. His lungs were heaving in and out. I entered his mind and my thoughts were consumed by dark, cold images that I could not describe. The visions scared me to my very core as a presence became known to me but seemed to lurk in the shadows of Kenny’s terror. It was a beast of some kind, as much as I could tell from the outline of its body in the shadows. But it was large—very large—with massive bulky arms. I tried to understand, but I was shut out by my own fear as it merged with Kenny’s horror.
I was over
come by a feeling of despair and misery. Waves of emotion were crashing into me like water pummeling the rocks on a beach soaked by the rhythmic pounding of the tides. I left his mind as fast as I could. In fact, I ran from his melancholy and terrified thoughts.
“Dude, you okay?” I sputtered, concerned.
Before he could look at me or give me a response, Kenny stumbled right into a camper who was not watching where he was walking. Kenny tumbled to the ground and I tried to reach for him, but he went into a combat roll. He snapped up as fast as I had ever seen him move and drew his weapon. Before the clumsy camper even knew it, he was looking down the barrel of a loaded Glock 9-mm handgun.
“Whoa, Kenny!” I said, and the camper froze in his tracks, his eyes as wide as they could get. I turned to him and told him to ‘get going now’ in the most authoritative voice I could muster and then I turned back to my partner.
“Kenny, put your gun away! What’s wrong with you, man?”
But he gave me no answer. Kenny’s eyes were still darting around frantically and sweat was welling up on his brow. I could see the fear in his eyes. I could see the utter terror he was sheltering behind them. And I really don’t think Kenny even realized I had dipped into his mind. I didn’t know what to say to him. What could I say? How could I even approach the subject with him?
Oh, by the way, I read your thoughts and I see how utterly scared you are right now. Do you want to talk?
That wouldn’t work with me and it certainly wouldn’t work with Kenny.
“Sorry, man,” he told me as we walked back to the truck. I waited for the muffled sound of the shutting truck doors before I let him have it.
“You want to tell me what’s going on in that head of yours?” I asked Kenny with exasperation. But he wouldn’t look at me. His eyes fixed on the side mirror of the passenger side of the truck. He looked as if he was checking for police but I knew better. He knew he had messed up. He knew that he had messed up bad and he didn’t want to face me. Didn’t want to face what I might have to say to him. I couldn’t let it go though—he had pulled his weapon on an innocent civilian for no reason at all.
“Tim… I…”
“No, this isn’t like you. You are like a powder keg. I’m supposed to be the one out of control, remember?” I told him.
Kenny remained silent.
“You’re the cop here, not me. You need to get it together. We are on seriously thin ground on this case, and if we’re not careful, you might be out of a job too.”
“My dreams… They’re getting worse,” he said, finally letting me in a bit.
“You want to talk about it?”
“I do… but not now. Not here,” Kenny said. I was surprised he even said that he wanted to talk about it at all.
“You’ve got to prepare yourself, my friend. All that fear. Over the long haul, it’s going to kill you. So… Fine. You don’t want to talk about it now. But at some point, you need to.”
I didn’t know what else to say.
Kenny turned to me, his eyes full of emotion. But it wasn’t sadness or anger in them. No, I saw fear. Pure and basic fear. And then I was a little scared myself. Only once or twice had I seen fear like that in his eyes, and now I was frightened for him. I was alarmed most by what I had witnessed in his mind. Something was happening to my friend and I didn’t know what to do about it. The only thing I could think of was Fabiana. Maybe she could help him. Maybe she knew what was happening.
“How do you do it, Tim? Everything you’ve seen. The destruction?”
I sat there for a moment and I let the silence settle in around us like a comfortable blanket. I let the distance lessen between us just a bit before I answered.
“You know, Kenny… I figure our lives are so screwed to hell anyway. Maybe we can help some others before we completely lose our minds. That’s how I cope. I know it’s not healthy or right, but it works, Kenny. I’ll tell you what else helps—you know there is real evil out there, man. I am working to kill as much of that evil as I can. That helps.”
Kenny smiled at me and I found that I got a great amount of joy out of that smile. The relief in him was not a miracle but it was something. And it gave me hope. Hope that our friendship was not lost.
I had more love for Kenny that any other friend I had ever known, and it made me happy to see even an inkling of what we used to be in his expression.
I put my key in the ignition and roared the engine to life, and a second later we were heading back down to Toledo to see Harvey Collins, the sister to Tommy, the missing camper.
Red mud splattered up in a lumpy mist as I pushed the engine and we tore away from the park. Clumps of dirt and angry glares faded away behind us as we drove down a windy road back into town and I wondered how Fabiana was doing. I had been so preoccupied with this investigation that I had not thought about her in several hours which was a rarity for me. Our minds were always so connected that I always had her in my thoughts. But now, out here I was having trouble finding her and I wondered why. Was it the distance? Or was her mind preoccupied as well?
Chapter 14
10:35 a.m., May 6
Somewhere in Washington, DC sat the international investment company of Hamilton and Jay. People were streaming into all the secret government departments. Especially the senior offices. It was hardly the usual thing for VIP parking slots to fill up at that time of the day. But that morning they had, and the Department of State Influence was no exception. Security personnel were called in as well, assigned to chase after a rogue asset that had gone off of the grid.
User319 knew that if it looked bad for one government agency then it looked bad for the entire Organization itself, even though the nature of the operation was cleanup, and it was also an erase mission, otherwise known as a ‘kill and retrieve.’ The agent in question had been devalued and had taken the advantage of having the Organization call in armed men. It really didn’t matter any longer. When A happened, B resulted. Because it was written down somewhere that B was what you did. Even if what you did was kill one of your own in order to avert the attention you so desperately didn’t need.
The Cleanup team looked at one another and shook their heads at the knowledge they’d be getting hazard pay. This put them one up on the agent they’d be hunting down or the big shots who stormed in from their homes in the neighborhood of Chevy Chase and high-society Virginia. The big shots that would race to their offices on the top floor and make the decision that would end another man’s life.
One such person found his parking space in the basement and used his RF proximity card or Radio Frequency Identification card to activate the VIP elevator to the seventh floor. What made him different was that he had a real mission on that morning, one not assigned by any member of that office building.
He was Agent Trent Void, or as they called themselves, one of the Users. He was User319. He wondered about the situation all the way from his Great Falls home. It was what he thought of as a sucker punch, though the term hardly applied here. Yet what else could he do? He owed the Organization everything, even his place in Washington society. His career was not well known in DC, but few could lay claim to his accomplishments in life. This country needed men like Agent Void, or User319, and the Organization. It always had.
Trent always told himself that the things he did for his country were required of him. It was patriotic. Maybe he was a patriot. After all, patriots sometimes had to go against the king to do what was right. A small voice in him had called it treason, but no, that wasn’t so. Because treason was the only crime defined in the Constitution as the enemy of this country. And wasn’t that the whole basis for the Organization, to conduct the country like the conductor in a symphony?
It seemed more and more to Trent that the men that he worked for acted like the grand puppet masters of the United States. He was doing… no. He wasn’t doing that, right?
It came down to loyalty. He was the one they turned to. The one they came to for answers. But what possible answ
ers could he give them this time? It came down to loyalty. He had always been Robert Jay’s man, as were a few select others in the Organization. The relationship had started at Stanford, with drinks and social gatherings and weekends at his family’s home on the water. The good times of youthful living. Trent had been the working class guest of one of America’s most influential families. Why? Because he had always entertained and amused them. And at the end of the day when all was said and done, Trent had caught Robert’s eye. But why? Really, he had no idea.
Trent had never even asked the hard questions of his friend but he had always wondered about his ethics. And now he would never find out. That was the way of their friendship. It just happened. He knew the odds of a working class man who just scratched by school on his football scholarship. Being invited into the high society life, he would have done well on his own, of course. Nothing but his sheer will had encouraged his development and his goals in this life. But really, he didn’t know what goals he had until he had met Robert for the first time all those years ago at Stanford. They were great friends then, and even after he had come back from the Navy, they were still good friends.
Trent had sent the agent to Seattle, and now that agent was going to lose his life. He would be killed all because of a mistake. The agent didn’t deserve to loss his life. That was something Trent couldn’t let stand.
This thought caused his eyes to close as the doors to the elevator opened. Values. Well, loyalty was one of those values. Wasn’t it? Without Robert’s patronage, who knew where he would have ended up? Not in one of the most influential companies in the world, that was for certain. But what he was now planning to do would ensure that his future would come to a swift end. And all things like friendship and loyalty would mean absolutely nothing. His life would mean nothing. Trent knew all the hard work in the world that he might have done would not have brought him to this place, and loyalty was owed. He knew that.
The Blood Born Tales (Book 2): Blood Dream Page 9
