But first, he needed a taste of snuffing out life to survive his immediate craving.
The lady in lingerie arrived with the menu. “The boss is ready to see you. If you’d like, you can still order, and I’ll have it sent to his table.”
“No. I will see him now.”
A guard escorted Edric forward into the public bar. He passed a bouncer who controlled access into the back room, and in the dim lighting, the patrons of the establishment’s front section appeared as seedy as those in the private auction-strip area.
As his guard angled towards a dark corner, his jacket shifted and exposed the pistol by his hip. When he stopped in front of a table at a semicircular booth, he raised a large palm to block the eager Edric, and then he faced the boss, who sat with a small entourage.
A dark drink in hand, the short and barrel-chested seller took up a wide expanse of the table in the booth’s corner. Beside him sat the eloquent minion of the auction stage, who brushed back shoulder-length black hair as he looked up at Edric. Outside either man sat a broad-shouldered bodyguard, and at the edge of the booth was a skinny, balding man who curled forward in a pleading and anxious posture.
Combed forward, the boss’ coarse gray hair was gelled straight as he tipped his head back with a quick, deep laugh. Though his ruddy face showed evidence of a heart that pumped blood, the coldness of his eyes suggested a callous monster.
Edric heard the flesh peddler’s gravelly voice dismissing the nervous man. “Your desperation is pathetic, and you’re in no position to ask for favors. Get out of my face before I have you beaten.”
As the guard who’d escorted Edric abandoned him to lead the nervous man away, he exposed the wraith to the boss and his court.
Edric recognized the simple, perfection of the seller’s game. To demonstrate a hierarchy, the peddler had made him wait, he’d forced him spectate the humiliation of his prior visitor, and then he’d subjected him to the court at the apex of the king’s demonstration of his power.
To accentuate the separation of power between king and pawn, the flesh peddler kept the wraith standing. The dog the seller had just whipped had earned a seat at the booth, but the man in charge deemed Edric unworthy of sitting. “It’s always a pleasure. I understand you have a request that is… urgent?”
Edric silently swore to kill the man before he left Istanbul. “I do. I need one girl, just one, and I’m not picky about it.”
Seeking submissive laughter, the boss glanced at his companions. “He’s not picky. He’s not picky. He requests an urgent meeting to buy a girl when I’m not selling, and he says he’s not picky.”
Using short sentences, the wraith tried to suppress his rage. “Money talks, and I’m speaking.”
The boss glared at him and appeared to appreciate the directness. “I’ll be auctioning off the inventory of a delivery I’m receiving from Iraq in a few days. Surely, you can wait.”
No, he couldn’t. “I will be interested in that, of course, but I have an urgent need for just one.”
“Very well. Money talks. Five thousand liras. I choose the girl.”
The wraith was desperate. “The price is acceptable if I can have her soon.”
“Come back tomorrow, and I’ll have a girl for you.”
The next afternoon, Edric parked his van in the private lot, passed through security, and met the long-haired minion in the back room.
His hair brushing his shoulders, the minion led the wraith behind the stage, upon which two strippers entertained sleazy patrons. “She’s in our green room.” Showing manners to the talent, the minion knocked on the door, looked to the ground, and shouted through the gap. “Make yourselves decent, ladies.” He waited several seconds before shouldering open the door.
Bright lights and mirrors illuminated a half dozen women in varied states of dress. The obvious target of Edric’s need sat in a corner.
Motionless in a sea of makeup, hair, and clothing preparations, the young girl appeared sixteen years old. She had dark brown skin and cornrow braids.
The wraith’s immediate conclusion was that a prior client had found her too young, too disobedient, too undesirable, or some other negative superlative, and he’d just funded the unhappy buyer’s reimbursement plus a huge resale profit to the flesh peddler.
She’d suffice.
Aiming his arm to her, the minion shifted into his showtime routine. “She’s lovely, is she not? Amazing that we could find her on such short notice.”
“I’ll take her.” He doubted he had a choice, which he expected his Master and the seller to both disallow.
“Excellent. After the money transfer, she’ll be yours, and I’ll have her delivered to your vehicle.”
As he drove his van to his warehouse with his solitary victim, he contemplated the final act of scratching his itch.
The belt around the neck was the cleanest and allowed him to see terror in the victim’s eyes. The hammer to the skull splattered blood and required a gag to prevent the screams he hated. A box cutter to the throat was messy, but it allowed the horror-filled eyes and rendered his victim voiceless.
Today, he’d quench his killing fire with a steel razor.
CHAPTER 22
Dianne faced the truth she suspected she’d hidden from Liam.
Since the trances on the dirt road, she’s had a good idea of how to invade the wraith’s mind, and the guilt of testing them against her enemy weighed upon her.
As she lay in bed, she examined her dilemma.
She believed she knew how to attack the wraith with her telepathy, but she feared trying. She wondered if her prophecy of the trafficked Iraqi women presented a call to action, or if instead the call to surrender herself had been a warning of the possible future she’d see if she continued to withhold her empathic assault on the wraith.
Which path to follow?
If she attacked via telepathy, she could lose herself in a trance for days or longer, dooming the next three tributes. If she instead tried to infiltrate the slavery network, the outcome was speculative. She could end up anywhere in the world, failing the captive tributes and transforming herself into a hostage and a burden on her friends and family.
The agony of the decision simmering within her in secrecy rose to a crescendo, requiring her attention, and the only solace she could fathom was action.
She caressed her pendant to verify its protective presence. It had helped her against his Michigan victim, but she questioned its value now.
Lifting it, she admired the disk of silver holding a milky iridescent ovular moonstone, which lacey, gothic metal twists surrounded with a sharp point at the bottom. The silvery structure serving as the stone’s setting suggested a dagger underneath a full moon.
An initial rush of excitement ran over her, raising the hair on her arms, and then came the jeweled piece’s familiar enduring calmness. If nothing else, it begat confidence.
After releasing the amulet, she grabbed her dagger from the nightstand, tightened ten fingers around it, and held it near her heart.
She closed her eyes. “Come on, Dianne. Relax and focus.”
Seeking the killer, she invoked emotions within herself that sought to connect with his.
But she groped to guess what a psychopath might feel. Arrogance? Entitlement? Contempt? Dianne tried to generate the emotions but fell short. Moving to those she could approximate, she probed.
Anger. Envy. Haughtiness.
The combination had worked with her victim in Michigan, and she brought it to the Turkish monster.
Expecting cold and angry resistance, she instead found a twisted welcoming. His words were inaudible, but his meaning was obvious.
“Who are you?”
She remained silent.
“You’re a fool for attacking me. I will destroy you.”
She kept her inner voice silent to avoid revealing a clue about her identity, and she stilled herself like a thief in the night.
The wraith taunted her. “I know you’
re there.”
More stillness. In her mental construct, she held her breath.
“Show yourself.”
Courage fueled her retort. “You show yourself first.”
“You’re in no position to demand.”
“I broke into your head. That puts me in charge.”
His laugh rose as a haunting mélange of baritone arrogance and high-pitched shrieks of madness.
She became ethereal stone, willing herself motionless while awaiting his next move.
He resonated a deep pain, which he suffered under her occupation of his mind, but he endured it as he oozed a powerful and defiant ego. “You think you know who I am, but you’re obviously mistaken.”
Recoiling, she felt a wave of wretchedness flow around her. It was a gust of putridness causing nausea to pervade her stomach. She reminded herself that she lacked a physical body in the spiritual exchange and that she could endure it.
“I take it by your silence that you find probing inside me… uncomfortable? I can bear the suffering. Can you?”
From her perspective, calling it uncomfortable was an understatement, but she countered and taunted him by withholding her retort.
“Come now, you’re not the first ghost I’ve faced. Just because you can hide doesn’t mean I don’t know you’re there. You came here to challenge me, not to cower. I’ll find you, and you’ll disappear again for what… years?”
Relieved he mistook her for a ghost, she released a burst of relief. Before she realized her mistake, she sensed his reaction.
He shot out a searing laser-like scorn for her existence. “Ah… there you are. An insolent little bitch. I will cut you. I will strangle you. I will burn you.”
She tagged his anger as a beacon for future connections. It was a special sort of unquenchable angst for all life, the kind so complete and desolate that she wondered if he considered himself something transcending existence to escape self-inflicted hate.
“Show yourself!”
Her ethereal heart pounded in her dreamed chest.
“I see your anxiety, your fear. Whoever or whatever you are, you will be exposed.”
The rancid evil bathing her forced her retreat. She tried to disentangle herself, sneak away, and use his extreme angst as a beacon to find him later if needed.
But he had other plans. “Where do you think you’re going? You came here to see me. Now see me!”
In a flash, she saw through his eyes.
The reflection of the bound woman startled Dianne. She gasped and viewed what the wraith saw.
The young lady, no more than a teenager, sat writhing in terror in a chair. Tape constrained her body, but her mouth was free, and she squealed protests in an unrecognizable language that Dianne understood.
“What are you doing? Stop! You can’t do this.”
As Dianne’s metaphysical eyes focused on the girl’s brown skin, she realized she watched a reflection. Behind the captive stood the wraith, revealing himself from the chest down.
Using his forearm at her forehead, he overpowered the girl’s neck and elevated her chin. With his free hand, he drew a box cutter across her neck, opening a bleeding red line.
The victim’s eyes opened wide in betrayed, terrified shock, and then life drained from them.
Keeping his face above the reflection, the wraith spoke into the empath’s supernatural ears. “I love having witnesses.”
Dying with the physical victim, Dianne felt an overflow of emotions. Anger, sadness, terror, hatred… they swelled over her, churned her insides, and served as a rip cord, yanking her from further suffering.
Her throat sore, she returned to her body on the bed and opened her eyes. As she dropped the dagger to the comforter, she credited the enchanted knife with extracting her from the horror. She coughed and clutched her neck as she accepted that the wraith had killed another victim.
But it wasn’t a tribute. It was another homicide for sport.
She marched across the floor to the bathroom mirror. Turning on the light, she checked her throat for signs of cutting. Her own fingerprints had reddened her skin, and she realized she’d grasped her neck during her telepathic trance.
Tears welled in her eyes, and she let them flow in a catharsis. How many more times would she have to endure death through another human’s anguish? Was this what the Israeli maiden meant about sacrificing herself?
No, she decided. It would only get worse.
In a moment of lucidity between inner barbs of horror and disgust, she realized the wraith had revealed a clue. The mirror in which she’d seen the homicide hadn’t been a mirror, but it had been a window. It overlooked a warehouse of empty metal shelves, and within the space, she saw the top of the white van she recognized from her visions of his past.
She had an identifying feature of his lair.
With that small consolation, she fought against her billowing nausea, knelt before the toilet, and vomited.
CHAPTER 23
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.
A familiar ghost appeared, an unseen wind flapping a milky gown over her frame as she called out in Hebrew. “Avenge me.”
Dianne responded in English. “I’m working on it. I volunteered myself as bait, or weren’t you paying attention?”
“You were wise to risk surrendering yourself. Only you know if you understand the risk.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You are an empath. You know.”
She wondered about divine penalties for punching ghosts. Fortunately, her perfect dream-state memory distracted her from her frustration and redirected her attention to the conversation. “You said if I failed to risk everything, everyone would suffer. You and our sisters wouldn’t be redeemed, and Liam would die.”
“Correct.”
In her dream, Dianne frowned. “You also said you wouldn’t be able to advise me before the next full moon. Why are you here already?’
“I have come to estimate your commitment.”
“Now you’re the police maiden?”
“You have offered to risk yourself, but your heart bears not the burden.”
The empath reflected upon her days in Istanbul. She had visited sites and had spent vacation time with her family and friends. Yes, she was on a mission, but she had no intention of hiding or sulking while awaiting her moment to act. “You think I don’t get it. You think I’m bopping around like everything’s going to be fine. Well, don’t you worry, I’ve faced a wraith before. I know what it’s like to be a helpless captive.”
“You are facing much worse this time.”
“I know that! Leave me alone!”
The apparition disappeared in an evaporating mist of white.
She awoke and glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It was just after three o’clock in the morning.
Questioning begat doubt, begat more questioning.
Was the young hunter correct in accusing her of mixing the past with the future? Was her vision of the pending truckload of Iraqi women properly timed? Was she taking more than a calculated risk in offering herself as bait? Was she walking into a guaranteed death to save others?
Sitting on the edge of her bed, she looked at her phone. In her moment of weakness, she wanted to call Liam, but she expected him to be sleeping.
Perhaps a text would be permissible, to see if he was awake, running on the same wavelength as her. Lifting the phone, she started tapping a message, but then she reconsidered, erased it, and put the device back on the nightstand.
Was Liam her new confidant? With her friends moving on in their careers and finding husbands, she had been looking towards her dependent brother as her companion. But the young hunter lived in her mind and in her heart as
her first thought for sharing her hopes and fears.
Crawling back under the sheets, she expected a sleepless remainder of her morning.
After hours of tossing and turning, she met the morning sun without further slumber. She reminded herself that in absence of sleep, quiet laying offered significant rejuvenating effects, and she hoped to feel rested during the day as she moved through her morning routine.
Today’s agenda included visits to the Basilica Cistern and the Topkapi Palace. She allowed that perhaps the Maiden of Beit She’an had been warranted in verifying her motivation. Her team of family and hunters behaved like normal tourists because they were powerless to do anything but wait for Dianne.
She needed to lead them, but she didn’t know what a leader was supposed to do.
Liam, however, did.
After the elevator brought her to the lobby, she found the young hunter devouring a continental breakfast. Upon seeing her, he waved and smiled.
She walked to his small table. “Can I join you?”
He chewed a massive mouthful of scrambled eggs and then swallowed. “Of course.”
“Where’s your dad?”
“I’m not sure, but I think he and Nana were up earlier and are taking a leisurely stroll about the city.”
“Ooh, they seem to be getting along.” She felt like a dork for saying it, but it was true.
“Yeah. Maybe it’s because they’re roughly the same age. Who knows?”
“True. I’m going to get some food.” She walked to the modest spread which offered the fiber she sought in the form of melon, strawberries, and whole grain muffins. With the plate of food in hand, she filled a small cup of coffee and returned to the hungry hunter.
He jammed a complete sausage link into his mouth.
“You eat like a caveman.”
With his brain consumed by its reptilian function of ingesting calories, he seemed detached. His eyes looked into the distance as he chewed and swallowed.
“Are you listening to me?”
Prophecy of Blood Page 13
