Dark Reality 7-Book Boxed Set

by Jennifer and Christopher Martucci

PART ONE:

  Dark Creations

  For the power of man to make himself what he pleases, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please.

  – C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

  Prologue

  Sergei Sokolov would have chosen to be anywhere other than his current location—stationed at an obscure site just outside an alleged mobster’s lair. He closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose, frustrated from weeks of staking out a prominent member of the Russian Mafia and his gang from the driver’s side of his unmarked car. Instead, Sergei momentarily focused his thoughts on his wife, Antonina, and their newborn daughter, Anna. Both were so beautiful, so warm, and so far away.

  Separated by nearly a thousand miles, the distance between he and his family seemed vast, endless. Homesick and in desperate need of solace, he flipped down the visor just above his head and was immediately greeted by his wife’s smiling face, beaming with pride, holding their daughter in her arms. The image, a photograph taped to the shade, was comforting, and briefly made him forget what was troubling him.

  Sergei’s heartening reflections were interrupted by his partner, Yuri Popov, feverishly rustling papers.

  “Could you be a little louder?” Sergei asked, his words dripping with sarcasm and bitterness. “I can’t even think with all that noise!”

  “Sorry! Didn’t know I was bothering you,” Yuri replied with matching acid in his tone. “What the hell is your problem, man?”

  Though he would have loved to rattle off a list cataloging his many complaints about their present assignment, he refrained from doing so, opting instead to respond with a generic “nothing” when, in fact, something felt off.

  Their location, the stakeout, the men they were shadowing, all of it felt wrong. Sergei could not quite identify exactly what was wrong, but he could feel it deep in his core. A sort of sixth sense he prided himself on possessing during his fifteen years with the Russian Police indicated that trouble lurked just beyond the confines of their vehicle. As an agent of the central law-enforcement body in Russia who operated under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Sergei had employed his instinctive perception to solve more crimes and apprehend more criminals than he cared to admit.

  Seated in his unremarkable tan sedan with the heating system activated at full force, Sergei felt goose bumps dimple his flesh despite the warmth of the car. Both he and Yuri had been patrolling incognito, surveying the comings and goings of a Russian mob boss and his crew. Thanks to intelligence collected by the Ministry of Internal Affairs about possible shipments of plutonium to a port in the Avacha Bay, they were both sent to the Kamchatka Peninsula to the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

  Several mysterious communications intercepted by the Ministry revealed that the recipient of the plutonium batches was a member of the Russian Mafia, a development that, if corroborated, could prove disastrous. To that end, Sergei understood the need for his presence, its urgency. But the necessity of his attendance did not ease his misgivings about leaving his wife and child. The prospect of validating or invalidating the cryptic claim did little to abate his intuitive qualms; he was stricken by the notion that something far worse than the possibility of mobsters with plutonium awaited.

  Situated just down the road from a brick warehouse with hundreds of miles of woodlands to their rear, thus far, Sergei and Yuri had not seen any deliveries other than lumber companies. Such transfers were appropriate as the dossier provided by his department stated that the formidable repository, which featured approximately thirty four thousand square feet and occupied an entire block of real estate, housed timber. Nestled in the expansive area, the Ministry suspected that a three thousand square foot office existed and was operated by the Russian Mafia.

  As Sergei and Yuri sat vigil outside the expansive storehouse in tense silence, the sun began its descent into the frozen horizon line, relinquishing its weak grip on the day and surrendering in shades of deep orange and salmon to darkening breadths of violet sky. The enfeebled rays of dwindling light transformed the bleached landscape to an unearthly electric blue, lending it a preternatural eeriness.

  Blanketed by cyan shadows, the scenery around them became unnatural, ethereal.

  “The countryside looks like something out of a horror movie, no?” Sergei commented.

  “Am I allowed to speak without disturbing you, Sergei?” his partner asked derisively. “I wouldn’t want to interrupt you or anything, seeing as how you’ve become so sensitive to noise,” Yuri continued.

  Sergei laughed aloud, heartily, for the first time in long while.

  “Oh man! I guess I am a bit sensitive lately, aren’t I?” he asked still chuckling. “You know how it is, Yuri, to be away from your family. It’s hard.”

  “But it’s our job. It’s what we signed on for,” Yuri rationalized. “This assignment will end, and you will be back with your family again.”

  “I know, I know. I just wish I didn’t have to be away from Anna so soon. She is so young. I wonder if she’ll remember me when I return.”

  “She’ll remember you. Don’t worry about that. And she’ll thank you someday for catching scumbags like the ones were tailing and preventing a possible nuclear catastrophe.”

  Sergei said nothing. He knew his partner was right, that their current task would end as all others did– hopefully with several arrests—and they would both go home to their loved ones. But the notion of home never seemed so remote.

  While Sergei Sokolov contemplated his pronounced, albeit, unreasonable, sense of impending dread, a tapping noise distracted him.

  “Yuri,” he said. “Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “That tapping noise,” Sergei paused, lowering the radio and heating system.

  The soft drumming continued.

  “What tapping noise?” Yuri asked, confused. “Turn the heat back on, I’m freezing, man.”

  “Listen, dammit!” he ordered.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  The patter continued, like the sound of sleet against a tin roof, beating ceaselessly against the rear of the unmarked police cruiser.

  “What the hell?” Yuri questioned. “What could be making that sound?”

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  Sergei and Yuri both twisted in their seats toward the rear window. The sun’s complete submission to the otherworldly blue of twilight cloaked the back end of their car in gloom, bound it in lengths of sapphire ribbon that appeared to glide then hover, waiting, but not still.

  Tap. Tap. Tap

  Confounded, Sergei was uncertain of what his eyes struggled to see but was certain that something evil lingered in the shadows.

  “I’m going out there,” Yuri declared as he unclipped his gun from its holster. “It’s probably a goddamn squirrel. Little rodent needs to be put out of its misery.”

  Sergei opened his mouth to speak, to warn Yuri, but his argument was based on nothing tangible, just intuition. And despite the elusiveness of his hunch, he fought to repress telling his partner of his gut feeling. Before Sergei could deter his partner from venturing into the murk alone, Yuri was already out of the car.

  “This shouldn’t take long. Stay here and keep your eyes where they need to be,” Yuri smiled as he tipped his head toward the warehouse.

  “Hey wait. Hold on a second!” Sergei attempted but was silenced by a closing car door.

  He closed his eyes, shook his head and attempted to dismiss the feeling troubling him as nothing more than a suspicion easily remedied by a hot shower and a good meal.

  Sergei watched as Yuri circled the front of the car first, gripping his pistol with both hands. The warehouse, the focus of their stakeout, loomed ominously in the distance. With only two windows illuminated on the third floor and several lit on the ground floor, the building was a sinister face behind Sergei’s partner, menacing. Rounding the front bumper, Yuri drew near the driver’s side window. He scrunched his face in mock determinat
ion raising his weapon out in front of his body in a two-handed grip. Once parallel to his window, Sergei watched as his partner turned his head and grinned before assuming his parody of an officer in pursuit.

  Sergei laughed again.

  He turned the radio back on and relaxed a bit as his partner disappeared behind their vehicle. He guessed that momentarily, his partner would return having successfully chased off a starving squirrel.

  Sergei waited for his partner to return. Interminable moments passed. Yuri did not return.

  He twisted in his seat again, looked to the rear of the vehicle where the tapping noise had begun. He did not see his partner. Darkness had encircled the back end of their cruiser. Sergei strained his eyes against the blackness, desperately trying to decipher a shape of any kind but saw nothing, a blackened void.

  The abnormal blackness unsettled Sergei more profoundly that any presentiment he ever experienced. It had become too dark too quickly.

  His hand began to tremble involuntarily as he reached for his radio, deeply suspecting that both he and Yuri were in danger, and in need of backup.

  As his fingertips grazed the transponder, a loud crashing against the car jolted him. Reflexively, Sergei squeezed his eyes shut, preparing for an implosion of safety glass. His mind raced, reasoning that a car crashing into their sedan had generated such a sound.

  Sergei opened his eyes immediately and expected to see a car pulling away. He instantly realized, however, that another car was not responsible for the thunderous clamor. It was something else entirely.

  Before him, atop the hood of his vehicle, Yuri Popov’s lifeless body was splayed. His mouth was agape, screaming soundlessly; his eyes wide with terror. Yuri’s body was battered, the look of torture fixed on his face. Sergei tried to tear his eyes from the horrific image before him, needed to look away, but was held, shocked.

  Suddenly, Sergei could not hear a sound. The world had gone silent, completely still. He held his breath, could have sworn he heard the distinct tapping return at the trunk through the unearthly static.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  It had returned.

  The tapping was muffled, however, by the sound of his own heartbeat thundering against his ribcage.

  He was dizzied, sickened by the mangled corpse of his partner positioned on the hood of the car. His mind raced nearly as fast as his pulse, searching for a logical explanation, but came up empty. Someone, or something, had dropped Yuri onto the vehicle and left his body a twisted, distorted heap of broken bones.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  The sound was incessant, maddening.

  Sergei retrieved his radio and immediately called for backup, alerted other units that there was an officer down. He then grabbed his pistol from his hip holster and released the safety before flipping down the visor above his head and grabbing the picture of his wife, Antonina and daughter, Anna. Placing the photograph in the inner breast-pocket of his jacket, Sergei climbed out of the cruiser.

  He left the door ajar to allow the meager light it provided to penetrate the thickening night, and then moved cautiously to the rear of the vehicle.

  He listened intently for the tapping sound, but heard nothing. There was no crackling of dried tree branches. No animals stirred or scurried. The street, just a short distance away, was soundless. The surrounding area was strangled, stifled.

  Sergei’s heart continued at a dangerous pace. He breathed unevenly in short shallow breaths, expecting at any minute to be met with a mysterious adversary.

  A sudden horn blast from the lumber warehouse made Sergei jump and nearly wet himself. Releasing one hand from his revolver and clutching his chest, Sergei stopped briefly. After several deep inhalations and exhalations, he was not calmed but slightly less jumpy.

  He skirted the trunk of the car and found nothing, then turned the corner to return to the front of the vehicle, where his partner, Yuri lay dead. Sergei felt dread flow through every vein in his body. He did not want to see Yuri in the condition he was in.

  Circling the car with his weapon in hand, Sergei Sokolov’s watchful gaze was met by a pair of wide-set, honey-colored eyes.

  In the distance the eyes were almond-shaped, feline. They seemed to float in the obscurity.

  Questioning his sense of depth perception, Sergei guessed the eyes belonged to some sort of mountain lion. But they looked too small, and too high up.

  Familiar with the terrain, he knew there were no foothills in the immediate surroundings, so the animal did not stand atop an elevated perch.

  Suddenly, he heard footfalls. Heavy treads began crunching down on ice-crusted snow. Slowly at first, they advanced toward him then picked up speed.

  Sergei fired his gun at the approaching beast. He was certain a bullet had hit it yet it kept coming, faster and faster. He had not injured it.

  He squeezed the trigger again and again, emptying his clip as he fired into the blackness. Impossibly, the animal still advanced.

  As the creature drew closer, Sergei realized it was no mountain lion.

  What he saw was an abomination. Its features were inhuman, but the body was that of a man, an enormous man.

  He turned to run, to flee the fiend that charged at him. Adrenaline flooded his system as flight conquered confrontation. A deep-seated aversion, inherent in his very DNA propelled him forward, away from the golden-eyed leviathan.

  With his legs moving as fast as they could, his feet alternately slammed to the icy snow beneath them, racing against resistant ground. But effortless footsteps behind him gained momentum, closing the distance between them too quickly. He heard them, galloping like the last of the four horsemen of the apocalypse; Death was pressing him.

  Sergei’s heart threatened to pound out of his chest just as a massive hand collared him from behind hoisting him high into the air, pulling him back. As he lurched rearward, the beast spun Sergei, positioning him so they were face to face.

  He stared into the eyes of what he could only imagine was the devil himself, escaped from the depths of unnamed underworlds to claim the souls of humankind. He heard himself cry out, a tortured scream, as he realized his newborn daughter, safely sheltered in the warmth and comfort of her mother’s arms, would grow up without him.