Souls At Zero (A Dark Psychological Thriller)

by Neal Martin

  Dead as can be.

  Blutwolf looked around him for a moment, then he knelt down beside the body. He didn't recognise the dead man, but then he didn't expect to either. None of the Angel of Death's drones knew each other. Each was a lone wolf, working independently, reporting only to the Angel of Death himself. Blutwolf rolled up the dead man's right sleeve and checked his forearm. On the still warm skin of the assassin's forearm was a tattoo of the number 27. Blutwolf had a number on his own forearm as well. The number one.

  Taking the dead shooter's rifle—a Dragunov sniper rifle—Blutwolf headed back to the farmhouse, leaving the dead body behind him.

  That was it. They wouldn't stop coming now. When 27 failed to report in, they would send someone else to hunt Blutwolf, and they would keep sending drones out until he was dead. He was a danger to them now. Out of their control. Out of his control, the Angel of Death's. His maker.

  Angel of death or not, his time would soon come.

  Blutwolf would make sure of it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The loud banging noises that cracked across the outside of the house stirred Kaitlin McGuire from her drug induced slumber. Half opening her eyes, she realised she had no idea where she was. Then she felt the softness of the mattress beneath her, and she thought she was home, in her own bed, having just awoke from a terrible nightmare. "Mummy?" she called out in a hoarse voice, her throat dry and raspy.

  When there was no answer, she opened her eyes all the way and sat up with a start, looking fearfully around the room.

  Now she remembered where she was. It all came flooding back to her in a horrible rush that made her head go dizzy and tears to spring from her eyes. In her mind, she saw the cafe in Botanic Avenue, saw Harry slump out of his chair and fall unconscious to the floor. She remembered the sting of the needle in her neck, and then waking up in the very room she was now in. She remembered her kidnapper coming into the attic room. Remembered the cutting blades in his hand, asking her, "Pain or no pain?"

  "Oh no…" she moaned.

  Kaitlin looked down at her hands and saw the bandage on her left one. The bloody stump where her little finger used to be. She stared at the bloody, bandaged stump for an extended moment, her hand shaking, her lower lip quivering.

  Her finger was gone, she realised with horror.

  Cut off.

  Then she saw all the blood on the floor. So much blood, stained into the floorboards.

  That's when the throbbing pain hit, and she began to scream. Screamed herself hoarser than she already was. Screamed until she made herself sick and she could scream no more.

  Then she flopped back on the mattress, curled into a foetal position.

  Why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this?

  When no answers came, Kaitlin stopped thinking and slipped into a mildly catatonic state, a failsafe against the insurmountable terror she felt. At some point, she was aware of the attic trapdoor being opened, and then closed a few moments later. She couldn't bring herself to look and see who it was. She didn't need to. She already knew who it was. Her captor. Her tormentor. The man who put her to sleep and then cut her finger off.

  It was the throbbing in her left hand that finally brought her out of her fugue state, that and the unbearable dryness of her throat. She needed water badly.

  Kaitlin forced herself to sit up, despite every movement being a monumental effort. All she wanted to do was retreat into herself until this whole terrible situation was over. She wanted to close her eyes, and only open them again when she was home safe with her mother.

  But Harry kept popping into her mind. His rugged face with brown eyes like hers. His warm smile that he seemed to reserve just for her. He wouldn't want her to give up yet. He would want her to be a soldier, just like him. To carry on, no matter what.

  Almost as a barrier against the pain in her hand, she found herself thinking about the time Harry told her about how he had almost died over in Iraq. The other nineteen people he was with at the time all died. Harry was the only one to survive. He didn't go into details about what happened. Just said he never gave up, even though he kept expecting to die at any second, like the people around him already had. He just kept going, and the reason he kept going was because of her. He said he couldn't bear the thought of never getting to know her, of never knowing his own daughter.

  Harry had stayed alive for her. Now she had to stay alive for him.

  She had to be as brave as Harry was, and keep going no matter what.

  So Kaitlin sat up on the mattress and forced herself to drink from one of the bottles of water that sat nearby on the dusty floor. She had drank half a bottle when she noticed the brown coloured pill bottle sitting on the floor as well. There was a note underneath the pill bottle that said: FOR THE PAIN.

  The note made her focus on the increasing pain in her hand. She could barely bring herself to look at where her little finger used to be. It still hadn't sunk in that she would be without the finger for the rest of her life, assuming of course she ever made it out alive from the situation she was in.

  But she would make it out alive. She would be brave until Harry came to get her. Which he would. She couldn't allow herself to think otherwise. It was the only hope she had, the only thing that was keeping her going.

  She reached for the pill bottle, opened it and shook two of the small capsules into her injured left hand, before placing the bottle on the floor again and transferring the pills to her right hand. She stared at the pills for a moment, almost afraid to take them in case they were really poison. She had to remind herself that she had been kidnapped, and if the man who took her wanted her dead he would have killed her earlier instead of just cutting off her finger. So she washed the first pill down with water, and then did the same with the second, hoping they wouldn't take long to work, because the throbbing pain in her hand was becoming unbearable and was making her sick to her stomach. So much so that she feared she might throw up what she just swallowed. She forced herself to sit still for the next several minutes, while she allowed her stomach to settle and her mind to further calm down.

  It was freezing in the room, the cold light of day pouring through the round window seeming to make it even colder. She had no idea what time it was either. A watch was something she never wore. Jewellery in general wasn't her thing. It irritated her and always felt uncomfortable to wear.

  She stood up and went to the window to look outside, looking down to the concrete yard below, then past the tin shed to the rocky fields beyond, the grey cloud-filled sky overshadowing it all. She remembered the loud noises then, the ones that woke her up earlier.

  Gun shots.

  She had seen enough movies to know the sound, although she couldn't be completely sure. If they were gunshots though, did the kidnapper make them? What was he shooting at? Someone else?

  Then a horrible thought hit her. Maybe the kidnapper was shooting at Harry. Maybe Harry found out where she was and came to rescue her, and when he got here, the kidnapper shot him.

  Was Harry lying dead outside in a field somewhere?

  Kaitlin shook her head and immediately dismissed such a horrible thought. There was no way Harry was dead. If he did find out where she was, it would be the kidnapper dead, not Harry. Harry was the soldier after all. The one who survived countless attempts on his life over the years. No way was Harry going to die and leave her fatherless. He wouldn't do that. She repeated that to herself over and over until there was no doubt in her mind.

  Harry was alive, and still out there looking for her. He would be here soon. She knew it.

  The kidnapper must have been shooting at something else. Rabbits maybe. Yes, that was it. He needed food, so he shot some rabbits. He would probably bring her some later, though she doubted she would eat any. She still felt sick.

  More than that, the pain in her hand seemed to be getting worse. She had expected the painkillers to have kicked in by now, but they didn't seem to be working. The pain around
the stump where her finger used to be was immense, and it spread all the way into her hand and wrist. The more she thought about it, the worse the pain seemed to get. She gritted her teeth as she held her injured left hand up with her right, and began to pace restlessly around the room. She just wanted the pain to stop, or at least subside, but it didn't.

  It was the worst pain she had ever felt in her life. Worse even than the time she had fallen off a swing at age seven and broken her right forearm. That was nothing compared to the pain she was feeling now.

  Kaitlin groaned as she walked around the room holding her throbbing hand. She couldn't stay still, and soon she was bent over, her groans turning to long wails of agony.

  At one point, the pain seemed to reach some sort of zenith, becoming so unbearable that she began to stamp her feet hard on the floor, near the middle of the room.

  And that's when the floorboard snapped and her left leg disappeared into the floor, breaking through the ceiling of whatever room was beneath her. Kaitlin screamed in shock as she went down, then screamed again even louder when her injured left hand slammed off the floor as she instinctively tried to save herself.

  She was lying flat on the floor, her left leg buried to the thigh into the floorboards and the ceiling below. For a moment, she could only lay there, screwing her face up against the blinding pain in her hand that was forcing her to take short, sharp breaths. Then with her right arm she tried to lift herself up and pull her left leg out of the hole in the floor. But as she did so, she heard a horrible creaking sound, and she froze, knowing what the sound meant. The boards beneath her right leg were breaking under the pressure she was putting on them. Even when she stopped moving, it was too late. The entire floor underneath her gave way with a massive crack, and the next thing she knew, she was crashing through the floor, in between the support beams and through the plaster ceiling below. It seemed like she fell for a long time, but in reality it was only seconds before she crash-landed into the room below, plaster and bits of rotting floorboard raining down on her as she slammed to the floor with a loud thud, her head banging against the harder floorboards of the room she had fallen into.

  Kaitlin lay there groaning for a second as bits of wood and plaster continued to fall on her prone body, then she went unconscious.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Blutwolf gripped the steering wheel of the stolen orange Vauxhall tensely as he drove along the Springfield Road, heading for Belfast city centre. Whatever time he thought he had to complete his plan had now been drastically cut short. He hadn't expected the Angel Of Death to locate him so quickly, even though it had now been over six months since Blutwolf shook off the leash that allowed the Angel Of Death to control him for so many years.

  After the accident that had disrupted his programming and set him free, Blutwolf lay low in Italy, where the accident had happened, before moving on to Austria, to hole up inside a mountain cabin for a time, while he decided what he was going to do with his newfound freedom. Not that he felt free at all. He was still as mentally trapped as he had always been, just in a different way now. Perhaps in a much worse way. Before, he had no choice but to do whatever the Angel Of Death asked of him. Like a robot following instructions, or a brainwashed soldier following orders. Now he answered to no one but himself. But such freedom came at a price. It forced him to confront the reality of the damage that had been done to him. He was a decimated human being. Not a real person at all. This final act of defiance was a way for him to close the book on his sorry self, but on his terms. He would deliver a final reckoning on all those who contributed to his decimation, then he would deliver himself from his own evil, and the evil that had been done to him by people that were so far beyond evil, they were barely even human.

  According to the small, handheld locater device in Blutwolf's lap, Edger was still at the building in Donegal Square, the place where he worked as a private investigator. He was probably trying to figure out how he was going to kill McGinty and the other target Blutwolf had given him. But that didn't matter now. As much as Blutwolf wanted the other eight dead, it was the last one on his list that mattered most. The Angel Of Death. There was no time left to pursue the others. More drone assassins would be closing in, not just on Blutwolf, but also on Edger. They would both be dead before they managed to kill the other eight men on the list. Which meant the only option was to go for the Angel Of Death. To cut the head off the snake. The rest would fall by other means. Blutwolf had enough damning evidence on each of them to put them all away for life. Not his preferred method of revenge, but it would have to do.

  There was also the no small matter of Edger's punishment. Before everything else, that was the catalyst that started the ball rolling on this revenge mission. It all started with Edger. And now that punishment was going to be cut short. Over time, Blutwolf had planned to do to Edger's daughter what the Angel Of Death had done to Blutwolf. By the time Edger did what was asked of him, taking out all nine people on the kill list—and if he didn't die in the process—he would get his precious daughter back. But she wouldn't be the same. She would be as hollowed out and as decimated as Blutwolf was.

  But there was no time for any of that now. Which Blutwolf should have knew in the first place. His desire for revenge had blinded him to the realty of his situation however. He allowed himself to think he could remain a rogue wolf for as long as he needed to. He should have known a control freak like the Angel Of Death wouldn't tolerate that for long.

  So now the plan had changed.

  Like it or not, Edger would be teaming up with Blutwolf so they could take out the Angel Of Death.

  And once that was done, Blutwolf would kill Edger's daughter, and force the man to live in a world of pain for the rest of his life.

  DI Black was at his desk in Lisburn Road Police station staring down at an eye witness report on an armed robbery that happened the day before at a jewellers near the city centre. He was doing his best to concentrate on the report, but his mind was on Harry Edger, as it had been since he last arrested the ex-Legionnaire the day before. It was eating at him that Edger was allowed to go free and was still running around out there, most likely still planning how he was going to kill Brian McGinty. McGinty was under round the clock protection now, but that didn't make Black feel any better. The fact was, Edger had committed some serious crimes, and then had the fucking nerve to make another attempt on McGinty's life within an hour of being released from custody. Black had never come across a situation like it before. He just couldn't understand why a man like Edger was allowed to go free.

  "Paul?"

  He was vaguely aware of DS McKee calling him from the desk opposite. He barely looked up at her. "What?"

  "What the hell's wrong with you?" she asked him. "I called you twice there. You're in a world of your own."

  Black looked up at her. "What is it?"

  "I was going to ask if you gleaned anything from those eye witness reports you're supposed to be reading, but it's pretty obvious you have no interest in them, and I know why."

  "I'm reading them."

  "No, you're not. You're thinking about that man Edger. I know you, Paul. You were told to let that go."

  "I can't."

  "Well, you'd better try, because we have this robber to sort out, and a pile of other cases on top. Get your head in the fucking game."

  Black frowned at McKee for a moment, considering telling her to fuck off. Her blatant ambition grated on his nerves sometimes. She didn't care if Edger was still running around out there. Her only concern was solving the next case and moving one step closer to her next promotion. He was about to remind her of her rank when a young guy he recognised as being from forensics walked into the incident room and stopped by Black's desk.

  "This is more than my job's worth," the young forensics guy said and dropped a manila folder onto Black's desk. "We were told to forget about this case."

  A sense of excitement ran through Black as he looked at the folder on the desk. "Thank
s, Aaron," he said to the forensics guy. "I'll not forget this."

  The forensics guy said nothing more and walked out of the incident room.

  "What's that?" McKee asked, her tone already disapproving.

  "The car used in Kaitlin McGuire's abduction was brought in this morning," Black said, picking up the folder and opening it. "It was found abandoned near the Springfield Road. I got my guy in forensics to run some tests."

  "Jesus, Paul. You'll get him sacked as well as yourself."

  "I need to know what's going on here," Black told her, scanning the forensics report inside the folder.

  "It's your funeral."

  Black ignored her as he read the report. As expected, hair fibres were pulled from the back seat of the car, probably belonging to Kaitlin McGuire. Various sets of fingerprints were also lifted from the car. All but one set belonged to the car owner and his family. Black read the name linked to the other set of prints. "Jesus Christ."

  "What is it?" McKee asked, her curiosity getting the better of her. "Did you find something?"

  "I found something alright." Black closed the folder and stood up.

  "Where you going?"

  "To have a word with Mr Edger," he said, walking out of the incident room.

  Gemma McGuire was standing by the window in John Rankin's office, staring over at the city hall building while drinking yet another cup of coffee. Her head was pounding from all the vodka she had drank the night before, and her stomach was turning over with constant anxiety, making her feel sick. Rankin sat behind her at his desk, while Donna Lennon sat at her own desk in the corner of the office, doing whatever she was doing on her laptop.

  "You alright, Gemma?" Rankin asked her.

  Gemma forced a smile and nodded, but said nothing.

  Rankin leaned back in his chair. "Harry will get her back. At least we have an idea where she's being held."