Planet Urth Boxed Set

by Jennifer Martucci

  Chapter 6

  Howard Kane had awakened days earlier from a deep sleep. In his bed, he had stirred with a start only to find that the sun had just begun its ascent, an eager ball of fire surging from the horizon line. From the window beside his bed, he had seen pure gold illuminate the skyline, melding into shades of orange, intensifying as it swelled and blended rich pinks and purples before deepening to violet as it shepherded night to day. He’d sat upright immediately, rapt. But the glorious sunrise had not been responsible for his rapture. Something far more magnificent had happened. He’d heard the sweet sound of the Lord’s voice, crystal-clear, in his head. Warmth and light had abounded within him, a heavenly peace teeming inside his heart. Even now, if he concentrated, Howard could hear God’s message echoing in his thoughts, and feel complete tranquility. He’d been given another mission. His divine instructions had been explicit. Howard was to find a man that was on fire; God had told him to find the burning man.

  In the many hours since he’d heard from the Lord, he had not slept, only rested intermittently. He had worked tirelessly on finding the burning man, on orchestrating his meeting with him. It had not taken long to find exactly whom the Lord had spoken of. In fact, he hadn’t needed the team he’d assembled to scour the Internet exclusively. A quick search of the local newspaper archives revealed exactly what he’d needed; what God had wanted. An article from the weekend edition of the Herald Falls Times indicated that two men, both hardened criminals whose releases from prison baffled Howard, had been attacked in a dark alleyway behind some hedonistic sinner’s club known as the Blue Ivy Nightclub. One had been burned to death and the other had been badly beaten and had almost died.

  As he’d read the text on the screen of his laptop computer, he’d known it was the work of the Sola, had felt her evil deeds as they were occurring, and that now he’d found the burning man who would lead him to her. Of course, the burning man had died, but his friend had lived. His survival had been the Sola’s mistake. She had undoubtedly tortured both men for her own amusement, but failing to kill them both would lead to her demise. He would make sure of it.

  Days of preparation had gone into executing Howard’s plan to make contact with the man who’d survived the Sola’s attack. The man, a Lester Vice, was recuperating at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Hospital. Fortunately, the hospital administrator, Graham Everett, was a weak man easily swayed by money. After being offered generous compensation, Graham had been more than willing to help facilitate his mission. Graham had agreed to influence scheduling decisions made by department heads so that a skeleton crew would be working on the floor the night Howard intended to visit. He’d also promised to equip Howard with a maintenance keycard that would permit him to gain access to the hospital through an employee service entrance. Disabling cameras and security guards had been left to Howard and his team.

  With as many factors as he could control being manipulated, Howard arrived at Our Lady of Perpetual Help at one o’clock in the morning. Visiting hours had ended four hours earlier. The parking lots had emptied and only staff cars remained. The lot he sought was around the back of the building near a loading bay. He directed his black SUV in to a space designated for employees only and quickly scanned the surrounding area. No one lingered near the loading bay smoking or talking on their phone as he often saw them doing during daylight hours when he’d surveyed the area. Confident he was not being watched, Howard stepped from his vehicle into the chilly autumn night. A crisp breeze stirred the dried leaves that had fallen from trees that lined the property. He pulled the hood of his jacket over his head and tightened the drawstrings around it, but not to protect him from the wind. He did it, instead, to conceal his features, features one could easily remember and remark on.

  His hooded coat that hid his face had been placed over of a navy jumpsuit identical to the ones worn by the custodial staff. The uniform had been a necessary guise crucial to him entering and moving through the building as inconspicuously as possible. Two of his men, dressed in similar garb, followed alongside him as he entered through the service entrance of the hospital. He swiped his keycard and the lock on the door disengaged promptly. Inside, he and his fellow Soldiers moved quickly down a long, narrow corridor, careful to keep their heads low and inaccessible to the prying eyes of security cameras, to an elevator bank. The area was deserted. No one milled about, yet they still shifted anxiously until a pair of doors opened. Jeb Atwood, the man to Howard’s right, immediately produced a can from one of his jacket pockets, aimed it at the camera lens in the elevator and depressed a valve that released a thin stream of black paint. Once the lens had been sufficiently blacked out, they rode to the fourth floor where Lester Vice, the criminal who’d seen the Sola, convalesced.

  Before the elevator came to a stop at the fourth floor, a walkie-talkie at Howard’s hip crackled to life.

  “The security guards that were posted by the southern elevator bank have been disposed of,” a deep voice said.

  Howard depressed a button on the side of his device and spoke, “Excellent. We will be stepping off the elevator in approximately twenty seconds. I trust that the nurses have been busied elsewhere?”

  “Yes,” the voice replied and Howard replaced his handset to his belt just as the elevator came to a halt. The doors opened and he and his men stepped out.

  A team had arrived moments before them and had secured the area. Three nurses and two elderly security guards had been injected with hypodermic needles filled with Ativan, a high-potency, short-acting sedative drug Howard had obtained, which had been prefilled prior to the team’s arrival. After being drugged, the hospital staffers had been locked in a supply closet. The sparse number of guards and nurses had been courtesy of Graham Everett, as was the shortage of doctors on call that night. The last thing Howard wanted, the last thing anyone wanted, was for innocent people to be harmed in his process of collecting information from Lester Vice. With extraneous individuals out of the way, he could breathe easier, confident he would get exactly what he came for. Everything had been set into motion, his path made clear and uncluttered by God and His loyal servants.

  Cameras had been identified and their lenses blackened in the area surrounding Lester’s room. Two men from the team that had tranquilized the nurses and guards had stayed behind and now stood sentinel outside the closed door to Lester’s room. As Howard approached, the men nodded deferentially to him.

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” Howard said to them. “Thank you for this divine service you’ve provided. The Lord appreciates your work. I appreciate your work.”

  He watched as the men beamed at his compliment, how their eyes glistened with reverence when they lifted their heads and looked upon him. He left Jeb Atwood in charge of the three men that now protected the room. To him he said, “No one is to enter this room without my command.”

  Jeb nodded indicating his understanding and Howard slipped into Lester’s room.

  The room was dimly lit by fluorescent fixtures that cast a sickly pallor on everyone, but Howard had to suppress a gasp when he saw the sad state of the man on the gurney in front of him. Neither the bruises that covered him nor the casts that covered one of his legs and arms had generated the near-gasp. His aura, stifling and laden with sins, mortal sins, hung around him, clinging like scum on a pond. He allowed his eyes to inspect Lester’s bare skin. Almost every inch of his exposed skin, his face, neck and arm straight down to his fingers, had been scribbled on. Tattoos of every shape and size, some blasphemous, some pornographic, covered his flesh. He’d defaced and mutilated the body God had given him. Had he not been in need of information from the wretch before him, he would have wrestled with the urge to strike him down and rid the world of such a vile stain. But he could not indulge in such assistance. He needed Lester, despicable as he was.

  Howard moved to the foot of the bed and tapped Lester’s foot. Lester did not respond right away so Howard tapped harder. Lester’s eyelids fluttered before he opened his eyes. Howa
rd stepped back, directly under the light fixture, and pulled his hood back from his head. When Lester’s eyes adjusted to the light, they opened wide in shock briefly before being replaced with an arrogant stare.

  Something in the way the man narrowed his beady eyes made Howard bristle, blistering with rage. How a contemptible man like Lester possessed the audacity to regard a man like himself, a man of God, with such scorn, was beyond him.

  Howard swallowed back the anger that arose within him and spoke. “I’m here to ask you some questions about the night you were attacked,” he said levelly.

  Lester’s upper lip lifted into a snarl and he spat, “I didn’t tell the cops shit and you don’t look like no cop, so why would I tell your Freddy fuckin’ Krueger ass anything? Unless I’m dreaming, then I’m in deep shit,” he said and laughed a twisted laugh. The laughter caused him to grimace immediately, his face twisting in pain. Howard couldn’t help but allow a thin smile to touch his lips.

  “Do you think mocking a man who has been near fatally injured and disfigured amusing?” Howard lectured in a booming voice.

  Impervious to Howard’s scolding, Lester smirked and said, “I have a question.”

  “Yes,” Howard replied impatiently. “Go on.”

  “Where’s your claws and red striped sweater?” Lester taunted then laughed before cringing in pain.

  Tired of the man’s insolence, Howard approached the side of the bed and handcuffed Lester’s free hand to the bedrail. He did not concern himself with the other as it had been wrapped in a cast from shoulder to wrist. With both of Lester’s hands immobilized, Howard shoved a rag in his mouth so quickly the injured man did not have time to react. He then grabbed Lester’s arm, the one protected by a cast, and slammed it against the bedrail. Lester tried to howl out in pain, but the cloth in his mouth muffled the sound.

  “Now,” Howard began. “I am going to remove the cloth from your mouth and you’re going to tell me what I want to know, or things are going to become very unpleasant for you.” Howard removed the rag, sure that his threat had been sufficient.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Lester demanded.

  “I am a servant of the Lord, and I need to know who did this to you.”

  “Okay, I get that you’re a fucking nut job, really I do, but I’m still not tellin’ you shit.”

  Howard, undaunted by Lester’s words, shoved the rag back into his mouth. He reached into his coat pocket and retrieved a scalpel. The blade was long and deadly sharp and gleamed when it caught the light of the overhead fixture, flashing just before he slashed at Lester’s stomach. In one quick motion, the instrument sliced through his gown and flesh. The cut made a wide wound just below his navel, wide and deep. But not so deep that it caused immediate death. Ruby-red blood spilled from the gash immediately and began collecting near his groin.

  Lester’s eyes grew wide and his face contorted in anguish. He tried to scream, but the gag prevented the sound from leaving his throat.

  “It seems as though you have a rather serious injury, Lester,” Howard said calmly.

  Lester began to thrash wildly searching for the call button near his bed, desperate to alert a nurse or doctor. But twisting caused the blood to flow faster, soaking his gown from the waist down and falling to the mattress below.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Howard warned and pointed to the expanding pool at Lester’s lap.

  Lester could not respond, but the desperation in his eyes conveyed every sentiment he wished to convey.

  “Such a pity, you with this gaping wound in a hospital full of doctors and nurses who could help. Of course, they’d need to get here in time to save you,” Howard paused and allowed for the gravity of his words to sink in. “And I could arrange for that, if you tell me what I need to know.”

  The bleeding man nodded eagerly. Howard issued a final warning before removing the rag. “If you scream or disrespect me, you will die from that wound; make no mistake about it.”

  Lester glanced at the lower portion of the mattress he rested upon, now saturated with his blood. His brows knitted together in worry and he bobbed his head up and down. Howard removed the cloth from his mouth.

  “Now tell me who did this to you,” Howard ordered him.

  “A teenage girl,” Lester said hurriedly. “My friend and I jumped her and her friend in the alley, just wanted to have some fun with them.”

  “You were going to sexually assault them,” Howard said evenly.

  “Whatever,” Lester dismissed. “Anyway, it never happened. One of the girls, she changed. One minute she was scared shitless, then she went dead calm. Next thing I know, I’m flying across the alley and getting slammed into a brick wall. After I hit the wall, a force pulled me away then slammed me into it again. That’s the last thing I remember. When I woke up, Rick was dead and I couldn’t move.”

  The “force” that Lester had referred to confirmed that dark powers had been at work in the alleyway the night of the incident, powers darker than the ones that lurked inside of Lester.

  “What did she look like?” Howard asked.

  “Brown hair, dark eyes, maybe eighteen and fucking hot,” Lester answered.

  “What was her name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What was her friend’s name?’

  “It wasn’t a date, man. I don’t know. Are you going to help me now? I told you all I know. I’m getting dizzy here.”

  Lester’s words had confirmed what Howard had sensed all along. The Sola had been in the alley, had maimed one of the men and killed the other. And she remained nearby. He needed to find her and kill her before she got away, but not before resolving matters with Lester Vice.

  He looked at the bleeding man and spoke. “You are a wicked and foolish man,” he charged. “In that alley, you actually attempted to rape a soldier of the devil.” Howard trained his gaze on Lester who looked unbothered by his words. “And no one is coming for you,” he said then shoved the rag back inside his mouth.

  Lester’s eyes widened in horror for a second time, but a look of arrogance never replaced it as it had earlier. Howard stared long and hard at him, at the panicked look etching his features. He wondered how many times Lester had caused others to make the exact face he made now. A swell of satisfaction jolted through his core and he realized that his decision to purge the world of an awful man like Lester was the right one. God would have wanted it.

  Howard Kane walked out of room four-hundred-twenty-eight on the fourth floor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Hospital and ordered his men to block anyone from entering Lester Vice’s room for at least half an hour. Lester would bleed to death, a slow and painful death deserving of a being as despicable as he. But Howard did not feel remorse for his death. Instead, he took hope in the fact that he had done work God would approve of, that his Maker would have had him carry out the task eventually; he’d simply taken the initiative and done it sooner. He had rid the Earth of one more sinner.

  Chapter 7

  Hours had passed since Arianna had called for Desmond in the woods, and in those hours her thoughts had continually returned to their discussion, to his words. He had attempted to explain away his disregard for Lily by saying his mission was to protect her, and only her, the Sola. That hadn’t been what she’d wanted to hear. She’d wanted to hear that her friend was okay, to have her worries allayed and questions answered. Yet, she had left their meeting with more questions than she’d arrived with, questions that nagged at her brain.

  She needed answers. And if Desmond did not have them, she would find out for herself. After a night of restless sleep, she awoke and decided she would ask Luke for yet another favor. She would ask him to go with her to Rockdale, back to the town she’d fled with her mother less than a month ago. With all the help he’d given her already, she felt like an ingrate asking again. Of course, he had offered to repair her motorcycle, as well as taking her to school each morning until the work was finished. But she had accepted. Accepti
ng help had been foreign to her then, was foreign to her still. Though she liked Luke and he seemed more than willing to help, motivated by his own unique set of reasons, she did not like feeling indebted to anyone. A thin smile touched her lips as she recalled Luke telling her he was helping in hopes of someday bedding her. He had been blunt, almost to the point of offense, yet completely charming all at once. Yes, she liked him. And he liked her.

  After showering and dressing, Arianna waited outside her trailer. Before long, she heard the faint rumble of Luke’s pickup truck. Within seconds, it came into sight then wheezed to a stop in front of her porch. She noticed that Stephanie was not with him and breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Sorry, Miss Personality will not be joining us today,” he said as he climbed out of the driver’s side. He walked around the front of the truck and opened the door for her.

  “Not giving up on the whole wooing thing, huh?” she teased.

  “Not until I get what I’m after,” he said and patted her backside playfully.

  He shut the door and rounded the truck then climbed behind the steering wheel.

  “Is Stephanie all right?” she asked and tried to mask her concern.

  “No need to worry about her,” he said picking up on her worry. “I’m sure that the stick up her butt bothers her some days.”

  He laughed at his own joke and she smiled.

  “Seriously, she’s okay, right?”