Prophecy of Blood

by John R. Monteith

  Unwilling to coddle her through gentle movements, he yanked her forward and tossed her over his shoulder. As he walked towards the nearest cell’s entrance, a thick exterior door he’d installed upon renting the structure, became visible through set of metal shelves.

  She wiggled and kicked in protest.

  He angled her face for the others to see, formed a fist with his free hand, and thrust it into her jaw. She cried, and he repeated punching her until she collapsed.

  Carrying her unconscious bulk required more of his attention since she’d stopped shifting her weight to balance herself. He adjusted her three times as he took her down corridor of empty storage shelves and then past the universal gym he used to keep up his strength.

  At the entrance to her cell, he dropped her on the concrete. Her slow breathing indicated she’d survived her blows, leaving her available for his needs.

  Again lifting his key chain, he found the appropriate cut of brass. Sliding the teeth into the hole and twisting his wrist, he unlocked the bolt he’d installed with his own craftsmanship and slid it sideways. Pulling open the door, he exposed one of many multipurpose enclosures that could serve as storage, a conference room, or an office. He prided himself on making this cell an exact replica of the other three, perfect for his needs and those of his overseeing spirit.

  With his bare hands, he’d customized the windowless spaces with toilets. The effort prevented lingering stenches he would find offensive, and any dignity it imparted to the captives was secondary.

  Expecting short sentences from his inmates, he left other sanitary needs to moist wipes and garbage bags. For sleeping, he provided a cot in each cell, and since he deprived each prisoner of a chair, the cot provided for seating as well. A switch beside the door controlled the solitary exposed LED bulb in the ceiling of each confided space. It was generous by his reckoning, but most of the prisoners belonged to his Master, who demanded the niceties.

  In the center of the room jutted Edric’s masterpiece. He’d broken into the floor and had embedded links of chain into new pours of concrete. He lifted his unconscious inmate’s shoulders from the hard surface and dragged her into her confines. Using a third key, he shackled her ankle to the room’s central anchor.

  He visually checked her restraints. Handcuffs around her wrists, leg irons at her ankles, and the tether to the concrete assured her bondage. He considered keeping her blindfolded, but he needed the rag for the next victim.

  When he appeared at the van’s rear, he found compliance. The first tribute for his Master, the tall and thin one he’d won in a two-bidder competition, accepted the blindfold and remained stationary while he unshackled her from the cargo hold. On his shoulder, she adjusted her weight to simplify his task.

  Securing her to her cell’s shackles proved easier than he’d hoped. A little defiance might have allowed a dose of discipline.

  The final two tributes behaved as compliantly as the first, until he locked the last one into her jail shackle and removed her blindfold.

  She scanned her room and then looked at him. “What kind of monster does this?”

  He marched towards her, and she cowered as he lifted his arm to backhand her. But his domineering spirit stayed his hand.

  The wraith obeyed one entity other than himself–the deity who enlivened his dagger, his Master. Commands came in rare and quick bursts of silent understanding, and in a flash of black nothingness, he received one.

  Leave her unharmed until instructed otherwise. She belonged to his domineering spirit, reducing him to a mere steward.

  He grunted, stormed out of the cell, and locked it behind him. His detainees secured, he rounded the corner to a stairway leading to the warehouse’s second floor. After a brisk climb to burn off his anger, he turned down a hallway leading to his quarters.

  The former supervisory office was spacious and gave a panoramic view of the building’s insides. Walking across the worn carpet brought him to the clear polycarbonate and gave him a panoramic view of his home.

  Across from him, sunlight shone through the upper level windows. Inaccessible to outside onlookers at the street level, the high glass squares were acceptable for his secrecy. The lower level glass gaps, however, were few and too small to allow human entry, and he’d painted over them with black paint.

  Below him, empty metal shelves covered the area of a football field. A broken and scavenged forklift leaning against a wall hinted at an abandoned inventory management system. Turning his back on the dormant work area, he examined his makeshift home.

  With forethought to entertaining clients and for supporting twenty-four-hour occupancy, the office displayed a measure of luxury and hominess. A wet bar with a semicircular seating booth lined one side, and a modest kitchen spanned the other. In the back corner, a sunken lounge area provided seating in front of a television, and a door beside the refrigerator issued to the small bedroom in which he slept.

  He strode into his chambers and then reached into the top drawer of a wooden dresser with faded stain. After he grabbed a leather belt, he darted down the stairs.

  On the abandoned inventory floor, he walked to the workbench that held various tools. He’d been fantasizing about a boxcutter and a claw hammer, in addition to the belt his gripped. Within a plastic box he found the blade, and the hammer was lying on the wooden table. With all three items in his hand, he marched to his toy’s cell.

  When he entered and peered inside, he saw the groggy woman. She’d awoken, but she appeared dazed and unworthy of wasting the effort to frighten her further. As she lay shackled on the floor, he noticed her enticing physique. Though she was of short stature, accounting for her lower bid price at auction, her curves formed where he wanted them, kindling his lust.

  For a moment, he considered forced gratification of his desire, but he sensed his Master would disapprove. The deity of the dagger had gifted her to him for a specific purpose, for snuffing her life, and using her for sexual relief would be unacceptable.

  He closed the door and moved to the next cell. After he worked the latch open and gazed inside, he saw the thin tribute sitting in the cot staring at him.

  She seemed overwhelmed by her circumstances, which he speculated ranged from false promises of gainful employment to a brute force abduction bringing her to an auction block and landing her in his clutches.

  Adding to her psychological torment pleased him. He lifted the three objects–the belt, the hammer, and the boxcutter. “Choose.”

  She frowned. “Why?”

  He snorted. “I told you to choose.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “If you don’t choose, I will choose for you, and I will select the worst of the three.”

  She became resigned. “What am I choosing for?”

  “I told you to choose.”

  “How can I choose if I don’t know what the purpose is?”

  He turned and stepped away. “I will choose for you.”

  “Wait! The belt. I choose the belt.”

  As he’d expected. “Very well.”

  “What did I choose it for? You have to tell me!”

  He closed the door and moved to the adjacent cell where he tormented the next captive with the same unanswered riddle.

  She chose the belt, the least threatening of the three.

  The third prisoner suffered through the same enigma to the same conclusion.

  He returned the tools to the workbench and kept the belt, snapping it between his hands loudly enough for the inmates to hear it in their cells. Walking to the first detainee’s prison, he hoped to find her lucid as he unlocked the latch and peered inside.

  She remained groggy.

  His extended life allowed for patience, and he considered waiting for her recovery. But then he glanced at his watch and noted lunchtime approaching, and killing whetted his appetite.

  He strode across the concrete floor to his workbench and exchanged his belt for a roll of duct tape. Then, lifting a nearby chair, he returne
d to the jail cell and set it beside her. “Sit.”

  She looked away. “I can’t.”

  “Sit, or I will hurt you again.”

  Clutching the chair for support, she pulled her torso over the seat. Leveraging the back, she muscled herself upright, revealing the abrasions and bruises on her face.

  He marched behind her and wrapped her torso and arms to the chair’s back, leaving her handcuffed arms resting in her lap. After resting the tape roll on her cot, he withdrew his keychain from his pocket, found the proper cut, and unshackled her ankles from the concrete floor. A final wrapping of tape bound her shins against the chair’s legs.

  “What are you doing?”

  He backhanded her head. “Shut up.”

  She whimpered.

  Bending at the knees, he wrapped his arms around her and lifted the combined weight of the woman and the chair. Stepping with short and deliberate strides, he carried her to the stairs.

  Although a freight elevator provided an easier route, he wanted to carry her mass. The tug against his shoulders foreshadowed the gravity of her pending death.

  Within his chambers, he carried her across the living space and then lowered her. He faced her towards the panoramic window.

  Leaving his victim in anxious silence, he backtracked his way out his chambers and down the stairs to the warehouse floor. He moved to his workbench where he’d left his belt, and then he returned upstairs to his seated victim.

  “You companions chose this. This is their doing.” He brushed aside his seated possession’s hair, strapped the belt around her neck, and yanked the length through the buckle. One hand held the leather taut while the other pressed the enclosed loop against her nape.

  Unable to breathe, she began thrashing. Her panicked frenzy rocked the chair, but her killer’s strength minimized her head’s movement. In the glass, the stark terror in her eyes fed his ego. As she died, she watched him play God, recognizing his power.

  With her struggle starving her of oxygen, she fell limp quickly and died.

  A rush of satisfaction soothed him as he held the belt tight around her windpipe to assure her demise. To become as God is, one must do as God does, and doling out death was the godliest act he could conceive.

  And it felt good.

  CHAPTER 8

  Dianne dreamt of a young woman burning on a cross, blood pouring from her heart’s puncture wound.

  Time stopped, accelerated, and slowed again as the surreal nightmarish scene unfolded. The victim seemed distant, and then Diane was the victim. One moment, she was a sacrifice, then the next she was the savior.

  Then a vision appeared in which an unseen wind flapped a milky gown over a female frame. The young woman, exposed and pierced during her death but now clothed in dignity and unblemished in the afterlife, called out in Hebrew. “Avenge me.”

  Dianne understood the foreign words and responded in English. “Who are you?”

  “We descend from the same line, the line of Nineveh.”

  “You’re an empath, too?”

  The ghost seemed to wrestle with the question, the black pools of her eyes narrowing as her misty brow furrowed. “I was, but I lacked your power.”

  “Why me? Why do I have all this supposed power?”

  “You are an empath. You know.”

  She hated that answer when the prior ghost had fed it to her. Though this apparition was the twin of the maiden of the French millhouse, Dianne knew it was a different spirit.

  “How do I know you’re trying to help me? How do I even know you’re real?”

  “You are an empath. You know.”

  Lacking a body, Dianne imagined herself slapping her palm against her forehead. “Can you at least tell me your name? I never got the name of the last one.”

  “I am the Maiden of Beit She’an.”

  Dianne recognized the name’s reference to the location of the new wraith’s last sacrifice fifty years earlier. “You’re the last one he sacrificed?”

  “Yes, his second. He sacrificed a sister in Urmia fifty years before me.”

  For an unmeasured moment in her timeless world, Dianne enjoyed the concept of belonging to a sisterhood. She also found her mind running on steroids in her dreamlike trance, her memory perfect, and her quantitative skills impeccable. “He’s killed twenty women, eighteen as tributes to the spirit of his dagger and two sacrifices to extend his life.”

  “No, he’s murdered many more. This one is terrible.”

  “As opposed to the guy who had sex slaves and stabbed thirteen women in the heart every fifty years for five centuries?

  “The one you destroyed killed only by necessity. The one you seek kills for sport. He’s killed thousands, by his hand and by the orders he’s uttered. He is an expert at killing and is far more dangerous.”

  Terrible, indeed. “Does that change anything I’m doing?”

  “You are an empath. You know.”

  The default answer annoyed Dianne. “Fair enough, but what am I doing? Am I stopping this wraith just like last time?”

  The apparition’s face became pleased, almost smug. “Just like last time.”

  Knowing an exact repeat of her prior predicament was impossible, Dianne doubted the maiden’s response. The details would be different, but something important would be the same. She wanted to ask her spiritual adviser about it, but the ghost’s smug visage suggested a dead end in the interrogation. So, she shifted her line of questioning. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Three hours.”

  That was a relief. She’d lost eleven days during her worst episode in the past. “Why did I fall asleep?”

  “You tried to impart your will upon the daggers.”

  “I thought my dagger was mine?”

  “It is a living entity. It will not obey orders it does not wish to obey.”

  “I commanded it to give up its energy to another dagger, and it didn’t like that, did it?”

  “Correct.”

  Dianne assumed the ghost’s terse answer and blunt tone included a tacit message about her realization having been obvious. A mortal doesn’t tell an immortal dagger what to do. She likened the relationship to a lion and its tamer in which the human so-called master elicits from the lion only what it’s willing to give. “Got it. What about Liam’s dagger?”

  The ghost cocked her head. “The dagger belongs to both hunters, predominantly to the elder. How curious that you attribute its ownership to the younger.”

  Dianne wondered if the maiden had just reversed the inquiry. “Right, the hunters’ dagger. Did I try to force-feed it too much energy all at once?”

  “It was wounded by the loss of its two hunters. Rarely does a wraith kill a hunter. Even more rarely do both hunters die. The dagger was traumatized.”

  Allowing for the feelings of enchanted bronze items, Dianne conceded her failing. “I understand. I’ll be more careful next time. There will be a next time, right? I still need to fix Liam’s, I mean their dagger?”

  The ghost kept her unearthly composure while leaving the question unanswered.

  Thinking herself in a standoff of wills with… her advisor, Dianne confessed. “Fine, I have feelings for Liam.”

  Translucent lids formed like thin films over the apparition’s black eyes while she seemed trapped in thought.

  Expecting her ghost advisor to process and access information in an instant, the eye-closing gesture perplexed Dianne.

  Then the lids opened. “Feelings, yes. Of course. It’s good that you admit them, for they are dangerous.”

  “How can they be dangerous? Isn’t love the tool of the empath?” Dianne thought she had her ghost in a logical bind.

  Nope. “Love is the tool of an empath to probe the minds of others. Infatuation is the bane that blinds the empath from seeing her world.”

  Was she allowed to swear at her spirit guide? “I’ll work on it.”

  “Be sure that you do.”

  The warning seemed somehow given out o
f kindness, quelling Dianne’s urge to tell the ghost to remain silent. “I will.”

  “Above all, remember what your dagger is.”

  “I know. It’s a weapon.”

  “Yes, but a dagger can be used in combat in multiple ways.”

  The concept of breaking one of her multi-colored manicured fingernails crossed Dianne’s mind, reminding her of the absurdity of her mastering a handheld weapon. “I guess so.”

  “He will kill again soon, and he will continue until you stop him.”

  “You mean, until I help the hunters stop him, right?”

  Again, the ghost closed her eyes and withdrew from the conversation to tap some distant source of knowledge. “They cannot succeed without you.”

  Dianne awoke with a jolt, sensed herself in the hunters’ home, and gasped for air.

  The elder hunter helped her sit. “Easy, young lady.”

  She coughed, and her throat felt dry and scratched.

  “Can I get you some cough syrup?”

  She shook her head. The couching subsided, and she tried to speak. Her vocal cords failed, and her attempt to form words sounded like a squeak.

  “Water, then.” He stood, turned, and darted to the kitchen. When he returned, he held a tall glass in front of her.

  She grabbed it and sipped, and the cool liquid quenched a fire. Desiring more of the soothing sensation, she gulped the container’s contents.

  “I guess you were thirsty.”

  Nodding, she handed him the cup. Then she realized she’d quenched her thirst with one hand, keeping her dagger clutched in her other. “What happened?”

  “Liam took our dagger back from you while you were sleeping. We have a bearing now. You did very well, I must say.”

  “But…” Her voice was regaining power but remained weakened.

  “Slowly now. There’s no hurry.”

  Having spent hours in a seemingly timeless trance, she agreed. As her memory fed her snapshots of her ethereal journey, she recalled images and sensations as if invoking memories of a dream.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I think so.” Her voice sounded better.

  “You appear as if you’d seen a ghost. Given your history, I can only wonder.”