“I know,” Sam whispered. But it had been so hard to see Damien as a monster. Right up until the end when he shoved his fist into her chest and nearly sucked the very essence of her into permanent nothingness.
Ben sat down again. “There’s more. And you’re not going to like it.”
Sam scowled and looked at him, but Ben was gazing out the open door.
“Claire’s missing.”
Sam sat up again, her jaw tight.
“She left Missy’s house and never made it home.”
Sam grabbed at the strap on her wrist to rip it off. Ben covered her hand, stopping her.
“We missed something, Sam. Scala’s made the Jump.”
“The father. He had an argument with Claire just before she snuck out.”
“We’ve been watching him from the beginning. It can’t be Doug. We would have seen Scala make the Jump.”
“We can’t just sit here!”
“I need you at full strength. There’s a battle coming and we can’t blast Scala if you’re at half strength. Just relax. Christian and Eugene are watching street camera footage and store footage to see what happened to Claire after she left Missy’s house.”
Sam sat back with a heavy sigh. There was no way she was going to let Scala hurt Claire.
“You hurt Eugene pretty badly,” Ben murmured softly.
Startled, Sam turned to Ben. Then, she shook her head. “I can’t believe he didn’t tell me Damien was trying to reach me.”
“He was trying to protect you.”
“I don’t think so, Ben. He was trying to keep me away from Damien. I think in his twisted mind he believed if Damien was not in the picture, he and I would have a better chance of getting together.”
Ben thought about her statement for a moment. “Even if that were the case, he was still looking out for you. He’s had our backs for a long time. I don’t think Eugene knows how to do anything but watch out for us.”
“I can make those decisions by myself.”
“Can you? Going to meet Damien alone was impulsive and dangerous.”
Sam shrugged. She had to do it. And she knew she would do it again. “I survived.”
“What did he want?”
Sam looked at Ben. “He doesn’t want us to blast Scala.”
Ben’s eyes widened in shock, then narrowed. “You think he’s working with Scala?”
Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.” She waved her hand. “It doesn’t matter. We’re going to stop Scala. I’m not going to let him hurt Claire.”
“How are you feeling, Sam?” Christian asked from the doorway.
“Better every minute,” Sam answered.
“What did you find?” Ben asked Christian.
“Eugene is a genius. He managed to isolate the license plate on the van Claire got into.” He looked from Ben to Sam and then back. “It’s coach Frederick’s van.”
“The coach?” Ben asked.
Christian nodded. “Apparently, Ryan was pretty close to him. Like a second Dad. He spent all his extra time at the gym for basketball practice.” Christian shook his head and did a little shudder. “I was sitting right next to the guy and didn’t even notice he was… possessed.” He looked at the others. “Is it that easy for a Change to hide after they made the Jump into a human?”
Ben nodded. “They can still see us, but after they make the Jump they are indistinguishable from every other human being. Just like what happened to your daughter.”
Christian nodded at the memory of Aurora. “So, I guess the coach was a pretty thick lifeline, huh?” Christian commented.
Ben shrugged. “It’s an imperfect science.”
“It’s not a science at all. We’re guessing.”
“Where did he take her?” Sam asked.
“Eugene is tracking the van through the use of the stoplight cameras. We’ll have a destination shortly,” Christian said. He stepped into the room. “So… when we find him, what are we going to do?”
Sam and Ben exchanged a glance. “You know what we’re going to do,” Ben said. “Same thing we did with your little girl.”
“Save the coach,” Sam clarified.
Christian looked down at the ground for a long moment. “You know, I’ve been thinking…” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “It might be more humane just to kill the coach.”
“What?!” Sam demanded.
Christian held up his hand. “Hear me out. This is a man who has a wife and two young daughters. He’s a notable man in the community and at the school.”
Ben’s scowl faded as understanding sank in. He began nodding. “He’s going to be caught and accused of these kidnappings and Rachel’s murder. He’ll go to prison at the least. Death sentence at the worst.”
“Wait a minute. You don’t know that,” Sam said.
“If we found him, you know the cops are on his trail, too” Christian said.
“After we blast Scala out of him, he could plead insanity.” She held up her hands, palms out. “It’s the truth, anyway. It wasn’t him doing the killing.”
“You can argue that all you want, but the fact is his fingerprints will be all over the murder weapons, if they find them. There will be eyewitnesses. He’ll still be locked up, unable to see his daughters. His reputation will be in ruins. His family will be ostracized.”
“What are you saying? That killing him is the right thing to do?” Sam demanded outraged.
Christian nodded. “In this case, maybe.”
“Is that what you would have said with your daughter?”
Christian’s jaw tightened. “She wasn’t a murderer. She didn’t kill anyone.”
“So it’s okay to kill the humans if they’ve killed? That makes us no better than the Changed.”
“You want to put his family through that? A trial? Publicity?”
“So we’re the judge, the jury and the executioners?!”
Ben stood, interposing himself between Sam and Christian. “All right, just calm down. Let’s think about this.”
“There’s nothing to think about. We don’t do that. We don’t kill humans,” Sam insisted.
Ben stared at her, thinking. Then, he shook his head. “I don’t know. If we kill the coach, we kill Scala.”
“We can blast him!” Sam objected. “I can’t believe you’re thinking about this! After all the years we’ve gone through discussing our plans for the Changed.”
“Only because of what it would do to the family. The coach won’t be able to explain it. And the humans will kill him anyway.”
“You don’t know that!”
“I don’t want the little girls to have to see something like that.”
Sam shook her head, trying to calm down. “I understand what you’re saying. I do. But it’s not our call. Maybe he’ll get a brilliant lawyer.”
“But he’ll be locked up for a long time. It will probably take years for them to get through this case. It’ll be a media horror show for his family,” Christian pleaded.
“There are too many ifs. It will be hard, but the coach will have a chance to fight for his life. And we will give him that chance when we blast Scala out of him.”
Ben glanced at Christian.
“It’s not our call. I’m not going to kill a human based on the fact that he might be convicted of murder. No way. He’s an innocent man!” She snapped the strap off her wrist. “It’s not going to happen.”
“Sam,” Christian said gently. “Think about those two little girls. Is it better for them to go through their entire lives with people looking at them and pointing and whispering? Or is it better to end it now?”
Sam hated this argument. She hated that part of her agreed with Christian. It just wasn’t the right thing to do. She stared down at her feet where they hung from the table. Yeah, she felt bad for the kids, for the entire family, but it wasn’t right to kill. It wasn’t the coach’s fault Scala jumped into him. The coach had every right to try and fight this. “We’re not killers,” Sam m
uttered. “Now that I know there’s another way to kill the Changed, I’ll never go back to killing the humans. Never.”
Ben sighed and nodded his agreement. He looked at Christian. “Even if we kill the coach, the family’s going to suffer. Scala’s already turned him into a murderer. Maybe we should give him at least a chance to somehow get out of this mess, no matter how slim that chance is.”
“I got it!” Eugene cried and raced into the room. He locked gazes with Sam for a moment and then quickly looked at Ben. “He’s at an old abandoned farm on the outskirts of Redwood. That’s two cities away. The van’s parked there now.”
“Good job, Eugene,” Ben said. He glanced at Sam. “I guess you’re ready to go.”
Sam held up a hand. “The coach does not die. Are we in agreement?”
Ben nodded.
Ben and Sam swung their gazes to Christian.
He shook his head and a lock of his blonde hair fell over his forehead. He sighed. “Your call, but I think this is a mistake.”
~ ~ ~
Sam gazed at the barn. The door hung crooked and flapped in the breeze. The window frames on the upper level were devoid of glass, dark rectangles filled with blackness. The barn looked like it hadn’t been used in ages.
In her mind’s eye, Sam saw another barn. A barn filled with a different sort of livestock. Captured Souls tortured by Scala. Souls he had used to feed his appetite for energy. When Scala had been a Changed, he had trapped her in a barn, binding her with iron manacles. He had drained her slowly, enjoying her torture.
“Sam?”
Sam jerked herself from the memories and looked at Ben standing beside her.
“You okay?”
She nodded. “Let’s get the sick bastard.”
“You sure he’s here?” Christian asked in a whisper.
“It’s a remote location,” Eugene admitted. “But I tracked the van through the street light cameras and the van itself has a GPS.” He smiled grimly. “Yeah. I’m sure.”
Ben agreed with a nod. “It fits his mode of operation. He always brought the girls to a barn.”
“He grew up in a barn. It’s where he feels comfortable,” Sam added, again staring at the decrepit wooden structure. “Claire is in there. We have to be careful.”
“He’ll be expecting us. Watch for traps,” Ben cautioned.
Sam glanced over her shoulder at Eugene. “You should wait outside.”
Eugene scowled. “I can help,” he objected.
“When it’s over, we’re all going to be pretty well drained. We’re going to need someone to faze us back to your lab and the regen bed.”
“Oh.” Eugene nodded and stepped backward looking very forlorn.
Sam moved forward down the weed-grown path toward the barn, flanked by Ben and Christian.
When they reached the door, Ben shoved his head through the wood into the barn.
Sam looked up, examining the worn wood on the second floor. A double door was open above their head. Prickles raced along her neck. She felt it before she saw it fall. “Move!”
Ben fazed and Sam shoved Christian out of the way.
A heavy iron rod crashed to the ground where they had been standing.
Sam rolled off of Christian and climbed to her feet, staring at the rod. It looked like an old piece of machinery.
Ben fazed in front of her. “Everyone okay?”
Christian nodded and stood. “It wouldn’t have killed us.”
“It wasn’t meant to.” Sam pointed to the side of the rod. Inscribed in the metal was ‘Can’t wait to see you again, Sam.’ “He’s playing games. Stay focused and stay sharp. He knows we’re here.”
“He can’t kill us, right? He’s in a human body now. So what’s the point?” Christian asked.
“He can’t kill us,” Ben agreed as they approached the barn again. “But he can trap us. Remember, he can still see us.”
“And talk to us.”
“He knows our weaknesses.” Ben placed one hand on Christian’s shoulder and the other on Sam’s. He fazed the three of them into the barn.
They were in the center of the dark barn, but it wasn’t hard for Sam to see. She quickly scanned the area. In front of them was a long row of stables for the animals, long since empty. To her left was a wall of nasty looking weapons, curved scimitars, sharp blades. They hung high up on the wall, their sharp edges all pointing down. Sam would have bet her Audi Spyder they were all made of iron.
Behind her were the wooden double doors, the entrance to the barn. To her right was a decaying hay pile.
Ben glanced around. “Up or down?”
“I’d bet down,” Sam said. Scala had taken her into a storage room below the actual barn when he had captured her.
“Listen,” Christian whispered.
A faint sobbing floated through the air.
“Claire,” Sam acknowledged. But she stood very still. Where was it coming from? The soft wailing seemed to echo from the wooden walls.
Ben fazed across the room to the wall where the sharp weapons angled straight down. He lifted a finger and pointed at the wall. He moved his hand forward and his fingers went through the wood of the wall, but his entire hand didn’t penetrate the wall. He scowled and ran his fingers beneath the wood.
The sharp blades of the weapons over Ben’s head glimmered in the moonlight. “Be careful, Ben” Sam cautioned.
“There’s something iron back there,” Ben said. “I can’t put my hand –” Suddenly, the floor beneath him opened and he fell.
“Ben!” Sam screamed and fazed to the spot where her brother had just been standing. But she was microseconds too late; the iron plate that had slid open had already closed, sealing Ben in.
The blades hanging on the wall above Sam crashed down, piercing through her body with agony and biting pain. The room faded around her as she disintegrated.
~ ~ ~
“Sam!” Christian screamed, but he didn’t move. He whirled, looking for her. It was a damned war zone. As his gaze nervously swept the barn, he noticed something shining in the moonlight on one of the wooden rafters that criss-crossed the barn above him. He peered closer. A camera.
Sam reappeared beside him, cursing softly, rubbing her chest where the blade had pierced through. Christian didn’t know what it felt like to be dematerialized liked that with an iron weapon, and right now he didn’t want to know. There was no way that was a pleasant feeling.
“He’s watching,” Christian said, pointing to the camera.
Sam nodded, but didn’t look up. She fazed again across the room and produced a small vial from inside her leather bodice. She dumped a drop onto the iron flooring that Ben had fallen into.
Christian fazed to her side. He recognized the vial from when they had been trapped in the iron jail at Daniel’s Crypt. It was some kind of acid. Any hole was enough for the Souls to faze through.
Sam looked up at Christian as the acid ate the iron away. “He’s been very busy.”
“There’s no way he could have done all of this in the couple of days since he made the Jump.”
“I don’t think he did. I think he’s been planning this for a long time. Too long. I’m going down. Wait here. Don’t touch anything. Don’t move. I’ll come up and get you if it’s safe.”
Christian grabbed her arm. “I’ll go.”
Sam smiled widely and Christian felt a weird sense of pride at the rare event of Sam actually grinning at him. “Chivalry is not dead,” she said and then she was gone.
Christian stood, his hand still encircling a wrist that was no longer there. He stared at the spot she had just been in. And didn’t like this. Not one bit. He lowered his hand and glanced back at the camera. Scala knew Sam was coming.
They were playing right into his hands.
~ ~ ~
Sam appeared in a small room. She looked up to see the hole above. Then, she scanned the room. It was completely iron. A perfect square. If that were the case, where was Ben? This was bad. Really
bad.
Fear trembled through Sam’s body. If he had hurt Ben…
“Ben?” She slid her sword from its scabbard at her back. Just the feel of the weapon in her hand calmed her nerves. She looked up. She still had a way out. She wasn’t trapped.
She moved forward, running the blade along the wall. There had to be a way out. Ben wasn’t in this room.
One of the iron walls slid aside with a grating noise to reveal another room. In the center was what could only be an iron table, a table Sam recognized. It was either the same table Scala had used to bind her, or something that looked damn similar. Claire was bound atop the table, with iron straps surrounding the girl’s wrists. The girl sobbed through the gag over her lips, struggling with the straps as she fought to free herself.
The coach stood over the girl. If it weren’t for the familiar table, or for the horribly familiar events taking place, Sam would not have recognized the man who stood before her.
Scala, now inhabiting the body that used to belong to coach Fredrick, looked at her. “Welcome, Sam. It’s been so long.”
Sam grit her teeth. She forced herself to remain calm. She forced her memories away. She couldn’t concentrate on freeing Claire right now. She had to focus on Scala. “Nice place you have here, Scala.”
“I thought you’d be impressed. I wanted you to feel at home.” He smiled. “Your friend Becky liked it.”
Sam froze at the mention of their missing friend. This was their first clue as to her whereabouts.
“Where is she?”
“I had her for dinner.” He licked his lips in a horribly grotesque way. “Literally.”
Sam gripped the handle of her blade tighter. It took all her will power not to swing and slice his head off. Cocky bastard. He had drained Becky completely for her energy. She was gone forever. Truly and eternally dead. Son of a bitch. She held the sword out before her. “Where’s Ben?”
“Resting comfortably, no doubt. As my guests usually do before a meal.”
Claire twisted her head, searching for who he was speaking to. A soft whimper escaped her gagged lips as she looked back at Scala.
Lost Souls: Imperfection – Episode 2 Page 7
